Which
Sharon Will We See Next? Both, of Course
By Aluf Benn
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page B03
TEL AVIV
On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave two senior White House officials his customary VIP treatment: a helicopter sightseeing tour over the West Bank. From the air, Sharon's distinguished guests -- deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and National Security Council senior director Elliott Abrams -- could gaze at the disputed Judea and Samaria mountains, green after an exceptionally rainy winter. And they could see the interwoven landscape of Palestinian towns and villages and Jewish settlements and "outposts" on recently captured hilltops.
Sharon likes to take visitors on this trip. It's the same trip he made with then-Gov. George W. Bush in late 1998 to impress upon him Israel's small size and need for "security zones" surrounding Palestinian areas. But Sharon's office tried to keep this recent helicopter tour mum. Instead, the main news of that day was the presentation by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, who gave Sharon an official copy of the "road map," the current magic formula for ending Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and establishing a viable, peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Hadley and Abrams had come to Jerusalem on a discreet mission: to figure out where Sharon is leading Israeli policy in the wake of the Iraq war, and to assess the chances for movement on the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It remains doubtful, however, whether afterwards Hadley or Abrams could give a definitive answer to the most vexing question of Mideast peacemaking these days: What does Sharon want?
Since he took office in March 2001, the "Sharon riddle" has puzzled diplomats and commentators. Will Sharon make good on his recent talk of "painful concessions" and drag the Israeli right with him, or will he continue to rule as he has in the past, with a mixture of blunt force, agile (though not daring) domestic political maneuvers and skepticism of, if not outright contempt for, a negotiated peace with Palestinian leaders? Even senior Israeli officials sometimes admit in private that they have no idea about their prime minister's intentions.
Hadley and Abrams were curious to know Sharon's thinking now because the Bush administation is eager to defuse anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, and please British Prime Minister Tony Blair, by tackling the Palestinian question. That's somewhat easier now that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, with whom Sharon would not deal, has succumbed to pressure and appointed his longtime acolyte-turned-rival, Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) to the newly created post of prime minister.
In Israel, the normally publicity-shy Sharon has piqued interest further by launching a media campaign, in which he pledged to set his sights on peacemaking. In a series of recent interviews, Sharon had said that the war in Iraq has created an opportunity for peace with the Palestinians "that shouldn't be missed." The former paratroop commander said his last remaining ambition, at age 75, was to "bring security and peace to this people." He mentioned the moral problems of ruling other people. And he even discussed the possibility of settlement removal as part of a future peace deal. Given Sharon's record as the champion of settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza, at the heart of Palestinian population centers, this was a real bombshell.
Or was it? Sharon watchers are divided into two camps. One believes that he is "willing and able" to wage peace and that he would be reluctant to end his career without "leaving a mark on history." This group says that he could become Israel's Charles de Gaulle or Richard Nixon, and give up the occupied territories just like those leaders abandoned Algeria and Vietnam. The opposing camp asserts that Sharon is congenitally "unwilling and unable" to compromise, and that he is a cunning, unrepentent warrior in a dove's disguise.
If Sharon does move toward peace, it won't be because he is pushed. At home, he couldn't be much stronger, despite two years of violence and economic decline. Recently reelected, Sharon enjoys vast public support for whichever path he chooses. The left-wing opposition is all but nonexistent. Meanwhile Sharon's right-wing coalition partners, who resist a Palestinian state or the dismantling of the settlements, are weak; Sharon's Likud can drop the extreme right and join up with Labor Party moderates instead. There is hardly any pressure from the outside, either. Until now, at least, the Bush administration has echoed Sharon's demand that an end to Palestinian terrorism and "more pragmatic" Palestinian leaders were preconditions for any peace moves. Sharon was therefore exempted from any action, until the other side fulfilled its part.
