Condi, Stay Home
First, do no harm. Policymakers ought to swear the oath Hippocrates suggested in his Epidemics, taken in some form or other by physicians ever since. More harm and no good at all has come from the Middle East interventions of Secretary of State Condi Rice. She has been promoting an Israeli-Palestinian "political horizon"-the latest euphemism for a comprehensive agreement. It sounds fine, but it has no relationship to the realities on the ground; in fact, it merely perpetuates a harmful illusion.
Look at the benchmarks of her plan. Dates are to be set for providing arms, ammunition, and equipment to the Palestinian Authority security forces in an "immediate and ongoing manner"; PA bus and truck convoys are to shuttle between Gaza and PA-controlled areas of the West Bank; security roadblocks are to be removed in key West Bank areas; the operating hours of the major Gaza border crossing are to be extended.
The Israelis have objected. Why? Three good reasons. One, when weapons have gone to the PA forces, they have been used to attack not the terrorists, as intended, but the Israelis. Two, the "safe passage" for Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza would simply make it easy for militants to pass Kassam rocket-building and know-how to the West Bank, with dire consequences for Israel. Three, the removal of the roadblocks-especially around Nablus, a center of terrorism-would just make it harder to apprehend killers and easier for them to kill. First, do no harm.
Two strikes. A little humility might be in order by now since the Bush administration has already twice gotten it grievously wrong. Both Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon advised that Hamas should not be allowed to take part in the election of '06 since Hamas had no intention of running a normal democracy but simply wanted to exploit Gaza as a base for a two-front war-one against Israel, the second against Palestinians loyal to Fatah. Condi Rice thought she knew better. Ditto with Israeli objections to turning over the strip of land between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphia corridor. Her insistence has simply enabled Hamas to import tons of ammunition. Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists move freely between Gaza and Egypt, and from there to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran for training. First, do no harm.
The Mecca agreement was supposed to yield a unified Hamas-Fatah government. But Hamas never intended to end its terrorism, as Abbas hoped. The Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, was clear: "Terrorism will continue." Hamas continues to manufacture huge amounts of weapons and continues to launch Kassam rockets into Israel on a daily basis. Its killers continue to infiltrate, especially through the 165-mile border between Sinai and Israel. And it continues to make war on Fatah, too.
Witness the chaos in Gaza, where power still comes from the barrel of the gun. Hamas militants set fire to the PA security chief's home and fired mortars at Abbas's own compound. Gunmen in ski masks take up positions in the streets while terrified residents huddle in their homes; combatants kidnap rivals and set up roadblocks; militants take over the high-rise rooftops and often fire randomly into crowded residential areas. In recent weeks, scores of Palestinians have been killed, hundreds have been wounded, and the neutral minister of security has quit. Abbas canceled his recent peacemaking trip to Gaza when he was warned Hamas was planning to assassinate him. No initiative, no summit, no declaration can end the Palestinians' instinct for self-destruction.
Meanwhile, Abbas dithers, saying nothing. No wonder Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that Abbas could not even return a bike that the Palestinians stole from one of the neighborhoods in Jerusalem. How on earth does Condi Rice expect the Israeli prime minister to talk to Abbas about a final status agreement?
The Bush administration wants someone to make an agreement with-and there isn't anybody. Nobody on the Palestinian side, for sure. And not on the Israeli side either, given the new chaos in Gaza.
Only the Arab countries-Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan-can provide enough cover and pressure for the Palestinians to make an agreement, but they don't want to. The Saudis prefer to look as if they want peace, rather than working to achieve it. And nobody is focusing on the fact that any agreement with Israel must now be endorsed by a refashioned Palestinian Liberation Organization through a popular referendum, held not only in the PA region but also among the refugee populations in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
Forget any possibility of an agreement. The "political horizon" Rice sees is a mirage of her own making, an effort that is bound to stall, diminishing American prestige and credibility. The best advice for the moment is that once given to the overly peripatetic Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: Don't just do something-stand there!
This story appears in the May 28, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.