MIDDLE EAST: Peace Process More Fragile

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

ANALYSIS - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 16 1996 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton played host last week to Jordan’s King Hussein – the first of a string of Middle East leaders expected to visit White House in the next few months – in an effort to shore up the US-sponsored peace process.

Hussein is the only Arab leader who has offered encouraging words about Israeli Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to present his government next week before also travelling to Washington.

But the Clinton-Hussein get together Thursday failed to lift the gloom that settled over officials dealing in Middle Eastern affairs immediately after Netanyahu upset Shimon Peres in last month’s Israeli elections.

U.S. officials, beginning with Clinton, are trying to put the best face on the results, insisting publicly that they are encouraged by Netanyahu’s public statements since the election in support of the peace process initiated by Peres and his assassinated predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin.

But their private assessments are consistent with those of independent analysts. “We didn’t need this,” says one senior State Department official who adds hopefully, “Perhaps Netanyahu will turn out like (former President Richard) Nixon and China.”

That parallel of a hawkish leader forging peace with his arch-foe has been offered up by almost every policy analyst here since the election – every one, that is, who is not a Middle East specialist.

Former State Department Director for Policy Planning Richard Solomon, for example, cited the parallel in introducing a forum on Mideast policy at the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) which he now heads. But the analogy fell completely flat, as none of the regional experts participating in the forum suggested this was a serious possibility.

Instead they joined other analysts who see little but danger for the peace process in the coming months. In their view, the process is like riding a bicycle: if the rider stops pedalling, the bicycle could end up in a ditch.

According to Adnan Abu Odeh, a former top Jordanian diplomat and now a senior USIP Fellow, if Israel opts for a slower course, the peace process “will become tense and, eventually, it will collapse altogether.”

Mordechai Bar-On, a top Israeli Army officer in the 1950s and 1960s and a founder of the Israeli group Peace Now, agrees. He says that the Palestinians have gone along with the peace process on the assumption that it would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state – a result implicitly recognised by the Israeli Labour Party earlier this year.

At this point, “it is not enough that Netanyahu agrees to (withdraw Israeli forces from) Hebron (as required under the most recent Israeli-Palestinian accord). He must understand that the march must go on,” says Bar-On. “This will take a great change in Netanyahu…as an Israeli, I’m very worried.”

Ahmad Khalidi, a Palestinian with the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London believes that if the Palestinians do not see that negotiations are addressing the major issues, such as statehood and Jerusalem, “the process will break down.” Also there is what Khalidi calls Netanyahu’s “predeliction” to ignore Palestinian Authority President Yassir Arafat, with whom he has yet to directly communicate.

For Netanyahu to persist in this attitude, or to pursue Likud’s long-favoured preference for a “Jordanian option” that would link the Palestinians on the West Bank with the Hashemite kingdom is bound to “heighten tensions, Khalidi says. “Whatever shortcomings of the present Palestinian leadership, it is the cement that holds the whole process together.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis also finds the lack of communication by Likud with Palestinian leaders in the election’s aftermath “distressing” but warns of a more immediate danger once Netanyahu takes office.

“I’m very apprehensive (about) the reaction to any suicide bombings (by Islamic militants) of a Likud government just elected on a (security) platform,” says Lewis.

Khalidi agrees. If such a bombing is carried out, he predicts, “Netanyahu will be very much a prisoner of his own positions. He will have to overreact.”

That could set off a renewed confrontation between Palestinians and Israel at a time when the Clinton administration will be very reluctant to criticise Netanyahu due to the election campaign here. Lewis says Washington is counting on a “honeymoon” with Netanyahu until at least after the November elections.

But the dangers don’t lie only in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic.

Another crisis could also break out at any time in southern Lebanon, according to Khalidi, especially since the Likud platform rules out any return of the Golan Heights, the sine qua non of peace with Syria. All parties are already in direct confrontation there.

Odeh worries that Arab leaders, particularly in their upcoming summit in Cairo Jun 21-23, will take too confrontational a stance towards Netanyahu. They must instead act in ways that will “strengthen Netanyahu’s pragmatism over his ideology,” he says.

A return by Likud to an ideological position could be disastrous to the region, he warns, because “the visible inability of Arab leaders to face Netanyahu” will boost Islamic fundamentalists in their societies who, in turn, will direct their anger against the leaders.