Most Arab states were uncomfortable with an expanded U.S. military presence in the region. Their lukewarm support for America’s war on terrorism made the United States doubt a number of its long-time allies in the region—none more so than Saudi Arabia. The fact that Bin Ladin and fifteen of the suicide hijackers in the September 11 attacks were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and that private Saudi funds had bankrolled al-Qaida, only worsened relations between the Saudis and the Americans. Other countries came under new scrutiny as well. Egypt was seen as soft on terror, Iran and Iraq were labelled as part of an “axis of evil,” and Syria rose to the top of the ranks of countries supporting terrorism. The Arab states found themselves under irreconcilable pressures after 9/11. If they opposed America’s war on terror, they risked sanctions that might range from economic isolation to outright calls for regime change by the world’s sole superpower. If they took America’s side, they opened their own territory to the threat of terror attacks by local jihadi cells inspired by Bin Ladin’s example. Between May and November 2003, cities in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey were rocked by multiple bomb attacks that left 125 dead and nearly 1,000 wounded. In November 2005, three hotels were ripped apart by coordinated bombs in Amman, Jordan, that left 57 dead and hundreds wounded—nearly all of them Jordanians. The Arab world faced tremendously difficult choices as it managed its relations with the United States. The same pressures that drove America and the Arabs apart drew Israel and America closer together. And the more America took Israel’s side, the greater its tensions with the Arab world. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon persuaded President George W. Bush that the United States and Israel faced a common war on terror. The Second Intifada, which broke out in September 2000, had grown increasingly violent by the time of the 9/11 attacks. Palestinian suicide bombers had inflicted heavy civilian casualties on Israeli society. According to Israeli government figures, Palestinian groups carried out thirty-five suicide bomb attacks in 2001, causing 85 deaths. The death toll more than doubled the following year, with fifty-five suicide attacks killing 220 Israelis in 2002.2 The worst incident came in March 2002 when Hamas suicide bombers killed 30 and wounded 140 Israelis celebrating Passover in a hotel in Netanya. The use of suicide bombings by Islamist groups to target innocent civilians was enough to convince President Bush that Israel and the United States were fighting against the same enemy. The United States then turned a blind eye to Israeli actions against both its Islamist foes—Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Palestine, and Hizbullah in Lebanon—and Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. Israel took full advantage of American complacency to unleash disproportionate attacks against Palestinian government and society that heightened tensions in the Arab world enormously. In June 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the reoccupation of the West Bank. Though he justified the measure in terms of assuring Israel’s security from terror attacks, Sharon’s move was clearly intended to isolate Yasser Arafat and weaken the Palestinian Authority. As Israeli forces seized Palestinian cities that had been under self-rule—Bethlehem, Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarm, and Qalqiliya—they stepped up attacks against the Palestinian resistance. Once they were back in control of key Palestinian cities, the Israelis tried to eliminate the leadership of Palestinian parties and militias by targeted assassination. Their attempts to assassinate militant leaders in densely inhabited areas normally led to extensive civilian casualties. In July 2002 the Israelis leveled an entire apartment building with a 2,000-pound bomb in their bid to assassinate Hamas commander Salah Shahada. They killed Shahada, along with eighteen other residents, including a number of children. Such use of heavy weaponry in urban areas inflicted heavy casualties on the Palestinian people. From the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 until the end of 2001, some 750 Palestinians were killed; in 2002, the number of Palestinians killed exceeded 1,000. On top of the use of lethal force, Israel imposed a number of collective punishments borrowed from British mandate–era Emergency Regulations. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada at the end of 2000, the Israelis have arrested thousands of Palestinians. Some have been tried and sentenced to long prison terms, others have been expelled. Yet others have been held under administrative detention for months on end, without charges or even access to the evidence against them, leaving them no means to challenge their detention or prove their innocence. As a further deterrent, in October 2001 the Israelis began to demolish the homes of Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks against Israel. The policy of house demolitions was only discontinued in February 2005, when the Israeli chief of staff acknowledged that the policy had no deterrent effect. Over this period, the Israeli military destroyed 664 Palestinian houses, leaving 4,200 people homeless, according to Israeli human rights group, B?Tselem. As the Israeli military struggled to contain the Second Intifada, the Sharon government exacerbated tensions with the Palestinians through measures designed to seize more territory in the West Bank. Israeli settlements expanded in the Occupied Territories. And in June 2002 the Israeli government began construction of a 720-kilometer (450-mile) wall, ostensibly to insulate Israel from Palestinian terror attacks. The Separation Barrier (dubbed the Apartheid Wall by Palestinians) cuts a path deep into the West Bank and represents a de facto annexation of nearly 9 percent of the Palestinian territory in the West Bank, adversely affecting the lives and livelihoods of nearly 500,000 Palestinians.
3 Israel’s repression of the Second Intifada proved a clear liability to America’s war on terror. The images of Palestinian suffering, broadcast live via Arab satellite television, provoked fury across the Middle East. Israeli actions, and U.S. inaction, proved valuable recruiting devices for al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. The Bush administration was forced to engage in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking to try to diffuse regional tensions. President Bush, recognizing the adverse effect Israeli policies had on America’s attempts to win Arab “hearts and minds” in the war on terror, decided to address the Palestine issue directly. In a major White House address delivered on June 24, 2002, Bush held out a vision of a Palestinian state “living side by side in peace and security” with Israel—the first time an acting U.S. president had openly advocated Palestinian statehood. However, the Bush vision required the Palestinians to “elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror”—a clear swipe at the democratically elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat. There was much in Bush’s speech to assuage Arab concerns. President Bush called on the Israelis to withdraw their troops from the West Bank and to return to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of the Second Intifada on September 28, 2000. He also called for an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These were new, substantive steps toward recognizing Palestinian suffering under occupation and towards acknowledging legitimate aspirations to independent statehood. Even so, Bush’s speech did not receive a favorable reception in the Arab world. His many references to combating terror made clear to Arab viewers that Bush was more concerned with prosecuting his war on terror than achieving a just and durable solution to the Palestinian problem. The Arabs doubted Bush’s sincerity—and for good reason. By the summer of 2002, his administration was already planning for war against Iraq.