WASHINGTON — Strengthened American resolve to fight terrorism could have a significant impact on the Middle East, building sympathy for Israeli tactics and a coalition of interests among Israel and moderate Arab states, analysts say.
President Bush on Wednesday called Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon an “act of war,” and said the government “will use all our resources” in response.
He also said Tuesday that the United States would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
It is too soon to determine the long-term effects of the attacks, experts say, but many believe they could substantially alter U.S. policy toward the Mideast.
For one, some experts say, it will be difficult for the State Department to condemn Israel’s policy of targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists as stridently as before.
“I think there will be additional understanding for what Israel is facing,” said Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli diplomat in Washington. “It is difficult for Americans to criticize Israel for going after the masterminds of suicide bombers when that is what the United States will have to do.”
But Shibley Telhami, a professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland, said the response could be more complex.
“I think there is no question that at the popular level, there will be more sympathy” for Israel, Telhami said. At the governmental level, however, “it may not translate into empathy for either” Israel or Palestinians.
Jon Alterman, an analyst with the U.S. Institute for Peace, said Israel’s policy of targeted killing remains illegal under American law, and the State Department therefore will continue to condemn it.
But Ben-David said he thinks Americans will be swayed on a more visceral level.
“The scenes of Palestinians celebrating in the streets is not going to go over well with some in America,” Ben-David said. “If ties” from Tuesday’s attack “are shown to any of the Palestinian groups, then I think Arafat is going to be in a very different situation than he was under the Clinton administration or what he is in today.”
Leon Fuerth, a national security adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, said the attack will force the Bush administration to re-examine many of its assumptions — such as the belief that the United States can take a more aloof posture in the Middle East and that terrorism can be fought through the courts rather than on the battlefield.
“The kinds of decisions the president makes are the kinds of things that might substantially change how he feels about what Israel does,” said Fuerth, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University.
It is still unclear who is responsible for hijacking the planes used in Tuesday’s attacks, but media reports increasingly are focusing on Osama bin Laden, the renegade Saudi billionaire responsible for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said fighting bin Laden and his followers will be harder than the Persian Gulf War against Iraq was 10 years ago, because Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida organization is widely dispersed and does not have a specific address.
“It is a small group of like-minded bigots that are motivated by anger and a mistaken concept of religion, and seek to destroy everything we stand for,” said Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now president of the Middle East Institute.
Military efforts will not be sufficient against this threat, Walker said, because many U.S. allies unknowingly harbor branches of the group.
But Walker said he believes Middle Eastern states, including both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, will support U.S. efforts because bin Laden’s group poses a threat to the entire region.
In addition, Al-Qaida is the largest threat to Saudi Arabia, which means that the Saudis, who have been cutting ties with the United States since the Persian Gulf War, might join an anti-bin Laden coalition as well.
However, a senior official with a major American Jewish organization expressed concern that after a short period of vigorous military efforts, the United States might revert to using law enforcement, rather than war tactics, to combat terrorism.
“The irony of modern life is that the standard of evidence needed to fight a war is much lower than the standard of evidence to convict someone in a U.S. court,” the official said.
The official believes the United States will have to take a pro-active stance against terror, but he thinks support for those measures may wane after the initial shock of Tuesday’s attacks wears off.