Posted on 06/02/2003 8:48:26 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - October is the target date. After October, the resources will be turned inward, for the election year, and the Middle East peace process can proceed as long as it doesn't get in the way.
Meanwhile, and that means this week, the U.S. administration is exploiting a rare moment of agreement on the road to the summit in Aqaba. There's agreement on the summit itself and on the necessary details to make it a success - but not necessarily an agreement on long-term policies that will follow.
One Washington analyst, trying to understand which way President Bush is going in the Middle East, remembered this week - and not by accident - what Leon Wieseltier once said about the previous president, Bill Clinton. Clinton's main legacy, he said, is preserving Clinton's legacy.
That's the same legacy that David Halberstam described in his book by saying that when the talks at Camp David collapsed, so did Clinton's last hope to base his legacy on foreign policy successes. The failure of the past has echoed in every discussion of a renewed American attempt to play an active role in the talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It united two former National Security Advisers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, during a joint TV interview in which they agreed without any hesitation: Bush's summit initiative was an act of bravery. Success is far from certain.
But Scowcroft and Brzezinski agreed on another, more substantial matter: Both believe the U.S. must require the Israelis and Palestinians to take parallel steps to implement the road map - parallel and not staged.
No wonder that Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, and one of the hawks in the neo-conservative camp in Washington, has been worried in the last week. He calls the road map the road trap. He represents the thinking (also present) inside the administration that does not believe the manner chosen for Bush to revive the peace talks will be very successful. The administration, he says, has illusions about Abu Mazen. Gaffney thinks the road map will strengthen the assumption in the Arab world that the U.S. means to pressure Israel - and thus weaken it. And as long as the Arabs think they can weaken Israel, Gaffney believes, they'll continue using terror.
There are reasons that "illusions" get mentioned along with Abu Mazen's name (in general, they tend to refer to him by name, Mahmoud Abbas, here in Washington). Shortly after Abbas was appointed prime minister, the president himself was surprised to learn who it was. During one meeting, he gave his advisers the impression that he thought Abbas was a young, energetic revolutionary. One of the State Department officials had to explain with a smile, Mr. President, he's a 68-year-old man and has been working with Arafat his entire life.
Abbas is currently enjoying a reputation in Washington that someone called "foggy." The administration is pinning hopes on him but are ready to half admit that they still don't have a firm basis for those hopes. At best, Abbas is a riddle here.
Sharon's situation is ostensibly much better, even if he does not enjoy the enormous credibility that his predecessor Ehud Barak had in public opinion.
\A Jewish lobbyist, asked to pick the figure in the Sharon government most popular with the American public, scratched his head for almost a minute before finally coming up with the name he wanted: Natan Sharansky. That's all there is.
But the administration is coordinated with Sharon "down to the fingertips," as one person deeply familiar with the talks between Israel and the White House said, and the appreciation for Sharon has only increased since his most recent moderate statements. That same person said that the administration also has a form of illusion about Sharon. "They think they'll be able to proceed with this process successfully without ever having to clash with him on the way," he said. That's what they think, that's what they hope.
That same "they" are the powerful, decisive people in the team. The president, his vice president, and Elliot Abrams, the National Security Council official responsible for dealing with the Middle East.
Newspaper and magazine reporters are now digging into Abrams' present and past (his role in the Iran-Contras affair, for example). In many circles, he's suspect. The person now leading policy in the Israel-Palestinian issue was, from the start, opposed to the way the road map was created. He did not want the Europeans involved nor any quarrels with Sharon over the settlements. At the State department there are those who suspect that Abrams does not seriously intend to implement the Quartet plan that he opposed from day one.
People who know Vice President Richard Cheney's views say he is one of the main proponents of cooperation with Sharon. He's said to have two main motives: political and substantive. The political reason is clear: the right, particularly the Christian right, sympathizes with Israel and the president is not interested in clashing with that camp because of unnecessary pressure on Israel.
The more substantive reason is the more interesting one. Cheney has told his people the U.S. should not make things difficult for Israel by making demands for various concessions, because in the future, the U.S. might also find itself facing demands for similar concessions in the fight against terror, concessions Cheney will not want to make. If that line is ascendant in the administration in the coming months, Sharon has nothing to worry about. There won't be any heavy pressure on him.
But there are those who think that line is being eroded. Jeffrey Kemp, of the Nixon Center, believes Israel is making a mistake by emphasizing its counting on the neo-conservatives and the Christians. Kemp believes the neo-conservatives will now begin to fade. He has spotted Bush's understanding that he needs to "reconnect" with the world - signs that were evident this week in Europe. The right, Kemp believes, will vote for Bush anyway, because they have no alternative. Ultimately, the president will take a more pragmatic line. He is, after all, his father's son, says Kemp.
The decisive question, of course, is whether if he will chose, as his father did, to fight with Israeli prime minister over the settlements. There are those on his team who have their reservations about that, like Douglas Feith, from the Defense Department, who said at a meeting a few months ago that the U.S. should stop talking about the settlements "in negative terms." And, of course, there are many others who hold the more traditional view: the settlements must come down.
A person who knows the president's position said this week that he's a bit "naive" about the settlements. It's clear to him that they will be taken down, "but he doesn't fully understand why such a big deal has to be made about them now."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.