The Bush administration begins a new round of high-level Middle East diplomacy this week at odds with virtually all of its partners in the peace process, including Arab and European allies who are hoping for an evolution in U.S. policy away from the hard lines enunciated in President Bush's most recent speech on the subject.
Arab leaders, who felt blindsided by Bush's June 24 call for new Palestinian leadership as a prerequisite to political negotiations, along with his decision not to press Israel to lift harsh military restrictions in Palestinian territories, gathered in Cairo on Friday in advance of a Tuesday meeting in New York between the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and top European and U.N. diplomats.
Although reluctant to start an overt fight they are unlikely to win, senior Arab officials said they hope to convince the administration that there are physical and political limits to Palestinian reform in the absence of reciprocal Israeli movement.
Their strategy, the officials said, is to applaud Bush's call for Palestinian statehood within three years and to push for a realistic assessment of what is necessary to achieve it. New Palestinian leadership, for example, requires elections. But elections cannot be organized or held, they said, while Palestinians are confined to their homes under military occupation and curfews.
"We want to talk . . . about the mechanisms to move from now to the endgame," said Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher. "We want a plan, a schedule, and benchmarks for all sides," including Israel.
A senior Bush administration official said that the White House "fully recognizes that . . . the restriction on freedom of movement . . . is an impediment to reform in a lot of areas." In its view, however, there are things the Palestinians can do in the absence of Israeli withdrawal, including in the financial area.
"At a certain point, in order for things to move forward, the Israelis have to move," the official agreed. But Israel must be the sole judge of its defense requirements, he said, and "ultimately, Israel makes decisions about Israeli actions."
Little that the administration has said or done in the three weeks since Bush's speech has assuaged their concerns that he sees the peace process, for the moment at least, as a series of one-sided demands on the Palestinians, European and Arab officials said. Although diplomatic efforts should focus on political reform, greater security and economic aid, they believe, the continued Israeli occupation has made progress difficult on all but the economic front.
At this week's meetings, officials said, Powell will seek support for a step-by-step "action plan" for Palestinian reform, which began in earnest last week with the formation of an international task force that started restructuring the Palestinian Authority's financial operations. "What we're looking for the meetings in New York to do," the administration official said, "is to bless that effort and to give momentum to seeing it through."
In addition to Powell, the Tuesday meeting will include U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, representatives of the Middle East "quartet" established in Madrid last May to facilitate the peace process. The Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers will join them later in the day and then travel to Washington, along with Saudi Arabian Prince Saud Faisal, for bilateral and group meetings with Powell on Wednesday.
The most controversial part of Bush's June 24 framework was his call for a change in Palestinian leadership, including the ouster of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Although Europeans, the United Nations and Arabs alike questioned how the United States could insist on a democratically elected Palestinian government while saying in advance that certain outcomes were unacceptable, there appears to be tacit agreement on all sides to set the Arafat issue aside for the moment.
"It's not that we're stupid, it's not that we haven't noticed that there are certain difficulties with the president's speech," a non-U.S. source said. "But I don't think there's any mileage in having a meeting with a collision head on."
"It's not unfair to say there is a certain amount of disagreement" on the Arafat issue, the administration official said. "For the moment with some of our partners, we'll agree to disagree on some issues."
Arafat wrote last week to Powell and other diplomats who will attend the New York meetings, arguing that Palestinians already have made strides in implementing reforms demanded by Bush but are now stymied by the continued presense of Israeli troops in Palestinian areas, according to Palestinian envoy Hassan Abdel Rahman.
At a news conference last week, Bush passed up an opportunity to press the Israelis to pull back from the West Bank, saying occupation was justified until "security improves." But Edward S. Walker Jr., a former top State Department official for Middle Eastern affairs, said many diplomats believe "there is really no way to get from point A to point B as long as the occupation continues."
The administration has said it understands and agrees with deep Arab and U.N. concern about a growing humanitarian crisis in Palestinian areas, where malnutrition among young children and poverty are soaring, according to a recent U.S. assessment, and where Palestinian inability to travel to workplaces has driven unemployment up to 75 percent in some areas. For this reason, and to allow political reforms to develop, the Arabs argue, pressure is now required on the Israelis to step back from the West Bank occupation.
Although Israel has moved in recent days to ease curfew restrictions and lessen troop presence in some West Bank areas, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made clear no withdrawal is planned. "In the three weeks since we entered" the West Bank with military force, "there have been no suicide bombers," a senior government official in Sharon's Likud Party said in Washington last week. "It seems that we will have to be there for quite a long time."
In the perceived absence of specifics in Bush's plan, other players have moved in recent days to fill in the blanks. The Danish government, in its role as current European Union head, and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer unveiled step-by-step plans for Palestinian and Israeli actions that would lead to full statehood before the three-year deadline set by Bush.
Powell has said repeatedly since Bush's speech that he is on board with the president's insistence that Palestinian reforms must come first. But most U.S. partners in the peace process believe that the administration remains deeply divided over how to proceed, with Powell more on their side than on Bush's.
"They want to put forth a strategy which they hope to work in favor of a moderate State Department interpretation of the Bush proposal," said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland specialist in Middle East politics.
The Arab leaders have much at stake in altering the U.S. position. The governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt believe that their close consultations with the administration have put them "out on a limb," in terms of their own domestic politics, as another senior Arab official put it. They had been assured by Powell, officials said, that their views would be reflected in the long-awaited Bush plan, which was announced June 24.
Although their initial public reaction to the plan was muted, the Arabs were privately fuming. Their irritation grew when expected clarifications were not forthcoming and when Powell canceled a planned trip to the region.
Even before pressing Israel to lift curfews and end the occupation, U.S. partners are looking for the administration to put teeth in its appeal to Israel to hand over more than $600 million in frozen export tax receipts that belong to the Palestinians.
Israel has refused to make any money available to Arafat's Palestinian Authority, saying that it has proof the funds are used to support terrorist groups. The administration, however, fears that those groups, which have other sources of income, will use their own social service network to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians and thus gain popular support.
The Arabs say their mission next week is clear. "We are very focused on the two issues . . . the endgame and the time frame," Muasher said. "The president alluded to both, but in ways that are not yet very clear to us. We insist on the endgame, we insist on the time frame."
But for their part, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia are seeking at minimum a reiteration of the goals the quartet set at its initial meeting with Powell last May. This includes the establishment of a "political horizon" for the Palestinians and an emphasis, however nonspecific it ends up being, on parallel progress by Palestinians and Israelis toward that goal.
"The name of the game at the quartet is to try to reaffirm" the statehood Bush called for, and "to try and be more practical, to operationalize the president's speech," said a non-U.S. quartet diplomat. "To say, yes, these are the goals, how do you get there, and to accept this is going to require action by both sides, and not just by one."
Achieving Israeli withdrawal will require U.S. participation, he said. "We'll see on Tuesday whether there's been any evolution in the U.S. position."
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