JEDDAH, 14 November 2004 — Some have already called it a spare-of-the moment thing while others wish to see it as a major American initiative to solve the Israel-Palestine problem.
The “it” in question is the five-point plan approved by President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair during two days of talks in Washington.
The plan, unveiled soon after Bush committed himself to working for the creation of a Palestinian state during his second presidential term, will be formally put to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab and European allies of Washington over the next few days.
Here are the five points:
• The United States and Britain are committed to the two-state formula under which an impendent, sovereign, viable and democratic Palestinian state will be created to live side by side with Israel.
• Washington and London support the election of a new Palestinian president within 60 days. They will work with the Palestinians to create other elected democratic institutions. This would require holding elections for the Palestinian National Council (Parliament) that have been overdue for more than two years.
• Both the US and Britain endorse Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s plans for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the complete dismantling of all Jewish settlements there.
• The two nations will mobilize international political and economic support for the planned Palestinian state with the aim of ensuring its security, economic development and prosperity.
• The “road map for peace”, initially proposed by President Bush will be revived with special focus on dismantling terrorist organizations as the first step toward reviving talks on a final settlement of the conflict.
“We will do whatever it takes to get a peace,” Bush said as the two leaders issued the five-point statement of strategy aimed at paving the way for final peace talks. Echoing Bush’s comments, Blair said, “What we will do is anything that is necessary to make the strategy work.”
“It’s coming at a time when you have the end of an era, so it certainly marks a potential, but I know something about Middle East potentials,” said Dennis Ross, who served as special US envoy to the Middle East for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton “What today reflects is a commitment. Now everyone will watch to see how you act on that commitment.”
The Bush administration has stopped short of appointing a special envoy modeled after the peace brokers whom previous presidents have assigned to the task. Ross suggests it will take either an ambassador with those credentials or someone highly placed in the Bush administration to make the US commitment clear.
“When the president says he is ready to use his capital, it’s a question of how he plans to invest it,” Ross said Friday. “The proof that you are prepared to do it is that somebody is there working on the ground full time. It doesn’t have to be a special envoy, but it has to be somebody from the administration who is charged with doing this and not from a distance.”
A senior White House official said Friday that the US and Britain want to encourage the democratic elections before assigning an envoy or establishing broader, formal peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.
“For right now, we don’t need to think about a conference and an envoy,” the official said. “We need to get this work done.
“There may come a time when the president decides a conference would be useful now, an envoy would be useful now. Clearly, he hasn’t made that judgment today.”
As confidently as they predict that a peaceful resolution of decades of conflict in the Middle East is within reach, the leaders are underscoring a belief that it cannot be achieved without the creation of a democratically elected government in the new Palestinian state.
Soon after the talks ended Blair made it clear that he will personally take charge of putting the five-point plan into practice.
The first step would be to sell it to Britain’s European Union partners. It would be no easy task as France, seeking a separate role for itself, appears determined not to let the “Anglo-Saxons” use the Palestinian issue for consolidating their presence in the Middle East.
“We shall look at what was said in Washington,” a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said yesterday. “We cannot say whether or not there is anything in this unless we have examined it carefully.”
Privately, the French dismiss the whole thing as a hoax, designed to divert attention from Iraq at least until after the Iraqi elections in January 2005. You can depend on Paris to do all it can, without provoking another open row with Washington, to prevent the “Anglo-Saxon” axis from reshaping the Middle East after its own fashion.
The second step would be for Blair to present the plan to the G-8 summit, which Britain hosts next May. But that would depend on whether or not Blair holds a general election before that date and whether or not his Labour Party is returned to power for an unprecedented third term.
In any case, the perception that Blair is pushing the Palestine issue higher on the agenda will help calm some of his opponents within the Labour Party and bring back some of the voters who have deserted him because of their opposition to the war in Iraq. But the toughest sell would be to Israel, something that Bush has promised to do.
It is unlikely that Israel will be reassured by a single election among the Palestinians. Israel may use the issue of democratization as an argument for postponing talks on a final settlement until it can be assured that any future Palestinian state would be genuinely, and lastingly, democratic. And that may require more than one election to establish.
The Five-Point Plan may run into difficulty with the Palestinians for another reason. Bush and Blair insist that the newly elected Palestinian president should first focus on dismantling the “terrorist organizations” before talks are held on a final settlement.
The term “terrorist organizations” is a code word for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a few smaller groups some of which are part of the Palestine Liberation Organization and take part in the Palestinian Authority.
The problem is that no newly elected Palestinian president would be strong enough to take on “the terrorist organizations” that, according to most estimates enjoy the support of at least 40 percent of the population in Gaza and the West Bank. Persuading Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine to disarm and put a definite end to attacks is easier said than done. All three organizations are committed to the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the totality of historic Palestine. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said they would boycott any elections conducted under occupation. To persuade them to change course, especially when they are offered no incentives, would be a Herculean task. Ten US presidents have tried to solve the Palestinian problem and bring lasting peace to the Middle East, with varying degrees of commitment. They either failed or achieved limited success, on the periphery of the central Palestine issue. Well, may be George W. has a karma that other US presidents, including his father, lacked. Only time will tell.
