Meetings of the minds - Haaretz

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Thu., January 10, 2008 Shvat 3, 5768

Israel Time: 22:49 (EST+7)

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Meetings of the minds

By Shmuel Rosner (Washington) , By Aluf Benn (Jerusalem)

Tags: George Bush

Insofar as is known in Jerusalem, the visit by U.S. President George W. Bush to Jerusalem and Ramallah next week was born when he was presented with the plan for his trip to the Gulf states. "Why shouldn't I go to Israel?" he asked his aides. "I've haven't been there since I became president."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres invited the president to take part in the 60th Independence Day celebrations in May and to come for an official visit then that would include a speech before the Knesset and all the trimmings. The request is still under consideration, and at the Prime Minister's Bureau the assessment and the hope are that it will be accepted. In the meantime, Bush will content himself with a less ceremonial visit: It is important for him to enlist the support of the Saudis and the Egyptians for the political process and therefore it is worth his while to meet with Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on his way to the Gulf and to Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Israeli side is issuing warnings, as usual. They are not keen on the idea of a three-way, Bush-Olmert-Abbas meeting during the course of the visit. The head of Israel's negotiating team, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, prefers that the talks be held without being dogged by media coverage. This is also the approach at Olmert's bureau: Had there not been premature revelation of the details of the negotiations, they say there, it would have been possible to issue a far more meaningful declaration at Annapolis. The reports served to toughen the sides' stances.

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At Annapolis, Olmert, Abbas and Bush promised to make "every effort" to complete the Israeli-Palestinian agreement by December 2008. In the meantime a month has gone by and the agreement is not a single millimeter closer. The Palestinians pulled a number on the Israelis and threatened to suspend the talks after the publication of the tender for the building of 307 apartments at Har Homa, which is within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, but outside the Green Line (the pre-1967 border). They knew that the world would support them and Olmert has had to respond by committing to increased supervision of construction beyond the Green Line. He has instructed his cabinet ministers to forward to him for approval any construction plan and tender in the West Bank and has ordered Housing and Construction Minister Ze'ev Boim, a friend since his youth, not to spring any new projects in East Jerusalem on him.

Before the last election, nearly two years ago, Olmert promised that his government would bring investments in the territories to a halt. His letter on Monday to the cabinet ministers looks like a fulfillment of this promise. Instead of coming out with political declarations, his aides explain, he is achieving the same goal by administrative order.

There is no doubt that Olmert supports removing the Jewish settlements in the West Bank that are outside the security fence - that was the basis of his "convergence plan" - but now it looks as though he has caved in to Palestinian and American pressure. He tried to reach an understanding with Abbas about construction in the settlements even before "the Har Homa crisis." We will continue to build in the large blocs, he told the Palestinian president, but we will not expropriate land or establish new settlements. In many places, explained Olmert, lands have fallen into the hands of private contractors, and if they have permits, they can start building tomorrow. Thus machinery and construction will be visible, especially within the blocs. I can't stop everything, Olmert said.

The Palestinians heard him, but when a chance to embarrass Israel fell into their hands they took it. As far as they - and the Americans - are concerned, there is no validity to the Israeli distinction between "neighborhoods in Jerusalem" and "Jewish settlements in the territories." Har Homa is beyond the Green line, just as Itamar and Eli are.

Last Thursday, Olmert met with Abbas and said something like this: Israel has agreed to start talks even though you have not implemented the security measures in the road map. Now you are bogging everything down because of the settlements. We, too, can stop the negotiations because of the Qassams, and so on. We agreed to talk unconditionally, and that also applies to you. Abbas agreed. No doubt he figured that the Palestinians had obtained the most they could.

In the coming days, until Bush lands at Ben-Gurion International Airport at noontime on Wednesday, the two sides are supposed to be demonstrating renewed momentum. It has thus once again been proved that there is nothing like the imminent arrival of Air Force One to get the Israelis and the Palestinians moving.

