Will Bush Force Sharon 'Unilateral Surrender' on Road Map?
by Jeffrey Steinberg
May 29 (EIRNS)On May 23, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "formally" accepted the Road Map put forth by the Quartet, setting out a path for the creation of a Palestinian state over the next three years. (The Quartet consists of the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.)
Sharon's formal acceptance came after his chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, travelled to Washington, to negotiate a modus vivendi with the Bush Administration over Israel's laundry list of objections to the Road Map. Following intensive meetings between Weisglass and Bush Administration National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, punctuated by some significant actions by President Bush for the first time placing pressure on Israel, Sharon made his announcement.
Two days later, Sharon presented the Road Map to his full Cabinet, which, after a stormy session, also endorsed the Quartet document. Sharon, in his own endorsement, had noted that discussions between Weisglass and Rice had convinced him that the United States was aware of and appreciative of Sharon's objections and concerns about the details of the plan; and that the Bush Administration would shape the implementation of the peace scheme with Israel's objections in mind. At the Cabinet meeting, Sharon won the vote of support, after it was agreed that there would be a separate statement, opposing specific actions, including Palestinian right of return to Israel.
Immediately after the Israeli Cabinet action, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell issued an important clarification. He told reporters travelling with him in France that U.S. acknowledgement of Israel's concerns did not mean that there would be any changes in the Road Map document.
Powell's remarks preempted the first Israeli effort to "reinvent" the Road Map in the Jabotinsky image. The day after the Cabinet action, Sharon announced that he had prepared a list of 14 "objections" to the Road Map formulation; and the Israeli government also voted up a resolution rejecting the idea of the "right of return" of Palestinians to Israeli land that they were expelled from in 1948.
Despite these typical Sharon equivocation games, as a result of the Israeli Cabinet ratification, President Bush is now slated to hold a multilateral summit meetingin Aqaba, Jordanwith Sharon, Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, and other regional leaders during the first week of June, immediately after Bush's trip to Evian, France for the G-8 heads-of-state meeting and a 300th anniversary celebration in St. Petersburg, Russia. On May 28, White House deputy press spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed Bush's Aqaba trip, and announced that the President would first stop over in Cairo, Egypt for meetings with Arab leaders, and would make a final stopafter Aqabain Qatar, which was the command post for the Iraq war.
Bush vs. Sharon?
Bush had let it be known to Israel, publicly and through back channels, that he did not appreciate Sharon's intransigence, and did not wish to go to the G-8 meeting weakened by a failure to get Israel to come around to a policy on which Bush had spent a great deal of political capital. According to one Washington source, Bush solicited a number of leading American Jewish leaders to phone Sharon and indicate that they supported Bush's Road Map efforts, to discourage Sharon from playing his usual games of mobilizing American Israeli lobby pressure on the President to bend to Sharon's will.
Sharon had suffered another setback when, a week before the Cabinet action on the Road Map, a widely publicized meeting of Christian Zionists and extreme rightwing American Likudniks in Washington proved to be a total flop. The event was held at the cavernous ballroom of the Omni Shoreham Hotel, which hosts such mega-gatherings as the annual spring meeting of the IMF. But, according to an eyewitness account, there were never more than 300 people attending the entire conferenceeven when rabid neo-cons Michael Ledeen and Frank Gaffney showed up to speak.
According to one well-placed Washington source, some White House staffers may have encouraged some of the financial backers of the mass rally for Israel to cancel their contributions at the last moment, a further indication that the President is in no mood to be bullied by Sharon.
LaRouche Comments
In discussions with colleagues on May 28, Lyndon LaRouche offered his assessment of the Bush view towards the peace process. Karl Rove, Bush's campaign Svengali, is convinced that the President must move ahead with Israel-Palestine peace, and must avoid any more "Clash of Civilization" wars between now and Election Day if he is to win reelection, LaRouche said. This puts Bush in a position of tremendous pressure, since he has publicly and more than once stated his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict (a statement no previous President has ever made). He cannot back down on his promises, at this point, without coming across as a failure and a hypocrite.
It is no secret that the entire prospect for the Road Map moving forward comes down to one simple question: Will President Bush put serious pressure on Sharon and the Israelis? Bush had sent some signals to Israel that he was serious about the Road Map, when he telephoned Abu Mazen at the same time that the Weisglass-Rice meetings were taking place, and asked Abu Mazen to send a top-level emissary to Washington for more detailed talks. The very next day, Rice met with the Palestinian Authority Minister of Finance, Salam Fayyad, and President Bush briefly participated in the meetingmaking it the highest-level contact between the Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority ever. In the same vein, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer told Israeli public radio May 22 that "it is in Israel's interest to abide by the law," and dismantle the Jewish settlements and outposts.
At the same time, Abu Mazen met for 90 minutes with leaders of Hamas, at his office in Gaza City. According to Hamas spokesman Ismail Hanieh, the group would be willing to begin a limited truce with Israel, halting attacks on civiliansbut not settlers or soldiersin the West Bank and Gaza Strip, if Israel would end its policy of targetted assassinations. Mazen, who requested the meeting, had held talks with Hamas in the past, and hopes for ceasefires.
But ultimately, the fate of the peace process comes down to two simple words: George Bush.
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