April 01, 2003

Arab Press on Rumsfeld and

Arab Press on Rumsfeld and Syria

A sample of typical commentary from the Arab world on Rummy's Syria comments and related topics:

"In the Beirut daily An-Nahar, Randa Haidar says that although Israel has long been accusing of Syria of helping Iraq acquire arms or hide banned weapons from UN inspectors, the US has always dismissed these allegations.

On the face of it, she writes, the warning issued to Syria by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld served notice that Washington will no longer turn a blind eye to arms smuggling via Syria to Iraq, or the continued pumping of Iraqi oil to Syria. In other words, the Americans are saying that “Syria can no longer claim to be supporting the ‘war on terror’ while at the same time supporting Iraq in its confrontation with the Americans and British.”

But Haidar says Rumsfeld’s threats to both Syria and Iran cannot be viewed in isolation from Israel, which is eager to get Washington to target both countries once it is finished with Iraq, using the “usual ploy” of playing up the threat they pose to it. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 they focused on Iran, but when that failed to impress a US administration that wanted Iran’s cooperation in Afghanistan, the Israelis turned the spotlight on the threat posed by Syria’s backing for Hizbullah and Palestinian fundamentalist groups.

Despite the assistance Syria gave Washington in its war on terror, Israel is lobbying to make Syria, Iran and Hizbullah its next targets, she says. Rumsfeld’s remarks have thus done them a “big service.” And while the US has traditionally put its own interests above Israel’s when deciding how to treat Syria, “the danger is that the current Bush administration’s perception of US interests in the region and Syria’s role is identical to Israel’s.”

And, on the ramifications of the Iraq campaign (ostensibly after a U.S. victory):

Egyptian analyst Dia Rashwan writes that it was inevitable the conflict in Iraq would quickly “cease to be an internal Iraqi matter” and have an impact on the other Arab states.

He writes in the semi-official Cairo daily Al-Ahram that the prospective occupation of Iraq can be expected to have the same kind of fallout on and within the countries of the region as the Palestine question has had over the decades."