olence in the United Nations. The U.S. government was under intense pressure from the domestic Israel lobby to veto any such condemnation, or to soften it to the point of meaninglessness. In the past, U.S. policymakers never, even under the severest provocation, showed themselves able or willing to defy the Israel lobby on a matter of this sort. Saddam Hussein gained immediate benefit by being able to proclaim himself the true champion of the Palestinian cause. The Israeli right could expect ultimate benefit, in its own eyes, by eliminating the growth of stronger ties between the U.S. and the Arab world, thus forcing the U.S. back into its dependence on Israel as its "only reliable ally" in the Middle East. The advantages to these parties were lessened by the U.S. readiness, for the first time, to join in condemning Israel police actions. But the underlying problem will recur.
Our concern here with the Haram al Sharif killings is not with the immediate problems it poses to U.S. policymakers, but with the strong way in which it underlines the overall thesis of this study: the central importance of establishing a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians as the key element in furthering U.S. interests throughout the Middle East. Jerusalem is roughly a thousand miles from Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf oil fields, the center of the greatest U.S. overseas deployment of forces in nearly a generation. Yet a single fusilade of Israeli police bullets across the Haram al Sharif is sufficient to severely complicate the U.S. position in the Gulf.
Arab leaders in the coalition with the U.S. are dismayed, and their peoples outraged. Saddam Hussein's regional political position is immediately reinforced. By the latest reports he is threatening action against Israel; if he took such action he might suffer militarily at the hands of the Israeli air force, but the regional coalition against him would almost certainly be s...