(IPS) analysis

Israel and India, eager enlistee in what US President George W Bush says is a ''war'' against terrorism but not against Muslims or Islam, appear to have been sidelined.

The two countries' governments see themselves as primary victims of Islamist 'terror' and hence natural allies in Bush's 'war'. But they have been relegated largely to the sidelines by a US administration that sees maintaining the support of its shaky Muslim and Arab allies in the region as its top priority - at least for the moment.

This has caused no end of bitterness among leaders of both countries whose top national security advisers, coincidentally, were meeting in Israel at the time of the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, outside Washington.

In the past week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has lashed out against the Bush administration for trying to ''appease the Arabs at our expense'' by pushing him into a cease-fire and negotiations with Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Senior Indian officials have hinted in recent days that their patience with Pakistan, which supports several groups active in restive Kashmir, is quickly running out, particularly in the wake of an Oct 1 suicide attack on the Kashmiri parliament house in Srinagar that killed 38 people.

In recent days, these same officials have suggested they will take military action against such groups in Pakistan unless Washington publicly demands that Islamabad cease its support.

Calm tensions

Secretary of state Colin Powell, who reportedly promised Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last week that Washington would focus on violent Kashmiri groups as well as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation, is scheduled to visit both New Delhi and Islamabad to try to calm tensions as early as this weekend.

Israel and India have made no secret of wanting a much wider war against terrorism - far beyond the current campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan - in which they, with US support and possibly direct participation, could strike out against their own 'Islamic terrorists.'

In India's case, this means Islamist groups based in Pakistan and long supported by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), a branch of the military that nurtured the Taliban.

Israel is hoping for an all-out offensive against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which blew up the US embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and forced Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon last year, ending its 28-year occupation. Sharon has suggested that the anti-terrorist struggle even extend to Arafat, whom he has compared with bin Laden.

Strategic threat

Forces within the Bush administration - particularly among senior political appointees at the Pentagon and vice-president Dick Cheney's staff - entertain similar hopes. A number of them, such as under secretary of defence for policy Douglas Feith and Cheney's top chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, have long seen 'Islamic fundamentalism' as a strategic threat to the United States, Israel, and the West in general.

Taking a page from Samuel Huntington's influential Clash of Civilisations , these same forces - which outside the administration are associated with the Project for the New American Century - also have argued that India and Israel (as well as Turkey) are Washington's natural allies in the region in 'containing' that threat.

Until now, the administration, focused as it is on Afghanistan, has refused to buy into that view, arguing that the support and cooperation of Muslim leaders, particularly Arafat and General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, are of much greater value than anything Israel and India have to offer.

The reasoning is particularly clear in the case of Pakistan: Not only does it share a long border with Afghanistan, its ISI probably has more information about both the Taliban and bin Laden than any other spy agency - information critical to the first phase of Washington's campaign, which aims to disable the Taliban and apprehend or kill bin Laden and his closest associates.

That Musharraf has shown in recent days he is prepared to take major risks - notably by removing top military officers regarded as sympathetic to the Taliban, including the ISI chief - makes Washington that much less inclined to back India's demands for a crackdown against Kashmiri groups, at least pending completion of its campaign.

Symbolic value

Arafat lacks the geographic and strategic advantages of a close relationship with Afghanistan but his symbolic value is considered very high, particularly in light of bin Laden's explicit embrace of the Palestinian cause in the video tape broadcast throughout the Islamic world by Al Jazeira television Sunday.

Like Musharraf, Arafat also has taken serious risks in recent days, notably when he ordered his police to put down pro-bin Laden demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza recently.

This has added to pressure on Sharon, whose intemperate remarks last week earned him a particularly harsh rebuke by the White House. In addition, the discovery that Sharon has quietly approved the construction of at least ten new settlements in the occupied territories after promising Bush that he would observe a freeze has badly undermined his credibility among some policy makers.

Moreover, unlike Musharraf, whose strategic importance may diminish when the Afghanistan phase of Bush's war is concluded, Arafat remains critical to Washington's hope of sustaining a broad Arab alliance behind the U.S. campaign.

Arab leaders have stressed repeatedly since Sept 11 that ending the violence on the West Bank and Gaza and reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are critical to their support for Washington.