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| Author: | Henry Siegman, Former Senior Fellow and Director for the U.S./Middle East Project, Council on Foreign Relations |
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June 21, 2005
International Herald Tribune
For the most part, both supporters and detractors of President George W. Bush's handling of the Middle East peace process missed the significant change in U.S. policy - at least on the rhetorical level - expressed by Bush when he met with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, at the White House on May 26.
In a press conference, Bush declared that it is U.S. policy that permanent-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must begin at the 1949 armistice line, popularly referred to as the pre-1967 border or the Green Line. He stated explicitly that no changes can be made in this border without Palestinian agreement. "This is the position of the United States today, and it will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations," he said.
Bush also called on Israel "not to undertake activities that contravene road map obligations or prejudice final status negotiations." It was the first time that he applied that stricture specifically to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is doing his best to preclude the possibility that any part of the city will belong to a future Palestinian state.
At his Texas ranch in April last year, Bush had given the Israeli prime minister a letter whose contents were construed by Sharon - and by most everyone else - as an American assurance that "new Israeli population centers" in the West Bank will remain with Israel, whether Palestinians like it or not.
For Palestinians, this meant that even if they were to comply with all of the obligations imposed by the road map - including the "dismantling of terrorist infrastructure" - they would still not achieve a viable Palestinian state, since the West Bank settlements destroy the territorial contiguity that defines "viability." The settlements' locations were planned by Sharon with that goal in mind.
The president's statement to Abbas that no such annexations can take place without the consent of both parties was therefore an explicit rejection of Sharon's construction of Bush's letter of April 14, 2004.
Bush's clarification of U.S. policy on unilateral territorial changes by Israel followed a similar clarification on May 25 this year by the European Council, which declared that the "European Union will not recognize any change to the pre-1967 borders other than those arrived at by agreement between the parties." In effect, EU heads of state rejected what was believed to be Bush's acceptance of unilateral territorial changes created by the settlements.
Critics of Bush's handling of the peace process dismiss the significance of the president's May 26 speech at the White House, on two grounds. First, they believe there was nothing new in it, since Bush had already mentioned in his letter to Sharon the need for "agreement between the parties to changes in the 1949 armistice line." Second, because Bush has never been prepared to use his political capital to put pressure on Israel to comply with its obligations under the road map, they do not believe that he will do so in the future.
While it is true that Bush used similar language in his letter to Sharon and at his White House meeting with Abbas, the different contexts had quite different implications. Given that Bush's letter to Sharon emphasized the likely irreversibility of certain "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers," it was easy for Sharon to insist that the letter's message to the Palestinians was "Get used to it, the settlements are here to stay."
The emphasis of Bush's speech a year later, however, was on the unacceptability of unilateral Israeli measures. Now the message was addressed to Israel: "Get used to it, changes in the 1949 armistice line can only be made with Palestinian agreement."
Unfortunately, Bush's responses to reporters' questions after his White House meeting with Abbas seemed both to justify the skepticism of detractors who say that he will not implement his rhetoric, and to undermine whatever confidence Palestinians might have had in his statement opposing Israeli unilateralism. Bush implied that Palestinians would have to transform the economic disaster and political chaos in Gaza into a model of democracy, good government and prosperity before he will lean on Israel to stop stealing Palestinian lands for its settlements and to start permanent status talks.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to allow Bush and his administration to distance themselves from the president's important confirmation of the inadmissibility of Sharon's unilateral changes in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Instead, Bush should be unrelentingly held to his latest statement of U.S. policy, for it provides a critical marker for Palestinians, and those in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere who still seek fairness and justice, not to speak of international legality, in shaping the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bush's statement that unilateral changes made by Israel without Palestinian approval violate the road map and U.S. policy remains the only reason for Palestinians to retain some hope that their dream of a viable Palestinian state may still be achievable.
Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a former executive head of the American Jewish Congress.
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