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All roads to a better future lead through Palestine

The Daily Star, 4/16/03

No one who understands such matters had any doubts that once the United States led an invasion of Iraq, the former would prevail. What remains to be seen is whether US President George W. Bush is willing to invest the same amounts of effort, money, time, and politico-diplomatic capital in a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has enough advisers to know by now that whatever goals have been achieved in Iraq will not matter very much or for very long unless he unties the Gordian knot at the core of the region’s problems: Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is said to be whispering all the right things in Bush’s ear, but that is no guarantee that the latter has either the wisdom to accept the advice or the courage to implement it. The first indication of how committed the United States is will come when the long-delayed “road map” to peace is finally made public. Ostensibly authored by the international “Quartet” of mediators (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), that document will be carefully perused to determine just how much of it was rewritten by the Americans at Israeli insistence. Should the proposal turn out to be one calculated to elicit an automatic Palestinian rejection, the entire Middle East will be sentenced anew to more frustration, more tension and more violence.
What Bush and his brain trust need to understand is that the peace process cannot be successful so long as elements on one or both sides have the ability to veto any hint of progress. It is not just the obvious gore wrought by Palestinian suicide bombers that has stymied efforts at reconciliation. Israel has contributed to the same obstructionism with tactics whose number and cynicism are matched only by their breathtaking temerity: Reoccupation, assassinations, home demolitions, settlements, curfews and closures are just a few of the measures that have assailed the peace process just as directly as anything carried out by Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The real test of the Bush administration’s policies in the Middle East has yet to take place, and it has nothing to do with the overthrow of a Third World tyranny by the most powerful military ever assembled. Washington’s plans for the region will sink or swim in Palestine and nowhere else. That is where the eyes of the international community are focused and where all Arabs look for indications of US intentions.
The riddle is not insoluble, but the damage incurred by failing to act now will be irreparable. Bush need not demand that Ariel Sharon throw open his arsenal of banned weapons or decamp with his sons within 48 hours, gratifying though such ultimatums would be. Instead, all he has to do is convince the Israeli prime minister to abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions. The two sides have been close to an agreement before, and they can get there again but only if and when the United States establishes beyond any doubt that it will accept no other result.
The beauty of the Palestinian issue is that an equitable agreement can help further a host of worthwhile objectives across the region, including genuine democratization, economic growth, open markets and increased stability. The unfortunate corollary to this capacity for good, however, is an unstoppable propensity to block these and other ambitions if the status quo is allowed to persist. The choice of which route to follow is Bush’s for the taking.

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