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March 2002 (March 19 - The Administration took steps to insert itself
into a leadership role on March 12, when it responded to a proposed
Security Council resolution, not with a veto but with another resolution
that referred to a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel. And
reversing his course again, the President sent special envoy General
Anthony C. Zinni to Israel to calm the raging violence and smooth
the way for Vice President Cheney's consultative tour.)
On March 2, at the end of the Jewish Sabbath, nine people, including
three children, were killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. This was
in retaliation for Israeli raids on two refugee camps, which left at
least 23 Palestinians dead since Thursday February 28. A few days
before, two pregnant women were shot; one Palestinian and one Israeli.
Their baby girls lived, but the father of one was killed, and the
grandfather of the other. The suffering and despair we can glimpse from
these fragments of news accounts is not reflected by statements from
U.S. officials, for example: "I'll reiterate today, as I have
before, that the first step to get there [negotiations] is to end the
violence…"
Maybe it is a well-thought-out strategy. Maybe not. The Bush
Administration sits back, disengaged, and waits for the parties to get
serious about peace. It was a tactic chosen in 1990 by the first
President Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, to deal with
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's recalcitrant stance. Then came the
Gulf War, which reshuffled alignments in the region, and
internationally; and in the Fall of 1991 dealt hands to reluctant
players gathered around the table in Madrid - Israel, Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan and a Palestinian delegation with the U.S., the Soviet Union and
others. Now, again, waiting for them to quit fighting seems to be the
main component of this Bush Administration's strategy.
As a reporter asked at the State Department press briefing on February
20: "Have you guys resigned yourselves to the fact that you're not
going to be able to do anything except issue statements like this from
the podium?" (The spokesman had said, again, that the U.S. is
deeply troubled about the violence and thinks the Palestinian Authority
needs to take action to halt the terror, and asks Israel to avoid
actions that make this objective harder to obtain.)
Fortunately, new initiatives are flowing into the vacuum of U.S.
inaction.
If Washington Won't Step In, Who Will?
That is the front-page headline of an article in The New York Times
Week-in-Review section on February 24. The writer sums up
Washington's strategy as "stand squarely with Mr. Sharon to isolate
and pressure Mr. Arafat to crack down on violence." Then he
reports on suggestions, all centered on the premise that renewed
American involvement is the key, including enlisting Mr. Baker as a
special envoy.
Indeed, each of the emerging alternatives
recognizes the centrality of U.S. involvement, but the alternatives jump
over the end-of-violence obstacle, and into negotiations.
Advocates of Israeli-Palestinian peace in
the United States need to push the Administration to cooperate with its
allies in paving a new path. Specific initiatives are outlined here
with the realization that some may fade and others may build in the time
before they come before the reader.
Crown Prince Abdullah's Initiative
Bypassing normal diplomatic channels, Saudi Arabia's leader gave Thomas
Friedman, an American journalist, the big story (which was published in
The New York Times February 17 edition). Abdullah told Friedman that he
expected to encourage the Arab League, when it meets on March 27-28, to
offer normalized relations to Israel in return for its withdrawal from
the land occupied in 1967.
Some would dismiss his proposal as a public relations ploy. Clearly,
Saudi Arabia's standing as a U.S. ally has been appreciably damaged by
the onslaught of criticism related to the September 11 attacks on the
United States.
For decades, oil and petrodollars fueled the U.S.-Saudi relationship,
which flourished despite the vast cultural differences between the
theocratic monarchy and the democratic superpower. Saudi Arabia has for
years ranked first as customer for U.S. arms makers. The Saudis
are reported (by The Washington Post on February 11), to have spent well
over $100 billion on American weapons, construction and support. And
of additional benefit to the U.S. has been the Saudi investment in
Western financial institutions, with an estimated $500-800 billion going
into the American economy. The Saudis have contributed to every
presidential library as well as Barbara Bush's campaign against
illiteracy and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug program.
Perhaps it's the money that helped to muffle U.S. criticism of Saudi
Arabia's repressive governance practices and religious intolerance;
perhaps it's the importance placed on Saudi Arabia's strategic value -
because of its oil and location. The U.S. bombing of Iraq, which
has continued for more than10 years now, is dependent upon facilities
provided to the U.S. by the Saudi regime. The U.S. promised to withdraw
from Saudi Arabia once the job of expelling Iraq's army from Kuwait was
done, or when asked to leave. About 5,000 U.S. troops remain today, and
a state-of-the-art command center has been built by the Pentagon. This
outrages the clerics and followers of the proselytizing Wahhabi
movement, which provides religious legitimacy for the House of Saud's
rule.
That 15 of the September 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia compelled
groundbreaking investigation and reporting of the murky U.S.-Saudi
relationship and the dynamics of Saudi society. The royal family
found itself in a dangerous situation. As with all the Arab and Muslim
governments cooperating with the U.S. in the anti-terror campaign, their
populations are rife with anti-American sentiment motivated by
Palestinian suffering and humiliation under Israel's military might,
with arms supplied free by the United States.
No matter what spurred the Saudi peace initiative, it can be said the
Crown Prince's proposal has momentum. Everywhere, reporters are
querying officials. The content of the proposal reiterates the basic
land-for-peace formula, but its importance lies in it being voiced by
the Saudi leader. By placing Arab recognition of Israel as a
starting point, it may be possible to restore hope for Israelis that
peace is really possible, i.e. with the whole Arab world, as well as
hope for Palestinians that the occupation can be ended through
diplomatic means.
