Bush and Sharon Have Similar Views but Distinct Agendas: News analysis in The New York Times
from Serge Schmemann. Bush’s audacity in demanding Israeli withdrawal, his contemptible school-marm tone, and the ludicrousness of banking his personal prestige — of which, as a diplomat, he has none — on it, probably did lead to Sharon’s token withdrawal from two towns in the occupied territory, but only with his impassioned insistence that the Israeli incursions are necessary for Israel’s survival.
…(T)o most experts, this was a tactical dance of two hardheaded men aware of their mutual dependence and not the striving of two close friends to patch up their differences….
Most Israelis view the bonds that developed between Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon since Sept. 11 as being based on mutual interest rather than friendship, although the two men have known each other for a long time. As governor of Texas, Mr. Bush visited Israel, and Mr. Sharon took him on a tour of the West Bank to bolster his arguments about Israel’s vulnerability.
Both leaders came to office less than two months apart, Mr. Bush in late January 2001 and Mr. Sharon in early March of that year, both intent on reversing the policies of their predecessors in the Middle East.
Mr. Bush believed that Mr. Clinton had created a mess in the Middle East by investing too much of his prestige and time, and so became determined to stay clear of the region. Mr. Sharon viewed the whole Oslo process, in which Washington was a central player, as a mistake, and he came to office on a pledge to crush the Palestinian uprising and to punish Mr. Arafat.
When Mr. Sharon and President Bush intersected, it was not always cordial. At a joint news conference in Washington last June, the two men openly disagreed in their description of the situation in the Middle East. After Sept. 11, when Mr. Sharon felt that the United States was cozying up to the Arabs to garner support against Al Qaeda, the prime minister famously used a word associated with the prelude to World War II, saying, “Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense.”
The Hindustan Times reports on Sharon’s determination to create permanent security buffers in the West Bank and the Palestinian perception that this effectively means the end of Palestinian self-rule and the death knell to the peace process. Israeli military commanders wanted eight more weeks to smoke out Palestinian terrorists, and tension has developed between them and the Sharon government for acceding at all to Bush’s demand for a pullout.
Reuters notes that Powell’s shuttle diplomacy got off to a ‘frosty start’ as King Mohammed of Morocco kept him waiting for two hours before receiving him, then asked him acerbically why he had not started his trip in Jerusalem instead. Exactly my question. The article observes that, despite the public rhetoric to the contrary, this step might be interpreted as a US green light to Sharon to continue the West Bank operation until Powell gets around to meeting with the Israelis later this week. It should also be seen as showing our true, craven, priorities. Powell gets sent out whenever the illusory War-on-Terrorism® alliance needs shoring up. This little Israeli-Palestinian brouhaha may just interfere annoyingly with US plans to orchestrate a move on Iraq.
Related: Phil Agre points to this interesting (if at times a little incoherent, probably because we’re reading the English instead of the Farsi…) Islamic perspective in The Iranian on the relationship between suicide bombing, martyrdom and jihad.
