Breeze or squeeze
Mohamed El-Sayed Said* examines Washington's likely demands at Tuesday's Sharm El-Sheikh summit
President Bush's announcement of his plans to visit the region were received warmly by most observers. It marks a break with the legacy of apathy and disengagement with the Middle East conflict. Visiting the region after the war against Iraq and the conditional acceptance, by Sharon and his cabinet, of the roadmap, seems the right thing to do.
The Sharm El-Sheikh summit provided Washington with an opportunity to promote an image of the US administration as one seeking to listen to the region's leaders not only on the future of Iraq and peace making between Palestinians and Israelis, but on the over-all future of the Middle East. Many commentators have explained this apparent shift in terms of Bush's desire to project himself as a man of peace after having, during the bulk of his presidency, spoken almost exclusively of war.
The Sharm El-Sheikh summit provides the president with an opportunity to present himself as a statesman, and at a time in America's electoral cycle when he most needs to do so. The image currently being cultivated for the president is that he was forced into the war against Iraq in the face of the objections of the international community because he saw it as being in America's vital interests. But he has no intentions of disrupting the international system or of continuing to act unilaterally.
After having achieved a great and costless victory in Iraq the time is ripe to mend fences with those who opposed his war plans. He can now reconcile the US with France, Russia, and to a lesser extent Germany, from a point of strength. The UN Security Council resolution ending sanctions against Iraq and the G-8 summit in France demonstrate how the president has managed to end the rift with America's traditional allies while at the same time legitimising his war. In short, the war managed not only to depose Saddam Hussein but also underlined to America's allies the extent of Washington's determination, and the limits on their own power in the face of such determination.
So too the president's visit to the Middle East: having launched a successful war that placed American troops in Iraq, and next to several major Arab countries, the president has "scared the hell" out of Arab leaders. It is now time to soothe them and to negotiate with them the perimeters of their roles and responsibilities as set forth in several speeches, most significantly that of 24 June 2002 on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The American administration now intends to sell President Bush to the American public as a man of peace and diplomacy.
But as the election draws ever closer the administration knows that it needs to do much more to woo America's Jewish community. It needs to let America's Jewish voters know that Bush can deliver Israel the best bargain. By allying himself to Sharon, an unwavering supporter of "Eretz Israel", the American president has shown himself to be a politician willing to go to any length to alienate the Arabs when this is perceived to be in Israel's interest.
The Bush-Sharon alliance was instrumental in lowering the expectations of the Palestinian people over the past two years. And the Palestinians are sure to have assimilated the lesson of the American war against Iraq. Explicit threats addressed to Syria made the message to the Palestinians clearer. The roadmap offers them close to nothing in comparison with Camp-David 2, or even with Oslo.
Yet the American president is determined to show the Jewish electorate that he can do even better than this. He can pressure Arab leaders to pay in advance for the early, and far from sure, implementation of the roadmap. The real purpose of Sharm El-Sheikh summit is to squeeze concessions out of Arab leaders before the roadmap even begins to be implemented.
President Bush will have almost certainly talked to Arab leaders about the necessity of immediately implementing Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative as endorsed by the Arab Summit in Beirut. He will have spared no effort arguing that Israel requires incentives to encourage it to be more flexible. He will have called on Arab leaders to help him persuade Sharon that withdrawal to 28 September lines will not harm the security of Israel.
For their part Arab leaders will have reminded President Bush that Sharon is still killing Palestinians, demolishing their houses and destroying their arable land. They will have called his attention to the pressure of public opinion which could easily boil over should they rush to normalisation without adequate guarantees of an end to occupation. President Bush will have answered by arguing that now is the time to be brave. He will probably have promised some lessoning of the daily humiliation faced by Palestinians. And he will have talked a lot about his vision of a Palestinian state. He will have called his demands for early normalisation of relations with Israel a test of Arab good will towards him personally.
The Sharm El-Sheikh summit has also addressed other major topics, among them Iraq, terrorism, and domestic reform in Arab countries.
If I read his mind correctly Bush will have also demanded financial assistance in the reconstruction of Iraq, mainly from Saudi Arabia, tangible support for the dismantling of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the occupied territories, an education in "Arab propaganda" against both Israel and the US in the Arab media and educational curricula and more extensive cooperation for his war against Al-Qa'eda and other terrorist organisations in the Middle East.
Arab leaders will have had much to say in return. They do not, however, have much power to wield in the face of a determined American president. There will have been a lot of talking on both sides. Only one side, though, will have been listening with attention.
Will this squeeze bring about the results Washington wants? We do not know. But in the overheated atmosphere of Sharm El-Sheikh there is unlikely to be any breeze.
* The writer is deputy director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
