http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550265,00.html Day of terror casts shadow over Middle East Today's terrorist attacks in the US could have disastrous consequences for the Middle East, says Derek Brown Tuesday September 11, 2001 Following today's terrorist attacks in the US, the finger of suspicion will inevitably point at the Middle East, at Palestinian groups and at the wider Islamist militant movement. Even if that suspicion proves unjustified - as it was in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma bombing by Timothy McVeigh - the calamities which engulfed America today are certain to send shockwaves through a region already in turmoil. It is, on the face of it, wildly unlikely that any of the known Palestinian militant groups were involved. They may have the will to commit such atrocities, but almost certainly lack the capacity or the organising ability to do so. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was said in an early news report to have claimed responsibility, in a telephone call to a television station in Qatar. That report was followed by a flood of denials from the group's headquarters in Damascus, and from spokesmen in the West Bank. Indeed, the idea of the DFLP carrying out such a series of attacks would be risible, were it not for the tragic context. The group has been around for some 30 years, and undoubtedly has a paramilitary apparatus. But it is tiny, and for years the leadership has been more interested in political struggle. Much more compelling is the case for implicating Osama bin Laden, the renegade Saudi-born billionaire and Islamist zealot, who last month boasted that he would launch an "unprecedented" attack on the US. Bin Laden is based in Afghanistan, where he has the protection of the Taliban regime in Kabul. Significantly, the Taliban ambassador in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, called a hurried press conference this afternoon at which he unequivocally condemned the New York and Washington attacks. The condemnation could have been an attempt to pre-empt punitive attacks on Kabul by US cruise missiles, as happened after the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania just over three years ago. If Bin Laden is identified as the mastermind behind today's carnage, the US may be expected to go to any lengths to eliminate him. And if Palestinians turn out to have been involved, even peripherally, there could be alarming implications for the Middle East. The Palestinians are already besieged in the occupied territories. An undeclared low-intensity war is raging between militants and the Israeli army, bringing almost daily fatalities. The Middle East peace process is dead in the water. Relations between America and Israel are cool - between America and the Arab world they are icy. Arab leaders were furious with Washington for siding with Israel at the UN racism conference in Durban last week. Both countries walked out rather than accept even a watered down version of a resolution equating Zionism with racism. At street level throughout the Arab world, America has never been so despised. There were reports from Jerusalem this afternoon of spontaneous celebrations breaking out in the West Bank. In the fraught aftermath of the spectacular attacks, that appalling imagery could spark a violent reaction. The most powerful nation on earth has been shocked to its roots. It has been shown to be humiliatingly vulnerable. In the fraught aftermath of the most spectacular act of terrorism on record, the temptation to lash out must be tremendous. It will be tempting too for the hawks in the Israeli government to press the case for a "once-and-for-all" military solution to the year-long Palestinian intifada. Should Israel unleash its full military might against the occupied territories, it could do so without any serious fear of US disapproval, let alone interference. There is, of course, just a chance that the shocking events in America could jolt the political leaders into a new push for a peace settlement. Precedent points in quite another direction. The dark skies over the Middle East have never been so menacing.
