The Tragedy of Condoleezza Rice
Patrick Seale Al-Hayat - 23/02/07//
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to be an intelligent, well-intentioned woman who, like a number of her predecessors, would genuinely like to make a personal contribution to the cause of Arab-Israeli peace. But after no fewer than eight visits to the region, she has failed to advance the peace process by the tiniest of tiny steps. Why?
The reasons are many and complex, of which the most glaringly obvious is that she has been knifed in the back by the hawkish pro-Israeli Eliott Abrams, the White House's main adviser on Middle East affairs, but also that President George W Bush himself has failed, at a critical moment, to support her.
Rice headed last weekend for Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman declaring that she wished to discuss the contours of a future Palestinian state and provide the Palestinians with a 'political horizon'. This was widely read to mean that the United States had taken note of the Mecca agreement, concluded between Fatah and Hamas under Saudi auspices earlier in February, and was prepared to give the proposed new Palestinian national unity government a chance.
At Mecca, the Islamic movement Hamas had pledged to 'respect' past agreements between the PLO and Israel, an implicit recognition of the Jewish state and therefore a big stride towards meeting the terms imposed by the Quartet (U.S. Russia, EU and UN) for resumed cooperation and funding of the Palestinian government.
It seemed that Saudi Arabia's mediation had managed not only to avert a full-blown Palestinian civil war but also to allow the lifting of the crippling international boycott of the Hamas government, which has reduced the Palestinians to abject penury over the past year.
The hope was that the much heralded summit on 19 February between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, which Rice was to chair, would jump-start talks on substantive issues such as borders, refugees and Jerusalem.
In the event, of course, nothing of the sort happened. The meeting turned into an acrimonious shouting match. Olmert accused Abbas of 'betraying' him by doing a deal with Hamas, a movement Israel wants to destroy not co-opt. Abbas retorted angrily that he had given Olmert no such promise and that his priority was to stop an intra-Palestinian war.
The outcome had in fact been decided before Rice even touched down in Israel. Olmert had phoned George Bush on 16 February, and had secured a private assurance from him that the Mecca agreement changed nothing and that the US would join Israel in continuing to shun Hamas. In the Israeli view, Mecca had actually set back the cause of peace by legitimizing Hamas! Olmert was able to crow that the U.S. and Israeli positions were identical. His spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, ruled out any talks on a final peace deal with Abbas, if he went ahead with plans to form a new cabinet that included Hamas. 'We're not talking about negotiations on final-status issues,' Elsin said.
Poor Condoleezza Rice! She evidently lacks all authority in dealing with the Middle East. She should not waste her time, and arouse false hopes, by going there, since her boss has embraced the Israeli view that the democratically elected Hamas government is a 'terrorist' organisation in league with Iran and Syria -- hardly different, in fact, from al-Qaida -- and that it must be eliminated from the scene before any progress can be made. The Israeli tail continues to wag the American dog.
Although attempts are being made in Europe and elsewhere to re-launch the peace process, Israel has no intention whatsoever of concluding a peace with the Palestinians which would involve withdrawing to anywhere near the 1967 borders. It will stop at nothing to prevent serious negotiations taking place.
As Geoffrey Aronson, of the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, writes in his latest report on Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories, 'Like Ben Gurion, Olmert excels in creating facts on the ground… under his watch, the settler population in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) increased by nearly 6 per cent in 2006.' At the end of the year, there were 268,379 Israelis living in the West Bank, while not a single illegal outpost was removed.
It would take extraordinary courage and personal commitment for a U.S. President to halt Israel's creeping annexation of Palestinian land - because of the overwhelming support for Israel in the Congress, in the American media and in Washington's many right-wing think-tanks; because of major funding by American Jews of both Democratic and Republican election campaigns; and because of the powerful influence of pro-Israeli officials embedded inside the U.S. administration.
Bush, meanwhile, is wholly absorbed by the calamitous war in Iraq, by the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, and by his dangerous game of chicken with Iran. This is where the legacy of his presidency will be decided, as well as the future of America's hegemony over the vital oil-rich Gulf. As his record of neglect of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past six years has shown, he sees no strategic threat to American interests if it remains unresolved. In his view, Israel can be left to settle the conflict in its own time and on its own terms.
What of the Europeans? Is there any hope that the European Union might step in to fill the vacuum created by Israeli obduracy and American indifference? Norway is the only European country to say that the Mecca agreement satisfies the three conditions posed by the Quartet for lifting the boycott of a national unity Palestinian government - namely recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, and acceptance of past treaties between the PLO and Israel.
Several other European countries share this view privately but are too timid to say so publicly. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has remained silent, although he earlier trumpeted his determination to devote his last months in office to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Financed by the Norwegian government, a delegation including representatives of leading NGOs, such as the International Crisis Group and Search for Common Ground, as well as individual peace activists, is planning to tour the Middle East from 8-12 March. But, without strong EU backing and without concerted Arab pressure on the United States, such well-meaning efforts will not sway Israel's hard-liners.
The EU has, in fact, failed as spectacularly as Condoleezza Rice. It made the grave mistake of following the Israeli-U.S. lead in isolating the Hamas government and withdrawing budget support. But, anxious to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, the EU set up a so-called 'Temporary International Mechanism' to channel funds to Palestinian hospitals and clinics, to secure energy supplies and access to water, and to provide social services to the poorest Palestinians.
Far from promoting peace among Palestinians - let alone Israeli-Palestinian negotiations - these EU policies encouraged Fatah to seek to regain power from Hamas by force and have, as a result, driven Hamas into the arms of Iran and Syria.
The EU should follow Norway's example in accepting the Mecca agreement as satisfying the Quartet's three conditions and put its full weight into dragging Israel to the negotiating table. According to a report this month from the U.S. Institute of Peace, most Israelis are prepared to accept a withdrawal from most of the West Bank that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. But Olmert and his right-wing supporters will not budge unless real international pressure is brought to bear on them.
Israel likes to refer to potential Palestinian militants as 'ticking bombs' and does not hesitate to murder them. In fact, the assassination of terrorist suspects is Israel's official policy. Israelis should perhaps reflect that the greatest 'ticking bomb' of all, which must one day blow up in their faces, is Arab and Muslim outrage at their callous treatment of the Palestinian population under occupation.
*Original English
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