After almost three years of strife, the Middle East is suddenly showing signs of life in the peace process. On Saturday the Israeli government approved the lifting of its closure of the West Bank and Gaza. A day earlier Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas predicted that he would persuade all Palestinian groups to agree to a cease-fire — and end their attacks against Israelis — within three weeks. And President George Bush will now try to provide the necessary impetus by taking a direct role in the process and meeting Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jordan on Wednesday for a three-way summit.
Before that, tomorrow, Bush will hold a broad meeting with several Arab leaders in Egypt to continue to build support for the Mideast road map initiative. The current moves toward a settlement are promising and might prove fruitful; the peace dividend could be considerable. But the way ahead remains politically dangerous, and despite a lot of promising diplomacy, Middle East peace initiatives have come and gone before.
This week serves as a test for all three men. The appointment of Abbas was the Palestinians’ first step toward the reform process the United States wanted, but with the violence far from being reined in, he still has his work cut out. He says he believes a cease-fire agreement can soon be reached with Hamas, one of the main activist groups. But America and Israel are not making Abbas’ task any easier by demanding far more than a cease-fire — that Hamas people be disarmed and arrested.
This past week Sharon said almost everything one could ask for. He said that he supported the road map. He solemnly declared that it was a terrible idea to rule millions of Palestinians, using the word “occupation” for the first time. He admitted that ruling over another people is a disaster for the economy. He emphatically warned that Israel must make big concessions to reach peace. Putting aside his reference to the occupation, Sharon has spoken like this before, but still managed to leave his real intentions obscure. The test of Sharon’s intentions may now be close at hand, since the road map requires Israel to pull down new outposts built since March 2001 and freeze old ones “immediately.”
It is Bush who probably faces the biggest test of all. Militarily, America has proved it has no equal, but is its diplomatic clout of the same caliber? The Palestinians and Israelis will soon find out. Bush has tried hard to avoid playing a personal role in the Middle East peace process. Events, though, have forced his hand. America’s global power is such that it cannot easily avoid becoming engaged in such important geopolitical issues, however reluctant it and its president might be.
