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 oes
this scenario sound familiar? On the heels of a resounding U.S.
victory on Muslim soil, Empire Americana turns its attentions to
the oldest conflict in the world — the struggle for Jerusalem.
Under mounting pressure from the Bush administration, Israel begrudgingly
agrees to start land-for-peace negotiations with a man it regards
a terrorist. After many more meetings a peace process emerges.
This is, of
course, a brief synopsis of what led up to the 1991 Madrid Peace
Conference that changed the international calculus for understanding
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But it also describes the dynamics
behind Secretary of State Colin Powell's long-anticipated Middle
East policy speech for how to handle the current Intifada.
He mentioned
Madrid no less than eight times in an address delivered on Monday,
as a British-American bombing campaign, supported by an international
coalition, drives the Taliban further into retreat.
In that speech
Powell promised American aid to rebuild the Palestinian economy
and announced that he will send not one but two envoys to the Holy
Land to restart failed negotiations. He demanded an end to Israeli
settlements and for Arafat "to arrest, prosecute and punish
the perpetrators of terrorist acts."
In 1991 President
Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, held up Israel's request
for loan guarantees to resettle a wave of expected Russian emigrants
as a stick to get Jerusalem to participate in the Madrid conference.
The new stick
is the specter of international or American monitors to the conflict,
a suggestion Israel has long resisted as an affront to its sovereignty.
"The United
States remains ready to contribute actively to a third party monitoring
and verification mechanism acceptable to both parties," Powell
told a packed house at the University of Louisville Monday.
In many ways
he is already contributing one of those monitors in the form of
his close friend retired General Anthony Zinni, the former chief
of Central Command — the theater of operations that includes
the Middle East.
Powell told
reporters on the airplane home from Kentucky that "Zinni will
focus on cease fire and security issues. And he will stay in the
region. He will come out from time to time, but I want Tony to stick
in the region for a while and get this thing started."
Zinni's job
is to actually to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to keep
the cease-fire and security agreements they made in June to CIA
Director George Tenet. He may not be called an observer, monitor,
or "third party verification mechanism" but his job description
sure sounds like it.
At the Madrid
conference, the Israelis for the first time began negotiating officially
with the Palestine Liberation Organization — at the time they
were part of Jordan's delegation. "The Madrid talks broke a
taboo," Meyrav Wurmser, the director of the Hudson Institute's
Center for Middle East Studies, said in an interview Monday. "They
negotiated directly with Syria and with the Palestinians through
the Jordanians. Eventually it created a spirit that led towards
Oslo. This was the first time the idea was broached that the solution
to the conflict was through an international framework."
Sharon has
negotiated indirectly with Arafat through his dovish Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres throughout the conflict. But for Sharon to drop his
demand that there be seven days of no violence in order to begin
the negotiations would represent a breaking of a different kind
of taboo.
Sharon became
his country's leader by campaigning against negotiations with Arafat
while he encouraged a campaign of terror against Israeli civilians.
Indeed, Arafat, Ehud Barak and President Clinton were in near-constant
contact in the twilight of the latter's presidency. For Sharon to
abandon his campaign pledge would represent a significant sacrifice
for one of Israel's most hawkish figures.
But things
are different now. To start, the United States has not yet won the
war in Afghanistan, let alone the war on all terrorism. Also it
is unclear the president supports the new Powell peace initiative
in the same way the first President Bush supported Baker's efforts
ten years ago. As Powell has called on the Israelis to move their
army from the Palestinian territories and cancel the policy of assassinating
suspected terrorists, the president's national-security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice has chastised Arafat for saddling up to Hamas and
Islamic Jihad.
But the most
glaring difference between now and ten years ago is that there was
a peace process. It ended after nearly a month of negotiations on
the sticky questions of Jerusalem and refugees at Camp David in
July of 2000 produced no agreement. The international community
has tried this tack before and it hasn't worked. So it begs the
question, Why is pressure for negotiations in the face of violence
going to work now when it hasn't worked before?
Powell and
his diplomats don't have much of an answer. "Over the past
decade, Arabs and Israelis have proven that negotiations can work
to achieve results," he said. The secretary referred to the
Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, perhaps the only tangible diplomatic
accomplishment in the Middle East since the Oslo Accords. But Powell
also mentioned the 1991 Madrid Talks, the Oslo Accords, and even
the last Camp David negotiations — all of which sound good
on paper but have fallen apart since last September — as proof
that "negotiations" can produce "results."
If results
are defined in diplomatic terms, then Powell's plan has a chance.
Whether such results add up to peace is another story.
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