Bush Indulgence May Lose Israel's Best Chance for Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

At the end of George Bush's first hundred days as president, critics complained that he had yet to formulate clear positions on a number of foreign policy issues. When it comes to the Middle East, however, the critics should take a second look.

Despite their sometimes contradictory statements, Bush administration officials have given clear evidence that they do have a definite policy toward the area. They have opted to do nothing to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict other than urging both sides to reduce tensions and begin negotiating.

Given the overwhelming disparity of power between Israel and the Palestinians under occupation, the effect of this hands-off approach is to support Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's short-run tactics of buying time to consolidate Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In the long run, however, it may cost the Jewish state its best chance for peace with its Arab neighbors and acceptance by the Islamic world.

To the Bush administration, its policy has the advantage of avoiding clashes with US supporters of Israel in Congress and the media, preventing humiliating rebuffs from either side and, as long as it is accompanied by enough talk of peace, keeping both sides friendly to the United States. Moreover, there is no feeling of urgency among US officials, since they no longer consider the Middle East central to national security interests.

The Bush administration gave clear signals from the beginning that it intended to put the Middle East on a back burner. At his confirmation hearings in January, Secretary of State James Baker told a Senate committee: "We ought to be realistic about the prospects for achieving a breakthrough ... There has been no more intractable foreign policy problem facing us for a long time , " He wasn't asked to explain why the Middle East issue is more "intractable" than, say, Namibia or Afghanistan, or, for that matter, Panama under General Noriega.

In mid-February, Baker turned down a request by members of the European Community for a US peace initiative. At a meeting in The Hague on February 16, Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van Broek told Baker that the foreign ministers of Spain, France, and Greece had met with key Arab and Israeli leaders and had concluded that prospects were good for negotiating a breakthrough if the US took the lead.

Baker rebuffed the suggestion saying, "The risk would be greater in taking precipitous action than it would in waiting a while, analyzing the situation, working in the ground carefully, tilling the ground, and making sure that when you do go in there you have some reasonable prospect of success." He specifically rejected the idea of an international peace conference, which the Europeans have advocated since 1980.

Following Baker's lead, State Department officials have offered encouraging statements to both sides, without committing the United States to any action. In March they asked the Palestinians to "end all violence against Israeli soldiers or civilians inside or outside Israel:' and even to stop distributing " inflammatory leaflets." In return, the US officials suggested that Israel reopen Palestinian schools and withdraw troops from heavily populated areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Not surprisingly, both sides rejected these suggestions.

When Foreign Minister Moshe Arens came to Washington later in March, Baker urged Israel to begin discussions with the Palestinians for a "final settlement" but he did not specify any actions Israel should take to reduce tensions in the occupied territories. On April 3, Bush told visiting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that "Egypt and the United States share the goals of security for Israel, the end of occupation, and achievement of Palestinian political rights." But four days later he assured Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that "We do not support an independent Palestinian state."

Shamir's visit to Washington ended in a double triumph for supporters of Israel's hard-line strategy. Bush endorsed Shamir's proposal for Palestinian elections to choose negotiators for an autonomy arrangement, and he agreed with Israeli officials that "the road ahead was long and slow." As one Israeli said after the visit, "It is clear the United States has decided to walk with us."

The walk promises to be at a snail's pace. The Bush administration must be aware that Shamir's plan is a nonstarter. The Palestinians rejected the Camp David autonomy plan in 1979 because it was obvious that the Menachem Begin government, which was accelerating West Bank settlement, had no intention of ever agreeing to Palestinian self-determination. Now that more than 65,000 Israelis live in the occupied territories and Shamir labels the Palestinians "brutal, wild, alien invaders in the land of Israel," the idea of autonomy as a step toward independence has even less credibility.

In any case, elections held under the guns of Israeli soldiers and under Israeli rules would be nothing more than a sham, especially since Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned that any candidate who identifies with the PLO will be arrested. Despite these obstacles, Bush told a press conference on April 7 that "I think the answer is to get on with the elections." On April 28 the New York Times reported that administration officials see elections as "the only realistic option ' " They dismiss Palestinian objections as "background noise."

For Shamir this US reaction to his visit was a bonanza. According to a column in the Jerusalem Post by Arye Naor, a government secretary under Begin, Shamir had avoided confrontation with the Bush administration and, in proposing a solution, had shown he was not a "nay-sayer." Now, Naor predicts, Shamir will stand firm against any pressure to modify his proposal and will encourage Israeli politicians and election experts to study its details for as long as possible. "Gaining time and more time—that is the name of the game," Naor writes. "That is a tactic of which Shamir is a proven master. . . Feeling his hands are realistically free, he will avoid any change in the status quo."

Another former Begin associate, Yaron Ezrachi of Hebrew University, echoed Naor when he told a San Francisco Examiner reporter, "Shamir is interested in gaining time, and, if possible producing a Palestinian leadership that is impotent."

The Bush administration' s emphasis on the difficulty of the Middle East problem and the need for more time to solve it provides vital support for Shamir's waiting game. But what does this policy of delay mean for Palestinians, who have already waited for 41 years as refugees and for 22 years under military occupation?

Since Shamir's successful trip to Washington, violence by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army has escalated. On April 26, leaders of the five major Christian denominations in Jerusalem denounced Israel's "excessive use of force" and "unprovoked harassment" of Palestinians. On April 13, after Israeli troop killed five residents of Nahalin in a predawn raid, the International Red Cross accused the army of "firing without discrimination and without restraint.' As if the daily confrontations between heavily armed soldiers and stone throwing youths weren't cruel enough, Defense Minister Rabin warned on April 30 that the army might take "harsher measures" unless the Palestinians accept Shamir's offer of elections.

The 18-month-old intifada is by all accounts irreversible. But Rabin's warning suggests that Israel is prepared to escalate its repression indefinitely, confident that the Bush administration won't protest.

This Bush wait-and-see policy could undermine the Middle East peace process. In a recent interview, PLO official Bassum Abu Sharif said that Yasser Arafat had only a year to produce results before opposition begins to rise against him. A New Yorker report from Tunis, where the PLO and the US are hold in discussions, commented that the Palestinians felt a sense of urgency base on the feeling that "the intifada had created a unique moment, which had to be seized or lost." If the PLO's moderate leadership fails and is replaced Israel may never again be offered as favorable an opportunity to achieve a just and secure peace as it has today.

This Bush wait-and-see policy could undermine the Middle East peace process. In a recent interview, PLO official Bassani Abu Sharif said that Yasse support to the Shamir government, which opposes any change in the status quo. The waiting game condemns the Palestinians to ever greater suffering in the immediate future, but in the end US reluctance to get the peace process moving could prove equally disastrous to both Israelis and Palestinians who must live together or perish together.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA. She is a member of New Jewish Agenda and writes frequently on the Middle East.