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Sharon May Need To Offer Arabs New Deal if Bush is To Fend Off U.N. |
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By Bradley Burston TEL AVIV, May 1, 2002 -- Nearing a dangerous precipice with the UN Security Council, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may need to make an overture the Arabs can't refuse if he is to win White House support in diplomatic warfare over the disputed bloodshed in Jenin. Sharon is to visit the White House next week. Bush administration officials had hoped that by the time the prime minister reached Washington, the hydra-headed negotiations regarding IDF-Palestinian standoffs at Yasser Arafat's besieged Ramallah headquarters, Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, and the Jenin investigation impasse, would have been resolved by the time President George W.Bush welcomed Sharon to Washington. True to form, however, the Middle East has little patience for quick solutions. In a cascade of policy reversals over the past two weeks, Sharon has twice agreed to and twice rejected Israeli cooperation with the UN fact-finding mission charged with the on-site sifting of evidence over the IDF offensive in Jenin refugee camp. Israel maintained its insistence that it had nothing to hide in the face of Palestinian allegations - now largely in doubt - of wholesale massacres and summary executions of Palestinian civilians in the camp. However, the Sharon government has balked at the possibility that the evidence gathered by commission members could someday be used to fuel war-crimes proceedings against soldiers, commanders, and even the leaders who ordered the operation, Israe The resultant diplomatic limbo has left the UN team stranded in Geneva, pending a late Wednesday Security Council debate over the impasse, and a subsequent decision by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on whether to disband the mission. Furiously pulling diplomatic levers of his own was Arafat, the focus of Sharon's High Noon war of nerves, whom the prime minister has kept sequestered in a corner of a dingy, largely destroyed Ramallah compound in an explicit bid to isolate the Palestinian leader from the world. But as Bush administration intervention increased in recent weeks, Arafat has been bathed in the spotlight of a range of international diplomatic efforts. Arafat's repeated past declarations that he wished nothing for nothing more than martyrdom in his Ramallah confinement have now given way to fresh negotiations and a steady stream of American and European mediators. If Israelis had harbored hopes that the issue would disappear along with the UN mission, their optimism was quickly dispelled by widespread fears that Israel's international diplomatic plight could dramatically worsen - and soon. Former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said that an enraged Security Council determined to show a defiant Israel who was boss, could raise the stakes of an investigation, appointing a full-blown commission of inquiry into the events of Jenin as well as other elements of the broad IDF West Bank offensive ordered in response to an unprecedented series of suicide bombings. UN sanctions could follow. A UN inquiry would likely pose a much more profound problem for Israel, Ben-Ami said. Moreover, if the government rejected such a commission, the step could lead to a "frontal confrontation with serious operative decisions regarding Israel, which would in turn put additional pressure on the United States, with respect to its ability to stand alongside Israel." At the same time, pressure on Sharon has increased at home. On Sunday, Sharon dismayed rightists by persuading the Cabinet to accept a Bush administration plan aimed at securing Arafat's release. In the past, Sharon had declared that Arafat would stay put until he handed over the killers of slain cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi. Under the U.S. plan, the suspected assassins, who have been Arafat's guests in the Ramallah compound, are to be transferred to a Jericho prison under American and British supervision, with Arafat's freedom to follow. According to Ha'aretz commentator Akiva Eldar, Israeli leaders had agreed to the proposal under the mistaken belief that in return, the Bush administration would act to quash UN action over Jenin. Now, after having caved in on the Arafat issue without the hoped-for diplomatic compensation, Sharon will likely be forced to come up with another quid pro quo to offer when he visits Washington. "This will then allow Bush to then say 'I have received something from Sharon that is worth the cost of a UN veto,'" Eldar says. "Sharon must come with an offer that the Arabs cannot refuse, an offer good enough to compensate them for forgoing pressure over Jenin," Eldar continues. "For instance, Sharon could go to the White House on Monday and say 'Okay, I'm willing to discuss and give my blessing to the new version of the Saudi plan, let's have an international conference.' "Sharon needs something big, just to shift the emphasis from Jenin to something new. He needs to make it possible for Bush to be able to tell the Arabs 'Listen, I've got something even bigger for you, and (if you reject it, then) I will have to impose the veto." © Ha'aretz, 2002. All rights reserved. Distributed in partnership with Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net). |
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