NY Times: In Mideast Diplomacy, Few Secrets or Solutions
nytimes.com
In Mideast Diplomacy, Few Secrets or Solutions
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
THROUGHOUT his presidency, it seems, George W. Bush has tried to impose a lockstep, lockjaw style of government. Secrets are kept; when they are spilled, there are consequences. Press briefings sometimes reveal so little information that they tend to confuse as much as they enlighten. Meetings are small, which helps to minimize leaks.
So it is puzzling that on the most politically sensitive foreign policy issue before them — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — Mr. Bush and his aides have publicly aired their views, and even differences. Even more remarkable, declarations are made even though the policy guiding the diplomacy has not fully taken shape. The Europeans, the Arabs, the Congress and the antagonists themselves have complained of confusion.
Why, then, not stick to secret diplomacy in the Middle East, which has often been the most potent weapon in solving diplomatic problems? In part, the answer is obvious: decades of personal animosity and two years of violence seem to have stripped the antagonists of the trust needed to bargain in secret, even as images of the violence have inflamed passions in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
But the lack of clarity about the substance of American policy has complicated efforts to get the parties to make compromises, and this in an area where every word of every statement is a potential verbal landmine. Security Council Resolution 242, for example, states that Israel must withdraw from "territories occupied" in the 1967 war, not "the territories occupied." For 35 years, that semantic ambiguity has led Arabs to demand that Israel withdraw 100 percent, and Israel to say that such a concession is not required. And back in 1990, one reason the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir fell was that President Bush's father, the first President George Bush, referred to homes built by Israelis in East Jerusalem as "settlements" rather than "neighborhoods."
In the face of demands for rigor and precision, though, Mr. Bush and his top advisers often seem less like a well-conducted orchestra than like improvisers in a jazz combo. Consider the last eight days. In the presence of Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, on Saturday, Mr. Bush said the United States must start work immediately toward establishing a Palestinian state. The next day, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, he said there could be no quick progress toward peace without sweeping reform of the Palestinian Authority. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the administration was considering backing an interim Palestinian state.
Kenneth Pollack, director for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the Middle East policy "seems a little like a cushion: it seems to take the shape of the last person to sit on it."
Even former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who insists the administration has "done well" on the Middle East, doesn't approve of all the public posturing. "The problem with stating a public proposition before you know what the other party is going to do is that you risk getting yourself into a public confrontation before you determine what the range of your choices is," he said. "The question is whether you want to narrow the differences before individual egos, public positions and political standing become involved." And former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who calls the Bush team's handling of the Middle East "pretty skillful," cautioned, "You have to be careful with words."
So why does it seem that the administration's wall of discipline is crumbling? One reason is that Mr. Bush came into office determined to keep the Middle East at arm's length; at first, the region got little high-level attention, and Mideast experts who had served Mr. Bush's predecessors were replaced or marginalized.
Then, with America engaged in a war on terrorism, growing Middle East violence played into the hands of those in the region who wanted to frustrate Mr. Bush's plans to overthrow President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. This set off bitter arguments within Mr. Bush's national security team about priorities. The Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that toppling Mr. Hussein of Iraq would make Mideast peacemaking easier; State Department officials said the Palestinian crisis had to come first.
Shortly after Mr. Bush identified an "axis of evil" among Iraq, Iran and North Korea in his State of the Union speech, Mr. Cheney was sent to lobby Arab leaders for their understanding about the need to overthrow Mr. Hussein. By all accounts, he failed. Martin S. Indyk, who had been the American ambassador to Israel for President Bill Clinton and, early on, for Mr. Bush, said the events were connected.
"All the parties in the Middle East with an interest in blocking the war on Iraq or in making sure the Palestinian issue was put on the agenda then worked together to escalate the crisis," said Mr. Indyk, who is now director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "The steady escalation of terrorist attacks reached a crescendo when Cheney was in the region and that insured that every Arab leader he met told him, `It's the Palestinians, stupid.' "
A THIRD reason is that the administration has not decided whether to abandon Mr. Arafat as a negotiating partner. The State Department sees no alternative to dealing with him; President Bush seems to agree with Mr. Sharon's determination to remove him from the political landscape.
Finally, there are the outside pressures: from American Jewish groups, Congress and America's allies in Europe and the Middle East. All of that attention requires the administration to at least give the appearance of being engaged.
But despite the need to do things in public, there are is distrust on almost every level. There is no trust between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat, practically none between the Bush administration and Mr. Arafat, little between America and its allies and distrust even within the administration. More than anything, this makes the kind of secret negotiations that have succeeded in the past impossible.
Secret diplomacy works when leaders recognize an opportunity to strike a deal before their followers do, and then work out the details free of the clamor and potential disruption of public debate.
In the Middle East, there are three good examples: the year and a half of Israeli-Egyptian talks that paved the way for the Camp David accords in 1979, the Israeli-Palestinian talks held in total secrecy at Oslo that brought Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization into negotiations toward a peace agreement, and years of secret contacts and meetings of King Hussein of Jordan and the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in Europe that preceded their 1994 peace treaty.
In those cases, the secrecy was a means to build confidence and test whether one side's position was compatible with the other's. The diplomacy was initiated by the parties themselves, not the United States. Today, it seems inconceivable that Mr. Arafat and Mr. Sharon would disguise themselves as Bedouins, as Golda Meir of Israel did when she visited Jordan's King Abdullah back in Israel's infancy.
Perhaps as early as this week, President Bush is expected to issue a major policy statement on the Middle East. There is, of course, a possibility that he will clear up all ambiguities about America's position and present a formula for talks that all sides can embrace.
But if that seems too difficult, he can always choose the path that Dwight D. Eisenhower took when preparing for a press conference in the midst of the 1958 crisis over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which China was threatening to seize by force. Told by his spokesman, James C. Hagerty, that the State Department was frantic that he should say nothing about the delicate issue, Mr. Eisenhower replied: "Don't worry, Jim, if that question comes up, I'll just confuse them." |