The best antidote to the use of violence by Palestinian militants would
be Palestinian confidence that the international community, the United
States and Israel were serious about fulfilling the requirements of UNSC
Res. 242 and 338. The appeal of violent actions could evaporate if
the prospects for a negotiated peace were real again.
U.N. Security Council
A U.N. role may be at the center of a new initiative. The Security
Council already has an historical authority over the Occupied
Territories and the determination of their sovereignty that dates back
to the League of Nations' assumption of the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
The United Nations' partition of British-mandate Palestine into a
Jewish state and an Arab state, and the Security Council's Resolution
242 in 1967 form the internationally legal basis for the two-state
solution.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, addressing the Security Council on
February 21, spoke of nearing the edge of the abyss as he considered the
toll of dead and wounded and intensified bitterness.
Annan supports the Mitchell Committee's recommendations "in
principle," but noted they had not been implemented "in
practice" and that trying to solve the security problem on its own
would not work. (This report by an international committee led by former
Senator George Mitchell calls for a cessation of violence, followed by
confidence building steps - including a freeze of settlement activity -
leading to bilateral negotiations. See
www.cmep.org )
The key political issues, particularly the question of land and the
increasingly desperate social and economic conditions of the
Palestinians, must be addressed, as well as security. Annan has asked
the UN Special Coordinator for the Mideast Peace Process, Terje Roed
Larsen, to intensify his consultations with the parties.
The Security Council has agreed to hold periodic consultations on the
Middle East. A resolution from Arab diplomats is, at the time of
this writing, being brought before the Security Council. The first draft
of the resolution builds upon an initiative from Saudi Arabia's Crown
Prince Abdullah. It focuses on Arab state recognition of Israel in
return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
Cheney on a Mission?
Vice President Dick Cheney is going to the region in March. It was
being said he will not focus on peacemaking but on broader American
relationships in the region as the war on terrorism expands. But,
as visiting professor at Princeton Stephen Cohen says; "He's going
on the reigning theory that you can have a solution to the United States
relationship to terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction
without dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This trip is
going to test that assumption."
The President's State of the Union casting of Iran and Iraq as an
"axis of evil" alarmed many U.S. allies, in the region, in
Europe and beyond. The Administration's internal battle about
if/when/how it might unilaterally attack Saddam Hussein is blatantly
inconsistent with the international tenor of the anti-terrorism campaign
it is working to hold together.
Around dining tables and over endless cups of tea and thick coffee, Mr.
Cheney is certain to hear plenty of appeals for the United States to
work with the United Nations and the international community to
construct an Israeli-Palestinian track for peacemaking. Much will
be made of the short-comings, indeed huge failings, of both leaders -
Sharon and Arafat. Some will say that peace is not possible with
one or the other. Yet, as Mr. Arafat reminded reporters, "He
[Mr. Sharon] demolished by himself all the settlements [in Sinai.] If
there's a will there's a way."
For now, the Crown Prince's initiative seems to have changed the planned
agenda for the V.P.'s trip. Secretary of State Powell, at the time
of this writing, is saying that Cheney would seek to "flesh out the
Crown Prince's ideas." Those ideas don't constitute a plan or
blueprint, but do shift the debate away from blame for the violence back
toward the vision of a common future for the two peoples living in two
states and sharing the city they both claim as their capital.
URGENT
ACTION:
A new resolution is likely to come before the Security Council for
consideration. A U.S. veto would be a setback for peace and further
harden anti-American sentiment. A probable time for diplomatic
decision-making would be late March, following Mr. Cheney's trip and the
Arab League meeting of March 27-28.
Of course, the danger continues that new violence might again blow
consideration of peace off the table. Advocates will want to stay
abreast of
changing events and the progress of the Saudi Crown Prince's initiative
and the emergence of other initiatives.
Write to Secretary Powell and Ambassador Negroponte: Personal
letters, sent by fax if you can, are considered the most effective form
of communication with governmental officials at this time. Your separate
letters to each should be short and focused on the following points
which you might adapt as appropriate for changing circumstances.
- Urge the U.S. government to support initiatives that can
restore confidence that peace is possible. Now is the time to formulate
a plan to actually implement UNSC Res. 242 and 338.
- Ask each to support the proposal of the
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince as a starting place for a comprehensive
peace settlement that has international support.
- Ask each to support the United States working with a United
Nations-based process. If a UNSC resolution is foreseen, ask that
the United States support it. Express concern that a U.S. veto would be
a setback for peace and further harden anti-American sentiment.
- To Secretary Powell, express
appreciation for U.S. efforts to calm the violence and implement the
Mitchell Committee report, and regret that that approach has not been
fruitful. Say that his demands upon Mr. Arafat to end violence should
be matched by demands upon Mr. Sharon to end the use of heavy weapons
(supplied by the U.S.) and to end the siege of Palestinian towns. Ask
that he and President Bush make clear to Israel that the United States
wants a real settlement freeze now. This just might re-energize the
Mitchell Plan.
The Honorable Colin Powell
The State Department
2201 C St., NW
Washington, DC 20520
FAX: 202.261.8577
H.E. Mr. John Negroponte
Permanent Representative of the U.S.A. the United Nations
799 U.N. Plaza
New York, NY 10017-3505
FAX: 212.415.4443
FOR NEWS:
American Committee on Jerusalem, an Arab/Muslim organization, has a
daily compilation at www.acj.org (click on Jerusalem in the News)
Americans for Peace Now, affiliated with an Israeli peace group, has
weekly summaries at www.peacenow.org
(click on Middle East Peace
Reports).
The Holyland Ecumenical Christian Foundation, at
www.hcef.org compiles
news from and about Palestinian Christians (click on News, then on HCEF
News)
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