Just as hopes appeared to be reviving that the US might yet try to promote some credible political process in the Middle East, they seem to have been once again resoundingly dashed by what Arab commentators see as US President George W. Bush’s latest wholesale endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s hard-line outlook and policies.
“Gone is all that was said over the past two weeks about the White House being poised to draft a ‘framework’ for a settlement in the form of a preliminary agenda for an ‘international peace conference,’” declares Rajeh al-Khoury in the Beirut daily An-Nahar.
“Gone too is talk of a ‘timetable’ for achieving such a settlement by laying down measures for implementing it that would be more binding on Israel, which has so far foiled every step taken toward a solution.”
It did not even take Sharon’s visit to scupper those ideas, Khoury writes. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited Washington ahead of Sharon, only to “discover that the Israeli ideas lodged in Bush’s head” were already firmly entrenched. Mubarak went to Camp David with “ambitious hopes” of persuading the American president to agree to the early proclamation of a Palestinian state along the Peres/Abu Ala plan and to a timeline for concluding final status talks, he says. By the time he emerged from the talks, Mubarak was reduced to sufficing with the considerably more modest hope the US president would agree to “give (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat a last chance to end the violence.”
Meanwhile, “Israeli tanks were invading Ramallah for the third time, perhaps to pay their compliments to the ‘new’ Palestinian government that doesn’t seem to have satisfied anyone other than its members.”
The reshuffled Palestinian Authority (PA) Cabinet indeed “falls far short of American and Israeli requirements,” Khoury writes, mainly because it does not affect Arafat’s dominant position. No prime minister was named who could become an alternative interlocutor. Interior Minister General Abdel-Razzak al-Yahia is supposed to unify the PA security forces but he is no more than “Arafat’s shadow.” And Finance Minister Salam Fayyad was appointed to ensure continued financial aid from the European donors, who know and trust him from his days with the International Monetary Fund.
Sharon went to Washington planning to cite the new Cabinet ­ which the Israelis ridiculed and the Palestinian opposition criticized ­ as evidence that Arafat can’t be trusted to oversee the reforms the Bush administration now portrays as a necessary precondition for reviving the peace process. And he planned to invoke “the intifada’s refusal to heed Arab appeals and international pressure to halt operations” to ensure that Bush “refrains from making an announcement featuring a political commitment or timetable.”
But Sharon’s task was easy, Khoury says, because “his thoughts preceded him and rolled off Bush’s tongue … during his joint press conference with Mubarak.”
The American president’s announcement that the only item on his agenda was the need to build new Palestinian “institutions” was exactly what Sharon wanted to hear him say. “And to ensure that the visit would be more than an opportunity to express thanks and friendship, he threw in a new spin” ­ namely, that it is not enough for Israel to be at peace with the Palestinians because it needs peace with the entire Arab world.
Sharon thus tried to kill two birds with one stone, Khoury remarks.
“The first was to expand the objective, in order to ensure it is not attained,” while depicting himself as a peace-seeker. The second was to scupper the idea of the international conference touted by Washington, “in favor of the ‘regional conference’ he had proposed, which is an impossible idea, and thus guarantees the perpetuation of the status quo ­ at least until the end of Bush’s term.”
The pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat warns the administration that allowing Sharon to have his way is the last thing it should do if it wants to encourage moderate forces in the region. It writes in its main leader that the political situation in the Middle East “has never been as clear as it is today,” nor have Israel’s demands ever been so extreme.
As conveyed to Washington by Sharon, they amount to a series of “no’s” meant to make the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible, negate the land-for-peace concept, render the occupation permanent, and provide Israel with further scope for expansion “by threatening anyone who is minded to challenge the new status quo with ‘transfer,’” Asharq al-Awsat writes.
Moreover, Sharon is busy translating this policy into practice on the ground with complete impunity. Israel’s daily incursions into Palestinian towns and villages amount in practice to the withdrawal of its recognition of the PA, of the Oslo Accords and of the peace formulas proposed at Camp David and Taba. “The ongoing demolitions, bulldozing, arrests, assassinations, deportations, and settlement expansions all confirm, without any doubt, that Sharon and his government have made up their minds about the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
And by “blackmailing” the PA with demands for “reform” as a precondition for entering into talks with it or even allowing it to survive, Israel has started the countdown to getting rid of what remains of the Authority, Asharq al-Awsat writes.
“This old-new conspiracy flies in the face of the Arab Peace Initiative, and of Arab efforts at the highest level to find common ground with Washington and demonstrate maximum goodwill vis-a-vis the regional situation,” the daily writes.
