Bush's plan: 'Too little, too late, too risky'
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - A major policy address on Monday by President George W Bush
promoting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has been greeted with
considerable skepticism by Middle East specialists here.
Most analysts said Bush's speech - including his pledge to provide some US$190
million to support Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and convene a
regional conference to
support renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks - was too little, too late and
included too many conditions to rally strong Palestinian or Arab support.
The speech, which came on the eve of a new trip to the region by Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, marked Bush's full embrace of what has been called the
"West Bank First" strategy.
It calls for providing full support to Abbas on the occupied West Bank while
isolating his main rivals, former prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and his Hamas
party, which took over the Gaza Strip last month after a series of gun battles
with security forces loyal to Abbas' Fatah.
Bush said Washington would provide Abbas and his new government, headed by
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, with nearly $200 million in mainly economic
assistance, including humanitarian aid for Gaza, as well as $80 million in
"non-lethal" aid for his security forces.
He also announced that Washington will convene "an international meeting"
chaired by Rice this autumn to promote both internal Palestinian reform and the
bilateral peace process that could offer Palestinians a "political horizon" for
the achievement of a "viable and contiguous" state of their own.
"So I will call together an international meeting this fall of representatives
from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize
Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements" between
Israelis and Palestinians, Bush said.
"The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank today is a struggle between extremists
and moderates," he said, insisting that Hamas' recent takeover of Gaza
"demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is [more] devoted to extremism and
murder than to serving the Palestinian people".
He added that Palestinians now face a "moment of choice" between "the vision of
Hamas ... [of] chaos, and suffering, and the endless perpetuation of
grievance", and the "vision of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad of a
peaceful state called Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people".
Bush also called, as he did in 2002 when he first endorsed a two-state solution
for Israel and Palestine, for Israel to halt its expansion of Jewish
settlements and to remove unauthorized settlement outposts on the West Bank.
"At the same time, Israelis should find other practical ways to reduce their
footprint without reducing their security - so they can help President Abbas
improve economic and humanitarian conditions," he said.
Bush's remarks, which were the subject of a protracted internal debate within
his administration, were criticized by most analysts here for failing to take
account of new realities on the ground, particularly in light of Fatah's rout
by Hamas in Gaza and indications that Abbas' popular support has eroded
significantly since he was elected president in January 2005.
"It's not only 'too little too late', it's actually a little more dangerous
than that," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in
Washington. "When [Bush administration officials] could've helped [Abbas] out
after he was elected and had strong support, they didn't. And when they
could've moved Israel forward, either during [former prime minister Ariel]
Sharon's time or when [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert was first elected, they
didn't.
"Now they have a situation where Palestinians are deeply divided and Olmert has
single-digit support, and here comes the president with less than couple of
hundred million dollars and a gentle suggestion that the Israelis should get
rid of their illegal outposts and checkpoints [on the West Bank] - something
they committed themselves to do five years ago and didn't follow through.
"The hallmarks of this administration's policy have been neglect when they
could do something, then letting ideology trump reality when they do do
something, and then being ineffective as a result," Zogby said. "This has all
the earmarks of that."
Shibley Telhami, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and an
expert on Arab public opinion, echoed Zogby's analysis, noting that the speech
itself offered "nothing new" and demonstrated that the Bush administration is
"really kind of out of touch" with the situation on the ground.
"The administration seems to think that the strategy here is to empower Abbas
and Fatah to be able to defeat Hamas politically or militarily," Telhami said.
"I don't think that can happen, certainly not in the foreseeable future.
"Most Arab governments - including those who want to see Hamas weakened - have
reached the conclusion that it's really difficult to isolate Hamas," he went
on. "They've all come around to the view that Hamas has to be brought back in"
with Fatah. Telhami also took issue with Bush's posing of a "choice" for
Palestinians. "When you put a choice on the table, you say, 'I'm going to give
you a Palestinian state.' But what is being put on the table is $190 million
and a conference, and, of course, there have been many conferences that have
failed.
"If you're a Hamas supporter, and you're rejecting [Abbas] because you see him
as being weak, and you know that whatever the $190 million is going to do, it's
not going to trickle down to people who have been under sanctions since Hamas
won the [parliamentary] elections [in January 2006], that's not a real choice
for them."
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator currently based at the Century
Foundation and the New America Foundation in Washington, was even more
dismissive of the speech, which he said "may well drive Palestinian politics
towards a period of even greater chaos that could create a space for al-Qaeda
look-alikes to gain a foothold" in the Palestinian territories.
Bush's approach, he said, appeared to be based on "deepening" the conflict
between Fatah and Hamas rather than trying to bring them together.
"The two-state solution that the president claims to support will need to
deliver and have legitimacy on both sides in order to have a chance of being
sustainable. That cannot be based on an irreconcilable Palestinian political
division," Levy noted, pointing to recent press leaks by US intelligence
officials who oppose the West Bank First strategy on the grounds that Hamas is
too strong and has too much popular support to be effectively isolated or
marginalized.
Nonetheless, Ziad Azali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine,
insisted that Bush's reiteration of his support for a two-state solution was
both "positive and timely", particularly after last month's events in Gaza.
"The team of Abu Mazen [Abbas] and Fayyad is one that can't be rejected by
Israel as a partner," he said. "And we're seeing from Israel that this team is
being taken seriously."
Indeed, David Welch, Rice's top Middle East adviser, insisted to reporters
after the speech that the administration of Abbas and Fayyad has constituted
"the best Palestinian government since the formation of the Palestine Authority
in 1994".
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