CONDOLEEZZA Rice’s delayed Middle East visit starts tomorrow when she arrives in Israel before visiting the occupied Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It must be hoped that the US secretary of state brings with her a sensible reappreciation of the follies of the Bush White House’s Middle East policies and that she is coming to listen and, where appropriate, to facilitate, not to dictate.
US influence in the region, as post-Eisenhower presidents have viewed it, stems from its relations with Israel. The Iraq debacle, the growing setback in Afghanistan and the belligerent confrontation with Iran have all been influenced by Washington’s slavish support for the Israeli state and its aggressive, expansionist Zionist policies. The key to a Palestinian settlement is supposed to rest in America’s leverage with the Israeli government. However, the consistent failure to use that lever in this cause, together with the no less serious refusal to deploy it in a timely manner over Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, must give rise to the thought that a lever for so long un-applied amounts to no lever at all.
There are signs of fresh developments that Rice could facilitate. Ehud Olmert’s announcement of an “imminent summit without preconditions” with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must be taken as encouraging, even though it is likely to be more for the purpose of propaganda than peace. The fact that Olmert then used the same interview to effectively repeat the rumor, strongly denied by the Kingdom, that there had been informal high-level contacts between Israel and Saudi Arabia, suggests the initiative could simply be mischief-making. Nevertheless, there is new movement and it could very well be in the direction of the Saudi plan tabled by the then Crown Prince Abdullah at the Arab League Summit in 2003. This foresaw an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestine together with an exchange of territories, in return for recognition of Israel by the entire Arab world.
Abbas’ attempt to form a Palestinian government of national unity appears stymied by Hamas’ reiteration last week that it would not abandon its refusal to recognize Israel. But this is not as dramatic a stumbling block as it has been made to seem. The Hamas electoral win on this explicit policy gave the Palestinians bargaining power after years of failure by Al-Fatah peace negotiators. It requires Rice and her chief in the Oval Office to understand the importance of this Hamas policy, democratically endorsed by the Palestinian electorate. If it no longer insisted that Palestine’s government be branded and isolated as terrorist, Washington would open the way to real talks and the prospect of genuine compromise and agreement. The bloody violence of Palestinian radicals has been deplorable. But so too has been the butchery by the Israeli military. One terror cancels out another.
Now is the time to address the political issues and get down to substantive peace negotiations. Any further delay in healing the Palestinian wound will allow the real terrorists, the ruthless killers of Al-Qaeda to draw strength from the continuing injury.
