Road blocked
Bush said he is not yet ready to adopt a diplomatic "roadmap". It is another case of the US weighing Israel's interests above all others, writes Graham Usher in Ramallah
Speaking in the dingy office that now passes for the presidential suite in Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said his people were facing the new-year with "some hopes" and "a dangerous hiatus".
Among the hopes was the election of Avram Mitzna as leader of Israel's Labour Party, and especially his commitments to renew negotiations with the existing Palestinian leadership, withdraw Israel "immediately" from the Gaza Strip and remove the lethal settler enclaves in Hebron.
Shaath also expressed "optimism" that some sort of cease-fire agreement could be reached between Fatah and Hamas at their next "dialogue". He and others in the Palestinian Authority believe such a move is vital to mobilise the Israeli electorate behind Mitzna's policies as the head of a "strong opposition", if not yet a prime minister.
The hiatus has been caused by George Bush's decision once more to bow to the Israeli leader's wishes as opposed to those expressed by leaders from the European Union, UN, Russia, the Arab states and the Palestinian Authority.
Last week Bush told French President Jacques Chirac that the US "was not yet ready to adopt" a diplomatic "roadmap" that aims to bring about a Palestinian-Israeli agreement within three years. At a meeting of their Council of Ministers on 13 December, the EU had attached "the highest priority" to adoption of the plan at a meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) by its 20 December deadline. Sharon had attached the highest priority to having the roadmap deferred until after the Israeli elections on 28 January.
It is easy to see why. In the first two weeks of December the Israeli army has killed over 30 Palestinians, including women, children and, on 12 December, five Palestinians whose crime was to try to breach the Gaza border into Israel in a desperate hunt to find work. It has also unleashed a wave of house demolitions, razing six homes in Hebron after Palestinian guerrillas killed two soldiers the same day and 16 in Rafah two days later, rendering 120 Palestinians homeless.
The first destruction will expedite Sharon's plans to lay a corridor linking Hebron's settler enclaves to the mammoth Kiryat Arba settlement on its outskirts; the second widens the Israeli-controlled buffer separating Gaza from the Egyptian border. 52 more homes are marked for erasure in Bartaa on the West Bank border with Israel. They are in the way of Israel's new "security fence".
Combined with Israel's "continuing illegal settlement activities" such actions "threaten to render the two-state solution physically impossible to implement", the European Council warned. It is "the common vision of two states, Israel and an independent, viable, sovereign and democratic Palestine ... on the basis of the 1967 borders", that is the destination of the roadmap, it added.
Few Palestinians believe it. Drafted originally by the Quartet in October, the roadmap may offer a vision but the route toward it is a retreat to the staged, reciprocal security process of the Oslo vintage.
In its first version it required the Palestinians to trade immediate delivery on "reform" and "an end to all acts of violence against Israelis everywhere" for the deferred vagaries of an undefined "provisional" Palestinian state in 2003 and a final settlement of the conflict by 2005.
More discreetly it gave power to Bush's call for a "new and different Palestinian leadership" by means of an "empowered" Palestinian prime minister and Palestinian parliamentary elections in "early 2003". There was no call for presidential elections, an omission clearly intended to remove Arafat from power if not yet from office.
This at least is how the Palestinian leader reads it. He refused to approve the plan until 12 changes were made to the draft. Written largely by the EU, UN and Russia, a second "amended" roadmap was leaked to the Palestinian and Arab press in November. This replaces the calls for a new prime minister and parliamentary elections with a commitment to "Palestinian general elections" and the appointment of an "interim" premier after the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state.
It also requires Israel to "reciprocate" Palestinians' ending their Intifada with the end of Israeli initiated military "attacks against Palestinians and withdrawal from Palestinian regions occupied after 28 September 2000". Most alarmingly of all for Sharon, it requires an unconditional and complete settlement freeze, "with priority to ending projects that threaten Palestinian regional and residential contiguity, including the regions around Jerusalem".
The US state department was unhappy with the changes to the reform clauses of the roadmap and wanted the settlement to freeze to be conditional on a Palestinian cease-fire. This is perhaps why Bush said his administration was "not ready" to adopt the roadmap by the agreed 20 December deadline. It is certainly why no government headed by Sharon could accept it.
Speaking at a conference in Herzliya in early December, Sharon gave his vision of the future. He said he accepted "in principle" the roadmap. But he hinged all diplomatic movement on an "absolute cessation of Palestinian terror, violence and incitement" and fundamental reforms in the Palestinian Authority, including Arafat's removal from leadership. Once these conditions were met, a "provisional" Palestinian state could be established in about 42 per cent of the West Bank and 70 per cent of Gaza, minus "regions essential to Israel's security", he conceded.
If these become the stations on the roadmap, "it will end up in the same place as the Mitchell Report, Tenet plan and Zinni's cease-fire -- in the trash can," predicted Palestinian analyst, Mamdour Nofal. This is probably where Sharon would like to put it. By saying no to Chirac and yes to Sharon, many Palestinians believe this too may now be Bush's preferred dump, at least until after the war with Iraq.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 December 2002 (Issue No. 617)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/617/re4.htm