MIDEAST-U.S.: Sharon rains on Clinton-Mubarak Talks

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 30 1996 (IPS) - Reports that the new Israeli government has revived road- and bridge-building plans in occupied Arab territory cast a dark cloud over talks here Tuesday between U.S. President Bill Clinton and visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Both leaders tried to put a brave face on the disconcerting news that Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister, ret. Gen. Ariel Sharon, has ordered the projects to go forward.

But there was little doubt that, if the reports are confirmed, prospects for resuming negotiations between Israel and Syria and for progress in talks between the Likud government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be severely set back.

Clinton himself said he was “concerned” about the reports but insisted that he would await word on whether the government headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had endorsed Sharon’s proposals and whether new roads were being built or older roads expanded.

Mubarak, who is making his first visit here since Netanyahu’s election at the end of May, was more direct. If construction takes place on Palestinian territory, he warned, “it’s going to complicate the whole process. We don’t like to make new things in the occupied territories unless it’s agreed upon between the two parties.”

The news — and the U.S.-Egyptian summit — came against a backdrop of growing concern about the fate of the U.S.-backed peace process with a Likud government in power in Israel. Since Netanyahu defeated former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the process has been largely frozen.

While Netanyahu has insisted — as he did at a meeting with Mubarak in Cairo earlier this month — that his government will fulfill Israel’s existing peace commitments, he has not yet agreed on a redeployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Hebron, as called for in accords between Arafat and Peres earlier this year. Nor has he taken steps to resume talks with Syria.

Optimists here suggest that the recent meeting between Foreign Minister David Levy and PA chairman Yassir Arafat and Netanyahu’s partial lifting of a four-month-old closure of Palestinian areas signaled flexibility on the part of the hard-line Israeli leader.

But most analysts here believe Netanyahu is playing for time. “His strategy is to give the appearance of motion without movement,” says Clovis Maksoud, former Arab League ambassador to the United Nations.

Gail Pressberg, director of the Washington Office of Americans for Peace Now, agrees. “I think we’re in a period in which the Israeli government is going to make the right noises but not take any concrete action.”

These analysts believe Likud simply does not accept the central premise of the peace process which was launched in Madrid in 1991: that Israel should give up land it has conquered from the Arabs in exchange for a secure peace. Netanyahu himself has insisted that future peace talks take place “without preconditions.”

Sharon has been among the most outspoken of Likud leaders in rejecting land for peace, and his road- and bridge-building plans, first reported by the New York Times Tuesday, are consistent with that view.

According to the Times account, the plans call for the construction of two major roads through the West Bank and the widening of an existing north-south highway that runs along the Jordan River. The plans also would replace two narrow bridges over the Jordan in the north with wider spans to link “the growing population of the Golan (Heights area).”

The new links would tighten Israel’s hold on both the West Bank and the Golan, which Syria has long insisted be returned to it as the price of any permanent peace accord. Israel took the Heights in the 1967 war.

“It’s a disaster,” says Pressberg of Sharon’s plans. “It seems they want to get as many facts on the ground as possible,” she adds.

“I don’t care what Netanyahu says; I care what Sharon does,” says Rashid Khalidi, Mideast specialist at the University of Chicago who served as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation in the Madrid process. “Land confiscation and settlement activity speak much louder than public relations.”

But both experts believe Clinton is not inclined to press Netanyahu very hard in the three months that remain in his re- election campaign. Administration officials note that the welcome recently given Netanyahu by the both parties in the U.S. Congress makes it unlikely that Clinton, despite his huge lead in the polls, will want to be seen as pressing the Israeli leader.

“Mubarak is telling Clinton, ‘When you’re re-elected, you have to get back to business,’ ” says Khalidi, who worries that Palestinian patience in Gaza and the West Bank may be running out. The implementation of Sharon’s plan may be the kind of development which confirms to the majority of Palestinians that the peace process has led to a dead end.

Mubarak is also seeking assurance from Clinton that Egypt “is a full partner of the U.S. in the Middle East, rather than an auxiliary to the U.S.-Israeli alliance,” according to Maksoud, who noted that the disclosure about Sharon’s plans on the day of his White House meeting with Clinton must have been “embarassing” to the Egyptian president.

Maksoud, who runs the Centre for the Global South at American University, also scored an unsolicited interview Netanyahu gave the Washington Post for publication Tuesday morning in which the Israeli leader endorsed Mubarak as a “wise and responsible leader” and called for Washington to renew its 2.1 billion dollar- a-year aid programme for Egypt.

“Netanyahu used palatable words to demonstrate his control of the peace process” here in Washington, said Maksoud. “It was a sort of pre-emptive strike in which he appears to license aid to Egypt.”