Ariel Sharon spent months trying to avoid yesterday’s summit with George Bush designed to launch the US-led ”road map” for the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli prime minister persuaded the US president to delay publication of the document three times, and cancelled a trip to Washington last month ostensibly because of a new wave of terror.
But yesterday he was forced to read the script the White House all but wrote for him by committing himself not only to the creation of a Palestinian state but one that is viable and contiguous and not squeezed between those individual Jewish settlers determined to claim every hilltop as Israeli land.
Sharon fell short on only one count — he refused to say that it would be independent.
As President Bush sipped a diet Coke and relaxed on board Air Force One, on his way from Aqaba to Qatar last night, he reflected on his evident success in putting pressure on Sharon. He described how he had told the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to make the peace process their top priority but that he was ready to step in if needed.
”I show up when they need me to call people to account, to praise or to say, ‘wait a minute, you told me, you know, in Jordan you would do this’,” Bush said. ”You haven’t done it. Why? Back up.”
Bush said he had promised Sharon and the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, that he would ”ride herd” on what happened — but wasn’t sure they understood the expression.
But already yesterday, Sharon appeared to be backtracking on his promises to the US president.
In a bizarre twist, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued what amounted to a clarification of his speech before he even made it by saying that when he referred to a Palestinian state he meant one that was demilitarised and that would be the only home for the Palestinian diaspora.
Sharon had notably made no such qualification in his speech, apparently because the Americans told both parties to steer clear of demands about the right of Palestinian refugees to land they once owned in Israel. Sharon’s office also went on to say that by ”viable” he meant an ”interim” state.
The Palestinians said they were not particularly disturbed, and that both clarifications had been made to temper criticism by the Israeli right. They noted that Sharon’s commitment was now on the record to a US president, and that the Americans had forced him to go further and faster than he wanted.
Confident
Above all, they took that to answer the single most important question of the summit for the Palestinians — was Bush serious about confronting a reluctant Israeli prime minister?
”This is not a conflict between two equal sides, it’s a conflict between an occupier and an occupied,” said Michael Tarazi, of the Palestinian negotiating team. ”We are hoping that the role of the US will be to correct the imbalance of power between a very strong Israel and a very weak Palestine. We are now confident that Bush is serious.”
That belief was reinforced at Bush’s summit with friendly Arab leaders on Tuesday when Egyptian television accidentally captured the American president in a private conversation as he dropped formality for an extraordinary invocation of God. ”I believe that, as I told the crown prince, the almighty God has endowed each individual on the face of the earth with — that expects each person to be treated with dignity. This is a universal call. It’s the call of all religions, that each person must be free and treated with respect.” He concluded by saying: ”I feel passionate about the need to move forward.”
The Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Sha’ath, said he recognised that the Americans were unlikely to deliver what the Palestinians desire — all of the land occupied in 1967. ”The proof of whether what we heard today is really the road to peace — the end of the occupation started in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state — will only come in time. But I think we have enough today to give us a real opportunity for hope,” he said.
A crucial first step was Sharon’s commitment yesterday after months of prevarication to begin dismantling the estimated 120 Jewish outposts in the occupied territories that are illegal under Israeli law. His government has identified 17 initially, some of which are either not manned permanently or are only home to a handful of people. But the real test will be whether he also prevents new outposts being thrown up or uses the inevitable confrontations with rightwing settlers, who are already calling Sharon ”a traitor”, as a pretext to draw out the process.
Israeli officials say Sharon met settler leaders last week and told them that, under US pressure, some of the more established settlements, home to about 220 000 settlers, would have to make way for a Palestinian state. ”Security will be a big factor in deciding which ones go,” one official said. ”Not just the question of which settlements are important to Israel’s security but which we will not have the ability to defend when the borders change. We know it will not be easy.”
Sharon’s spokesperson, Ra’anan Gissin, denied the Israeli government had bowed to US pressure and said embracing of the road map was a response to the changed reality of the Middle East. ”What came out of the meeting is a reflection of the fact that the US won a great victory in Iraq and there has been a major change in the Middle East – that terrorism is in retreat. I think it’s very important that conspicuous by his absence is Yasser Arafat,” he said.
Yet just a few weeks ago the Israeli administration evidently felt confident that a mix of hawks in the Bush administration, the mobilisation of support in Congress, and next year’s election in the US, would contain White House pressure for Sharon to commit himself to the peace process.
Lobbying
Persistent leaks from the prime minister’s office sought to deride the US secretary of state, Colin Powell — a strong advocate of the road map along with Tony Blair — as too liberal and irrelevant to the Bush administration’s thinking.
The Israeli government had mobilised such influential organisations as the American Israeli Political Action Committee against the road map, and had persuaded dozens of Congress members and senators to warn the president ”not to jeopardise Israel’s security”. The concern for the Palestinians now is that Bush keeps up the pressure on Israel, as his father once did.
In a conversation with the Palestinian finance minister in Washington last month, Bush dismissed concerns that he would be disinclined to confront the Israeli government in an election year. He said that only 9% of American Jews voted for him ”and it can’t get worse than that”.
Yesterday Sha’ath said it was crucial that the Americans had insisted on taking control of monitoring both sides to see if they meet their commitments under the requirements of the road map — in other words, the Israelis will not be the judge of whether the Palestinians are doing enough to fight terrorism.
He noted that the process would be overseen by the two Bush administration officials whom the Israelis once said were of no relevance whatever to the American policy on Israel — Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. – Guardian Unlimited Â