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ANALYSIS
Questions over Bush's
Mideast commitment
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The question is, is President
George W Bush really serious - serious enough to put
real pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -
about implementing the much-heralded road map to achieve
peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
If
not, most analysts here believe, the latest attempt to
resolve a 55-year-old problem is doomed from the outset.
Views about the question are surprisingly varied
in Washington. Conventional wisdom before Bush's travels
to the Middle East, which culminated in his summit at
Aqaba with Sharon and new Palestinian Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas, held that Sharon and his Likud party had
little to fear.
The prevailing belief was that
Bush would go through the motions of trying to implement
the road map to satisfy British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, who has long argued that Western credibility in
the region depends on Washington resolving the conflict
more or less even-handedly. There was no sense that Bush
was himself committed to the plan.
In this view,
the victory in Iraq confirmed the domination over US
policy of the pro-Likud hardliners in the
administration, centered in the offices of Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld. Their rhetoric echoed the views of
neo-conservatives outside the administration, who have
been arguing since the attacks of September 11 that the
war on terrorism and Israel's fight against the
Palestinians were one and the same.
After all,
it was Rumsfeld who referred to the West Bank and Gaza
last year as the "so-called Occupied Territories", a
phrase denoting an identity of views with the Jewish
settler movement, one of whose spokesmen, Mark Zell, is
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's law
partner. Cheney and his powerful chief of staff, I Lewis
Libby, have also made no secret of their lack of
sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
They and
their allies outside the administration, including the
former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard
Perle, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Center
for Security policy director Frank Gaffney - to name
just a few - had been pouring scorn over the road map,
which Washington worked out with the European Union,
Russia and the United Nations, since even before it was
officially handed to the two parties.
Finally,
the Republican president's chief political adviser, Karl
Rove, has been salivating over the fast-rising approval
ratings for Bush among US Jews, a constituency that
traditionally provides a major portion of campaign
funding for Democratic presidential candidates.
But in the past two weeks, Bush has surprised
just about everyone with his stated determination to
give the road map a serious go. "I believe peace is
possible, and I believe that I have ...
responsibilities, now that the conditions are such, to
move the process forward," he said just before leaving
for Europe and the Middle East in late May.
Once
there, he not only promised to "ride herd" over both
Sharon and Abbas to see the plan implemented, he also
appointed national security advisor and his closest
foreign-policy counselor, Condoleezza Rice, to oversee
the process.
"Bush's welcome personal immersion
in Middle East peace diplomacy holds out the hope of
significant changes in Israeli policy, as evidenced by
the fact that [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon
persuaded his government to accept the road map despite
his overt hostility to it," noted Henry Siegman, a top
adviser to former president Bill Clinton now with the
Council on Foreign Relations, in a column in the
International Herald Tribune.
Sharon himself
seemed to sense Bush's newfound commitment and,
apparently determined not to alienate the most
pro-Israel US president in history, has shown unexpected
flexibility.
While he retains the 14
"reservations" about the road map that he voiced before
Bush's trip, his statements and behavior over the past
two weeks have themselves surprised both US analysts and
angered - even panicked - many of his Likud supporters.
His declaration 10 days ago that Israel's presence in
the Palestinian territories amounted to "occupation" -
previously a taboo word among right-wing Likudniks - and
that Israeli control over 3.5 million Palestinians was
neither desirable nor sustainable, was seen by many as
an historic breakthrough.
Similarly, Sharon's
decision to proceed with dismantling a dozen illegal
Jewish outposts - set up by settlers in the West Bank
over the past 30 months - as he promised Bush he would
do at Aqaba, in spite of Sunday's joint operation by
three Palestinian militant groups that killed five
Israeli soldiers in Gaza, was also out of character.
Faced with such an attack in the past, Sharon
would almost certainly have frozen any compliance with
the peace process, and also launched a ferocious attack
on targets alleged to have been involved in the Sunday
operation. Indeed, his recent maneuvers have spurred
speculation similar to that raised by Bush's actions. Is
he serious about moving toward a real peace agreement,
or are these simply tactics designed to co-opt
Washington and buy time until the agreement collapses
due to non-compliance by the Palestinians?
"At
some point, he's got to decide whether it's Sharon the
survivor or Sharon the statesman," said Jean AbiNader,
managing director of the Arab-American Institute in
Washington. "I think there's still warring going on
inside him about that."
Another possibility is
that Sharon believes that, by cooperating with Bush, he
will eventually force Abbas to crack down hard on
militant opposition and provoke a civil war among
Palestinians - a scenario about which neo-conservative
New York Times columnist William Safire, who speaks
frequently with Sharon, has written favorably more than
once.
To Siegman, the proof of both Bush's and
Sharon's intentions lies with the fate of the existing
Jewish settlements, whose growth is supposed to be
frozen at the plan's outset. Bush reportedly asked
Sharon at Aqaba if he would commit to a freeze, but
Sharon demurred, insisting that such a move was more
than the political traffic would bear. To Sharon's great
relief, Bush failed to press the issue, not only
depriving Abbas of a tangible gain to take back home,
but also casting renewed doubt on Bush's determination.
If Bush cannot deliver Sharon on settlements,
according to Siegman, then it would be "absurd" for
Washington to expect Abbas to confront Palestinians
militants. "More than any other factor, settlements are
responsible for Palestinian violence and for the absence
of popular Palestinian opposition to terrorist groups."
(Inter Press Service)
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