As far as Olmert is concerned, more stringent supervision of construction beyond the Green Line will be the main gesture Israel will make toward the visiting president. In return, he will ask Bush to recognize Israel's security demands: freedom of military action in the territories during negotiations, and security oversight of the future Palestinian state, including the permanent deployment of the Israel Defense Forces in the Jordan Valley, as well as control of its border crossings and air space.

Frequent flier

On the way to one of his vacations in Florida, United States president Harry S Truman scribbled a short thank-you note to his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, who had bid the president farewell on the steps of his aircraft. "I'm still a farm boy," Truman reminded Acheson, "and when the secretary of state of the greatest republic comes to the airport to see me off on a vacation, I can't help but swell up a little."

The farm boy who is sitting in the Oval Office today will also board a plane next week, though not for a vacation, and not without his secretary of state. The pair will have a lot more flights like it this year, together and individually. This was not Bush's habit during his first seven years in office, but in his eighth and final year, he will be putting in overtime in the air.

This month's journey includes seven countries in the Middle East; later on there will be Africa, Europe and Japan. And in August, Bush will set out for China and the Olympics. The increased travel is quite a natural choice, when in the domestic arena his strength has dwindled and the focus has moved to the battle for succession. It isn't Washington that is at the center of the activity, but rather New Hampshire - where primaries will be held next week - and after that, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida and later Colorado and Minnesota, where the party conventions will be held.

An American president remains relevant during his last year in office mainly when it comes to foreign policy. From Jerusalem, Bush appears as a powerful leader, the only one who can get the political process moving and impose order on the region. From America he looks like a has-been, whose decisions are arousing less and less interest. Both descriptions are correct. Even a weak American president is the most important leader in the world. However, his ability to persuade others is limited, as Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton learned in his last-minute attempts to achieve peace between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat.

North Korea as test case

This summer will mark the first time an American president will attend Olympic Games not held on U.S. soil. Apparently this is the prize that China is being awarded for the help it has given the U.S. in paving the route to a solution of the crisis with North Korea - despite that fact that China has piled up and continues to accumulate obstacles to a solution to two other burning problems: the Iranian nuclear program and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

North Korea was an interesting test case for the Israelis. The Israeli bombing in Syria, which according to foreign reports was aimed at a nuclear installation that had its source in North Korea, did not stop the process of the thawing of relations. Now there is talk of a reasonable chance of a trip by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to North Korea - one of the three members of "the axis of evil," as described by Bush six years ago. Everything, of course, depends on whether North Korea fulfills the conditions to which it committed itself, in an agreement with the international community. As always, Rice is the one who will decide whether the conditions have been met. In face of this development, Israel should take a sober view of what is expected in the American-Iranian arena this coming year.

There is no doubt that Iran will be the main issue on Bush's mind during his trip to this region, in the wake of the American National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran does not have a military nuclear program. Bush will want to reassure the rulers in the Gulf, who have taken the NIE hard, to show them that they have American backing and support, and he can be expected to discuss large arms deals with Saudi Arabia. In Israel they will ask Bush to hold a joint Israeli-American discussion of the significance of the intelligence estimate. The American document states that Iran was working until 2003 on the development of nuclear weapons. Were the engineers and scientists in that project fired, or did they move on to a different, more secret program?

Beyond the intelligence issue, say senior sources in Jerusalem, the main significance of the American report is political. Olmert will talk to Bush about the loss of momentum in the diplomatic effort to isolate Iran and to impose sanctions on it, as well as about how to revive that effort in spite of the U.S. intelligence assessment. After all, the sanctions were imposed because Iran was enriching uranium - which is still going on - and not because of Iran's military nuclear program.

In any case, they are saying in Jerusalem, we aren't going to bring up military requests in connection with Iran - neither bombardment of its nuclear installations, nor new American guarantees to Israel. There is still time to talk about those things. First it is necessary to pursue diplomacy to its end.

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