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Indeed, Perle, Wurmser, and Feith are on record as being committed to policies
which are radically at variance with long standing American policy and are also
radically at variance with President Bush's Roadmap.

At focus in this context is the document, A Clean Break: a New Strategy for
Securing the Realm, written in 1996 for the incoming Netanyahu government of
Israel by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser, James
Colbert, and Robert Loewenberg in their capacity as members of The Institute
for advanced Strategy and Political Studies' "Study Group on a New Israeli
Strategy Toward 2000" a Washington/Jerusalem based think tank providing policy
analyses for the government of Israel. This document is remarkable for its very
existence because it constitutes a policy manifesto for the Israeli government
penned by members of the current US government. Richard Perle was, until his
recent resignation chairman of the defense policy board, and now continues to
sit on the board. Douglas Feith is currently undersecretary of defense for
policy, the departments number three man and a prot�g�' of Perle who has worked
closely with him in the past. David Wurmser is assistant to undersecretary for
arms control, John Bolton, at the State Department, the latter coming from the
far right conservative American Enterprise Institute

This document makes the following points:

1. "Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace
process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation..."

2. The previous Israeli government's pursuit of a peace process, which was
responsive to "supranational over national sovereignty... undermined the
legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel to strategic paralysis." That peace
process obscured the evidence of an "eroding national critical mass --
including a palpable sense of national exhaustion -- and forfeited strategic
initiative. The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel's
efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically,
to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital...."

3. Israel should "work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize,
and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from
the slogan "comprehensive peace" to a traditional concept of strategy based on
balance of power."

4. Israel should "change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians,
including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all
Palestinian areas and [should nurture] alternatives to Arafat' exclusive grip
on Palestinian society" [italics mine].

5 "While previous governments, and many abroad, may emphasize "land for peace" -
- which placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political,
diplomatic, and military retreat -- the new government can promote Western
values and traditions. Such an approach ... includes "peace for peace", "peace
through strength" and self reliance: the balance of power."

6. "Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and
the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace
now." Our claim to the land -- to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years --
is legitimate and noble..."[italics mine]..

7. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in
their territorial dimensions, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the
future."

The breathtaking import of this program should not be obscured. The rejection
of "land for peace", indeed the identification of withdrawal from territory
with "annihilation" of the state of Israel, the pursuit of the "unconditional
acceptance" of Israel's rights (apparently including the right to expand its
borders) by the Arab states is a complete rejection and a radical departure
from 36 years of American Middle East Policy which embraces UN Resolution 242
and all subsequent Security Council Resolution on the Middle East. It is also
at radical variance with the Roadmap, which embodies the two state solution and
calls for the establishment of a "viable and contiguous Palestinian state."

Under the subheading, Securing the Northern Border:

8. "Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil."

9. Israel should engage Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principle agents
of aggression in Lebanon by:
10. Striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove
insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

11. "Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is natural and moral that
Israel abandon the slogan "comprehensive peace" and move to contain Syria,...
rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights."

Under the subheading, Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy:

12. "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and
Jordan by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria."[italics mine]

13. "This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an
important strategic objective in its own right -- as a means of foiling Syria's
regional ambitions."

14. "Damascus fears that a "natural axis" with Israel on one side, central Iraq
and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach
Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, it would be a prelude to redrawing
the map of the Middle East....

15. Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East
profoundly.

It is amazing how much of this program, though written for the Israeli
government of Netanyahu of 1996, has already been implemented, not by the
government of Israel, but by the Bush administration. The overthrow of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq, the two year old house arrest of Arafat and the attempt to
cultivate a new Palestinian leadership, the complete rejection by Sharon of the
land for peace agreement on the Golan Heights, with little US demurral, and the
bombing inside of "Syria proper" with only the response from Bush, "Israel has
a right to defend itself". In the complete rejection, de facto if not de jure,
of the Roadmap, Sharon is well aware that he is strongly supported by those
inside of the Bush administration to such an extent that Bush can well be
ignored.

After interviewing CIA officials including George Tenant, U.S. diplomats, and
Syrian President, Bashar Assad, investigative journalist, Seymour Hirsh,
writing in the New Yorker under the title, The Syrian Bet, has described how
American official burned Syrian source of intelligence on Al Qaeda largely
because of Syrian support for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and also because
the government has allowed Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to maintain
offices in Damascus.

