End of Empire?
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The French press was
indecently jubilant in its response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's rebuff to President Clinton in the Middle East negotiations.
"Netanyahu Humiliates Clinton," shrieked the liberal Libération on its front page,
picking out the word "humiliates" in red. The headline on Page 2 was
"Netanyahu: The Offense Done to Bill Clinton" and on Page 3, "America Struck by
Powerlessness." An editorial said that "the long premeditated snub inflicted on
Clinton by Netanyahu is particularly revealing of the inability of the United
States to get itself listened to, even by its closest allies."
Libération said "U.S. imperialism" is no longer what it used to be: "The
world's last Superpower" is "forced every day" to recognize "the relativity" of
its power. "This phenomenon of insubordination" is exacerbated by "the relative
isolation of President Clinton in his own country," which enabled Netanyahu to
"play Congress openly against the White House," the editorial went on. "Only a
president with a clear vision of the world--a president both convinced and
convincing--would have had any chance of imposing himself."
In
similar vein, the conservative Paris paper Le Figaro led its front page Monday with the headline
"Netanyahu Defies Clinton." Next to that story was an editorial titled
"American Powerlessness." This declared that the Israeli prime minister ran no
risks when he refused to go to Washington to talk peace, because "the White
House is incapable of punishing his insolence as, six months before the midterm
congressional elections, Clinton is disarmed." His Democratic friends in
Congress know that to appear to be campaigning against Israel is the surest way
to lose the elections, Le Figaro said. "Politically weakened by the
interminable inquiry into his escapades, Bill Clinton cannot permit himself to
open a new front," it added.
There was a striking contrast between the attention paid in
France to the U.S.-Israel problem and the lack of interest in it in the rest of
Europe. Spain, which has its own Basque separatist problem, was far more
interested in the vote by Sinn Fein and the IRA to support the Ulster peace
agreement, and El País of
Madrid devoted a front-page story and its main editorial--titled "An End to All
or Nothing"--to the subject Monday. Page 8 in El País did, however,
carry a piece from its Washington correspondent saying the United States
regards Israel's "intransigence" as a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle
East.
Italian newspapers were still
dominated by the political fallout from the mudslide tragedy in southern Italy
(95 victims were buried Sunday); and Corriere della
Sera of Milan found room only on Page 11 for a story about the "U.S.-Israel
friendship in crisis." La
Repubblica of Rome's angle on the story was fear in the Middle East that
the peace negotiations are effectively at an end. "For more than a year it has
been customary to say that the peace talks are blocked, paralyzed, in grave
danger, moribund," the paper's Jerusalem correspondent wrote Monday. "Since
yesterday there has been a strong temptation to say that they are dead and not
worth talking about any more."
La
Repubblica also discussed a new report on the Middle East situation by
the veteran Jewish-Italian journalist Arrigo Levi, who, after conducting
high-level interviews throughout the region, concluded that the loss of all
hope by Arafat and the Palestinians could lead to a new "catastrophic" war in
which biological and chemical weapons might be used. In one of the interviews,
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said, "The forces of extremism are
destroying the Israeli-Palestinian partnership." He was quoted as saying that
the window of opportunity created by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
results of the Gulf War is now closing. "To the Israeli Left, which asks us to
intervene to save Israel from itself, we answer that it is not for us to
intervene," Indyk reportedly added. "If something is close to your heart, then
it is for you to do it, not us."
In Israel, the front-page
lead in the conservative English-language Jerusalem Post said a "yet-to-be-detailed compromise"
between Netanyahu and U.S. envoy Dennis Ross makes a Washington summit this
month among Netanyahu, Arafat, and Clinton a "near certainty." But the leading
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, in an op-ed piece by Akiva Eldar, said the U.S. administration
is debating only "when to set zero hour" for Netanyahu: after his address in
Washington next Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
convention; or earlier--this week--by summoning him to Birmingham, England,
where Clinton is attending the G7 economic summit.
The British press has been
dominated for several days by the crisis threatening Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook over claims the British Foreign Office secretly encouraged a private
company to sell arms to help overthrow the military junta in Sierra Leone, in
contravention of U.N. sanctions against that west African nation. "Cook's job
on the line in arms row," said the conservative Daily Telegraph Monday. In an
editorial, the same paper complained about the British government's reluctance
to celebrate "the West's greatest Cold War victory: the breaking of the Berlin
blockade," which President Clinton is marking with a visit to Germany Tuesday.
The airlift, it said, had been "conceived, directed and largely carried out by
the Royal Air Force."
In Hong Kong the South China Morning Post reported on
its front page that Indonesia's anti-riot forces have been ordered "to shoot to
cripple rather than kill" in clashes with protestors. Quoting a military manual
leaked to the Jakarta Post , the paper said platoon leaders have been
authorized to use live ammunition "in self-defense to cripple rioters who are
clearly threatening to kill others [or to] cause heavy material damage." If
this doesn't work, it added, a platoon commander has the authority "to proceed
with actions he deems appropriate."
