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>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,744013,00.html
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Comment
George W's bloody folly
Bush's fantasy Middle East plan is bound to fail. It will strengthen those who want
war, not peace
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday June 26, 2002
The Guardian
That was a fantastic speech. Quite literally, fantastic. George Bush's address on the
Middle East, delivered outside the White House on Monday evening, consisted,
from beginning to end, of fantasy.
It bore so little relation to reality that diplomats around the world spent yesterday
shaking their heads in disbelief, before sinking into gloom and despair. Our own
Foreign Office tried gamely to spot the odd nugget of sense in the Bush text - but,
they admitted, it was an uphill struggle. Israelis committed to a political resolution
of
the conflict were heartbroken. Even Shimon Peres, foreign minister in Ariel
Sharon's coalition, reportedly called the speech "a fatal mistake", warning: "A
bloodbath can be expected."
The core of the president's message was that the Palestinians must embark on a
sweeping process of internal reform before they can even think about getting back
to the negotiating table. They must transform themselves into a democratic market
economy, free of corruption and with a separate judiciary and legislature if they are
to be considered eligible for statehood - which, when it comes, will be merely
provisional.
Shall we count the ways in which this is completely absurd? George Bush is
demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine: it must
be stable, prosperous and boast constitutional arrangements which still elude Britain
- our judiciary and legislature are not separate - let alone the Arab world before it
can become even a state-in-waiting.
This would be laughable if Palestine were in tranquil Scandinavia. Even there it
would count as putting the cart before the horse, asking a nation to create the
institutions of a highly developed country before it becomes a state. But this,
remember, is being demanded of the Palestinians - statebuilders with every
possible obstacle in their way.
Like the fact that they are under military occupation. As the New York Times noted
yesterday: "How the Palestinians can be expected to carry out elections or reform
themselves while in a total lockdown by the Israeli military remains something of a
mystery." Palestinian ministers complain they cannot visit a village 10 minutes
away; they can pass laws but not implement them. They are Potemkin ministers,
existing on paper only. Yet now they are to build the Switzerland of the Levant,
where the streets are clean and government functions like clockwork. This is
George in Wonderland stuff.
Monday's speech even had a touch of black comedy. The president said the new
Palestine should be taught good governance, nominating the Arab states for the
role. Imagine it: democracy lessons from Saudi Arabia, a masterclass in liberty from
Kuwait.
But that is not the president's greatest fantasy. Yasser Arafat must go, he says,
though without naming him. It may be refreshing to hear a US president come clean
in his conviction that he has the right to pick other nations' leaders, but this demand
exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's thinking.
For who does he imagine might replace Arafat? Does he not realise that
Palestinians are angry with their leader not because he has been insufficiently pro-
American but because they see him as too moderate, too willing to do Israel's
bidding. The Palestinian street is not clamouring for a man who will crack down
harder on Islamist militants or sing a western song about free trade and local
elections.
So if elections go ahead, here's what will happen. Either Palestinians will
deliberately defy Washington and re- elect Arafat or they will choose someone more
hardline. Any leader who has the Israeli or US stamp of approval will immediately
be discredited as a puppet and promptly rejected.
Also, for all his flaws, Arafat has an asset none of his rivals can match. He is still,
thanks to his long history, Mr Palestine: his signature on a compromise deal is the
only one that could persuade his people to accept it. By rushing his exit now, Bush
is depriving any future peace agreement of the only Palestinian who could deliver it.
S o the president's speech shows a man unconnected to Middle Eastern reality. But
it is worse than unhinged; it is dangerous. First, Bush has given a green light to
Sharon to continue his policy of military force coupled with a refusal to freeze
settlement building on the West Bank. Monday's wording implied that Sharon is only
obliged to pull back from Palestinian cities or freeze settlements once the
Palestinians have worked their way through the US wishlist. So long as violence
goes on, or Arafat remains in place, the Israeli PM can do what he likes.
Given that the president refused to specify what the final settlement might look like -
delaying that and other questions to later talks - he has supplied Sharon with an
incentive to get busy now, building settlements, putting up fences and carving new
borders. If Bush had declared that the eventual Palestinian state would be on the
other side of Israel's 1967 borders, there would be no point in Israel trying to redraw
the map. But now Sharon has every motive to create his notorious "facts on the
ground".
There is danger on the Palestinian side too. The only people celebrating yesterday
were the Islamist extremists of Hamas and Jihad, chiding moderate Palestinians for
ever believing that politics, rather than violence, might bring results. Bush has not
dangled any serious carrot before the Palestinians: no promises on Jerusalem or
refugees or final borders. Even Colin Powell's planned international conference
seems to have vanished. All Palestinians will get if they comply with Washington's
demands is a provisional state on 42% of the West Bank. Maybe. Few will consider
that a prize worth the sacrifice of their own leader and a national transformation.
So this new plan of Bush's is a flight of errant, irresponsible fancy that can only
fail,
bringing more bloodshed and ruin to the peoples of the Middle East who are
desperate for something better.
But it will reverberate far beyond. It will damage the international standing of the US
president and America along with it. Muslim and Arab nations will be antagonised by
this plan of inaction, while chancelleries from London to Moscow will realise they
are dealing with a leader who pays no lip-service to them - or to basic reality.
This is a foreign policy failure for George Bush. If he were a Democrat, both the
Washington press corps and Congress would already be racking it up alongside the
unextinguished threat from al-Qaida and the continued freedom from captivity of
Osama bin Laden. Those failures, and now the guarantee of further slaughter in the
Middle East, should be prompting hard questions about Bush and his war on terror.
America needs to snap out of its post-9/11 torpor of consensus and realise there is a
leadership problem in the US - and his name is George Bush.
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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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