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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Coyne who wrote (254264)	5/11/2002 9:03:00 AM
From: Scumbria	Respond to of 769670

The Bush administration violates the rules of successful Mideast negotiations. nationalreview.com The famous handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in September 1993, gently overseen by President Clinton, has come to represent all that was great and good about Clinton's "engagement" in the Middle East: the hovering concern, the care for details, the steady insistence that the two parties give up their irrational, but deep-seated animosity. The problem with this picture is that it is totally erroneous. Clinton had almost nothing to do with the successful conclusion of the Oslo negotiations, sealed with that handshake. The Oslo deal was the product of bilateral, secret talks that made U.S. involvement, let alone pressure on Israel, impossible. Which is exactly why those talks were a success. This is also why the Bush administration's current foray into peace processing is so ill conceived. It not only diverts the U.S. from what should be its chief strategic goal in the Middle East (replacing Saddam's regime), but it violates every principle of successful Mideast negotiations: that they be bilateral, secret, and not the result of U.S. pressure. In his book on Oslo, Making Peace with the PLO, David Makovsky writes that "Rabin observed that the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict had demonstrated that successful agreements ? the 1974 Egyptian and Syrian disengagements, the 1975 Sinai II disengagement, the 1978 Camp David accords ? were reached bilaterally and discretely." Oslo operated on those same principles. The secrecy gave both sides significant advantages. Makovsky again: "Damascus would have exerted heavy pressure on the Palestinians not to make a deal until Syria's demands had been met. More important, since one of Israel's main cards in the negotiations with the PLO was mutual recognition, conducting formal talks with the organization before obtaining a declaration of principles would have precluded Israel from obtaining the benefit of that concession." Not only did Oslo not feature U.S. pressure, Clinton-administration strong-arming of Israel would clearly have been counterproductive. Makovsky explains how "the PLO's inability to drive a wedge between the two governments forced Arafat to realize that Palestinians could not impose a solution on Israel. According to Nabil Shaath, the organization realized that 'the U.S. could not deliver Israel, but rather Israel would have to deliver the U.S.' Senior U.S. officials concur with this assessment. 'Given the sensitivity of what negotiating with the PLO means, this is a decision that we could have never forced Israel to take,' said Dennis Ross. 'It had to make that choice on its own.'" Maybe the Bush administration thinks that it has to create some sham public action ? much like the negotiations stumbling on in Washington while the Oslo talks were taking place ? until such time as the Israelis and the Palestinians secretly find their way to a conference table in some faraway foreign capital. But all indications are that the administration is serious about pressuring Israel, in the open, as part of a multiparty effort, into a peace deal. It is very unlikely that this will work, as all those earlier successful negotiations demonstrate. Of course, it seems odd now to say Oslo was "successful" since it so obviously was a sham. Everyone should have taken more seriously Yasser Arafat's words at a Johannesburg mosque not too long after the signing. As Makovsky recounts, he "likened the Oslo accord to a truce that the Prophet Muhammad had reached with the Quraysh tribe and then abrogated 10 years later" (the late King Hussein of Jordan, at least, wasn't fooled ? he always thought Oslo would founder on Arafat's basic unreliability). So, consider this the final lesson of successful peace deals: Don't sign them with Yasser Arafat.