As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak heads to Washington, a number of Arab commentators suspect that a regional political deal is in the making that would translate into a sellout of the Palestinians.
Jordanian columnist Tarek Massarwa writes of arrangements that are being “cooked up on a slow fire” to broker a pro forma Israeli-Palestinian agreement that evades matters of substance, and effectively places the Palestinians under the tutelage of Arab governments.
The idea appears to be for “Palestinian-Israeli negotiations to be restricted to formalities then ratified by an international conference and reconfirmed at the UN Security Council,” he writes in the Amman daily Al-Rai.
“The Arabs and Europeans have gone into the details, and President Mubarak’s visit to Washington will be an appropriate opportunity to put forward the plan to the administration, though it has not been unfamiliar with it,” he says.
Meanwhile, “the Palestinian Authority (PA) flings the doors and windows open to ‘reform,’” with US envoy William Burns taking charge of the organizational aspects and CIA chief George Tenet handling the security side!
In the meantime, Massarwa notes, the Israeli Army continues to enter West Bank refugee camps, towns and villages and to detain thousands of Palestinians between the ages of 15 and 45 without encountering any resistance.
“For the Palestinians have dropped their demands for a mutual cessation of violence, for the cessation of martyrdom operations being conditional on the Israeli Army rolling back its occupation of Area A enclaves, for the siege to be lifted, for the Palestinian money seized by the Israeli Finance Ministry to be released, and all the other demands that could have been traded off for the intifada,” he writes.
The Palestinian stitch-up that is envisaged is for a Palestinian state to be declared with “sovereignty” over the Area A and Area B enclaves, i.e. 42 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, excluding the Jerusalem area. Then, a three- to four-year period of negotiation is to begin on the interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and such final status issues as Jerusalem, borders and refugees, says Massarwa.
On this point, the Jordanians and Saudis insist that a specific timeline must be set to complete negotiations, but the Europeans and Americans think “such a precondition is an unnecessary luxury, seeing as the future of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship will be determined by ‘good will!’”
It’s no great secret what the deal is all about, says Massarwa: “Bringing the cause back into the house of Arab obedience and under international trusteeship, and ending the era of ‘independent Palestinian decision-making’ and of the ‘daunting element in the equation.’”
Abdelbari Atwan, editor in chief of the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, says the various moves by the United States and its Arab allies have two main objectives:
l to “pacify the occupied Palestinian territories and put an end to martyrdom operations as a prelude to uprooting all armed resistance;” and
l to set the stage for an eventual American attack on Iraq.
Atwan is struck by the high-profile role being played by American and Arab intelligence chiefs. He sees that as “proof that the dish which is silently being cooked up is principally a security dish, not a political one.”
Thus, the CIA’s Tenet is doing the rounds of Cairo and Ramallah. And Egyptian intelligence chief Amr Suleiman “appeared before the TV cameras for the first time ever” during his long meeting with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, having always previously operated ­ like all his Arab counterparts ­ strictly in the shadows.
“What happened to make Mr. Suleiman break this time-honored security tradition? God alone knows, but he may have been bitten by the same bug as the Palestinian security chiefs,” who are constantly appearing on the satellite TV news shows these days.
This while Burns stresses from Amman that his country wants to see a regional peace conference held in the summer, specifically in mid-July, Atwan states.
The haste to convene the gathering, at a date when the Western world is usually beginning its summer vacations, suggests to Atwan that the Bush administration is thinking in terms of mounting an attack on Iraq early next year.
Washington is seeking to defuse the tension in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as quickly as possible and “create the right climate for the new-fangled Palestinian security services to crush the intifada and then the resistance, thus enabling the Arab states to participate in the US military effort against Iraq with a clear conscience.”
The Bush administration is also in a hurry because it knows that the Arab regimes’ fear of falling foul of America’s “war on terror” ­ hence Saudi Arabia’s declared willingness to normalize ties with Israel ­ creates a “golden opportunity.”
It gives the US an unparalleled chance to “impose a political settlement that achieves long-term stability for Israel and a nominally independent state for the Palestinians,” writes Atwan.
Israel is meanwhile at a real impasse, he continues. Despite its sweeping military supremacy, it has failed to put an end to Palestinian attacks. That is another reason the Bush administration is acting with renewed urgency, so as to help Israel find a way out of its dilemma by reviving the supposed “culture of peace” in place of the “culture of martyrdom” that has rapidly taken hold of the region in the past five months.
