OxBlog

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

# Posted 10:17 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHAT'S NEW HERE, EXACTLY? No question about it, this morning's Bush-Sharon press-conference is the top story of the day. But why, exactly? If you get your news from the WaPo or NYT, the answer to that question is far from self-evident. Both papers' headlines focus on Bush's support for Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip unilaterally. So? Why does Sharon need Bush's support to make concessions to the Palestinians? Halfway through its cover story, the NYT provides a cryptic answer to that question:
The United States' support is expected to strengthen [Sharon] at home, and help him push his disengagement proposal through a binding vote by his Likud party on May 2.
Those familiar with the details of the peace process will recognize that the May 2 vote represents an effort by Sharon to overcome the opposition of Likud hard-liners to making any sort of unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. In other words, Sharon is investing a good amount of political capital in an effort to give up land to the Palestinians and Bush is investing political capital in an effort to support Sharon.

Of course, casual readers of the NYT would have a hard time figuring out that that is what they President and the Prime Minister are trying to do. Readers of the WaPo wouldn't have any idea at all about what's going on, since the WaPo cover story doesn't even mention the May 2 vote.

Now, if you focus on the text of the NYT and WaPo articles rather than the headlines, you get a better idea of the point that those papers' correspondents are trying to make. The first sentence in the Times tells its readers that
President Bush, in a significant shift in American policy, told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today that the United States would not object if Israel retained some West Bank settlements under a future peace accord.
According to the second paragraph in the WaPo's version of the story,
In an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and in an exchange of letters to be made public later today, Bush accepted essentially all of what the Israeli leader had sought. The move substantially changes U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, softening the American objection to Israel's settlements and dropping a reluctance to dictate terms of a final peace settlement.
In other words, today's big story is that Bush is damaging the peace process by publicly endorsing -- for the first time ever -- the most unreasonable of Israeli demands. In case this message wasn't clear, the NYT reports that
The [American] announcement seemed sure to anger many Arabs and Muslims, many of them already deeply resentful of the United States occupation of Iraq. [If I were less generous, I might describe this reference to Iraq as entirely gratuitous. --ed.]

Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, issued a powerful denunciation, saying, according to Reuters, "Bush is the first U.S. president to give legitimacy to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. We reject this."

Earlier today, anticipating the administration's action, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a statement that such an accord "means clearly the complete end of the peace process."
That's funny. I thought that the "complete end of the peace process" was when Arafat walked away from the negotiations at Taba in December 2000 and ordered a merciless assault on Israeli civilians that continues to this day. Now, given that both the NYT and WaPo describe Bush's new position on the peace process as a major innovation, you'd think that they would at least have the decency to compare his position with the one that Clinton endorsed at Taba. After all, how else can you figure out what's changed?

Well, FYI, Arafat walked away from Taba because neither Clinton nor Barak considered the Palestinians' Right of Return to be legitimate. The bottom line is that letting millions of Palestinians settle inside the Green Line is an invitation to civil war. Clinton and Barak also negotiated some marginal territorial concessions in order to bring as many Israeli settlers as possible inside the boundaries of Israel proper. Nonetheless, Clinton and Barak offered Arafat more than 90% of the occupied territories as a Palestinian state. As the NYT correctly states halfway through its coverage, Bush's position represents a
Clear shift from a longtime United States position that issues such as borders, the "right of return" for refugees and the status of Jerusalem be resolved in final-status talks.
In other words, what's changed isn't the substance of the American position but the articulation of it. But when it comes to diplomacy, articulation matters. That's why today's announcement really is a big story. By staking out a clear position in advance of final-status talks, Bush is essentially saying that important aspects of Israel's demands are simply non-negotiable. If the Palestinians negotiators accept those demands, they will now come across as giving in to American pressure rather than compromising in the name of peace. Thus, if you think that only a negotiated accord can end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then Bush and Sharon really have thrown a wrench in the works. Clearly, that is the premise on which the NYT and WaPo correspondents are operating.

But there is another premise out there which also deserves a fair hearing: that a negotiated settlement is no longer possible and that Israel simply has to find the best way to let go of the occupied territories. That is why Sharon wants to pull out of Gaza. That is why he is building a massive wall to separate Israel from the West Bank. While one can argue that good fences don't make good neighbors, a strong majority of Israeli voters have taken Sharon's side on this one. Interestingly, Bush said that
the security fence Israel is erecting to separate part of the Palestinian territories "should be temporary rather than permanent, and therefore not prejudice any final status issues, including final borders."
In other words, Bush has no intention of letting Sharon use the wall to define the borders of a future Palestinian state. That message doesn't really come across in either the NYT or WaPo, which both cite Bush's statement but don't explain its significance. In fact, the WaPo follows it up by writing that
Bush's stance in favor of Sharon's policy of "disengagement" and promise that Israel need not return to its pre-1967 borders has the potential to further inflame relations between the United States and the Arab world. Although Arab states are opposed to the security fence, they have urged Bush not to allow Israel to use its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza to mean that it will keep its position in the West Bank.
That last sentence makes it seem that Bush actually is going to let Sharon use the wall to draw Palestine's broders. What it would be fair to say is that even if Bush describes the wall as temporary, what difference does that make if there is no prospect for peace talks that would enable Israel to remove the wall? Thus, I am very concerned that Bush has given Sharon an implicit green light to force an unfair settlement on the Palestinians.

As this excellent article in Foreign Affairs [subscription required] points out, there are multiple paths that the security wall might take. Some of them bring an overwhelming majority of the settlers into Israel proper without expropriating more than a small amount of Palestinian land. If such a path were followed, the wall would have the basic effect of imposing the Taba agreement on the Palestinians. However, there are Israeli hawks who want to use the wall to punish the Palestians by carving up their state and surrounding it with Israeli territory. That is a recipe for conflict and that is what the NYT and WaPo should be focusing on.
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