why the US won't do this

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Seth poses the question very starkly:
>
>'It may seem far-fetched in today's atmosphere, but there's nothing 
>unrealistic about the idea of the US calling a Rambouillet-style 
>conference with Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians, laying out a 
>settlement and threatening to cut off aid / impose sanctions on 
>anyone who says no. The question is why the US won't do this.'
>
>I think that you have to take this seriously as a question, and the 
>answer is that it will not do it because the Israel-Palestine 
>conflict is a synecdoche for conflicts between the US and Arabs, 
>and, increasingly for conflicts between the US and Europe.
>
>Let me make an important qualification, I mean the US establishment 
>not the American people, who it seems to me have no special interest 
>in supporting Israel over the Palestinians. However, the interests 
>of the elite are reflected in public opinion.
>
>But the establishment itself would no more see Israel defeated than 
>they would see New York defeated. It is morally an extension of the 
>US. Anti-Israeli feeling outside of Palestine proper is inevitably a 
>form of anti-American feeling. The US elite could never bend to it, 
>without harming themselves.
>
>The difference with Rambouillet is palpable. Sharon is not 
>Milosevic, however much we deracinated intellectuals might draw 
>formalistic comparisons: I mean that Israel is identified with the 
>US in a way that Serbia just never could be.
>--
>James Heartfield

Comparison with Yugoslavia won't do, for reasons that you explain, 
but the US/Australia pulled East Timor on Indonesia, when it became 
clear that the severe economic crisis profoundly destabilized 
Indonesia, demanding a new political settlement, and that the 
leadership of the Timorese independence movement proved themselves to 
be cooperative.  Perhaps the US has not moved on Israel because a 
similar crisis (an economic crisis leading to a legitimation crisis) 
has not happened to it yet.
-- 
Yoshie

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