The raging gun battles in Hebron and Bethlehem dictate that the focus of the latest mission by US envoy Anthony Zinni to the Middle East will be to arrange a cease-fire. However, if Zinni’s third trip to the region is not to meet the same fate as his first two, which were outright failures, the target goal will have to be much broader and his efforts more intrepid. So far, Zinni is upbeat about brokering a truce and is working on setting up bilateral and trilateral meetings among Palestinians, Israelis and Americans. But while such talks are well and good, they cannot be an end in themselves. If Zinni’s brief essentially remains unchanged, then his prospects for success are no rosier than before.
The Bush team has so far refrained from creating the outlines of a process leading to a permanent settlement that could be offered as an alternative to the current bloodshed. From the beginning, the Bush administration rejected President Clinton’s micro management of the Middle East, thus moving from actively seeking to end the conflict, to turning away from mediation, to trying to manage escalating violence. But reacting to events instead of taking the lead is not worthy of the world’s sole superpower. There needs to be on the horizon a comprehensive and permanent peace settlement which all parties should use as a model to strive for. It would be heartening if a cease-fire can be obtained but after that the administration needs to be ready to begin a serious political process.
In truth, the US administration has taken several steps to facilitate Zinni’s mission. President Bush dropped his insistence on a halt to “Palestinian violence” before sending Zinni back to the region. He abandoned his hands-off approach and intervened, the alarming trend of bloodletting persuading the administration that it could no longer watch from the sidelines. Then came the surprising US-drafted resolution at the Security Council referring for the first time to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. And sources say Bush is blocking a request from Israel for hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid.
For all the good it might do, the Tenet plan, which the United States is relying so much on, can only do so much. The plan put forth by CIA Director George Tenet is the first step toward implementation of the Mitchell Plan which, likewise, calls for an immediate cease-fire and other conditions for the resumption of peace talks.
What is truly needed though is not simply a plan of truces but a plan of action, not reaction, which is where the wider Saudi proposal for land for recognition comes in. Hailed by the Palestinians, given a cautious welcome in Israel and praised by Washington, the diplomatic steam that has built up behind the Saudi initiative makes it a compelling political solution. The Bush administration cannot afford another shuttle flop. It needs at least staying power. If a temporary cease-fire is wrested from both sides, the United States and Israel must be ready to accept the fact that occasionally militants will carry out acts of violence. So far, the first US reaction has been to retreat to the sidelines whenever fighting broke out. Security aspects cannot work in isolation from a political vision. They must work in tandem, never divorced from one another.
