Interesting analysis of Sharon's speech the other night, where he backed a Palestinian state -- after reforms -- and said that Israel did not intend to resume rule in the territories. Herb Keinon notes that Sharon is backing Bush's program of last June, and not the State Dept "roadmap", and he that thinks Sharon is reading the winds in Washington astutely. Elliot Abram's appointment is counted as a definite pro-Defense, anti-State signal.
ANALYSIS: The winds behind Sharon's speech
By HERB KEINON
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's wide-ranging diplomatic speech Wednesday night made major news in Israel as well it should.
Here was the prime minister publicly and unequivocally advocating a Palestinian state if the Palestinians fulfill certain requirements and doing it in the midst of an election campaign. His electoral calculus was simple the idea may push some right-wing supporters into the arms of Yisrael Beiteinu, but it will also surely lure an equal amount of votes from the soft center.
Here was the prime minister saying the agreements of the past are irreversible, and that while the IDF is in Palestinian cities now, it will not stay there despite those inside his own party who say the IDF must remain or terrorism will return.
A day earlier there was another major news event that captured much less attention here, but which one diplomatic official labeled an "earthquake": the appointment of Elliot Abrams as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for Near East and North African affairs. In other words, he is the White House's Middle East point man.
Abrams is a neo-conservative in the mold of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. He is a staunch friend and supporter of Israel who has friends and family here.
The Sharon speech and Abrams appointment must be seen as interrelated.
Sharon, in his wholehearted adoption of the Bush sequence calling for Palestinian reform, Israeli military abatements, a provisional Palestinian state, and then final status negotiations, was at the same time rejecting the State Department backed road map.
He was sending a signal he wants to go back to the original Bush ideas spelled out in the president's June 24 speech, without the road map trappings that include timetables and international monitors, and reducing the Palestinians onus for reform and security crackdowns before the diplomatic process gets moving.
Sharon did this at a time when the White House, with the Abrams appointment, was making a statement of its own it was signaling that its patience with the State Department approach to the conflict had reached its end.
In the Herculean battle in Washington between the State Department and Colin Powell on the one had, and the White House and Defense's Wolfovitz on the other, the Abrams appointment gives a serious nod to the latter camp.
Sharon has picked up on these signals. His speech is not a cheeky defiance of the US-backed road map, but an insider's reading of the way the winds are blowing in Washington. He believes the White House is ripe for a rejection of the road map.
From the birth of the road map in September, Sharon believed it to be a State Department production not a White House initiative and therefore not something he had to pay that much attention to.
The US tried to signal the White House's involvement in the plan by sending Flynt Leverett, from the National Security Council, on a visit here with William Burns to discuss the plan. This same Leverett has now lost out to Abrams for the top Middle East post in the National Security Council.
The straw that broke the camel's back for the administration, according to one Israeli diplomatic official, was the Russian interest in having the road map which was to be hammered out together with the EU, UN, and Russia approved by the UN Security Council. For the White House this was going too far. Sharon was clearly aware of this sentiment when he wrote and read his speech.
Which is not to say Israel is now in for an easy ride. If anybody can now push Israel on the settlements issue, it is Elliot Abrams. His support for Israel is such that no one will question his motives if he asks as he surely will for a complete cessation of settlement construction, including natural growth, in all the settlements.
The White House, even before its attack on Iraq, will push Israel both on the settlements as US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer made quite clear in a speech Monday night and on transferring the frozen PA funds to the Palestinian Authority.
Sharon alluded to this in his speech, outlining the mechanism he believes needs to be in place before funds can be transferred. Although he made no mention of the concessions he will make on the settlements, he did use the catchword "painful concessions" which is widely interpreted as a euphemism for a willingness to uproot some settlements.
Two other issues also hovered above Sharon when he delivered his speech in Herzliya.
The first is his election campaign against Labor head Amram Mitzna. With his speech Sharon underlined for his electorate the close relations he has developed with the US a strategic asset Mitzna will be find it hard to compete with.
Also, by outlying his diplomatic vision and plan, Sharon is disarming Mitzna's argument that Sharon has neither a plan nor a vision.
The Sharon plan will also fall on receptive ears in Washington, which, in advance of its campaign against Iraq, will now be able to tell its Arab allies, "Sharon isn't all bad; look what he is offering." By clearly spelling out support for a Palestinian state, Sharon has given the White House something it wants. This will obviously not hurt when the administration considers Israel's loan guarantee and financial aid requests. Sharon did not deliver this speech because of the aid request, but it has to help efforts to get those requests approved.
One major imponderable in all this is whether the Palestinians will accept this type of plan. Under the current configuration, the answer would have to be a resounding no.
The plan calls for security measures and reform that no one believes Yasser Arafat has either the will or ability to carry out. But the feeling is that everything in the region will change after Iraq, including a Palestinian leadership that would be hard pressed to say no to a plan from the Israeli Right culminating in a Palestinian state especially if the plan has US support.
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