BEIRUT -- Few disputed at the time that Israel was a factor that pushed U.S. President George W. Bush to go to war on Iraq. Just how much weight it had among all the other factors was the only controversial question. But what is clear, six months on, is that Israel is now a very important one indeed in the stumbling neoimperial venture that Iraq has become.
This "Israelization" of U.S. policy crossed a new threshold with the two blows dealt Syria in the past fortnight -- Bush's endorsement of Israel's Oct. 5 air raid on its territory and the Syrian Accountability Act passed by the House of Representatives last week. A community of U.S.-Israeli purpose pushed to unprecedented lengths is now operational as well as ideological.
For the U.S., the main battlefield is Iraq, and any state that sponsors or encourages resistance to its occupation; for Israel it is occupied Palestine, its "terrorists" and their external backers. These common objectives converge on Syria.