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Friday, Jan 9, 2009
The Israeli prime minister cut short his stay after another suicide bombing. Christopher Hitchens, Malcolm Hoenlein and other experts debate whether his trip made a difference.
May 8, 2002 | Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew home late Tuesday, cutting short his U.S. visit after yet another Palestinian suicide bombing -- this time in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel Aviv -- that killed at least 16 and injured 60. The move provided a perfect microcosm of Sharon's controversial approach to peacemaking: While his boosters applauded the decision to back-burner peace talks in response to terror, his critics derided it, noting that peacemaking is never more crucial than at a time of bloody fighting.
Clearly Sharon's U.S. visit produced no breakthrough to the Middle East stalemate. As of late Tuesday, he had not succeeded in convincing the Bush administration to leave Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of peace talks, nor had the administration managed to convince Sharon he must bargain with Arafat. Bush, who reaffirmed his support for an independent Palestinian state, could not even get Sharon to go that far. "I think it's premature to discuss" that issue until Arafat reforms his government, Sharon told the Associated Press.
If there was any news in the visit at all, it was that Bush, by all accounts, did not back down on the message that Sharon must deal with Arafat. Administration forces have been sending mixed signals to Sharon for at least a month -- every time Secretary of State Colin Powell tries to pressure the Israeli prime minister, administration hawks seem to undermine his tough stance -- but Bush appeared to stick to the script administration sources described to reporters before the meeting. Bush also said he would send CIA Director George Tenet, author of an earlier cease-fire proposal, back to the region to help build a Palestinian security force to fight terrorism.
In a hastily called, high-security press conference before he left for Israel, Sharon seemed to hint at plans for military retaliation in response to the Rishon Letzion bombing, but said he had not shared his plans with Bush. "Israel is an independent counry and we must exercise our right of self-defense," he told reporters. "Israel will not surrender to blackmail....Israel will triumph."
Next moves for the Bush administration remain unclear. Will the administration push Sharon to accelerate the peace process? Will the U.S. decide that Arafat isn't a genuine partner for peace? How will the peace proposal Sharon brought to the U.S. play? Salon asked experts to assess whether the Israeli prime minister's visit made any difference in the Middle East mess.
Christopher Hitchens, Nation columnist and Salon contributor:
Has anything changed since the last time Sharon met with Bush? Is Sharon's hand stronger or weaker?
The administration is obviously very split on how to deal with Sharon, as it is on the related question of Iraq. Obviously there's a short term gain to be had in saying that Israel is our friend, that it's under attack and should be able to defend itself as it sees fit. That translates as a free hand for Sharon, and it includes thing like the U.S. dropping the demand for a U.N. inquiry in Jenin. That's fine for now. It's easy to explain on a chat show and the president probably understands it when it's put to him.
I think he also understands that it's risky. How long do they expect Israelis to be able to dominate the Palestinians in an area dominated by millions and millions of Muslims? The people who are quickest to see that are the oil community. They don't need Prince Abdullah coming here -- they have enough Gulf friends already to know that the Arab world will never accept a greater Israel. The Arabs probably would, with bad grace, accept a '67-borders-size Jewish homeland, but they will never accept a Greater Israel and there's no way they can be made to. So the question becomes "Can we do Iraq if we're seen to be partners of Sharon?" Just as a practical matter, to say yes would be very rash.
Is Sharon offering anything new in his peace plan?
It's the same [as what he's been advocating all along]. The time which he's gaining is being used to create on the ground a situation where the occupation cannot be undone. It may possibly be it's already happened that there are so many towns, villages, settlements, roads and people [in the occupied territories] where it's beyond the power of the Israeli electorate to alter it. That's what Sharon's always wanted.
It has nothing to do with Jewish security. If Jewish security was your main concern, you would not want to put a small handful of Jews in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The only reason for doing that is colonization.
Do you think Sharon wants a two-state solution?
Of course he doesn't. When he says he's for a Palestinian state, he's in part lying, because what he means by that is the rebaptism of Jordan as a Palestinian state. The implication is that the Arabs of the West Bank would be not very politely invited to go move there. I don't think what he's doing makes any sense unless that's the endgame -- to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank and into Jordan or to make their lives so unlivable that they have to leave. He's invited into his Cabinet several people who openly advocate ethnic cleansing and I don't think the U.S. government has said one word, though it's forever denouncing extremism.
If you're not going to give them a state and you agree that the status quo is unlivable, that leaves one other option -- expulsion. I think we're getting nearer to it. Congress and the president should ask Sharon for an advance guarantee in unambiguous words that that will never happen. Why don't they ask it? Why doesn't the New York Times or the Washington Post demand it?
Is this issue even on the table? Is there any chance that Bush is going to call Sharon on it?
When have you ever seen an editorial that says what security guarantees the Palestinians would need to protect themselves from someone like Sharon? It's like Sharon being told he won't be invited to Washington until he renounces terror. It will never happen. The day he's asked by the United States to renounce terrorism will never come. It isn't in our idiom.
Sharon has been meeting with lots of American Jewish leaders. Do you think they understand his endgame?
I don't know. I hope not. The sad fact is that American Jews who could have been a civilizing force have been supporters of more obdurate forces in Israel. Until recently, many more Israelis than American Jews were pro-Palestinian. I remember thinking things were really changing when Rabin came to America and told the America Israel Public Affairs Committee to get lost, saying Israel wanted to be an independent state and didn't want to find that its rejectionists were being funded by America.
Does the Bush administration have a coherent plan, or it just improvising?
It's very clear that it's the latter. We know one thing about this White House -- it's the most disciplined White House there's ever been. They're fantastically good at staying on message and sticking to the line of the day. So for Bush to send Powell off to the Middle East and then torpedo him before he got there by saying Sharon was a man of peace and there wasn't anything to negotiate, that's incredible considering the way they all hung together in Afghanistan. Powell was made to look foolish in public. There's a big divide between State and Defense, and it's impossible to tell which side Bush is on. I think his instincts are all pro-Israeli. He thinks of Israel as an extension of the U.S., which of course in some ways it is. The only Arabs he's interested in talking to or knows anything about are oil Arabs, patrons of people like himself and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney. The Palestinians don't count at all. They're an inconvenient population. Bush regards them basically as a nuisance.
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