What Abu Mazen Should Say to President Bush
Patrick Seale Al-Hayat 2005/05/19
On his first visit to Washington as President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is due to meet President George W Bush on 28 May, an encounter that could decide the issue of war or peace in the Middle East. Above all, it will be a test of both men's political courage.
For Bush, the test will be whether or not he is at last prepared to implement his vision of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - in effect, whether he is willing, or able, to impose his will on Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The moment of decision has arrived.
If Bush fails, yet again, to check Israel's settlement expansion on the West Bank, a third Intifada, far more violent than its predecessors, will almost inevitably break out with potentially disastrous consequences for the peace of the region, for Israel's security and for American interests.
The view, often heard in right-wing circles in Washington, that no pressure should be put on Sharon until his Gaza disengagement plan is successfully completed this summer is totally misguided. It merely provides Sharon with an opportunity to continue seizing and settling Palestinian land.
Bush should outline without delay his parameters for a final settlement and impose them on the parties. Sharon has repeatedly defied him. It is more than time for him to take up the challenge.
For Abu Mazen, the test will be whether he can - or dares - use the real leverage at his command to influence American policy. He must make crystal clear to the American president that the Palestinians hold in their hands the fate of the United States in the Arab and Muslim world.
Only by resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a basis of justice and equity can the U.S. hope to recover its good name, gravely damaged by the disastrous war in Iraq and its systematic pro-Israeli bias.
Reports, whether true or not, that U.S. interrogators of Muslim prisoners at Guantánamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet have stoked the fires of hatred. Anger at the United States has spread like brushfire through the entire Muslim world, causing the death of 17 demonstrators in Afghanistan. Washington needs to take such signals very seriously indeed. Firm U.S. action on the Palestine question could help to calm the situation.
What can Abu Mazen ask for?
Abu Mazen should put a list of specific demands to President Bush.
*The matter of settlements is, of course, all important, as is Israel's security wall which slices through Palestinian territory. If settlement building continues, as Sharon has promised; if Arab East Jerusalem is severed from its West Bank hinterland; then there will be nothing to negotiate about. The peace process will be dead and the men of violence on both sides will return to the front of the scene.
The security wall is inflicting great damage on the Palestinians, cutting tens of thousands off from their fields, hospitals and schools. A Palestinian city like Qalqilia, with a population of 50,000, is encircled by the wall, while Bethlehem is cut in half. Such actions are intolerable and must be halted and reversed.
Abu Mazen should take maps and photographs with him to show Bush what is happening on the ground.
*With very few exceptions, the Palestinians have respected the ceasefire, while Israel has not. It continues to raid Palestinian towns and villages and kill Palestinian activists. This must stop at once.
*The Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem must be given maximum protection. Any attack on it by Jewish fanatics would set off a great explosion in the Arab world, which would destroy Abu Mazen and his government (and perhaps other Arab regimes as well).
*Israel must put an end, once and for all, to its iniquitous policy of assassinating its Palestinian political opponents. Many Arabs are convinced that Yasser Arafat was poisoned because he stood up to Israel and the United States. If the peace process is to go forward, the U.S. must guarantee the personal security of Abu Mazen and other Palestinian leaders, even if they are unable to go beyond the concessions made by Yasser Arafat on such vital issues as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.
An independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem, and an equitable settlement of the refugee problem, remain the minimum Palestinian demands, which no Palestinian leader can depart from.
Is Abu Mazen up to the Job?
*Finally, Abu Mazen must seek George W Bush's support for his policy towards the radical Islamist movement, Hamas.
Israel has been demanding that Abu Mazen confront Hamas, disarm it and destroy its military wing, even at the risk of a Palestinian civil war. In Israel's often repeated phrase, Abu Mazen must 'dismantle the infrastructure of terror.' This is to demand the impossible.
Having taken shape during the first Intifada (1987-93), Hamas has grown into a major political force, threatening to overtake Fatah, the veteran Palestinian resistance movement, at the Palestinian legislative elections next July 17.
At the recent municipal elections, Hamas won fewer seats than Fatah but took almost 60 per cent of the vote. This is because the district councils which Fatah won were in overwhelmingly rural areas with a small voter base, whereas Hamas won in big urban areas, taking the three cities of Rafah, Qalqilia and Beit Lahiya.
Instead of confronting Hamas, which would be disastrous, Abu Mazen is attempting to draw it into the political process in the belief that it can be persuaded to give up violence against Israelis and integrate its fighters in the Palestinian Authority's security services.
Hamas is also facing its own test of statesmanship. Will it become a political party and enter the democratic game or will it remain committed to violence? In any event, it should let Fatah take the lead in the elections and give Abu Mazen a chance. A Hamas victory could have unpredictable consequences, setting off a new cycle of violence.
Sharon may hope for a Hamas victory as it would give him a pretext to abandon the peace process. With Hamas as an interlocutor, he would claim, there could be no hope of making peace. 'How can you negotiate with someone who wants to kill you?' is a typical right-wing Israeli sophism.
In an attempt to decapitate the movement, Sharon killed the Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi. Who will be next? Bush may not be able to persuade him to give up such crude tactics, because he will do everything he can to sabotage the peace process, which he detests.
For Abu Mazen to have a chance of success in his coming trial of strength with Bush and Sharon he must surround himself with true Palestinian nationalists, untarnished by the charge of corruption. He must rally under one banner all the disparate Palestinian forces - the different factions inside Fatah, fighting groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa brigades, and the PA's military cadres. He must also rally support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, from Syria and from the rest of the Arab world.
Abu Mazen may not have the stature of a historic leader able to mobilize these very considerable assets. It is too early to judge. His trip to Washington will be watched very carefully to see how he puts the Palestinian case, and whether he can dent the deep-seated prejudices of President Bush and his advisers.
So far, he has allowed himself to become absorbed in secondary battles inside Fatah. His quarrels with old colleagues such as Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei and the Tunis-based PLO veteran Faruk Qaddumi have not enhanced his reputation.
Now is the moment for him to show whether he is the statesman the Palestinians so badly need.
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