Page 2 of 3 Condi's free ride in the
Middle East By Tony Karon
diplomatic dance floor. The Saudi
efforts are, however, so clearly at odds with
administration policies and desires on key issues
that this characterization is impossible to
sustain.
As Washington pressed for the
isolation of Iran, Riyadh - supposedly the leader
of a new "axis of moderation" being constructed by
Washington - spent the winter vigorously engaging
Tehran at the highest level. The purpose was to
begin to calm
Shi'ite-Sunni tensions across
the region, aggravated by the catastrophic
situation in Iraq, and to bring Lebanon's warring
factions back from the brink of confrontation.
While the US press were generally
reporting that the Saudis were entering a period
of muscular confrontation with Iran, that country
appeared to be searching for mechanisms to manage
Saudi/Iranian differences based on a mutual
recognition of each other's regional roles. Not
exactly what Bush, Dick Cheney or Rice seems to
have had in mind.
Then came the Saudi
attempt to bring the warring Palestinian factions
together in the Mecca Agreement. Here, the Saudis
brokered negotiations to draw Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah
party into a unity government with Hamas - even as
Washington continued to warn Abbas against doing
so. Abbas, the president of the Palestinian
National Authority, has rarely exhibited any
independence from Washington. His willingness to
take this step offered a clear signal that the
Saudis were orchestrating things on the
Israeli-Palestinian front with little patience for
indulging Bush administration fantasies.
The US had, of course, been seeking the
literal overthrow of Hamas since it won
legislative elections in 2006 - something the
Saudis recognized as infeasible, given that Hamas
is, at this point, far more representative of
Palestinian sentiment than Fatah. Saudi leaders
were also aware that Washington's campaign to
isolate Hamas in the Arab world left it little
option but to seek Iranian patronage.
In
reality, the Bush administration seems
increasingly at odds with the consensus among the
Arab moderates it claims to be leading. Saudi
Arabia's King Abdullah, in particular, appears to
have sent a signal of this in canceling - with
little explanation - a special state dinner that
was to be hosted by Bush on April 17. Then, at
last week's Arab League Summit in Riyadh, the king
followed up by demanding an end to the crippling
financial siege of the Palestinian Authority
imposed by the US and denouncing the American
military presence in Iraq as an "illegitimate
foreign occupation". This is strong stuff from the
Saudis.
Rather than a patient plan crafted
by the secretary of state as some miraculous
alchemist of grand strategy, the latest flurry of
activity reflects the maturing of a range of
crises in the Middle East that have festered
dangerously, while Condi fiddled. These include:
The fact that the Bush administration has
only exerted itself - and then just symbolically -
on the Israeli-Palestinian front when it was
desperate for favors from allied Arab regimes on
other fronts, notably the roiling crises in Iraq
and Iran. With the US struggling unsuccessfully on
both fronts, its vaunted ability to influence
events in the region is in precipitous decline.
The fact that the Arab regimes most
closely allied to the US face mounting crises of
legitimacy at home, damned not only by their
authoritarianism but also by their paralysis in
the face of US and Israeli violence against Arab
populations. Delivering the Palestinians to
statehood is now seen by those regimes as
essential to their own domestic political
survival.
The fact that an Israeli
government, which came to power promising peace
through unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza and
parts of the West Bank, having fought a disastrous
war in Lebanon and facing a never-ending struggle
in Gaza, is seemingly disengaged from itself, its
policies in tatters. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is
drowning in a sea of corruption, scandals, and
recriminations over the strategic and tactical
incompetence he demonstrated in last summer's
Lebanon war. With his own approval ratings at an
astonishing 3%, he desperately needs a new idea to
persuade Israeli voters that there's any reason to
keep him in office.
The fact that the
Palestinians are experiencing an unprecedented
humanitarian and political breakdown. All factions
of the Palestinian government share an
overwhelming incentive to get the financial siege
lifted from battered, strife-torn Gaza. Abbas'
political future and legacy rest solely on
completing the Oslo peace process; while for Hamas
- at least for its more pragmatic political
leadership - allowing Abbas to pursue that course
(particularly when it carries pan-Arab blessing)
makes a certain sense.
Hamas's political
choices have always reflected a keen sense of
Palestinian popular sentiment. By maintaining a
distant and ambiguous stance toward Abbas'
diplomatic efforts, it can plausibly deny
complicity if the outcome proves unpopular on the
Palestinian street.
The failure to 'get
there' It is this combined political
weakness, the loss of power among all the main
players, that makes a renewed push for peace
suddenly so attractive - and so dubious. In recent
weeks, both Rice and Olmert have expressed guarded
enthusiasm for the Saudi peace proposals, as if
they represented some remarkable new set of
suggestions.
The plan, which offers Israel
recognition for full withdrawal to its 1967
borders, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem
as its capital, and a solution to the Palestinian
refugee question based
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