Because the secular Syrian government had been at war for more than two decades
with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood based in Alleppo, with close ties to Al
Qaeda, Syria had complied hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on
the men who participated in the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. Syria had also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the
Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. Many of the
airline hijackers of the September 2001 attack had operated out of cells in
Hamburg and Aachen. Some of these members worked for a German firm called
Tatex, which was infiltrated by Syrian intelligence during the eighties.

Hirsh states that just after the September 2001 attacks, the Syrian government
began allowing the CIA and FBI to operate in Alleppo, and on one occasion
provided the U S with advanced knowledge of an Al Qaeda plot to fly a glider
loaded with explosives into a building at the U S Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters
in Bahrain. Syria also provided the US with advanced knowledge of a plot
against an American target in Ottawa.

American intelligence and State Department told Hirsh that by 2002 Syria had
become one of the most effective sources of intelligence and one of the most
important allies in the fight against Al Qaeda. After the September 11 attacks,
Syria provided a flood of information to American operatives, which only ended
with the onset of the Iraq war.

With the invasion of Iraq, came the constant threats from Rumsfeld, Condeleez
Rice and members of the Pentagon along with the accusation that Syria is
harboring some of the Iraqi Baathist leadership as well as having stashed
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It is a poorly kept secret that the neo-
conservatives members of the Pentagon want to see the fall of the Syrian
government and that it is their next target after Iraq

In June 2003, the American army attacked several vehicles inside the Syrian
border, killing about 80 people and detained several members of Syrian security
personnel who spent several days in interrogation. Evidently, Rumsfeld believed
that this small caravan of cars was carrying Saddam Hussein or other high
ranking Iraqi officials to sanctuary in Syria. It turned out to be little more
than people smuggling gasoline.

In early October, after a suicide bombing in Israel, two Israeli Air force F16
fighter jets attacked a position 10 miles from Damascus which Israel said was a
terrorist training camp and which Islamic Jihad said had not been used for two
years. In either case, the point was made. In Washington, a senior
administration official said, "We have repeatedly told the government of Syria
that it is on the wrong side in the war on terror and that it must stop
harboring terrorists."

Govern the constants threats to the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, son of
the late President Hafez Assad, including attacks by both the United States and
by Israel inside of Syrian territory it is little wonder that intelligence on
Al Qaeda provided by Syrian intelligence has ceased.

One sees, in the case of the Syrian relation, a conspicuous instance of Israeli
interest eclipsing American interest. Al Qaeda, not Islamic Jihad or Hamas is a
threat to the United States. Islamic Jihad and Hames threaten Israel, not the
United States.

In February of 2002, the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah advanced what became known
as the Saudi initiative in which Arab states would offer normal diplomatic
relations including peace agreements which would recognize Israel's right to
exists within secure borders in return for Israel withdrawal to its 1967
borders including withdrawal from East Jerusalem. When, in April, the Crown
Prince was the guest of the President at his ranch near Crawford, Tx., he found
that the Bush was barely aware of the plan and had not been briefed on it. Bush
has said on one occasion that he does not independently keep up with the news
but rather relies on his staff for briefings.

In fact, there is little motivation within the administration for briefing Mr.
Bush on a proposal centered around the "land for peace" formula which has been
forthrightly rejected by the major foreign policy players of this
administration.

The major players of foreign policy, Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Feith, Wurmser,
are not the only sources of action within the administration; there is Powell,
there is the President himself. But the authors of A Clean Break have had
dramatic success in shaping foreign policy to their conceptualization.

The following conclusions can be drawn with considerable confidence:

1. The Middle East policies driving the American government's Middle East
policy are delineated in the document, A Clean Break, and are only partially
congruent with the attitudes of the President. Much of the program of this
document has already become reality and has eclipsed President Bush's Roadmap,
which embodied a two state solution.

2. The authors of A Clean Break, those driving American policy, derive their
concepts based on Israeli security and Israeli interest so that American
foreign policy under the Bush administration is primarily serving the interest
of Israel and secondarily that of the United States.

3. The invasion of Iraq for the purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was
undertaken for the interest of Israel though paid for with American capital and
with American and Iraqi lives. Statements made by David Kay, chief US weapons
inspector in Iraq that Iraq almost certainly possessed no weapons of mass
destruction on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq destroyed any
justification for the claim that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the United
States.

William James Martin
University of Central Florida, Orlando

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