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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
With Israeli and American interests diverging, stakes will be high and negotiations tricky when President Bush and Ariel Sharon meet this week.
Oct 15, 2002 | Last Wednesday, members of the Israeli cabinet were flown to the Negev desert in southern Israel to attend an army training drill. Under the blazing sun of late summer, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his ministers and the country's top brass watched the ground forces "occupy" a mock Palestinian village and saw a bulldozer razing one of the "homes." Sharon used the stage to talk about the coming American attack on Iraq. "The clouds of war are darkening in our region, and I hope they will not reach us," he told the TV cameras, "but this should be known: If Israel is attacked, it will defend its citizens."
With this carefully worded statement, Sharon broke a self-imposed silence on the Iraq issue. Only days before, he had acquiesced to an American demand and ordered his fellow cabinet members to avoid discussing it. The timing of his warning was significant. On Wednesday, the Israeli leader will meet with President George W. Bush for the seventh time. One of Sharon's aides described it as a "critical" meeting: Sharon's leadership will be put to the test as the Middle East prepares for an earthquake that is likely to change its strategic landscape, perhaps for decades to come. Both Sharon and Bush want to use the meeting to clarify the rules of behavior, at least until the war is over, and to start discussing the realities of "the day after."
Two issues, Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, will dominate the White House encounter. The American attitude on Iraq is clear and simple: Bush wants Israel to stay completely away from his campaign. Any overt Israeli dimension to the war will weaken America's shaky alliances throughout the Arab world and stir up more Muslim rage against the United States. Israel has been asked to lower its profile to prevent any impression that the U.S. is going to wage war against an Arab state on Israel's behalf.
At the same time, and for the same reasons, Washington needs Israel to restrain itself on the Palestinian front, both before and during the likely war. In recent weeks, the administration's attitude toward Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza has visibly hardened. While not offering a friendly hand to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the U.S. called off the Israeli siege of his Ramallah headquarters and has publicly criticized the Israeli military operations in Gaza that killed innocent Palestinian civilians. Moreover, the White House called on Israel to transfer frozen tax funds to the Palestinian Authority and sent angry messages to Jerusalem, blaming Israel for not keeping its promise to ease the humanitarian conditions of the Palestinian population in the territories. Moreover, the Americans asked Sharon to withdraw from one or two of the reoccupied West Bank cities. Those measures are aimed at convincing Europe and the Arab world that Washington is capable of more even-handed dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For all their evident closeness, Sharon and Bush are quite suspicious of each other. Yet paradoxically, it is precisely the areas where they distrust each other that draw them even closer and increase their need for constant consultation. For his part, Sharon fears that the administration will change course one day and push Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza forever, along with his beloved life's work, the settlements. So far, Bush has avoided any confrontation with Sharon. By and large, he has accepted the Israeli's view that Arafat must go before a peace deal can be struck. But Bush's position could change: Once he's done with Saddam, he could turn on Sharon, just as his father turned on Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1991. Having served in Shamir's cabinet, Sharon learned the lesson firsthand.
The blueprint for a renewed peace process already exists. The Bush plan, laid out in his June 24 speech, called for Arafat's replacement. But it also calls for the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel by 2005, at first within temporary borders and then with final ones. More recently, the international "Quartet" (the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. and Russia) issued a more detailed version and ordered its Middle East case officers to prepare a "road map" for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two American officials are working on it, David Sutterfield of the State Department and the National Security Council's Flynt Leverett. After the Sharon visit, both will join Assistant Secretary of State William Burns for an extensive Middle East trip to discuss the developing draft.
So far, all those efforts have been put on the back burner: The White House continues to be reluctant to get involved in the Israeli-Palestinian mess. But Sharon can't relax. He knows that the American and European positions are closer than before. Like their American counterparts, senior E.U. officials have called on Arafat to step aside and allow political reforms. The next day, America and the Europeans might present the bill to the Israeli side.
Sharon objects to deadlines and timetables. He wants to base the political process on strict "performance benchmarks." Since the first steps in any plan call on the Palestinian side to improve security and undergo a thorough political reform, and since the Palestinians are very far from fulfilling Sharon's -- or the United States' - demands, there is only a slim chance that Israel will be asked to pay its dues, by withdrawing from Palestinian territories to pre-intifada positions and freezing settlements. The Bush plan avoided the problem by mixing both tentative deadlines and performance demands. But the new "road map" drafts, as reported to Israeli sources, include firmer deadlines and commitments from both sides.
Sharon's main goal is to extract promises of maximum "coordination" from Bush in order to avoid unpleasant surprises after the war. To achieve his goal, Sharon is playing on Washington's hopes and fears, offering both carrots and sticks. As a carrot, Israel announced its intention to withdraw its troops from the West Bank city of Hebron. More important, the prime minister and his aides have leaked vague stories about secret talks they have held with senior Palestinian leaders, at the tier right below Arafat. They hint that once Arafat is gone, and Sharon reelected, the peace process will move into higher gear. Their Palestinian interlocutors, according to these stories, are openly criticizing Arafat, hoping for his early retirement, and planning for the day after. As for longer-term goals, Sharon has proposed a modified version of Bush's plan with a longer timetable.
