9 - 15 May 2002
Issue No.585
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 May 2002 Issue No.585 |
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'Kill them first'
Sharon's visit to Washington ended in chaotic and inconclusive fashion as he rushed back to Israel to attend to the aftermath of the first suicide bombing in nearly a month. Anayat Durrani reports
When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in the United States on Monday, he claimed to have come equipped with a "serious plan, maybe the most serious" for peace in the Middle East. But he had hardly discussed it during his meeting with President George W Bush on Tuesday before a suicide bomb that claimed 16 lives in Jerusalem forced him to return, promising revenge: "He who rises up to kill us, we will preempt it and kill him first," he said.
Ariel Sharon's intransigence and the spiralling Middle East conflict prompted protesters to mass outside the Washington hotel in which the Israeli Prime Minister was speaking to protest his government's policies
(photos: AP & Reuters)
Sharon laid out his "peace plan" to Bush in his fifth meeting with the US President and amid strong Congressional support for Israel's military policy in the West Bank. Bush has yet to invite Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to the White House.
Sharon's "long-term interim plan" proposes setting up Israeli security buffer zones in the West Bank and keeping in place Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. The Israelis have ruled out talks over a final peace deal in the near future and objected to instituting a timetable for peace negotiations. However, Sharon has said he would like to work out his long-term interim deal with the Palestinians at the regional peace conference, providing Arafat is banned from attending.
While speaking at the Anti-Defamation League, Sharon attempted to justify and compare Israel's major offensive against West Bank cities and camps with that of the US in its response to the 11 September attacks. "There is a moral equivalency and direct connection between America's continuous operations against Al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan and Operation Defensive Shield and any other Israel Defence Forces operation to defeat terrorism," Sharon said. The Israeli leader also said that although Israel and the United States shared a strong friendship, Israel was prepared to depend on itself to safeguard its own interests.
Sharon said that, for his plan to be successful, there would need to be an end to the violence on the Palestinian side and "major institutional, structural reform in the Palestinian Authority". He said the Palestinian government should attain "full transparency" and "not be dependent on the will of one man". Sharon has repeatedly called Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a "terrorist", dismissed him as "irrelevant" and continued his efforts to sideline the Palestinian leader. The US, however, has insisted that Arafat is the sole representative of the Palestinian people and negotiations must take place with him. "It serves us all better if we continue to work with all Palestinian leaders and to recognise who the Palestinian people look to as their leader," said Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC's "This Week". Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, added: "The White House position is that we're not going to try to choose the leadership for the Palestinian people. Chairman Arafat is there."
Sharon has also come with a 103-page report in hand which Israeli officials claim shows direct evidence that Arafat and his aides funded attacks on Israelis. Palestinians have dismissed the document as propaganda and lies, and the Palestinian information minister called the booklet "ridiculous". On Monday, officials traveling with Sharon took a shot at Saudi Arabia, accusing it of financing the families of suicide bombers, jailed attackers and the Islamic Hamas group, listed by the United States as a terrorist organisation. The Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, issued a statement calling the allegations "totally baseless and false ... a smokescreen intended to distract attention away from the peace process". He added, "The Israelis, it appears, have not come to Washington to talk about peace, but rather to undermine those who want peace negotiations."
This week Bush emphasised strong US support for Israel as well as for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Bush administration, showing greater effort to act as a peace broker than at any other time, is striving to maintain a balance in its recent meetings with heads of government. President Bush has said he supports an Arab initiative to recognise Israel and a peace process that would include direct involvement by Arab leaders as well as active participation by the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to push the peace process along. "In order to achieve peace, all parties -- the Arab nations, Israel, Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority -- must assume their responsibilities and lead," he told reporters during a visit to an elementary school in Southfield, Michigan on Monday.
Sharon met Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Monday. Powell held separate talks with Sharon, Jordan's King Abdullah and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal. "We're consulting with all of the parties and trying to determine what could usefully be achieved at this meeting with respect to a security track, with respect to humanitarian and economic support for the people in the region ... and what kind of political dimension we can point to as a way forward," Powell said.
"What we'll be discussing with our friends in the weeks ahead is the nature of a comprehensive settlement that would involve way-stations on the way to a comprehensive settlement," Powell said after meeting King Abdullah. "We have not made a judgment on this, and that's why we're consulting with our friends."
The US has been working toward an international Middle East conference slated for this summer, one proposed by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. After meeting Powell, Al-Faisal told reporters: "The conference or a meeting is not an objective in itself. It depends on what that meeting includes. And, until these ideas are cleared, I don't think we can give an opinion on that. But it is not a bad idea if the content is the proper content."
King Abdullah will also meet Bush this week in Washington to discuss the Middle East peace process. In an interview on CNN, Abdullah said he planned to tell Bush that the peace process needed to move forward quickly within the coming weeks and work towards establishing a Palestinian state and Israeli security within a "reasonable time frame". He said if the parties first agreed on that principle they could then work out agreements on such issues as borders and the problems of refugees.
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