[iwar] [fc:Bush's.'Vision'.Of.A.Palestinian.State.Is.Meddlesome]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-04 07:18:18
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 07:18:18 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Bush's.'Vision'.Of.A.Palestinian.State.Is.Meddlesome]
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Los Angeles Times
October 3, 2001
Bush's 'Vision' Of A Palestinian State Is Meddlesome 
By Robert Satloff, Robert Satloff is the executive director of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
"The idea of a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision, so long
as the right of Israel to exist is respected." With those words, President
Bush on Tuesday launched U.S.-Middle East diplomacy into new and uncharted
waters.
The idea of Palestinian statehood has not, of course, "always" been part of
Washington's vision for Arab-Israeli peace. Indeed, President Reagan
specifically rejected statehood in 1982. More generally, the thrust of U.S.
diplomacy has been to focus on process rather than preferred outcomes, i.e.,
how peace should be made rather than what that peace should look like.
Some critics dismiss this focus on process as the Washington equivalent of
fiddling while the Middle East burns. But the record of the past three
decades has shown it to be among the wisest and most successful elements of
U.S. foreign policy in the modern era. Through the peace process, the U.S.
resolved the long-standing conundrum of balancing ties with Israel and Arab
states, wooed Soviet allies to the U.S. camp, removed the threat of
superpower confrontation from the Middle East and permitted the rise of a
tacit coalition of moderate powers--Israel, pro-West Arab states and
Turkey--that was instrumental in winning the Gulf War.
Along the way, the U.S. helped engineer peace treaties between Israel and
two of its neighbors (Egypt and Jordan); promoted diplomatic negotiations
between Israel and its two other neighbors (Syria and Lebanon) and, perhaps
most of all, created the conditions for Israel and the Palestinians to
negotiate directly, without international interference, toward the goal of
resolving their century-old conflict. All told, not a bad record.
Today, one year into the second Palestinian uprising and one week into what
looks like yet another failed attempt at an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire,
the "peace process" does not look very auspicious. Car bombs explode in
Jerusalem with frightening regularity; violence is the norm. The two parties
are barely speaking with each other, let alone negotiating their differences
peacefully.
Even before Sept. 11, there was a powerful attraction to intervene by
presenting a U.S. vision of how the conflict should ultimately be resolved.
Since then, the perceived need to line up Arab and Muslim coalition partners
in the war against terrorism only added another quiver in the arrow of those
who argue that the time has come to resolve this pesky local conflict--by an
imposed solution, if necessary--so that the world can focus without
distraction on larger issues.
Advocates of that policy, however, are wrong. Lending endorsement to
Palestinian statehood in the current environment cannot but be interpreted
by Palestinians as the first political fruit of the intifada. The desire to
continue the armed struggle against Israel will gain new urgency. For
Israelis, whose last prime minister gave the Palestinians an offer of
statehood that was roundly rejected, U.S. backing to statehood in the
absence of ongoing diplomacy will only fuel fears that the anti-Osama bin
Laden coalition will be built at their expense. And throughout the Middle
East, millions of Arabs will see the U.S. offering a major diplomatic
concession to Arab leaders who may condemn the killing of innocent American
civilians but countenance the killing of innocent Israeli civilians, and who
are unwilling to do much about either.
In the current environment, what Palestinians and Israelis need is more
process, not less. The U.S. needs to send a clear message about the
necessity of negotiations as the only path to resolve disputes, not
pronouncements from afar on how their dispute should end.
"More process" wouldn't require a major new initiative or the dispatch of a
high-profile envoy. What is needed is consistent talk from the White House
and a willingness to penalize whoever refuses to implement existing
commitments to stop violence, fight terrorism and negotiate peacefully.
In the larger sense, the incumbent president should consider the merits of
the sequential approach his father adopted a decade ago.
When Saddam Hussein gobbled up a neighboring state and posed a threat to
international security unseen since World War II, Bush the elder received
numerous messages from Arab and Muslim leaders demanding U.S. intervention
in the Israeli-Palestinian arena as the price for support in the campaign
against Iraq. He refused to be drawn in prematurely, confident that victory
in Desert Storm would deflate the region's radicals, embolden the moderates
and create the conditions to invigorate the search for Arab-Israeli peace.
That was the right approach then, and it is still the right approach. 

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