RENEWED SUPPORT from US President George W. Bush for the creation of a Palestinian state are ringing alarm bells in Israel. Reports say Bush is preparing to become further involved in the peace process, pushing to establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, something anathema to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Palestinian officials have been briefed on the US ideas by Arab leaders but to add insult to injury, the plan has not been communicated to Israel. Bush’s ideas to revive the peace process and resolve the final status issues included a possible first meeting with Yasser Arafat, saying he was pleased that Arafat was trying to control radical elements within the Palestinian Authority and that the world ought to applaud him for that. The United States is thus back where Sharon least wants it: at the political center of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Sharon has been buffeted and consistently disappointed by the US for many weeks. First he came under heavy pressure to allow Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to meet Arafat last month, nullifying the 48 hours of quiet in the occupied territories that Sharon had insisted on as condition for the meeting. Then Colin Powell froze anti-PLO legislation which was about to pass through Congress, a clear message that the State Department was not willing to equate Palestinian activism with terrorism. Then came Powell’s reluctance to designate Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah as terrorists. Then there was Bush’s remarks earlier this month that the idea of a Palestinian state — as long as it recognized Israel’s right to exist — had always been part of a US vision in the Middle East and his repeat of that belief at a prime-time press conference on Thursday. Always or not, this was the first time the president had revealed it. But the real scare came with a flurry of articles in US newspapers that prior to Sept. 11, the US administration was about to unveil a new diplomatic initiative to end the one year of violence in the occupied territories. Details of the initiative remain vague and for no one more so than Sharon. For the first time in memory, a US president had not consulted an Israeli prime minister about what he was planning for Israel and the Palestinians.
The papers said the initiative would take into account the progress that was made at the Camp David summit last year during the Clinton administration, but would stop well short of the specifics Clinton gave in January in a speech in New York before leaving office. But the Israeli Haaretz newspaper said the initiative was in fact a reprise of Clinton’s January proposals. In other words, a viable and sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank, some form of shared sovereignty in Jerusalem and a vague formula for Palestinian refugees based on resettlement in host countries and/or a return to a state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Where all leaks converge is that the initiative begins with implementation of the Mitchell report, with an absolute freeze on settlement construction in the occupied territories, including the natural growth of existing settlements. That is why Sharon erupted and lashed out at the US last week for what he described as US appeasement of the Arabs. For Sharon’s vision is a long-term interim arrangement based on a Palestinian state in about 50 percent of the West Bank and 70 percent of Gaza with undivided Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem. It also requires not only the permanence but also expansion of all existing settlements, including the 25 new settlements established since his election in February.
The State Department said Sharon already sees that any Middle East peace settlement would involve a Palestinian state. But he blew his top because he understood what the US initiative signified: the end of his personal vision of that state.
