Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion

		18 - 24 July 2002 Issue No. 595 Opinion	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Under mandate
By Salama A Salama

No one expected the recent Quartet meeting in New York to result in proposals that might realistically help in overcoming the current Middle East crisis. Predictably, the Quartet based its recommendations firmly within the framework already outlined by President Bush whose statement of US policy towards the Middle East has become something of a sacred text, one not to be interpreted without reference to the high priest whose temple is the White House.
The very idea of the Quartet, in fact, is one of the strangest developments of the last few months -- a committee through which the US, the EU, Russia and the UN might convene to determine the future of the conflict currently raging in the Middle East, without any participation by the parties most concerned. At issue is a kind of mandate being assumed over the Middle East.
The Quartet made no attempt to influence Bush's address or the distorted vision that informed it. It only really moved into gear following the address. Its efforts seem to be directed mainly at promoting what Washington desires and there was no attempt whatsoever to change the minds of the Americans, let alone the Israelis. Even when the German foreign minister suggested drawing up a schedule for implementing the reforms demanded by Bush the suggestion failed to appease either Washington or Israel and was dropped without being discussed. Timetables are of no apparent interest because the whole complex problem has been reduced to a single issue: Should Arafat stay or go?
If it is surprising that security issues and political reform of the PA should constantly precede the search for a comprehensive and permanent resolution capable of bringing about a viable peace, it is no more so than the fact that Arab foreign ministers have asked to meet with the Quartet in New York, knowing full well it has no power to alter the situation in any way. Israel, which deals exclusively with the American coordinator, has of course completely ignored the Quartet.
This is the backdrop that allows Israel to continually thwart every effort to achieve the calm that is required for progress to be made. Not content with resuming its occupation of Palestinian land, obstructing political reform as well as arresting and murdering Palestinians with impunity, Israel has assumed an antagonistic position vis-à-vis each and every peace initiatives at hand, a stand that was more than apparent in Sharon's and other Israeli leaders' meetings with the head of Egyptian intelligence Omar Soliman. Sharon, furthermore, curtailed meetings between Israeli ministers, including Perez, and Palestinian officials, stressing that the occupation would go on until Arafat disappeared.
It is increasingly evident that what is at stake is not Arafat's position but the identity of the PA itself, which Israel and the US wish to destroy and then reshape in a way that suits Israel.
In the opinion of a great many commentators there is accumulating evidence that the Quartet could easily turn into an instrument for freezing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, neutralising its present course to buy time for the rebuilding of the PA on a so-called democratic basis, and according to a "flexible" schedule that begins with the next three years and ends whenever Israel sees fit. The Arab initiative that emerged from the Beirut summit, by contrast, has been shelved.
Such fears are only compounded by the increasingly frightening rhetoric directed at Baghdad. Once again military intervention is said to be necessary to stop the development of weapons of mass destruction there. Secret and public meetings have been held in the US and Britain with the object of revitalising the Iraqi opposition, preparing for an invasion of Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussein.
The region, then, currently faces the possibility of radical transformations that will perpetuate Israeli control of Palestinian lands and postpone any withdrawal while the political landscape is being reshaped, according to Washington' s will, which has decreed that the thorn that is Iraq be removed.

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