US-Palestinian summit restores balance to Mideast diplomacy
AFP
Date: 05-27-05
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas' White House summit restored balance to US diplomacy on the Middle East and could end up giving a significant boost to the peace process, analysts said.
The Jewish state played down Abbas' meeting Thursday with President George W. Bush who gave a solid vote of confidence to the Palestinian after spurning contact with his late predecessor Yasser Arafat for years.
"Nothing President Bush said contradicts American promises vis-a-vis Israel," Trade and Industry Minister Ehud Olmert told Israeli public radio.
But Abbas said he was "very pleased" with Bush's renewed support for an independent and contiguous Palestinian state and his opposition to continued expansion of Israeli settlements.
Middle East experts said the Palestinians had good reason to exult in the first White House visit by their president in more than four years, heralding a new era in US-Palestinian relations.
David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the "body language was very good" and the summit could turn out to be a milestone in the torturous efforts to restore peace.
"It shows the United States thinks highly of Abbas, that they do not see him as another Arafat, and that they want to re-engage," Makovsky said. "Those are all important."
Tamara Wittes, of the Brookings Institution, saw a personal chemistry developing between Bush and Abbas, who the Israelis still dismiss as too weak in cracking down on violence by Palestinian militants.
"My kind of gestalt sense was that ... Bush was impressed with this guy," Wittes said. "He wants to work with him, he wants to help them. That's a very, very positive takeway for the Palestinians and for the peace process."
The talks came at critical time, with Palestinians and Israelis struggling to maintain a fragile cease-fire after 56 months of bloodshed, and Israel preparing a unilateral troop withdrawal from Gaza in August.
Analysts noted nothing strikingly new in Bush's pledges to Abbas on his long-awaited day at the White House where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been a frequent visitor.
But they did see some subtle and not-so-subtle signs of a sincere effort by the US administration to return to the role of "honest broker" after breaking with Arafat for his failure to rein in the militants.
-- Bush's announcement of 50 million dollars in direct aid was seen as a gesture of confidence in the new Palestinian leadership. Most assistance has been channeled through third parties to keep it safe from corrupt politicians.
The analysts stressed that to procure the money, Bush had to expend some political capital and twist the arm of a US Congress that had attached most of the strings to the previous aid packages.
-- While Bush renewed his condemnation of the radical Islamic group Hamas as a "terrorist group," he did not explicitly demand its dismantlement or oppose Abbas' strategy of trying to co-opt rather than confront the militants.
-- Bush said loud and clear that final-status questions were subject to mutual agreement, restating a US position clouded by his letter to Sharon last year basically acknowledging the perpetuity of some Jewish settlements.
-- The US president announced he was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region before the Gaza withdrawal to discuss a return afterward to the internationally drafted peace "roadmap."
This was seen as a response to Palestinian concerns that Sharon would stop at Gaza. "That was a boon to the Palestinian side, the president is sending a signal he's interested in an after-Gaza process," Wittes said.
Overall, analysts saw the summit as shoring up peace efforts by anointing Abbas as a capable and respected negotiating partner and strengthening his hand in dealing with Palestinian militants.
"I think Abbas can go back to his people and say, 'Hey, I got something here,'" Makovsky said. "I think it's a start."
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