Renewed talks between the Palestinian Authority and the Bush administration mark a welcome shift in US policy. The recent meeting between Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and Secretary of Sate Colin Powell and today’s talks between Qorei and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are the Qorei’s highest-level contacts with the Americans since he took office in November. They perhaps signal a growing awareness in Washington that attempts to isolate the PA are counterproductive and have made the resumption of negotiations more difficult. Instead of containing violence, it has intensified it.
Or there could be other reasons why the administration is orchestrating such close encounters — either to appease Arabs in the wake of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal or in the wake of Bush’s endorsement, for the first time in the history of US involvement in the conflict, of an Israeli plan to keep parts of the West Bank and deny the Palestinians the right of return.
But a policy of mending fences based on pacifying the other side without addressing the root cause of problems is destined to fail.
If the meetings are to make headway, the Gaza pullout must be tackled. Apparently, Palestinians are willing to consider a withdrawal depending on how Ariel Sharon revises the plan Likud rejected last month.
Sharon has come forward with a pared-down plan for a truncated disengagement. Instead of pulling out of 21 settlements in Gaza, he is proposing limiting the pullout to only three, and instead of four West Bank settlements, he proposes pulling out of only two. But the amended plan can please neither the right-wing extremists opposed to any pullout nor the opposition Labor Party which will support only a full-scale disengagement.
Sharon is being pulled in opposite directions by his coalition partners, with the religious parties insisting that he honor the results of the referendum, and the secular right-wingers insisting that he push ahead with his disengagement plan. Thus, whether he complies with the pro- or with the anti-disengagement plan camps, Sharon knows he risks the disintegration of his coalition government.
As he tries to wriggle out of the fix in which his ill-fated decision to hold a party referendum placed him, Sharon is keeping his cards close to his chest. But his actions are loud and clear. One thousand Palestinians have been made homeless in Gaza in the past week in the biggest Israeli attack in recent times. After the setback at the ballot box, Sharon is stepping up military action in Gaza to foster an impression of strength and resolution. This is an unacceptable policy that needs the urgent attention of the United States.
