-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4387808,00.html
}}}>Begin
Bush has finally grasped that Sharon is the problem
American prestige is now on the line: the president must not fail
Martin Woollacott
Friday April 5, 2002
The Guardian
It has been a long time coming, but President Bush has finally engaged with the
Middle Eastern crisis which his administration has skirted for so many months. One
American commentator recently called on the United States to wake up, and behave,
"for God's sake, like a superpower". Yesterday Bush seemed to be acting on such
advice. When the rhetoric, and long exposition of anti-terrorist principles, are set
aside, at the heart of his speech was a series of orders.
Even as he told Yasser Arafat to repudiate suicide bombings, he told Ariel Sharon to
get his troops out of the West Bank and to end settlement activity. He told the
moderate Arab states to put maximum pressure on the Palestinians to renounce the
attacks; he told Syria to decide which side it was on; he told Iran to cease arms
shipments to the Palestinians. He made demands in a manner expecting obedience,
almost as if chastising inadequate members of his own administration, or
incompetent viceroys in foreign parts.
In other circumstances Bush's peremptory style might be resented, but as an index
of American seriousness it is welcome. The length (and tone) of his speech was one
thing that distinguished it from previous statements by Bush and by his secretary of
state, Colin Powell. The other was that it included specific requirements that Israel
withdraw from West Bank cities it has reoccupied, that a political process must follow
a ceasefire, and that the process must end in a Palestinian state that would be
"viable".
Viable in this context will be instantly interpreted by Palestinians as meaning a state
with something close to the attributes which were discussed at Camp David and
Taba. At the very least, viable could never apply to what we know about Sharon's
ideas of a Palestinian state without coherent territory, without control over any part
of
Jerusalem, and without command over resources such as water and power. Given
that Israeli spokesmen have been almost daily emphasising that what was offered at
the time of Camp David and Taba will never be repeated, this is a gage thrown down
before the Israeli leader.
It may be that the American administration has finally grasped that Sharon is not only
part of the problem, but actually constitutes much of the problem facing those, on
either side, who are ready to make peace. Doubts must remain about how far the US
administration understands that skilful use of the terror argument has allowed Sharon
to obfuscate his own responsibility for the violence and his pursuit of a "solution"
that,
insofar as it can be sketched, would be deeply unjust - and unattainable without the
flight of much of the Palestinian population.
The most important change is that the Bush administration has committed itself in
this speech, in a manner which is close to unequivocal, to steer the conflict between
the Israelis and Palestinians through to a settlement. American prestige is now on
the line in a way it has not been before, even during President Clinton's efforts to
mediate; and the most important aspect of any act of policy now becomes its
success or otherwise in leading to such a settlement. That now matters more than
Israeli wishes, Palestinian wishes, the influence of the Israeli lobby, or the
attitudes of
diaspora Jews.
Whereas the critical element used to be that the president wanted to steer a course
that would keep him clear of trouble, the new critical element is that the president
must not fail. That changes a great deal. But it does not mean that the parties will
fail
to fasten instantly on America's new policy in an attempt to bend it to their purposes,
or to sabotage it completely. They will certainly do so, and there is no guarantee that
they may not succeed, given the fissures still apparent within the Bush administration
over Israel and the conduct of the campaign against terror. The administration has
agonised so long over how to deal with the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
that it has allowed the conflict to grow almost into a full-scale war. From the start
the
administration was torn over whether Sharon was an ally whose activities
represented another front in the campaign against terrorism, or whether his fight
gravely weakened the US in the pursuit of that campaign. This argument is hardly
over, but Bush's speech, together with recent American moves at the United Nations,
suggests that the administration has moved several degrees toward the latter
position.
In Israel and the territories there will be relief and hope, as well as rage in some
quarters. Israelis and Palestinians had become so manifestly incapable of extricating
themselves from this crisis on their own that many craved, some in public and some
less openly, a forceful takeover of their affairs by the only country with serious
leverage on both sides.
Yossi Sarid, the leader of the Meretz party, for instance, wrote recently that "The US
says that if both sides don't want to reach an understanding, it cannot force them to
accept one. This is not true. In Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia, the sides might not
really have wanted an agreement but the international community, with American
backing, spoke and acted." Sarid, who advocates a US-led international force, adds:
"When victims fall every day and both sides are blinded by hatred and revenge, we
are Kosovo. And a Kosovo-like reality demands a Kosovo-like solution."
On the Palestinian side there are many like Afif Safieh, the Palestinian representative
in London, who concluded long ago that the dysfunctional nature of the Israeli
political system, which gives disproportionate influence to minorities, meant that the
crisis could only be resolved by outside power. No doubt there are also Palestinians
who, more privately, wanted to see their own leadership rescued from a different kind
of paralysis.
The promise of the Bush speech for that leadership if they take it at face value (and
they have little alternative but to do so) is that, if suicide attacks cease, the
Americans are now undertaking to force the Israelis into political concessions that
will lead in time to a state. The chances are there will be such a cessation, following
an Israeli withdrawal.
Then will come the real test of the new US policy, as ceasefire arrangements give
way to a political phase in which the Sharon government is likely to try to evade
substantive talks, and to cut down what is to be offered. There will also be wreckers
on the Palestinian side, possibly assisted by Israeli provocations. A civil war among
Palestinians is not impossible.
Colin Powell, now designated as Bush's envoy, will need the coolest of heads if there
is not to be a relapse into war. But, as Sarid wrote: "America does not have the
luxury of deciding when and where it will intervene. I have bad news for the US
government: when you try to run away from the Middle East, the Middle East will run
after you - and catch up."
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