Madison-Rafah Journal

By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

Is the ice cracking in the long-frozen Middle East peace process? Is a thaw on the way? At a meeting with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN last week, US President George W. Bush reaffirmed his "vision" of an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will soon be heading for the Middle East, presumably to explore how to get things moving.

The Bush administration seems to be awakening from its six-year stupor regarding the Arab-Israeli peace process. It may even have begun to recognise the limits of military power and to be considering the possible merits of dialogue, not only between Israelis and Palestinians but even between the United States itself and Iran.

But that is as far as it goes: talks about talks. There is still no hint that America is prepared to use real muscle to bring about a settlement.

Hopes are still alive

In European and Arab capitals, hopes are still alive if only just that Fatah and Hamas may eventually bury the hatchet and form a national unity government, which will agree to renounce violence, accept past agreements and if not explicitly, then at least implicitly recognise Israel, thus meeting the main demands of the international community.

A flurry of other signals seems to suggest that something is afoot. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, under attack at home and abroad for joining America's war on Iraq and condoning Israel's war on Lebanon, has again declared that his priority is to secure an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. However, as he has done little to advance this goal in nearly a decade in office, his latest statement has about as much value as a deathbed confession.

Another small sign of movement is the Quartet's invitation to former World Bank president James Wolfensohn to return to the Palestinian territories to oversee the disbursement of international aid which, it is suggested, might soon be renewed.

Wolfensohn, it will be recalled, resigned from the job earlier in the year in protest at the suspension of aid following the Hamas victory at last January's elections.

Alarmed by the real possibility of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, the European Union has now agreed to provide emergency funds for a further three months, while Israel has come under some pressure, including from the US, to release $500 million of Palestinian tax money it has impounded.

Meanwhile, prominent voices continue to call for a return to the negotiating table. A recent appeal has come from Gareth Evans, president of the influential International Crisis Group.

Writing in The Financial Times of London on September 20, Evans with considerable courage called on Israel and the Quartet to accept the leadership chosen by the Palestinians as a "legitimate partner". Hamas, he wrote, "has earned the democratic right to a place in government".

Going to the heart of the matter, he urged Israel to exercise reciprocity to honour agreements such as the roadmap, to transfer tax revenues, to end assassinations, incursions and bombardment, and to resume bilateral negotiations in good faith.

This is where all current attempts to revive the peace process break down. The Israeli government led by Ehud Olmert is not ready to enter into serious talks with the Palestinians. Indeed, it will do everything to avoid them, including mobilising its powerful friends in the United States against any such initiative.

To escape pressure from the international community, Olmert might agree to meet Mahmoud Abbas, but that is as far as he is likely to go.

As a result of the fiasco in Lebanon, the Olmert government may not survive. But even if it does, it is politically too weak to contemplate a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians which, in any event, runs counter to its ideology and to the wishes of most of its members.

Rather than contemplating a return to anything like the 1967 borders a central demand of the so-called Palestinian Prisoners' document and of the Arab peace initiative of March 2002, Israel continues its relentless expansion into Palestinian territory.

Authorised construction

To cite a single example among many, earlier this month Olmert authorised construction bids for another 690 homes in the Maaleh Adumim and Betar Illit colonies, which threaten to cut off Arab East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The United States made a pro forma objection to which Israel paid not the slightest notice.

The truth is that the Bush administration is far from ready to throw its weight behind an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Influenced by pro-Israeli neocons, it has on the contrary played down the importance or the urgency of such a settlement. Above all, it has never publicly recognised that the hostility and the terrorist threat it faces in the Arab and Muslim world is largely a result of its Palestine policy.

On the contrary, the neocon argument is that Arab anger at the US has nothing to do with America's support for Israel but is a product of backward Arab societies, of their violent culture and fanatical religion.

To be safe, so the neocon argument goes, the US must reform Arab societies, if necessary by force. Little wonder that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict has slipped a long way down the list of America's national priorities.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.