And it is fueling an “unprecedented” mood of hostility toward Washington in the Arab “street” ­ which many have been trying to warn it of. The US is doubtless aware of this public mood, not least because it was alerted by “high-ranking visitors who opted, out of friendship and shared interests, to be candid.”
“Accordingly, if Washington is genuinely concerned to retain moderate and positive options in the region, and if it is conscious of the importance of containing the threat of an explosion, it must reply to Sharon’s many ‘no’s’ with a big fat ‘no’ of its own,” Asharq al-Awsat counsels. “No to taking the Middle East to the brink of despair, with all the dangerous reactions that despair could generate and that everyone can do without.”
Obviously writing before Bush went public with his embrace of Sharon’s policies and views, the Syrian daily Tishrin wishes Bush would turn Sharon’s visit “into an opportunity to rein in Israel’s aggression and remind the rulers of Tel Aviv of the realities and requirements of peace.”
The US president has, after all, promised to relaunch the peace process on all tracks, based on UN resolutions and the land-for-peace principle, it states.
“Bush has acknowledged that the Arab states consistently cooperated with him in combating terrorism, and it is vital for him to combine forces with them to relaunch the peace process, end the Palestinian people’s suffering, end the Israeli occupation of Arab territory and uphold the rule of international law.” This requires pressure on Israel’s extreme and racist leaders, who are solely to blame for the loss of life on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides as their brutal actions “leave the Palestinians with no option other than resistance and martyrdom,” Tishrin says.
“The US president hit the nail on the head when he stated that hope must be restored to the Palestinian people. But that requires action rather than words, and foremost of those actions is to curb Sharon’s aggression and remind the Israelis that a just and comprehensive peace in the region necessitates full withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories and respecting the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Egypt’s leading semi-official daily, Al-Ahram ­ which had until recently been playing up expectations that the US would soon initiate bold new peace moves ­ portrays Sharon as being out to undermine the progress Mubarak made during his visit to the US, and implicitly warns Washington that its Arab allies will blame it for his subsequent actions.
The Egyptian president went there to argue that there is no military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and that the peace process must be revived on all tracks, Al-Ahram writes. He affirmed that this can only be done by means of an “active and effective US role” and an international conference convened to tackle a carefully drawn-up agenda, and also that the US should deal with the Palestinians via their elected leadership represented by President Arafat.
Sharon is striving to get rid of Arafat, rejects the idea of declaring an independent Palestinian state, and refuses to consider any timeline for peacemaking “because that would bind him and prevent him from playing his favorite game of maneuvering and evasion while reverting to the use of armed force against the Palestinian people.”
“The outcome of Sharon’s discussions in Washington will determine his policies for the forthcoming period. Therefore, his behavior after his return from the US will illustrate the nature of what he got from the Bush administration, or the nature of the American positions that were conveyed to him,” Al-Ahram reasons. “It is on that basis that the Arab capitals will formulate their view of the US role in the Middle East. Washington’s credibility is in the balance.”
Pan-Arab Al-Quds al-Arabi quips that Mubarak’s efforts to lobby the US, and those of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah before him, have indeed brought about a change in the Bush administration’s Middle East policy ­ “only for the worse.”
It is even more biased toward the Israeli viewpoint than it was before their respective visits, as evidenced by the way Bush espoused Sharon’s attitude not just to the PA but to the Arabs as a whole, the paper writes.
The disappointment of Washington’s friends in the region will have been redoubled by the thumbs-down Bush gave to the new Palestinian government formed by Arafat this week. He was supposed to consult with the Europeans ­ who welcomed the move as an encouraging step toward reform ­ before passing such hasty judgment, but didn’t because he knows they don’t align themselves automatically with Israel but take a more rational stance.
Al-Quds al-Arabi says it disagrees with both the American and the European verdicts on PA reform. The new PA Cabinet was indeed a disappointment, albeit from a patriotic Palestinian perspective, as it should have included more dynamic young faces and excluded all incumbent ministers tainted by corruption. But it concedes that Palestinian and Arab critics of the PA, “like us,” have been put in an “extremely embarrassing position,” for their criticism inadvertently advances the campaign that Israel and the US are waging against it.
While Bush was berating the new Palestinian government and declaring that Israel was acting in self-defense, the State Department too was tacitly endorsing Israel’s latest reoccupation of Ramallah, Al-Quds al-Arabi states. That could mean Washington has given Sharon another green light “to carry out his old-new plan to assassinate the Palestinian leader or banish him from the occupied Palestinian territories.”

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