Nowhere to turn
US officials say there is no option but to try to revive the roadmap while insisting on dismantling Palestinian armed resistance groups, Khaled Dawoud reports from Washington
In a joint news conference with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan shortly after the deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem was reported last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked whether the roadmap was dead. His answer was no, because all players involved in the Middle East peace process see no alternative to it. "The end of the roadmap is a cliff that both sides will fall off. So, it is not the end of the roadmap," Powell told reporters. He added, "I believe that both parties understand that a way has to be found to go forward. The alternative is what? Just more death and destruction? Let the terrorists win? Let those who have no interest but killing innocent people win? No. That is not an acceptable outcome."
At the same news conference, however, Powell made a significant remark which observers here continue to debate. Powell made an unprecedented appeal to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to allow the implementation of the roadmap. "I call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister [Mahmoud] Abbas and to make available to Prime Minister Abbas those security elements that are under his control, and allow progress to be made on the roadmap." While some observers saw this comment as an indication that the US administration has finally recognised where the real power lies within the Palestinian Authority, admitting the Palestinian premier's lack of strength, others interpreted it as a warning to Arafat that he has to stop undermining Abbas's authority.
Seeking to deny a shift in US policy, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said that the United States has "discussed with our Arab friends the need to prevail on Mr Arafat to allow all the security forces to be put at the disposal of [Palestinian Interior Minister Mohamed] Dahlan, and of course Prime Minister Abu Mazen to try to stop the cycle of violence; and we'll continue to urge that." He added, "The fact that up until now all of the security forces haven't been made available to Prime Minister Abu Mazen seems to indicate that Mr Arafat has some mixed views on the situation."
As in previous incidents when the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories had sharply deteriorated, the US administration announced that it would send its envoy to the region to try to calm the situation and renew the commitment to the roadmap. US envoy to Israel and Palestine, Ambassador John Wolf, was asked to interrupt his holiday and rush back to the region, while Armitage said he was also planning a visit sometime in early September. Asked whether he would meet Arafat during that intended visit, Armitage said, "US officials do not need to meet him. US officials need to work with the prime minister, with Mr Dahlan, with [Palestinian Finance Minister] Mr [Salem] Fayad and all of their colleagues."
Meanwhile, US President George Bush decided on Friday to freeze the US assets of six leaders of Hamas, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and of five charities, most of them based in Europe, claiming that they provided financial support to the group that claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem bombing, in which 21 people were killed. The move was seen as significant because it was the first time the US government has taken action against the political and social wings of the militant group, having already done so with its military command. As five Americans were killed in the Jerusalem attack, the Bush administration has finally bowed to pressure by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who refuses to distinguish between the military and political wings of the militant group.
US officials, however, recognised that Bush's decision would have little effect on Hamas, which has no assets in the United States. Out of the five charities named in Bush's order, four are based in Europe and one in Lebanon, the Sanabil Association for Relief and Development. The European countries involved, Britain, France, Austria and Switzerland, have all reacted negatively to Bush's new order, saying they will have to carry out their own investigation first. Spokesmen for the four Europe- based groups: the French-based Committee for Welfare and Relief of Palestine, the Palestinian Relief Association in Switzerland, the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund in Britain and the Palestinian Association in Austria have also issued statements saying that they were cleared of any links to terrorism or Hamas following investigations carried out in recent years upon US request.
The Bush administration also avoided any public criticism of Israel for assassinating Hamas political leader Ismael Abu Shanab. "It was Israel who was struck heinously by this bomb on Tuesday, and Israel does have a right to defend herself; and we support that," Deputy Secretary of State Armitage said.
President Bush and his aides also tried to link the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Iraq to the attack in Jerusalem, claiming that the two acts confirmed that the United States was waging a larger war against "terror".
"Last week, terrorists struck in Baghdad and Jerusalem. These bombings confirm that our enemies are engaged in a war on freedom," US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said during a lecture on Monday. She added, "Let me be very clear, the terrorists know that a free Iraq can change the face of the Middle East. That is why they, together with the remnants of the old regime, are fighting as if this is a life and death struggle."
While calling upon Israel "to fulfil its responsibilities to help that peaceful [Palestinian] state emerge," she strongly denounced the "violence by those who would use terror to destroy the hopes for peace". Rice added that "the terrorists will not succeed -- and terrorist networks must be dismantled."
MJ Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israeli Policy Forum, a pro-peace American-Jewish group, however, blamed the Bush administration for the latest decline in the situation in the occupied territories. He said, "The United States has not done nearly enough to ensure that Israelis or Palestinians live up to the commitments they made at Aqaba [at the summit in June]." He added that "Israelis and Palestinians took advantage of America's vacillation to drag their feet about living up to their respective commitments." He said that while the Palestinians did little or nothing to confront the terror groups (as the Israelis claim), Israel did little or nothing (as the Palestinians claim) to take down the outposts, stop settlement expansion, and eliminate the checkpoints which separate one Palestinian village or town from another. "So long as Washington was appeased, Israelis and Palestinians kept doing what they were doing. Feeling little if any pressure, they simply bought time," he added.
That time, Rosenberg said, ran out on Tuesday. "Achieving more will require the Bush administration to continue doing what it started to do at Aqaba but to do it with considerably more vigour and consistency. But, even more, it requires the two sides to look into the abyss and understand that the name of the game is not pleasing America, it is rescuing their own futures."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 August - 3 September 2003 (Issue No. 653)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/653/re4.htm