Sharon and Bush must move beyond a cease-fire: stalling on negotiations will perpetuate Mideast conflict

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 18, 2005 by Marlene Nadle

Officials in the Bush and Sharon governments have admitted they didn't do enough to keep Mahmoud Abbas from failing when he was Palestinian prime minister in 2003. They say they won't make that mistake again. Once past the rhetoric and the newly announced cease-fire, they are doing precisely that.

The Washington-backed summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Abbas was only about easing the occupation, not ending it. Bush and Sharon still are stalling on final-status talks on borders, Jerusalem, refugees and the creation of a viable Palestinian state, thus undercutting Abbas' credibility. They still are demanding, as a precondition for negotiation, that Abbas first dismantle the militants' organizations and risk a Palestinian civil war.

Although most of the U.S. political establishment supports making an end to terrorism a precondition for progress, there is one exception. Former Secretary of State James Baker, in a December article in The New York Times, wrote, "Israel should announce that upon the election of a Palestinian negotiating partner, it is prepared to resume "substantive negotiations for peace without requiring all terrorists activities cease.... To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations."

It is legitimate to want an end to terrorism. Unfortunately, Bush and Sharon don't see that there are other ways to defeat terrorists besides killing them. Instead of undermining Abbas, they would be better off following his lead. He knows that terrorism is a political, not just a military problem.

Before the Feb. 8 summit, Abbas used discussions instead of bullets to get the Palestinian militants to agree to an informal cooling of attacks. It's that agreement more than the symbolic deployment of Palestinian security forces that stopped the rockets from Gaza. The militants and the press have all heard Abbas say he will not militarily confront what Palestinians see as the resistance.

Abbas used politics to convince Bush and Sharon that for the cease-fire to have a chance of lasting it must be mutual. Sharon has agreed to halt military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. However, that is conditional and can be reversed any time a few Palestinian diehards or trigger-happy Israelis create an incident. The peace won't hold without the international guarantees Abbas desires.

The road map calls for an international conflict resolution committee. That could prevent a slide back to tit-for-tat war. Bush, however, wants only the United States to mediate. He is unlikely to say, as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin did, "We have to wage peace as if there is no terrorism."

To further reduce violence, Abbas is discussing not only rockets with the Palestinians, but regular politics. He knows some militants want to be part of the power structure and is trying to co-opt them. Hamas has done well in the municipal elections, and it plans to participate in parliamentary elections. The militants don't exist in a vacuum and are responsive to the shift in Palestinian public opinion. Last June, 26 percent of Palestinians said they were opposed to attacks on Israel. By December it was 51 percent. In the Palestinian elections, 62 percent voted for Abbas' nonviolent strategy, and the number could go higher with hope. If the pragmatists emerging among the militants in the West Bank are brought into government and into final-status negotiations, they would join the Palestinian people in further marginalizing the diehards.

It's those substantive negotiations that are Abbas' fundamental political solution to violence. As the militants keep telling him; the fighting will stop when the occupation ends. He and the Europeans believe the negotiations have to be started quickly. Analysts say Abbas has only 100 days, about six months, before he begins losing legitimacy with his people. Yet Bush and Sharon keep procrastinating, refusing to prove to the men with guns that negotiations can deliver a viable state and an end to the occupation.

The stalling is a conscious strategy. An unidentified Israeli official told the Jewish weekly The Forward that the Israelis and Americans would attempt "to steer [the Europeans] toward this incremental approach and away from fast-tracking." Alon Liel, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is reported to have said Sharon is buying time so he doesn't have to enter final-status negotiations before the Gaza withdrawal. Abbas fears that if negotiations aren't started before the withdrawal, they will never be started. Mainstream Israeli press supports his suspicion. Many analysts have written that Sharon's goal is to achieve a long-term interim solution that would leave the major issues unresolved and Israel in control of about 50 percent of the West Bank. Bush has given no evidence that he understands the urgency of final negotiations.

Bush and Sharon are unlikely to change their doomed approach without pressure from their publics. There may be a withdrawal from Gaza, but little beyond that except more preconditions about ending terrorism, building Palestinian security forces and creating democracy. Once the Palestinians realize the peace process has no clothes, Abbas' authority will tumble, the violence resume and the tragedy go on.