International Conference And An Interim State?

Walid Choucair     Al-Hayat     2003/09/5

The U.S. sticks its head in the sand when it insists on ignoring Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his important influence on the Palestinian scene. Despite the fact of its awareness of his political, popular and organizational weight within the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and the Palestinian society as a whole.   

The same U.S. Secretary Of State Colin Powell who said yesterday that Arafat's words about the death of the Roadmap are of no value and that the U.S. didn't deal with him when it drew the Roadmap, had said not more than two weeks ago that Arafat should help Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in preserving the truce and in controlling the Palestinian factions that are carrying out suicide operations. The only difference here is that after Powell addressed the requirement to Arafat, the latter responded and announced that he was ready to control these organizations, the White House, thus replied that the Palestinian President is a partner in the problem and not a partner in the solution…

This means, once more, that the parties insisting on adopting the policy that reflects matching whatever Israel wants in the U.S. administration, or rather in the White House, are not giving the Department of State the chance to make any amendment imposed by the objective reality of the adopted system in solving the crisis between Palestinians and Israelis.

As usual, Powell retreats so that his steps are harmonious with these parties matching the Israeli position. Once more the choice of "changing the Palestinian regime" prevails over handing the priority to stop the violence and give impetus to the political process in order to solve the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. The strategy of changing the regimes in the Arab world is and will always be the obsession of the ruling team in Washington. It is translated through the indifference of the whole Bush administration towards the disclosure of the falsity of its claims of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction in order to attack it. The most important issue is that the main implicit goal was achieved and that is changing the Iraqi regime (for the collapse of which the Arab world is not feeling sorry).

Whereas in cases other than Iraq, in the Arab world, the U.S. cannot market changing the regime as it did in Iraq especially on the Palestinian level. If the collapse of Saddam's regime was a main issue for international and Arab powers, in addition to the Iraqi powers, the situation is different in the Palestinian situation. If the political process between Palestinians and Israelis to reach a Palestinian state was not the most important, European and Arab countries wouldn't make all efforts to induce the U.S. to fasten the drawing of the Roadmap and its declaration, and it wouldn't refuse Washington and Tel Aviv's demands to put an end to their relation with Arafat. Countries adhering to the Roadmap are interested in using Arafat's role and power in helping Abbas to launch the political process and not in deepening the crisis between them, while the political chaos is controlling the Palestinians so they seem unable of conducting negotiations and so the delay would be justified.

Just as a reminder, according to the Roadmap an international conference should be held between last June and upcoming December, and a temporary Palestinian state would be established during a period of which only around three months are left. It seems that none of these two steps is close to that text or to its timings… As long as Washington decided to even ignore the Aqaba summit directives to put an end to the violence which Israel pursued even under the truce declared unilaterally by the Palestinians, and as long as it is focusing its efforts on nourishing the Palestinian internal conflict…

The amount of Roadmap procedures Israel is accountable for and which it didn't execute justifies Arafat's words that the Roadmap is dead…

However, the U.S. has completely forgotten the texts of the Roadmap it is somewhere else, which will put other partners as Europe, Russia, the UN and Arab countries in total incapacity.