The pretence of peacemaking
Washington must accept its share of the blame for
Colin Powell's abortive Middle East peace mission,
writes Simon Tisdall
The Guardian
Thursday April 18, 2002
Colin Powell was at pains to place a positive spin on his Middle
East mission at a final press conference in Jerusalem. But there
was no disguising the fact that his high-profile foray on to the
frontlines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had achieved little or
nothing - and no hiding his relief to be heading home.
Nobody should take comfort from this verdict. For the two
principal parties, for the Arab world, and for others such as the
EU, Russia, the UN secretary-general, and George Bush's
White House, Mr Powell's failure spells big trouble down the
road. For ordinary Jews and Palestinians, it means more daily
fear, misery and pain.
All involved had been depending, to varying degrees, on the
American somehow pulling a rabbit out of a hat - even as many,
by their words and actions, were daily making it harder and
harder for him to succeed. But the hoped-for conjuring trick
failed to materialise. The US secretary of state and career
soldier turned out to be no magician - not even a particularly
imaginative diplomat.
Mr Powell failed to achieve the ceasefire he had initially said
was his primary aim. He failed to secure Israeli agreement to
end the occupation of large parts of the West Bank and to
withdraw its troops. Prime minister Ariel Sharon's verbal
undertaking to pull back "in a week or so" was almost laughably
vague - and is an undertaking that is in any case unlikely to
survive the next Palestinian "terrorist" outrage.
Mr Powell failed to secure agreement from the Palestinian
leader, Yasser Arafat, to halt, or even try harder to limit, suicide
bombing attacks or other targeting of Jewish civilians. And
although he said other US envoys, including the retired general
Anthony Zinni and the assistant secretary of state, William
Burns, would continue to offer their help as mediators, Mr Powell
offered no structure or timeframe for any renewed efforts.
Crucially, Mr Powell's mission failed to find a way of rekindling
substantive political dialogue, even prospectively, on the final
status issues that stand in the way of a settlement.
Now all that the "international community" has left to cling to, as
it surveys the ruins of its Middle East policy, is the possible
convening, possibly in the US, possibly in June, of some kind of
vaguely defined conference of regional countries, as proposed by
Mr Sharon and already rejected by Syria and Lebanon, to which
Mr Arafat may or may not be invited.
Such a conference, if it happens, may discuss Saudi Arabia's
recent peace proposals. Then again, if Mr Sharon has his way, it
may not. Meanwhile, in the absence of even the most
rudimentary truce in the occupied territories as a whole, and
given the anger and bitterness engendered by recent and still
unresolved confrontations in places such as Jenin, Nablus,
Ramallah and Bethlehem, Israeli-Palestinian violence can only
be expected to increase once more.
Oddly enough, Mr Powell himself is probably less to blame for
this depressing and highly dangerous outcome than many
others who have watched events from afar. The leaders of Syria,
Lebanon and Iran have done little to help the cause of peace; on
the contrary, their support for renewed, opportunistic Hizbullah
attacks in northern Israel has fanned the flames of war.
So-called moderate Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, have once again displayed an absence of leadership. The
recent Beirut Arab League summit led some to suggest that the
Arab world was finally trying to take charge of its own destiny
and address itself collectively to settling its most abiding
problem - Israel. Instead, it has lapsed back into slothful
whingeing, flirting with the idea of oil embargoes against the
west while simultaneously hoping that Mr Powell would pull the
fat out of the fire.
The EU emerges from this latest Middle East chapter in an
equally unflattering light. Its envoys were snubbed by Israel
before Mr Powell made his trip and were refused access to Mr
Arafat. Their political impotence thus cruelly exposed, they
mithered on about sanctions against Israel for a week. Then,
finding this idea too problematic and with immaculately bad
timing, they threw their weight behind Mr Powell, too grudgingly
and too late.
Sharing in this failure was Britain's Tony Blair who, along with
the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, boldly told parliament last
week that the Middle East was facing a catastrophe and that
something must be done - and then failed, along with the rest, to
do anything.
But for the real reasons for the failure of Mr Powell's mission, it
is necessary to look no further than the White House, just down
Pennsylvania Avenue from his Foggy Bottom HQ in Washington.
The failure of the Powell mission occurred primarily because Mr
Sharon, having spent months carefully taking the personal and
political measure of George Bush, had concluded, quite rightly,
that the US president, when push came to shove, and especially
in the context of the post-September 11 "war against terrorism",
would not absolutely insist that Israel do anything that it did not
want to.
Mr Sharon and his advisers clearly understood the international
pressures that led Mr Bush to change tack two weeks ago and
demand an Israeli withdrawal. But he also seems to have
understood that, domestically, Mr Bush would be unable - and
unwilling - to punish Israel if it did not comply. His judgment has
been borne out by events, and not least by a sudden upsurge in
pro-Israeli statements and demonstrations in Washington. Far
from encouraging Mr Powell to turn the screw on Mr Sharon, Mr
Bush progressively lowered expectations and seemed to
distance himself from his secretary of state.
In other words, Mr Powell's mission became a figleaf for the
Bush administration's fundamentally unchanged, pro-Israeli
policy, a pretence at action. It was an initiative that could not
succeed because Mr Powell did not have the wholehearted
backing of his boss - and Mr Sharon knew it. Doubtless the
hapless Mr Powell knew it, too. No wonder he was in such a
hurry to go home.
Email
simon.tisdall@guardian.co.uk
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