Fri, Dec. 27, 2002

IKE SEAMANS
Mistrust in the Mideast

Agreement, compromise and cooperation are almost alien concepts in the Middle East. Self-serving goals are relentlessly pursued by revengeful regimes and states that are frequently duplicitous, always suspicious and rarely trusting of anyone.

This distressing dilemma is captured perfectly by two new polls released in early December. One examines the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The other measures disapproval and mistrust of the United States' attempts to force its wishes and made-in-America solutions in a resistant region.

Search For Common Ground, a conflict-resolution organization, surveyed Palestinian and Israelis. ''It's striking how much the two sides mirror each other,'' says Executive Vice President Susan Collins Marks. ``Mistrust blocks a basic underlying willingness to stop the violence and move toward a settlement.''

Three-fourths of the Palestinians polled say that violence will end if Israel gives them a homeland that includes Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, they doubt that it will happen because Israelis can't be trusted. Seventy-five percent of the Israelis questioned agree that Palestinians need a state, but they can't be trusted to stop fighting. ''Implicitly, they're saying, `If the other side is willing to make a deal, so are we, '' says Common Ground's Steven Kull. ``But so many people on both sides don't believe the other side.''

The United States tries to broker peace and trust in the fractious region by doling out billions of dollars while making demands that are often resented. The result is ''true dislike if not hatred, of America'' in the Muslim Middle East, according to the new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. U.S. interference is condemned, American values are rejected (don't confuse this with cravings for Levis and Big Macs out there), and the Bush administration's effort to win support for its war on terrorism is a failure. ''The war on terrorism is opposed in nearly every country surveyed,'' the Pew Center reports.

Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey are supposed to be the United States's greatest allies in the Muslim world. However, Pew analysts find that they harbor the most intense distrust and hatred of the United States despite receiving a stream of American taxpayers' dollars:

• Egypt: $2 billion annually. Three out of four Egyptians have an unfavorable opinion of the United States.

• Jordan: $1 billion proposed for 2003. The vast majority of Jordanians have a poor image of America.

• Pakistan: $1 billion. A hotbed of terrorist activity, 90 percent of Pakistanis strongly oppose the war against terrorism, have negative views of the United States and are unmatched in their dislike of American culture.

• Turkey: $230 million plus an additional $800 million now, billions later and $5.5 billion in loans wiped out if Turkey can be used as a launching pad to attack Iraq. Eighty percent of the Turks polled oppose the plan and dislike America.

Eighteen of the 22 Arab nations receive U.S. aid, but not one of them is a full-fledged democracy. More than half the people surveyed by the Pew Center have an ''antipathy toward American democracy.'' The U.S. State Department is undeterred. It has just announced a new democratic reform initiative to change attitudes, pledging $29 million for an education program. Egypt's suspicious foreign minister immediately criticized the plan. An Arab newspaper also denounced it with a puzzling claim that the United States can't be trusted because it ``submits to Israel's will in prolonging the Middle East conflict.''

I don't recall where I was when someone told me that trust is the highest form of human motivation. You can bet that I wasn't in the Middle East.

© 2001 miamiherald and wire service sources