Desperately seeking Bush

Much will rest on Mahmoud Abbas's meeting with George Bush on Thursday -- almost certainly too much, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem

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Israeli activists are greeted by Palestinian residents as they are carried in a police vehicle after being arrested by Israeli soldiers (photo: AP)

This week saw Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas in the United States. The Israeli prime minister was in town to lend moral support to American Israel Public Affairs Committee (currently reeling from charges of espionage), drum up support for his disengagement plan and rally the American Jewish troops for "the day after": when, Sharon fears, pressure will be exerted on Israel to move from the unilateralism of Gaza to the negotiated process required by the roadmap. As far as Sharon is concerned that linkage can be postponed until the end of never. "It is safer to sign agreements with President Bush than with the Arab world," he told a meeting of the Israel Bonds in New York on 23 May.

Abbas is in town for his first meeting with Bush as Palestinian Authority president. He will seek financial support and credible commitments from the American president that the Gaza withdrawal will be linked to the roadmap and pressure will be applied on Israel to adhere to its provisions, critically, a freeze on settlement construction and the withdrawal of the Israeli army to positions prior to the Intifada.

He will probably not get them. But there are some in the administration who believe he should, and for one reason. Five months into presidency -- and about to meet the man on whom his entire political strategy ultimately rests -- Abbas is a weaker leader than he was.

On the surface this seems a paradoxical assessment. Abbas arrived in Washington on the back of a global tour, stretching from Argentina to Pakistan and consecrating enormous international legitimacy behind his leadership. Polls show he is far and away the most popular politician in the occupied territories, with clear majorities for his agenda of calm ( tahdiya ), reform and negotiations.

Even William Ward -- the US general mandated to overview the PA security forces -- has quietly praised Abbas for drumming some kind of order into the PA police, including the replacement of "Arafatist" commanders with those loyal to him and his new Interior Minister Nasser Youssef.

But -- as any Palestinian will tell you -- these are mirages that a gust can blow away. Last week, in Gaza, the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas engaged in the most ferocious combat since calm was declared at Sharm El-Sheikh in February, leaving three Palestinians dead and over 60 mortars fired (most of them on the Gush Qatif settlement bloc). The fight not only widened the vast divide between occupier and occupied, but among the occupied also, with Hamas militiamen exchanging fire with Fatah police officers.

Tensions were already high due to the decision by Palestinian courts to re-hold elections in several wards in Rafah, Beit Lahia and Bureij, three municipalities where Hamas slates apparently won clear victories in the Palestinian local elections on 5 May. Hamas's political leader, Mahmoud Al- Zahar, said these were "political decisions masquerading as judicial ones", accusing the judges of buckling under intimidation from Fatah. Local and international monitors implicitly agreed. Polls in the three areas, while flawed, were correct in procedure and outcome, they said.

Salt was then ground into the wound. On 18 May the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) rejected a proposal from their president to amend the elections law to a system based on proportional representation (PR). Instead 53 law-makers -- many of them from Abbas's Fatah movement -- reaffirmed the law passed in April whereby 88 seats would be elected by district and 44 by PR.

Abbas will probably return the law to the legislature, if not to endorse PR, then at least the 50-50 district-PR split agreed between the factions in Cairo in March. But, if he does, this will certainly delay the parliamentary elections set for 17 July. The PA's Central Elections Commission has already said any change in the law mandates a two-month interval before elections can be held.

Hamas -- which is concerned less about the system than the date -- has appealed to Egypt, guarantor of the 17 March Cairo Declaration, to intervene and ensure compliance. It has also mobilised supporters on the streets of Gaza to protest against the courts' re-election rulings.

On 23 May clashes flared between Hamas and Fatah students at Gaza's Al-Azhar University and a car was rammed into a Hamas march in Bureij, injuring 12. Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, warned that in the aftermath of the election recounts and probable PLC election postponement Hamas may not only "boycott all future elections", but it is "reconsidering all understandings with Fatah, especially those reached in Cairo", including, of course, the calm.

Postponement will please the Americans, morbidly worried by the spectacle of a Hamas political victory ahead of the Gaza disengagement. Many, too, in Fatah will be relieved. Less than two months before the parliamentary elections, Palestine's premier national movement has yet to agree to a date for primaries, let alone candidates and policies that may sway an electorate weary of its increasingly authoritarian hegemony.

But Abbas is not among them, and not only because he knows deferring democracy will imperil the ceasefire. Unlike many in Fatah, he believes renewal comes not from the postponement of elections but rather their prosecution, says Palestinian analyst George Giacaman. "The main obstacle to Abbas's strategy are the vested interests and power blocs in Fatah and the PA. Whatever else elections bring, they will produce a pro-reform coalition of new Fatah leaders, Hamas and independents that will allow him to confront this party of the authority".

Without this coalition -- committed to the ceasefire on the basis of democratic change and power sharing -- Abbas becomes more dependent on Bush. And what he seeks from Bush is not just cash and verbal declarations in favour of the roadmap. He needs guarantees -- akin to those Bush gave Sharon in April 2004 -- that the disengagement is an integral part of the roadmap, that the roadmap will lead to final status negotiations and that those negotiations will end "the occupation that began in 1967" as well as lead to a just and agreed solution for the refugee question that began in 1948.

Not a single one of these milestones is anywhere on Sharon's horizon. If Bush shares the same vision -- or refuses to give substance to an alternative -- Abbas will leave Washington weaker than he arrived.