So far, Sharon's goal has been to retain maximum freedom of action, while avoiding confrontation with Washington. To facilitate that goal, he has developed a form of diplomatic newspeak. Rather than say "no," he says "yes, but . . . ." His concessions belong to the distant future; in the short term, he puts the onus solely on the Palestinians' shoulders. Whenever Sharon has shown flexibility, it has been coated with tougher demands on his Palestinian adversaries. For example, before his 2001 election, Sharon said he was ready to establish an interim Palestinian state on 42 percent of the West Bank (the part allocated to the Palestinian Authority under the 1990s Oslo agreements). Since then, Sharon has added demands for a thorough reform in all walks of Palestinian public life, and has called on the Palestinians to waive their claim for "right of return" of the 1948 refugees to their homes in what is now Israel -- a pillar of the Palestinian national ethos, which Israel views as a synonym for its destruction. And Sharon wants that concession at the outset of negotiations, rather than at the end as part of a quid pro quo for even a limited statehood.
Reactive by nature, Sharon has avoided putting forward any Israeli peace plan, opting instead for coordination with Washington. Nevertheless, when handed others' blueprints for easing the conflict, he has managed to neutralize them without formally rejecting them. Here's how: Sharon asks for time "to study the details"; then he accepts them "as basis for discussion" and suggests "comments and corrections." If the plan survives this stage, Sharon delays implementation until the Palestinians meet ever-tougher tests. This dismantling mechanism has been applied to the Jordan-Egypt initiative, the Mitchell Report, the Saudi initiative and now to the road map. The only program accepted by Sharon, and only "in principle," has been the Bush speech of June 24, 2002, in which the president laid out his "two-state vision" for resolving the conflict and called for a new Palestinian leadership.
When presented with the road map last October, Sharon appointed an interagency team headed by his chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, to draft comments aimed at "making the road map consistent with Bush's June 24 speech." The resulting document proposed more than 100 corrections, divided into 15 major groupings, to a road map that was only seven pages long.
These maneuvers have created a disconnect between diplomacy and reality. On the rhetorical level, much progress has been made under Bush and Sharon. The road map goes further than Oslo in its firm commitment for Palestinian independence. But as diplomats engage in quasi-theological debates over "sequential or parallel steps" by both sides, the reality on the ground has deteriorated.
The underlying problem of Mideast peacemaking is that the maximum offer of each side fails to satisfy the minimum demands of the other. Realizing that, Bush has accepted Sharon's idea for a three-stage process: a cease-fire and resumption of security; creation of a Palestinian state in interim borders; and at last, a final-status deal. Sharon has convinced Bush to accept his "performance-based" approach, which conditions any progress on the fulfillment of previous commitments. This concept is written into the road map and frees Sharon from dreaded timetables. Nevertheless, the plan also calls for a freeze of Israeli settlement construction and the dismantling of "outposts" erected since 2001. So far, Sharon has avoided the freeze decision and paid merely lip service to removing "illegal outposts." A settlement freeze, and the inevitable confrontation with his traditional allies in the settler movement, could serve as the litmus test of the Israeli leader's intentions.
So where is he going? Most likely, nowhere. A final status agreement, with the delicate issues of the future of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, appears beyond reasonable expectation. Sharon might agree to a small Palestinian state, cordoned off by Israeli settlements and checkpoints, whose borders will remain disputed with Israel. At a more reasonable minimum, the road map could aim to restore the pre-intifada security environment, with a Palestinian crackdown on terrorism and an Israeli withdrawal and outpost removal. Even this would be difficult to achieve, though, given the total lack of mutual confidence.
To a large extent, Sharon has been freed from any real dilemmas by the absence of a serious Palestinian counterpart. With the elevation of Abu Mazen, a different Sharon might seize the opportunity to alter the tone of Israeli-Palestinian relations or make a gesture of reconciliation. The Sharon we know, however, will wait for Abu Mazen to fail and for U.S. attention to wander. And Israelis and Palestinians will continue down the well-trodden road. From above in the helicopter, maybe it will be clearer where that leads.
Aluf Benn is the diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.