Inside the glass house: by Thalif Deen

19th November 2000

Who will have the last word?

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When Yasser Arafat was asked what he plans to do about the rising violence in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian leader pointedly blamed the military excesses on the Israelis.

As is obvious to everyone, Arafat declared, the overwhelming number of killings were by heavily-armed Israelis firing at unarmed Palestinians.

As the death toll rose to more than 220, almost all of them Palestinians, the Israeli military is increasingly deploying its US-supplied Cobra helicopters, rockets and missiles against Palestinian targets, including a vehicle carrying a Palestinian militia leader who was killed in a rocket attack last week.

"They are not my helicopters, they are not my tanks, they are not my missiles," Arafat told reporters during a visit to the White House and the United Nations last week.

"I have only one aeroplane," he said, alluding to his single-aircraft Palestinian airline.

The ongoing battle between machine gun-wielding Israelis and rock- throwing Palestinians continues to remain totally uneven and one-sided.

"A supposed peace-broker supplies one of the sides with 2 billion dollars' worth of arms per year," says Mark Steel, a columnist for the London-based Independent, "So if they want to be truly neutral they should either cut that out or, more controversially, send the Palestinians 2 billion dollars' worth of rubble."

Traditionally, the United States has tried to play the role of the "honest broker" in mediating the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, and also between Israelis and Arabs.

But the billions of dollars in US economic and military aid doled out to Israel every year - 1.9 billion dollars in outright military grants and 1.2 billion dollars in economic aid - clearly signal a far greater US commitment to Israel than to the Palestinians.

A public opinion poll conducted last week by the Bir Zeit University in Israel revealed that about 97 percent of the Palestinians feel that the United States can no longer be accepted as an honest broker in any Middle East peace negotiations.

The survey, which was conducted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, also revealed that Palestinians are increasingly of the view that future peace talks should be sponsored either by the United Nations or by some other international organisation - not by the United States.

The rising anger at the United States is predicated primarily on the unrelenting US support for the Israelis - irrespective of whether Israel is right or wrong.

Israel, on the other hand, has continued to prevail in the Middle East largely because of its prodigious military strength built almost entirely on US military aid and the uninterrupted supply of state-of-the-art US weapons systems.

According to the latest "Middle East Military Balance, 1999-2000" published by the Tel Aviv University's Jafee Centre for Strategic Studies, Israel continues to maintain a military superiority strong enough to face any combination of Arab forces.

As numbers go, Israel has a total of 624 US-supplied fighter planes compared with Syria's 520, Egypt's 498 and Jordan's 91.

Israel is also armed with 289 combat helicopters compared with Syria's larger fleet of 295, Egypt's 224 and Jordan's 68.

On land, Israel has 3,895 battle tanks against Syria's 3,700, Egypt's 2,535 and Jordan's 872.

Last April, Israel announced plans to spend over 3 billion dollars through 2005, primarily on additional fighter planes and helicopters, in order to strengthen the rapid mobility capabilities of the military following Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 18 years of occupation.

Last year Israel came up with a 17 billion dollar shopping list for new weapons - including additional fighter planes, helicopters, military transports and reconnaissance satellites - as a part of a US compensation package in return for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

The costs of withdrawal, along with the construction of new bases, were expected to total more than 10 billion dollars— all of which to be paid for by the Americans.

Although the United States is also the primary arms supplier to Egypt providing about 1.3 billion dollars in outright military grants annually, Washington has always ensured that the Israelis have a qualitative military edge over the Egyptians.

Major General Eitan Ben-Eliahu, Commander-in-Chief of the Israeli Defence Force, said early this year that Israel has always sought to ensure that Egypt does not receive the most advanced US weapons systems.

Currently, the F-15 fighter plane, described as the most advanced in the American arsenal, has been supplied only to Israel and Saudi Arabia, among Middle Eastern nations.

Israel, which does not consider Saudi Arabia a military threat, is willing to concede the F-15 to the Saudis but not to the Egyptians.

Ben-Eilahu said that Israel wants to continue to maintain its military superiority over all of its neighbours."To maintain this edge, we shouldn't have the F-15s delivered to any other country except Israel."

And, as always, Israel will continue to have the last word because no US Administration or US Congressman would agree to provide any Arab country with weapons that could help outshoot the Israelis in combat.

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