Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2003, pages 18, 59

Special Report

 

Palestinian Peace Plan Is Next on the International Agenda

 

By Nathan Jones

“The Palestinian question is the core question of this region,” Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the 22-country Arab League, has written. “Iraq will come and go, other issues will come and go, but as long as this issue remains unresolved, frustration will continue to be the order of the day in this region.”

Thanks to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who desperately needed political “cover” to justify the war on Iraq to the British public, the necessity to move rapidly on the Arab-Israeli peace process no longer can be ignored. If U.S. President George W. Bush is a man of his word, and fulfills his promise to his British and Arab allies, this should happen almost immediately.

It has been uncertain how negotiations for the Palestinians will proceed. The so-called “road map” for peace was drafted by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations—known as the “Quartet”—but, at Israel’s request, the Bush administration delayed its publication for months.

The plan, designed to implement Bush’s call last June for the creation of a Palestinian state, envisions a three-stage process that will create Palestinian institutions, establish provisional borders by the end of this year, and reach a final agreement in 2005.

U.S. officials have consistently played down the possibility of changes to the plan. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a mid-March conversation with Arab diplomats, said that the December draft of the road map is final. Around the same time, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Al-Jazeera television that “this is not a matter of renegotiation of the road map.” She also mentioned that the U.S. may soon invite newly-appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas—also called Abu Mazen—to the White House. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher agreed with their sentiments, adding that “the document will be released as the road map: that is the road map, and that will be the road map.”

Another State Department official explained that “we do not want to leave the impression that Israel has veto power and can renegotiate the road map on their own terms.” He added that the widespread interpretation of earlier statements by President Bush, which left the impression that the road map was somehow negotiable, “was not intended.”

Israel’s response to these assertions by Washington was that the seven-page plan is vague and ambiguous. An Israeli official noted that “the president invited our and the Palestinian contributions. Israel is hopeful to put our input on the table.”

According to a report by Ori Nir in the Jewish weekly Forward, “Jewish lobbyists were in hair-trigger reaction mode [the week of March 21], furious at the Bush administration for its plans to release an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, but wary of openly confronting the White House.”

 

“We do not want to leave the impression that Israel has veto power.”

Bush seemed caught between Israel and its U.S. allies, who object to boosting support for the war on Iraq by advancing the peace process, and Tony Blair, whose political survival could depend on linking those issues. The president seemed to have surprised the Israelis when he announced his intent to publish the long-awaited “road map.”

Israel’s initial reaction was polite but cautious, as Israeli officials began bracing for a possible confrontation. According to Israeli commentator Chemi Shalev, “the strategic goal of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and his advisers is ultimately to undermine the road map and to exclude the three remaining members of the so-called Madrid Quartet—the European Union, United Nations, and Russia—from active involvement in the peace process.”

If Sharon fails to achieve this goal, Shalev asserts, it “might ultimately force a sea change in American policy in the Middle East.” A Bush administration weakened by an unsuccessful Iraq war would have to make concessions to Europe and the Arab countries, and may be forced to do so “with an Israeli coin,” as Shalev cites Israeli officials.

Should that happen, Sharon might lose U.S. support for his “sequential” peace process, one that lacks timetables, and may end up having to dodge serious pressure to work faster. Perhaps for this reason, a team of Sharon-appointed experts is preparing a counter-plan, in which the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reports there are over 100 changes to the current Quartet version.

The plan, as it stands, is divided into three phases. Initially, the Palestinians must reiterate Israel’s right to exist and call for an immediate end to all violence against Israelis. In addition, political reforms, including the drafting of a new Palestinian constitution, must be implemented. The Israelis must issue an unequivocal statement affirming commitment to an independent Palestinian state, call for an immediate end to violence against Palestinians, dismantle settlement outposts and freeze all settlement activity. A series of international conferences will then lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

It is not clear whether Bush is sincere about following the road map without allowing any major changes. If there are no such changes, the battle will begin very quickly, as Sharon begins to make exceptions or requests to renegotiate.

What happens next will depend on whether Bush decides to go for a clean sweep of the Palestinian problem now. If he does, his administration may hold back any further aid to Israel until the problem is resolved. That would also make Tony Blair a true ally of the Bush administration, and probably within a few more years the Palestinian problem could be settled.

The scenario would roughly follow Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace plan, which calls for Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for a just settlement to the dispute. Such a settlement would be based on the 1967 borders, without further compromise, as called for in U.N. Resolution 242.

 

The Pessimistic Scenario

The other possibility, however, is an extremely pessimistic one. There is no question that Vice President Richard Cheney, and almost certainly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the Israel lobby will continue to push for changes and delays.

Should they prevail, Blair eventually could fall, and Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar also would presumably bow out. This would leave the United States without any significant European ally. It is hard to believe that this would be the outcome, but the pessimistic scenario should not be discounted.

Bush election strategist Karl Rove was apparently pushing to keep the Palestinian problem off the administration’s agenda until after the 2004 U.S. presidential elections. In that case, the elections would hinge more on domestic affairs, and God knows what will happen to the Middle East.

Either way Bush faces a hard choice. He must also take into account the strong possibility that Secretary of State Colin Powell will resign if Bush chooses to ignore the Palestinians.

The vice president and his clique would like very much to abandon the peace process. They think it would be possible to find a new secretary of state quickly and proceed with Cheney’s agenda. On the other hand, if Powell has his way, Israel and the Israelists in America will likely delay further in hopes that a more amenable secretary of state will come along.

It is hard to believe that the Palestinian problem could finally be resolved primarily because Israel is running out of money. Assuming that Bush is sincere and that the Israelists can be neutralized, however, this could indeed happen. “The only way this could ever work,” according to University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, “is if the president personally holds [the road map’s] hand and follows it through.”

Let us pray that President Bush decides to do just that—with, of course, the other Quartet members.

As Shalev put it, “The most widely cited cliché in Israel [the week of March 21] was that one knows how wars begin, but never how they end.”

Nathan Jones is a free-lance writer specializing in Israeli and North American Jewish affairs.

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