“Tenet’s current tour is not limited to endorsing the new arrangements that the Palestinian leadership intends to make for its security services,” Atwan suggests. It is also about “reorganizing” other Arab security agencies, especially Egypt’s, according to Washington’s plans for Palestine and Iraq.
Mubarak wants to make sure that at his upcoming meeting with US President George W. Bush he “has something in his pocket to prove that he is doing his bit to combat Palestinian and Arab terror, and that he still has a firm grip on the Palestinian card ­ which is the key card at this particular juncture,” says Atwan.
He suggests that Mubarak is keen to regain Cairo’s role as the “gateway” to Arab-Israeli peace, which was dealt a big setback by the Saudi peace initiative.
The Americans must have sensed that the Egyptian president was taken aback by the festive reception they laid on for Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and so are according him special treatment too.
But all the Arab leaders are increasingly being treated by the Americans as security enforcers rather than political leaders, Atwan remarks, hence the way FBI offices have mushroomed in Arab capitals alongside the local CIA stations.
In Cairo, Egypt’s foremost semi-official daily Al-Ahram stresses the “special importance” of Mubarak’s trip to America, only three months after he was last in the US capital.
The Americans want a political settlement in Palestine, which can only be reached if the cycle of violence is halted, the paper writes in its main leader. And Washington knows that “there can be no talk of peace without consulting Egypt” ­ the biggest country in the region ­ and its “wise, reasonable, moderate, farsighted and unflappable” leader.
The paper goes on to state that Cairo has made clear to Washington the terms and principles on which any proposed regional peace conference should be held.
“US administration officials, with President Bush at the forefront, are eager to hear Mubarak’s views about the American vision currently being proposed for moving toward a settlement based on two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli, living side-by-side,” Al-Ahram says. “American sources insist that Mubarak’s opinions will help Bush and his aides define the practical steps aimed at translating this American vision into practice,” the paper continues.
However, Al-Ahram’s editorial is accompanied by a lengthy commentary by editor in chief Ibrahim Nafie who plays down expectations of Mubarak’s visit.
Nafie writes that the Egyptian president had hoped that by the time he headed back to Washington, the US stance toward the conflict would have improved, thus enabling his visit to be “an important step on the road to establishing the foundations of a genuine political settlement.” But that has not happened, and the US has done nothing to press Israel either to sue for peace or to halt its war against the Palestinians, he observes.
Nevertheless, Mubarak decided to accept Bush’s invitation, writes Nafie, stressing that he is not going for a “one-hour meeting in the Oval Office,” but for a series of discussions on the regional impasse, including two lengthy sessions with Bush over two days at Camp David.
Mubarak goes there “knowing that the climate necessary for making genuine movement toward a political settlement in the Middle East is not yet in place,” Nafie continues.
In recognition of this, Burns and Tenet have been trying to secure movement on “three tracks,” he says. “First, helping the Palestinians establish institutions for a Palestinian state as a prelude to declaring that state. Secondly, resuming a serious political process aimed at achieving a two-state solution ­ with Burns taking charge of those tracks. The third track, undertaken by Tenet, seeks to secure a more effective Palestinian performance on the security level.”
But the administration has yet to develop its vision, Nafie remarks: “What it is proposing is no more than a collection of blurred preliminary ideas.”
Washington needs to clarify its thinking about a number of matters, including the level of representation at the proposed international conference, and whether security issues should be tackled “before” political talks are held as Israel wants, or “in parallel” as Egypt is insisting.
Clarification is also needed from Washington on the issue of reforming the PA, which Israel is depicting as synonymous with removing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Its insistence that Arafat must be deposed is a transparent pretext for avoiding political talks which the US must not indulge, says Nafie.
And he suggests that in addition to “defining more accurately its vision” for the region, the Bush administration also needs to determine which of its personnel and departments is in charge of the peace process. Failure to do so would give Israel and its lobby endless opportunities to torpedo any peace moves, he warns.
“President Mubarak’s trip to Washington will not be easy. I imagine he will make an intensive effort to ensure that future moves are based on unambiguous foundations, so as to deny the Sharon government the chance to play its favorite game of maneuvering and evasion, drowning things in detail, and exploiting differences of outlook within the ranks of the Bush administration,” he says.

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