From CNI:
Withdrawal from Reality?
By Eugene H. Bird
October 21, 2005
President Bush rolled out the red carpet for his Palestinian protégé,
Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting in the Rose Garden, in terms of staging,
equaled anything that President Clinton had done with his friend, Yasser
Arafat, in the heyday of the Oslo agreements.
And the president stuck to his carefully concocted script, probably
written by Steve Hadley in its original form. Bush said that he had had
a good discussion with the president of the Palestinian Authority.
Calling him "president" instead of just "chairman" is a slight step
forward towards recognition of a Palestinian state.
Pessimists, on the one hand, believe that nothing will happen until
after the Israeli elections, probably set for November 2006. And that
means continued rolling violence between now and then.
Optimists, on the other hand, believe that incremental steps can
eventually lead somewhere and give hope to the situation. That is where
the administration is at the present time. On every occasion, including
this one, they refer to the Roadmap, which even Israeli observers such
as Yossi Beilin say is dead on arrival.
From what the President said, he wants to free up the Palestinians and
give them a better life. Nothing new in that. And the only result to
come from the meeting in Washington this week was a report in the press
that behind the scenes the United States will not oppose the
participation of Hamas in elections.
Almost immediately, the prime minister’s office in West Jerusalem said
that Israel would not facilitate an election in which Hamas is allowed
to participate. One of the Palestinian officials visiting Washington
last week said that postponement of the election in January to the
legislative council would trigger a third intifada.
If a Palestinian state were negotiated before the end of his term, he
would "attend." When asked about a timetable for such a state, George W.
Bush waffled and only suggested that he would be satisfied with laying
the groundwork.
The president has made a few cosmetic changes in American policy towards
the Palestinians. He did mention the opening of a seaport sometime down
the road, but apparently not of the airport in Gaza, as one of his early
objectives. But his call for a link between Gaza and the West Bank and
for Israel to stop expanding settlements is a simple regurgitation of
American policy during the Oslo process. President Bush called for
removal of "unauthorized" checkpoints, despite the fact they are all
authorized in one way or another by the Israel Defense Forces on the
ground. Now, such policies have a ring of the unreal, in view of the
rejectionism of the Sharon government. The question will be who is more
"persistent," George W. Bush or Ariel Sharon.
He stood in the same spot in the Rose Garden two years ago and called
for Israel to end its intrusions and end them now. Nothing happened.
Does the president of the United States really believe Ariel Sharon has
either the personal or political will to do everything now that would
prevent a further violent escalation by the Palestinian insurgency?
Yes, of course, he and apparently even his professional team of foreign
policy advisors believe they can cajole the prime minister of Israel to
ignore the politics of land-grabbing and continuing to seek a military
solution to a political problem, the continued occupation.
Realistically, the meeting only reiterated the need for the Palestinians
to do much and the Israelis to do little or nothing to improve the life
of almost four million Palestinians.
The new representative of the Palestinian Authority in Washington, Affif
Safieh, will carry the title of ambassador and supposedly be recognized,
a small step towards reality and recognition of the state.
The pilgrimage to the Rose Garden by the president of an unrecognized
state of Palestine will be matched by a visit from the prime minister of
a state that refuses to establish agreed borders. We can expect Sharon
here in the next few weeks if past calendars of the Israel-Palestine
dispute are followed.
And the President will probably again honor him by letting him stay at
Blair House, the ultimate reward for presidential guests. When Patrice
Lumumba visited Washington as head of an unrecognized rebel group
throwing off the Belgian colonial heritage in the Congo, a Belgian
diplomat was ordered to protest full state treatment of Lumumba, then
considered a terrorist.
He said to his opposite number in the Department of State, "How can you
let that man sleep in the same bed that my kin (Belgian) slept in only a
few months ago?" The State desk officer replied, "Oh, we change the sheets."
Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas will be invited to use that same guesthouse before
the end of the Bush Administration. Don’t count on it.
Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/
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