The Siren Song of Peace
Belatedly, Rice embraces Israeli-Palestinian talks
Jerusalem—It is an administration that once banished the term "peace process" and poured scorn on holding meetings for their own sake. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's intensive shuttle diplomacy last week has sealed a decisive turnaround from the Bush administration's past aloofness from Middle East peacemaking. Suddenly, in the final quarter of the administration's lifespan, lack of activism is no longer an issue. Visiting the region monthly of late, Rice is behaving like a convert to the idea that American secretaries of state need to search for peace in the Holy Land. Not a grand risk-taker by instinct, Rice is now pinning much of her legacy on netting tangible progress toward that ever-elusive comprehensive peace in the Mideast. Hers is not a wager for the faint of heart.
Last week, she received a modest—if essential—payout for her recent efforts: an agreement between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to meet every other week for confidence-building talks on humanitarian, security, and even political issues. The discussions will cover such topics as shoring up a ceasefire, stopping Palestinian arms smuggling, and easing the barriers to movement that Palestinians face at Israeli border crossings. "I'm delighted that they are going to talk, and they're going to talk often," an evidently pleased Rice announced here.
Rice had lobbied for another welcome development last week: the reaffirmation of an Arab League peace-for-land proposal that—though mostly ignored by the administration when first issued in 2002—is now touted as a signal of Arab receptivity to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that would lead to recognition of Israel. Despite its deal-breaker call for the return of Palestinian refugees and Israel's pullback to pre-1967 borders, the plan is getting a mostly polite reaction from once dismissive Israeli officials, who hope it will bring direct contacts between Israel and key Arab states.
But at the core of Rice's energetic mediation lies a paradox: U.S. activism has returned, arguably, at one of the least propitious moments for peacemaking in recent years.
The radical Hamas movement (which rejects past accords with Israel) dominates the new Palestinian "unity" government, leaving Fatah chief Abbas with limited authority. Hamas, an Islamist movement, has killed more than 200 Israelis in terrorist attacks. The United States and the European Union refuse to talk with or send humanitarian aid to it until it accedes to three demands: renounce terrorism, recognize Israel, and accept past peace agreements, including the U.S.-authored "roadmap" that envisions an independent Palestine at peace with Israel.
Hamas has done none of those things, though a politically weakened Abbas cut the power-sharing deal with it in hopes of halting fighting between Hamas and Fatah, a secular and nationalist group.
And these are tough times also for Olmert, assailed for Israel's poor military performance in last summer's Lebanon war and for corruption scandals touching key officials around him. His popularity has fallen to single digits.
And, finally, there is the problem of America's standing, diminished in Arab eyes by chaos in Iraq and by uneven pressures on authoritarian Arab states to democratize. Bush's closeness with Israel and earlier reluctance to embrace a peace process have ingrained Arab doubts. The possible lost opportunities, in this view, include the fleeting moment when the administration was riding high after the Iraq invasion and the period between Yasser Arafat's death and Hamas's electoral win. "It's definitely too little, too late," worries an Arab official friendly to the United States. "This administration has not lived up to its responsibility in advancing the peace process."
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