The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance

It is no great surprise that the USraelis will go to any length to avoid defeat at the United Nations (and have any two nations in history ever been more united than the US and Israel?) but what is truly shocking are the arguments that they now employ in an attempt to stave off defeat.

John Bolton has alienated his French counterparts with an extraordinary intervention. According to an official in the UN Secretary General's Office:

"It's a real row that started with Bolton's statement that you couldn't compare the deaths of Lebanese to the deaths of Israelis," the official said. "He implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit. It was a stupid thing to say. It tore the scab off the wound."

When I expressed my shock yesterday at Dershowitz's article I was unaware that this was actually official American policy. Indeed:

Bolton refused to back down, reiterating that the death of Lebanese civilians, while "tragic and unfortunate", was understandable considering Israel's right to "self-defense". In any event, Bolton went on to say, Israel did not "desire" the deaths of innocents - unlike Hezbollah.

Bolton did not elaborate on why, given Hizbullah's desire to kill civilians and Israel's wish to avoid such tragedies, the simple fact remains that Israel have killed ten times as many civilians as Hizbullah.

The fallout at the UN is extraordinary and yet somehow strangely predictable given the fact that Bolton represents the US and her interests. George Bush was extremely foolish when he put a brute like Bolton in charge of international diplomacy. And now, at a time when the US need diplomatic skills more than ever, it looks likely that the Atlantic alliance could be torn apart by what has been described as Bolton's "cheerleading for Israel".

Indeed, with as many as 100 MP's now demanding a recall of the British Parliament to express their disgust over Britain's mirroring of the US line in this dispute, the previously unthinkable notion of Britain splitting with the US over this has become a real possibility.

"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism," UN deputy secretary Mark Malloch Brown said last Tuesday. His voice edged with anger, Brown hinted that the United Kingdom could be forced to rethink its by now predictable support for the US initiative.

"Britain has tried very, very hard to keep with the US on this; no one respects the reasons for that entirely, but you have a Security Council and international public opinion, while fully understanding what has been done to Israel, now believes strongly in a cessation to hostilities."

After hesitating for only a moment, Brown issued a warning on a future British vote - stating almost baldly that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government might decide to side with Europe over the United States. "This is where the UK is a crucial swing vote," he said. "When it comes behind a cessation of hostilities, it makes it that much harder for the last stalwarts to hold out."

The US position is now more isolated than ever, and the US and Israel find themselves facing a world almost united in hostility against their proposed resolution. The Arab world, who have not been consulted throughout this negotiation, have reacted with fury to the US/Israeli proposal.

The resolution, in fact, seems to satisfy the French and Americans - but no one else, and so angered Arab diplomats that Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, denounced it publicly, while privately calling the resolution "a surrender document".

A spokesman for Hezbollah in Beirut was even blunter, saying that the resolution was "dead on arrival". He added, "The French caved in to American and Israeli pressure. Israel gets to stay on our land. We are required to disarm. Why isn't an international force deployed in northern Israel? Our arms get cut off and the US gets to fly cluster munitions into Ben Gurion [Airport in Tel Aviv]. Just who do they think is winning this war?"

The neo-con line appears to be unravelling, with even former White House officials now going on the record against them:

"The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."

All of this, this former official noted, "is covered over by this talk about how we need a substantive agreement that addresses the fundamental problems and that will last. But no one is willing to say exactly what this means."

A former US Central Intelligence Agency officer confirmed this view: "I am under the impression that [President] George [W] Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice were surprised when the Europeans disagreed with the US position - they were running around saying, 'But how can you disagree, don't you understand? Hezbollah is a terrorist organization."

It is here that Europe and the US split. The United States, Canada, and Israel consider Hizbullah a terrorist organisation, the European Union does not. Indeed, even the United Nations has no official position on the matter.

I said yesterday that this was Bush's Waterloo and that he will very soon have to decide whether to shit or to get off the pot. He has pushed this as far as he can and, by putting Bolton in charge of the US position at the UN, he has now alienated the moderate European voices who's support he could normally rely upon.

Bush, through a dreadful mixture of arrogance and a shocking disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians, has inadvertently placed himself at a crossroad's. Now he must choose.

With nearly everyone now wondering whether the US position in the Middle East is unravelling, one UN diplomat said the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict may spell the end of an era in which the US and Europe established a tradition of diplomatic co-operation: "We might as well face up to it. Sooner or later the United States is going to have to choose what is more important - its strategic alliance with Europe, or its friendship with Israel."

And so it comes to this. "The Decider" must decide. It's a helleva decision, but he's brought it all upon himself. I do not have a modicum of sympathy for the man.

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