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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
April 22, 2004
Despite the screaming headlines, it is not clear that U.S. Middle East policy shifted very much this week. In fact, if one limits one's focus to what actually was said, it is clear that little of substance has changed.
The change, and it is a troubling one, is that the Bush administration has seemed to move from promoting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to the idea that the only legitimate negotiating partner for Israel is America. As Bill Clinton liked to say, "that dog won't hunt." Any successful movement toward an agreement requires Israeli-Palestinian, and not Israeli-U.S., negotiations. Hopefully, the Sharon-Bush meeting was only a prelude to negotiations between the parties to the conflict. Otherwise, we can count on the situation to continue to deteriorate, and fast.
Shutting the Palestinians out also means that they incur no new obligations. At a time when Israel needs Palestinian assistance to end terrorism, they are locked out of the room. At a time when America needs the Islamic world to view the United States as not hopelessly biased against it, the Palestinians are given the back of the hand. Fortunately, the administration is consulting with both the Egyptians and Jordanians who are in constant communication with the Palestinians. And National Security Adviser Condeleezza Rice will be meeting with the PA's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nabil Shaath, next week.
All things considered, the substance of the U.S. positions seems not to have shifted much.
Take the issue of settlements. President Bush said that any peace agreement would have to reflect "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers?" He said that it is "unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."
That is not new.
The United States has always recognized that adjustments to the pre-'67 lines would have to be made, particularly at Israel's narrow "waist."
Nothing here is different from the so-called Clinton parameters of 2001.* And Bush conceded that his ideas are no break with the past when he said that "all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution" have reached the "same conclusion" on settlements and borders that he had.
However, as former Ambassador to Israel Sam Lewis points out, Clinton's statement of policy came at the very end of his Presidency, when both he and Prime Minister Barak were already out the political door. "It never really attained the status of an authoritative statement of U.S. policy in the way that Bush's statement will."
Sharon wanted Bush to sign off on an expanded list of settlements that would remain in Israeli hands, but that didn't happen. All he got was a commitment that some settlements would stay but, even those, would have to be "mutually agreed" upon by Israelis and Palestinians.
On the issue of refugees, Bush said that "an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel." Again, not much new.
The Clinton parameters also provided for the settling of Palestinian refugees in the new Palestinian state, not in Israel. In fact, Palestinian negotiators at Camp David and Taba reportedly agreed that they would seek to exercise the "right of return" only symbolically. A few thousand refugees would return to Israel but only with the approval of Israeli authorities. Nothing Bush says contradicts that.
Nor does anything in Bush's statements on Wednesday indicate any backtracking on the issue of a Palestinian state. Bush again committed himself to "the establishment of a Palestinian state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent." That can only happen if Israelis evacuate all of the West Bank except the settlement blocs just adjacent to the pre-'67 lines (as in the Clinton parameters). Anything more and a Palestinian state is neither viable nor contiguous.
In short, there is little new here -- except that Bush seems to be prejudging key issues in Ariel Sharon's favor prior to negotiations, a tactic which could lead Palestinians to dig in against positions they have previously accepted. This is no favor to Israel.
Former United States Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, told the Los Angeles Times that there was nothing new in Bush's remarks except for the fact that they made it easier for Sharon to leave Gaza. That "will set precedents - for the full evacuation of Israeli settlements and for full withdrawal - and that is actually far more important than what the president said today." Getting out of Gaza is a good thing for Israelis and for Palestinians. To a large extent, the rest amounts to rhetoric, rhetoric which will take a back seat when actual Israeli-Palestinian negotiations begin.
Ambassador Lewis, told NPR that, nothing Bush said "forecloses" Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over all the issues in dispute. In fact, Bush repeatedly said that the resolution of all issues must be "mutually agreed" upon by Israelis and Palestinians.
What is the alternative? Although withdrawal from Gaza can take place unilaterally, neither Israel's security nor Palestinian sovereignty can be achieved except through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, not Israelis and Americans As for combating terror, Israel's most significant success in thwarting it came as a result of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.
George Bush is in no position to abandon America's commitment to a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement because to do so would be a major blow to the war against terror.
In his book about his experience as America's anti-terrorism coordinator ("Against All Enemies") Richard Clarke writes that he was momentarily disappointed, during the last days of the Clinton administration, when the President turned his attention from the struggle against al Qaida to the Camp David negotiations.
But then he understood it was all part of the same war. "If we could achieve a Middle East peace, much of the popular support for al Qaida and much of the hatred for America would disappear overnight," he wrote. You cannot wage war against al Qaida without working for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
That was true in 2001. It is infinitely more true in 2004, with 135,000 Americans on the ground in Iraq, in harm's way.
*The "Clinton parameters" refers to positions President Clinton offered to Israelis and Palestinians in 2000 as "a guide toward a comprehensive agreement", and which had been accepted with reservations, by Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat as the basis for further peace efforts. Clinton announced the parameters at the Israeli Policy Forum dinner on January 7, 2001.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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