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July 5, 2002/Tamuz 25 5762, Vol. 54, No. 42
After Bush speech, wondering what's next
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - There is a brief moment, after a gun is fired or a bomb goes off, when the air is filled with a shocked silence broken only by the fluttering of birds who have been startled from their perches.
It is only when the dust settles that reality sets in.
That might be a fitting analogy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the dust begins to settle from President Bush's recent speech on Middle East policy.
By coming down so strongly on Israel's side, Bush changed the rules of the game in the Middle East, shocking both Israelis and Palestinians.
After years in which Yasser Arafat turned double-dealing into an art form - claiming to support a peace process while funding terrorist groups - Bush made it abundantly clear that there can be no diplomatic progress until the terror stops and Palestinians remove Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority.
But what happens until then? Does the Bush speech mean that nothing substantial can move on the Israeli-Palestinian track until Arafat goes?
The two sides seemed to be fumbling for ways forward. Palestinian officials alternately rallied indignantly around Arafat and offered plans to reform the Palestinian Authority - while still taking no action against terrorist groups.
Israel, meanwhile, both intensified its military operations in the West Bank and talked of offering the Palestinians a "political horizon."
But as long as Israel remains in the Palestinian cities - and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says it could be for months - it's difficult to imagine the Palestinians making the necessary moves for renewed dialogue.
Israeli left-wingers fear that the occupation of Palestinian cities could, over time, lead to a full-scale reoccupation of the West Bank.
Moreover, they point out that the army is not targeting only Hamas. By destroying the Hebron governor's building and dismantling the District Coordination Offices - the last vestige of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation - army actions could make eventual reconciliation with the Palestinians much more difficult, even after Arafat goes.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer criticized Sharon July 1 for turning down Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' request to renew contacts with senior Palestinian Authority officials.
"The sense is that we can now go and let loose everything we've got in order to exercise our right to defend ourselves," Ben-Eliezer, who also is head of the Labor Party, told Israel Radio. "But this can happen only at a time when Israel every minute continues to seek and move toward any possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough."
On the Palestinian side, the carrot in the Bush vision is viable statehood backed and funded by the international community, with the United States in the vanguard.
Despite his aspiration for Palestinian statehood, however, Arafat repeatedly has spurned this in practice.
For Arafat, a state that closes the file on refugee claims and ends the conflict with Israel is not a prize but a trap. The question is how his successors will see this, and whether Palestinian society as a whole will be ready to pay the price of statehood: removal of Arafat, recognition of Israel's right to exist and readiness to live alongside it in peace.
For now there is little sign of any imminent succession. The initial Palestinian reaction to the Bush speech was to gather round their beleaguered leader and angrily reject American interference in their choice of leadership.
Moreover, Arafat himself has not indicated any readiness to bow out.
According to one rumor, Arafat will retire to Cairo and Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the relatively dovish Palestinian leaders, will take over and organize new elections. Some Palestinian leaders are saying publicly that Arafat may have been the right man to lead the revolution but is not the man to build the institutions of statehood, leaving open the possibility that he will be replaced.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report. JTA correspondent Naomi Segal in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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