To hold peace fast, hold talks quickly

BY MARLENE NADLE
February 9, 2005

Officials in the Bush and Sharon governments have admitted they didn't do enough to keep Mahmoud Abbas from failing when he was Palestinian prime minister in 2003. They say they won't make that mistake again. Once past the handshake, the rhetoric and the cease-fire of yesterday's summit, they are doing precisely that.

The Washington-backed meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian President Abbas was only about easing the occupation, not ending it. President George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon still are stalling on final-status talks and undercutting Abbas' credibility. They still are demanding, as a precondition for negotiation, that Abbas first dismantle the militant's organizations and risk a Palestinian civil war.

Although most of the U.S. political establishment supports making an end to terrorism a precondition for progress, there is one exception. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III wrote in his December article in The New York Times, Israel should be "prepared to resume substantive negotiations. ... To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations."

It's legitimate to want an end to terrorism. Unfortunately, the two leaders don't see there are ways to defeat terrorists besides killing them. Instead of undermining Abbas, they would be better following his lead. He knows terrorism is a political problem and not just a military one.

Abbas used talks instead of bullets to get Palestinian militants to agree to a cooling of attacks in recent weeks. That agreement, more than the symbolic deployment of Palestinian security forces, has stopped the rockets from Gaza. The militants and the media have heard Abbas say he would not militarily confront what Palestinians see as the resistance.

He used politics to convince Bush and Sharon that for the cease-fire to have a chance of lasting it must be mutual. Sharon may have agreed to halt military offensives. However it is conditional and can be reversed any time. Bush is ignoring his own road map that calls for an international conflict resolution that could prevent sliding back to tit-for-tat war.

To further reduce violence, Abbas is discussing not only rockets with the Palestinians, but regular politics. He knows some militants want to be part of the power structure and is trying to co-opt them. Hamas has done well in the municipal elections and plans to participate in parliamentary elections. The militants don't exist in a vacuum and are responsive to the shift in Palestinian public opinion. In June, 26 percent said they were opposed to attacks on Israel. By December it was 51 percent. In the Palestinian elections last month, 62 percent voted for Abbas' nonviolent strategy. The number can go higher with hope. If the pragmatists emerging among the militants are brought into the government and into final-status negotiations, they would join the Palestinian people in further marginalizing the diehards.

It's those negotiations that are Abbas' fundamental political solution to violence. As the militants keep telling him, the fighting will stop when the occupation ends. He and the Europeans believe the negotiations have to be started quickly. Analysts say he has only 100 days or six months before he begins losing legitimacy with his people. Yet Bush and Sharon keep procrastinating, refusing to prove to the men with guns that negotiations can deliver a viable state and end of the occupation.

The stalling is a conscious strategy. Alon Liel, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is reported to have said Sharon is buying time so he doesn't have to negotiate before the Gaza withdrawal. Abbas fears that if negotiations aren't started before the withdrawal, they will never be started. The Israeli press supports his suspicion. There have been many articles saying Sharon's goal is to achieve a long-term interim solution that would leave the major issues unresolved and Israel in control of about 50 percent of the West Bank. Bush has given no evidence that he understands the urgency of final negotiations.

Despite yesterday's summit, Bush and Sharon are unlikely to change their doomed approach without pressure from their people. There may be a withdrawal from Gaza, but little beyond that except more preconditions about ending terrorism, building Palestinian security forces and creating democracy. Once the Palestinians realize the peace process has no clothes, Abbas' authority will tumble, the violence will resume, and the tragedy will go on.

Marlene Nadle is a journalist and associate of the Transregional Center For Democratic Studies at the New School University in New York.