Still stalled
The long awaited meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Premier Ahmed Qurei has not yet materialised, despite renewed American pressure on both sides, writes Khaled Amayreh
The same old deadlock between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government was highlighted again this week with regard to the anticipated meeting between Ariel Sharon and Ahmed Qurei. PA officials accused the Israeli government of "evading the meeting", arguing that Sharon is not genuinely committed to the American-backed roadmap plan; a seemingly plausible argument in light of Sharon's increasingly unilateralist approach to the entire Palestinian problem. On the other hand, Israel is reiterating the traditional charge that the Qurei government lacks "the inclination and willingness to fight terror". The PA argues, however, that the "re- imposition of law and order" -- in other words, reining in the Palestinian resistance -- cannot be carried through without the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Palestinian population centres, and the termination of Israel's hermetic blockade of the occupied territories.
A "preparatory meeting" between Qurei's secretary, Hassan Abu Libdeh, and the head of Sharon's office, Dov Weisglass, was scheduled to take place earlier this week. The meeting was cancelled due to bad weather, according to Palestinian sources.
Qurei has repeatedly declared that he wants the meeting with Sharon to go ahead and succeed. "We do not dread a meeting with Sharon," Qurei told reporters in Ramallah on Monday, adding that he hoped that such a meeting would take place as early as Saturday. But holding the meeting itself is one thing. Ensuring its success in kick-starting the peace process and ending violence is quite another.
Indeed, a successful meeting will require some sort of preliminary agreement between the two sides on at least the most critical issues now poisoning the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic arena. These include the huge separation wall Israel is building inside the West Bank that cuts through hundreds of square kilometres of some of the most fertile Palestinian farmland. Continued Israeli attacks and incursions into Palestinian population centres which leave many Palestinians dead and maimed, and many homes utterly destroyed, also constitute a major obstacle to meeting.
The latest -- and among the bloodiest -- attack the Israeli army has recently carried out took place on 11 February in the Shujaiya neighbourhood in the eastern outskirts of Gaza City. At least 15 Palestinians, including five civilians, were killed in the eight-hour incursion. As many as 60 others were injured, some suffering from serious-to-critical wounds.
Five more Palestinians were killed in Rafah at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, while more homes were destroyed this week.
Palestinian officials have accused the Israeli army of carrying out a "calculated carnage". The timing of the killings suggests that Sharon may have wanted to provoke Palestinian militants to carry out fresh suicide bombings inside Israel in order to help Israel defend the building of the "separation wall" in the West Bank before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Sharon has argued that the purpose of the wall is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel, an argument Palestinians insist is misleading despite containing a modicum of superficial reasonability.
In fact, the fiercest Palestinian objections are not of the wall itself but the fact that it is built several kilometres inside Palestinian lands, in some cases cutting into Palestinian population centres, as is the case in East Jerusalem. Thus Palestinians argue that the construction of the wall is motivated by a gluttonous desire on Israel's part to annex more Palestinian land, ghettoise Palestinian towns and villages, and ultimately render the creation of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible. For the most part, the international community supports the Palestinian stance in this regard, posing a serious public relations problem for Sharon and his government.
Indeed, Sharon's efforts to divert attention from the wall's disastrous effects on the Palestinians to the causes that allegedly "forced" Israel to build it in the first place are so far proving futile. The PA and many ordinary Palestinians hope and pray that Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will not carry out dramatic suicide attacks inside Israel, at least in the next few weeks leading up to the convening of the International Court in The Hague, since Israel stands to benefit tremendously from such attacks.
Meanwhile, some Israeli commentators have recently suggested that Sharon is planning to crush Gaza into submission before carrying out his proposed evacuation of settlers. Israel, they contend, does not want to relive the Lebanese experience when the Israeli occupation army pulled out of South Lebanon in disarray nearly five years ago. The Arab world in general viewed the withdrawal as a victory for resistance movements, elevating Hizbullah to hero status. The United States is reportedly asking Israel to coordinate its "disengagement plan" with the PA in order to avoid chaos in the areas evacuated by Israel, and also to strengthen the connection between the evacuation of the settlements and the roadmap plan.
According to Israeli sources, the US wants to portray this disengagement plan as part of an overall process rather than a unilateral move by Israel.
In order to put this so-called coordinated unilateralism into effect, the Bush administration is dispatching three US officials to Israel and Palestine, including Steve Hadley and Eliot Abrams from the National Security Council and William Burns from the State Department. The Israeli press reported that the American envoys will ask Sharon to refrain from annexing more Palestinian land in the West Bank as compensation for quitting Gaza. Other demands include cancelling plans to build a separation wall in the Jordan Valley (the so-called eastern fence) and refraining from transferring Gaza settlers over to the West Bank.
It remains unclear -- bearing in mind US bias towards Israel -- whether the Bush administration is serious about reining in Sharon's strident unilateralism, or whether it is simply practising its usual managerial role in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. In any case, it is unlikely that Sharon will easily surrender to such demands. It seems that the real question remains whether the Bush administration is willing to exert genuine and meaningful pressure on Israel during a US election year; a pressure without which everyone knows Sharon will not take any substantive steps towards peace.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 24 February 2004 (Issue No. 678)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/678/re2.htm