Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The president's sudden, passionate intervention surprised everyone. But Israeli officials doubt he's in it for the long haul.
Jun 11, 2003 | Last Wednesday, the long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict entered a new chapter, which could be called "the Aqaba process," after the Jordanian port and Red Sea resort city where it was launched. After more than two years of frozen negotiations and bloody fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, the leadership trio of U.S. President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and his new Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, announced a new initiative for calming the duel and moving toward the declared goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, sharing the Holy Land in peace and security. A few days later, despite Palestinian attacks that killed seven Israelis, Israel started to dismantle settlement outposts planted on the West Bank hilltops in the past two years. In another violent twist on Tuesday, Israel tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Abd-el-Aziz Rantisi, a top Hamas leader. The failed operation highlighted the explosive reality of the conflict and the many pitfalls that could befall it, but all the players involved tried to keep the peace process moving forward.
At first glance, it appears that Bush, Sharon and Abbas (known as Abu Mazen) are simply following in the footsteps of their predecessors. The same Red Sea scenery has been used many times before as the stage for Middle East summits and peace negotiations. Only a few miles away on the opposite beach from Aqaba, at the Egyptian resort of Taba, the previous Israeli-Palestinian talks broke down in January 2001 -- a few days before Sharon was elected prime minister, pledging "never to negotiate under fire." As the fighting went on, Sharon decided to boycott Yasser Arafat, the veteran Palestinian leader, and called for his replacement as a precondition to resuming negotiations. Bush agreed and waited for the emergence of Abu Mazen before undertaking a major diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Bush has not invented anything new. He simply used the old crisis-management recipe: summoning the leaders, staging a splendid photo op, reading nice words, and going back home.
In many aspects, however, Bush is trying to avoid the failures of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who sponsored the Oslo process throughout the 1990s until its fateful collapse at Camp David in July 2000. The Bushites decided not to allow the president's prestige to be taken hostage by local hatreds. They produced a strictly scripted event at the beach palace of Jordan's King Abdullah, drafting the speeches of Sharon and Abu Mazen in Washington, and allowing them only a limited margin for changes and corrections in the text. The outcome avoided any mention of contentious, dividing issues like the future borders of the Palestinian state, the fate of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, or the final arrangements in Jerusalem. Instead, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders were told to be optimistic, emphasize whatever steps they might take to promote the process, and avert any attacks or tough demands from the other side.
To the wary spectators on the beach, mostly veteran reporters who have attended quite a few ceremonies like this in the past, the Aqaba event was refreshing in its modesty. There were no biblical citations or big promises for a new Middle East, only dry talking points, which fit the non-charismatic nature of Sharon and Abu Mazen. The leaders were confined to their pre-written statements; no questions from the press were allowed, to avoid any semblance of disagreement. Sharon said that forming a democratic Palestinian state was in Israel's interest -- a sober recognition from the leader of the Israeli right wing, the architect of settlement building who had opposed any concessions in the past. Now at the helm, bearing the heavy responsibility of national leadership, Sharon sounded more conciliatory as he promised to remove "unauthorized" settlement outposts and to give the future Palestinian state "territorial contiguity." It could have sounded like Sharon's revelation speech. But the Israeli leader is not a man of grand gestures. True to form, most of his remarks dealt with security and the need to eliminate terror, the main themes of Sharon's long, embattled career.
Abu Mazen renounced terror against Israelis anywhere and pledged to establish a democracy and the rule of law in Palestine. Responding to an old Israeli demand, he spoke to his people in Arabic, thus averting any possible claim about double talk. He also recognized the suffering of Jews throughout history, a brave new theme for an Arab leader.
The main Palestinian achievement in Aqaba was the implicit equation of terror and settlements, which both sides pledged to curb. Even Sharon tacitly recognized this, as he announced the immediate removal of outposts as a "down payment" and hinted at the future evacuation of settlements to create Palestinian contiguity, pending good behavior and the uprooting of terrorism. This "terror for settlements" deal marked a clear departure from Oslo, which demanded that Palestinians stop their violence but allowed Israel to continue building settlements. In fact, the number of settlers in the occupied territories has doubled since the Oslo signing ceremony in 1993.
From the Israeli viewpoint, the main achievement of Aqaba was the composition of the team at the podium. For the first time, the detested Arafat was absent from the picture, and so were European and U.N. leaders, who are viewed in Israel as pro-Arab, imbalanced interlocutors. The Aqaba process is an American monopoly. On Sunday, at the Likud party conference in Jerusalem, Sharon boasted that Israel was near victory in the conflict, citing the Palestinian leadership change as "the kernel of our victory."
Undoubtedly, the key player in Aqaba was the American president, who arrived from a long trip to Russia, Europe and a gathering of pro-American Arab leaders in the Egyptian resort Sharm El-Sheikh (Sharon refused to travel to Egypt, citing bad blood with the Mubarak regime, and Bush had to split his Mideast visit in two.) While both Sharon and Abu Mazen focused on their statement drafts, and all but avoided looking at the cameras, Bush sounded enthusiastic and looked straight ahead as he spoke about the "great and hopeful change" coming to the Middle East, with Saddam Hussein gone in Iraq and Abbas rising to promote "freedom and statehood for the Palestinian people." Bush pledged a stronger American involvement in the process from now on, and the ceremony was over, after only 24 minutes.
Clearly, it was Bush's intervention that brought the hesitant Palestinians and Israelis to Aqaba. He radiated determination in his closed-door meetings with the leaders. Sharon, who had met with the president seven times previously, was impressed by Bush's unprecedented "messianic fervor" as he embraced the role of leading Israelis and Palestinians toward a settlement. Sharon had heard Bush talk about peacemaking in the past, but his words were abstract. This time, he went above and beyond the formal talking points. The president used tough language on both sides, demanding action and rejecting any excuses.
After two years in which it avoided walking into the Middle East quagmire, the Bush administration has dramatically changed course in recent weeks. Three events coincided with the switch: Abu Mazen's appointment in March, the American victory in Iraq in April, and the president's decision to visit the troubled region in May. The depth of American involvement was remarkable, compared with the previous foot-dragging. Since the war ended, a stream of senior officials from Washington has called on Israeli and the Palestinian leaders, laying the ground for deeper American involvement. Bush adopted the "road map," a three-stage, three-year plan to calm the conflict, establish a Palestinian state, and reach final-status agreement, and he later forced Sharon to approve it in the Israeli cabinet. The United States will deploy a small monitoring team in the West Bank and Gaza to oversee Palestinian actions against terror and Israeli outpost dismantling. The whole process will be co-managed by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who will work with the Israelis, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who will work with the Arabs. At the president's order, both will make the matter "their highest priority."
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