Bushes Israeli and Palestinians policy

Bushes Israeli and Palestinians policy

Posted on the New York times Website
Rice Faces an Uphill Battle for a Mildest Breakthrough

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — On a chilly Saturday morning late last year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, sat down alone in Ms. Rice’s apartment at the Watergate here and hashed out a plan.
It was an ambitious one. To jump-start Arab-Israeli peace, Ms. Rice would encourage Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to start talks with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, leap-frogging interim details and squabbles, and instead trying to define the big “final status” issues of a Palestinian state, which have bedeviled peace negotiators since the Camp David accords of 1979.
“It’s important to start sketching out broader political issues,” Ms. Rice said Thursday in a group interview with newspaper correspondents at the State Department.
To some extent, the approach turned the clock back to the closing days of the Clinton administration, when a push toward a final settlement expired. Since then, the Bush administration has engaged the peace effort in fits and starts, and none of the paths has led far.
On Monday, Ms. Rice, Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas are scheduled to sit down in Jerusalem, ostensibly to discuss what Ms. Rice calls horizon issues: the fate of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state and the question of the treatment of Palestinian refugees.
But the timing could not be worse, American, Israeli and some Palestinian officials said. “If you invited a man from Mars down and asked him, ‘Is this the moment to go for a breakthrough?’ the answer would be categorically ‘No,’ ” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who was a senior adviser for Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department under the last three presidents.
“What she’s got going for her is that expectations of her success have plunged lower than the Dead Sea,” said David Makovsky, a Middle East expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. And that, he said, “might actually help her.”
Prospects for any real breakthrough were already bleak two months ago, when Ms. Rice and Ms. Livni came up with their proposal. The Palestinian government was controlled by Hamas, which preaches Israel’s destruction. Mr. Olmert’s approval ratings were as bad as, if not worse, than those of President Bush. There was factional strife in Gaza, to the south, and turmoil in Lebanon, to the north.
Last week, one more giant obstacle emerged: a national unity government of Fatah and Hamas leaders that was worked out in talks brokered by Saudi Arabia in Mecca.
Bush administration officials, publicly lukewarm about the agreement, were angry with Mr. Abbas. They say the pact brings him closer to Hamas instead of bringing Hamas, which America views as a terrorist organization, closer to Mr. Abbas, who is seen as far more moderate.
In her session with reporters on Thursday, Ms. Rice said the task of negotiations had become “obviously more complicated because of the uncertainties surrounding the national unity government,” and that the Bush administration would “await the formation of that government before we make any decisions about it.”
The Bush administration, along with Israel and several European countries, wants the new Palestinian government to meet three benchmarks for normal relations: recognize the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian accords. The Mecca accord does not address the first two benchmarks. The Palestinians argued that the three benchmarks were met implicitly, though the accord does not mention Israel.
While Ms. Rice was angry about the Mecca deal, she said that she would nonetheless go ahead with the planned summit, Arab and American officials said. But she has warned Mr. Abbas that the United States would deal only with Palestinian government ministers who explicitly agreed to the three conditions, the officials said.
So what was supposed to be a summit that shored up Mr. Abbas in the eyes of the Palestinian people by discussing a future Palestinian state may now downgrade to one in which Mr. Abbas spends his time trying to defend the Mecca deal and convince the United States and Israel that he has not sold out to Hamas.
Both Mr. Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, and Mr. Olmert are politically weak, making compromise tricky. “If Olmert agrees to talk about Jerusalem, someone could threaten to leave his government,” said Martin S. Indyk, the United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration. “If Abu Mazen talks about giving up the right of return, Hamas would condemn him for betraying the cause.” He was referring to giving Palestinian refugees the right to return to lands they left in 1948.
Still, Mr. Indyk, who is now the director of the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the Bush administration had let Arab-Israeli peace talks go untended for too long. Ms. Rice, he said, “deserves full support for trying, and she deserves to be given a chance and some rope and leeway to try to make this work.”
Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

Commentary Herb A Krantz

As usual Bush shows how little he knows about the Middle East. Not only is it a bad time to even thinks about starting talks with Israel and the Palestinians but he is sending Condoleezza Rice there again. Most Arabs will not take it seriously when dealing with a woman. Women hold very little importance in their society.
Also Hamas and Fatah leaders walked out of a meeting last week brokered by Saudi Arabia. Both leaders would like to destroy Israel not make peace. Bush has let the Israeli-Palestinian question go unanswered for to long besides the point we the USA do not hold the respect that we once did. We are not the peace brokers that we once were, after we invaded Iraq. At this point in time Bush has painted us in the eyes of the world as being stuck in a box that we can’t find our way out of.
It used to be when we Spoke the world would listen, know they all look the other way. Thanks to you Mr. Bush.


I have placed my Charity discount shopping mall link below.
It was started to donate 40% of profits to the charities listed on the site. I have also placed my blog on that sit. Read Alan’s story and you will find out why I have done this. Shop and save while you give to Charity.

Home Shopping Center Mall

Affordable Shopping Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com