31 May - 6 June 2001
Issue No.536
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 May - 6 June 2001 Issue No.536 |
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What cease-fire?
Cairo's view is that continued Israeli aggression on the ground is more telling than airy statements from Israeli leaders, writes Tarek Atia
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "is trying to lure Arab countries into a war, and this is very dangerous," Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told Abu Dhabi TV on Sunday.
During a two-day tour, President Mubarak held talks with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd (top) and UAE's Sheikh Zayed
photos: Ahmed Afifi
Maher was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with President Hosni Mubarak on the second leg of a two-nation Gulf tour which also included Saudi Arabia, and was meant to help coordinate a united Arab position vis-à-vis the current crisis.
The discussion with Arab leaders is business as usual for Cairo, which has been trying intensively to find a way out of the juggernaut. "We're moving on all tracks," one diplomat said when asked by Al-Ahram Weekly if there had been a shift of focus from Europe to the more immediate neighbourhood regarding diplomatic efforts. "It doesn't mean we're giving up on the Europeans. It's not mutually exclusive," he added.
Whether or not Europe would muster more than harsh condemnations of Israeli intransigence and actually implement, for instance, trade barriers on Israeli goods produced in illegal settlements, was still unclear. Clear as day, however, was that Europe, along with most of the rest of the world, has placed its trust in both the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the Mitchell report, two documents that provide a blueprint for a return to the negotiating table.
Despite this, things remain up in the air regarding how close the region is to war or peace, as the minister's statements in Abu Dhabi made clear. At the same time, Maher made sure to reiterate Mubarak's assurance that what happened in June 1967 would never happen again.
The main question mark in the equation remains Sharon, and what he really wants the current conflict to become. The Israeli prime minister's unilateral cease-fire announcement has been greeted with tremendous scepticism from Cairo, as it has by the rest of the Arab world. Practically speaking, the diplomatic source said; "The cease-fire does not exist. It's a fuzzy concept. No matter what he says you cannot hide what's happening on the ground."
On his way back home from Abu Dhabi, Mubarak told Al-Ahram,"The truth is that Israeli attacks on Palestinian land and infrastructure have not stopped. This is a deception of international public opinion."
Maher further explained the situation: "Israeli aggression continues despite Sharon's announcement of a fictitious, unilateral cease-fire. This is a publicity move meant to transfer blame to the other side."
Palestinian reports have varied as to the number of incidents of Israeli aggression which have taken place since the so-called cease-fire was announced. The number ranges between 45 and 100, and is growing day by day.
The trouble is, however, that Sharon may have achieved exactly what he was looking for, which was a way out of the clear call -- in both the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the Mitchell report -- for an immediate halt to settlement construction. Now that Sharon is claiming to have stopped the violence on his side, it certainly seems as though the US administration is leaning more towards a less stringent condemnation of settlement building.
The timing of the settlement freeze is becoming a major issue of contention, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell summing up the American view on the issue by saying the violence must stop first, and that settlement freezes fall under the auspices of later-stage confidence-building measures.
Maher told the Weekly: "There is an Israeli reading of Mitchell, that things should happen step by step, in sequence ... The Palestinian point of view, which we support, is that it's all inter-connected. We can't separate one thing from another, because you can't say today that someone throwing rocks is comparable to someone with planes and bulldozers. If you want to solve things you have to look at the complete deal: stopping settlements, stopping violence, confidence building. It's all part of one package."
An informed diplomat said the Americans were looking rather at the Mitchell report's recommendations section than at the full report. In that context, the settlement issue falls within the section about confidence-building measures.
"You cannot address the issue without using both Mitchell and the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative as a road map," the diplomat said.
He added that the mandate of the new US envoy William Burns was to do something very similar to that. He was looking for a road map to implement the report in its entirety. "Burns's task is to find the time frame and the sequence, and this is how the two documents complement each other," he said.
Maher added: "Burns's mission is to implement Mitchell with a time table or schedule. It doesn't have to all be in the same second, but it has to be on a schedule."
Senior presidential adviser Osama El-Baz also expressed reserved optimism regarding the new US envoy. "Burns is not experimenting," El-Baz told the Weekly. "He knows the region. We are waiting for him, and are interested in hearing his viewpoint."
Support for the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative also came from former Russian premier Yevgeny Primakov, who was in the region this week, and seemed to back Mubarak's assessment of the Sharon "cease-fire" in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper.
"The situation," Primakov said, "has been aggravated after the Israeli prime minister's statements about a cease-fire, because the Israelis are not implementing it."He added that the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative contained "practical ideas" to end the violence.
In Saudi Arabia, Mubarak met King Fahd as well as Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdel-Aziz. In Abu Dhabi, the Egyptian president met UAE President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan. "The two leaders [Mubarak and Zayed] stressed that the United States and the international community should play an active and decisive role to stop Israel's aggression and genocide against the Palestinian people and rescue the peace process," the official Emirates news agency reported.
While in Saudi Arabia the Egyptian president also warned of the implications of Israel's threat to strike at Lebanon and Syria.
Meanwhile, Maher said Egyptian diplomatic efforts in New York were continuing. "The Arab group is working on how and when a new push for UN intervention into the conflict will come into being," he said. "The idea of UN protection is on the table. It is important and essential. But we have to decide on the right timing."
Diplomatic sources explained that bringing up the issue again at the UN was a "way to make the Security Council face its responsibility vis-à-vis Israeli aggression against the Palestinians."
Upping the level and frequency of contacts on all fronts seems to be Cairo's choice for now. Maher said he was personally in constant contact with Palestinian officials. "There's no doubt that the extensive contacts between Mubarak and the US administration helped move the Americans into action," he said.
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