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| May 11, 2003 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 8, 1424 |
Sharon could derail Bush’s roadmap
TEL AVIV: On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave two senior White House officials his customary VIP treatment: a helicopter sightseeing tour over the West Bank. From the air, Sharon’s distinguished guests — deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and National Security Council senior director Elliott Abrams — could gaze at the disputed Judea and Samaria mountains, green after an exceptionally rainy winter.
Hadley and Abrams had come on a discreet mission: to figure out where Sharon is leading Israeli policy and to assess the chances for movement on the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It remains doubtful, however, whether afterwards Hadley or Abrams could give a definitive answer to the most vexing question of Mideast peacemaking these days:
What does Sharon want?
Since he took office in March 2001, the “Sharon riddle” has puzzled diplomats and commentators. Will Sharon make good on his recent talk of “painful concessions”, or will he continue to rule as he has in the past, with a mixture of blunt force, agile (though not daring) domestic political manoeuvres and skepticism of, if not outright contempt for, a negotiated peace with Palestinian leaders?
In Israel, the normally publicity-shy Sharon has piqued interest further by launching a media campaign, in which he pledged to set his sights on peacemaking. In a series of recent interviews, Sharon had said that the war in Iraq has created an opportunity for peace with the Palestinians “that shouldn’t be missed.” The former paratroop commander said his last remaining ambition, at age 75, was to “bring security and peace to this people.” He mentioned the moral problems of ruling other people. And he even discussed the possibility of settlement removal as part of a future peace deal. Given Sharon’s record as the champion of settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza, at the heart of Palestinian population centres, this was a real bombshell.
If Sharon does move toward peace, it won’t be because he is pushed. At home, he couldn’t be much stronger, despite two years of violence and economic decline. Recently reelected, Sharon enjoys vast public support for whichever path he chooses. There is hardly any pressure from the outside, either. Until now, at least, the Bush administration has echoed Sharon’s demand that an end to Palestinian terrorism and “more pragmatic” Palestinian leaders were conditions for any peace moves. Sharon was therefore exempted from any action, until the other side fulfilled its part.
So far, Sharon’s goal has been to retain maximum freedom of action, while avoiding confrontation with Washington. To facilitate that goal, he has developed a form of diplomatic newspeak. Rather than say “no,” he says “yes, but ...” His concessions belong to the distant future; in the short term, he puts the onus solely on the Palestinians’ shoulders. Whenever Sharon has shown flexibility, it has been coated with tougher demands on the Palestinians.
For example, before his 2001 election, Sharon said he was ready to establish an interim Palestinian state on 42 per cent of the West Bank (the part allocated to the Palestinian Authority under the 1990s Oslo agreements). Since then, Sharon has added demands for a thorough reform in all walks of Palestinian public life, and has called on the Palestinians to waive their claim for “right of return” of the 1948 refugees to their homes in what is now Israel — a pillar of the Palestinian national ethos, which Israel views as a synonym with its destruction. And Sharon wants that concession at the outset of negotiations, rather than at the end as part of a quid pro quo for even a limited statehood.
Reactive by nature, Sharon has avoided putting forward any Israeli peace plan, opting instead for coordination with Washington. Nevertheless, when handed others’ blueprints for easing the conflict, he has managed to neutralize them without formally rejecting them.
Here’s how: At first, Sharon asks for time “to study the details”; then he accepts them “as basis for discussion” and suggests “comments and corrections.”
If the plan survives this stage, Sharon delays implementation until the Palestinians meet ever-tougher tests. This dismantling mechanism has been applied to the Jordan-Egypt initiative, the Mitchell Report, the Saudi initiative and now to the roadmap. The only programme accepted by Sharon, and only “in principle,” has been the Bush speech of June 24, 2002, in which the president laid out his “two-state vision” for resolving the conflict and called for a new Palestinian leadership.
When presented with the roadmap last October, Sharon appointed an interagency team headed by his chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, to draft comments aimed at “making the roadmap consistent with Bush’s June 24 speech.” The resulting document proposed more than 100 corrections, divided into 15 major groupings, to a roadmap that was only seven pages long.
These maneuvers have created a disconnect between diplomacy and reality. On the rhetorical level, much progress has been made under Bush and Sharon. The roadmap goes further than Oslo in its firm commitment for Palestinian independence. But as diplomats engage in quasi-theological debates over “sequential or parallel steps” by both sides, the reality on the ground has deteriorated.
The underlying problem of Mideast peacemaking is that the maximum offer of each side fails to satisfy the minimum demands of the other. Realizing that, Bush has accepted Sharon’s idea for a three-stage process: a cease-fire and resumption of security; creation of a Palestinian state in interim borders; and at last, a final-status deal.
Sharon has convinced Bush to accept his “performance-based” approach, which conditions any progress on the fulfilment of previous commitments. This concept is written into the roadmap and frees Sharon from dreaded timetables.
So where is he going? Most likely, nowhere. A final status agreement, with the delicate issues of the future of Al Quds and Palestinian refugees, appears beyond reasonable expectation. Sharon might agree to a small Palestinian state, cordoned off by Israeli settlements and checkpoints, whose borders will remain disputed with Israel. At a more reasonable minimum, the roadmap could aim to restore the pre-intifada security environment, with a Palestinian crackdown on terrorism and an Israeli withdrawal and outpost removal. Even this would be difficult to achieve, though, given the lack of mutual confidence.
To a large extent, Sharon has been freed from any real dilemmas by the absence of a serious Palestinian counterpart. With the elevation of Mahmoud Abbas, a different Sharon might seize the opportunity to alter the tone of Israeli-Palestinian relations or make a gesture of reconciliation.
The Sharon we know, however, will wait for Abbas to fail and for US attention to wander. And Israelis and Palestinians will continue down the well-trodden road. From above in the helicopter, maybe it will be clearer where that leads.
(Aluf Benn is diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.)—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post
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