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A Times Editorial
President Bush's diplomacy, which produced a plan to end Israel's siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters, offers a glimmer of hope for further progress.
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 1, 2002
President Bush's first steps into the minefield of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were belated, tentative and sometimes contradictory. Now, the president may be gaining more solid footing. In the process, he is providing a rare glimmer of hope that the United States can exert further leadership to defuse a crisis that threatens to spread violence and instability to other countries, including our own.
The president's private diplomacy in recent days led to an agreement to end the standoff that has kept Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat trapped in his Ramallah compound for weeks. Six Palestinians holed up with Arafat, five of whom have been implicated in the assassination of Israel's tourism minister last year, will be turned over to U.S. and British civilian authorities. Israeli troops, in turn, will relax their hold on Arafat's headquarters.
That may not sound like much of a breakthrough, considering that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators only a year and a half ago seemed on the verge of a comprehensive peace treaty. However, the agreement brokered by President Bush could be a step toward reversing the region's bleak momentum of escalating terrorism and military reprisals.
First, ending the siege of Arafat's compound is a prerequisite to negotiations on broader issues. Even if he were so inclined, Arafat hardly can fulfill Israeli demands to crack down on terrorism as long as his own freedoms are so circumscribed. Second, the role U.S. authorities have agreed to play in the detention of the six Palestinian suspects suggests that the Bush administration is prepared to become more active diplomatically than the president originally preferred. It has become obvious that Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are incapable of statesmanship in the absence of heavy pressure from the United States and other international parties.
Once the terms of the Ramallah agreement are met, all parties should move quickly toward broader confidence-building measures. The most pressing issue involves the details of a proposed international inquiry into the Israeli attack on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. The Bush administration can help to implement a full and fair inquiry that replaces wild rumors with demonstrated facts.
Israeli authorities have valid concerns about the fairness of a U.N. inquiry as originally proposed. The organization has a longstanding bias against Israel, and the three-person fact-finding team originally named by Secretary-General Kofi Annan has neither the objectivity nor the expertise to render a definitive verdict on events surrounding the Israeli offensive in Jenin.
However, it is in Israel's interests to cooperate with an evenhanded inquiry. While Palestinian claims of wholesale civilian massacres already have been shown to be exaggerated, continued objections to an international investigation leave the impression that Israeli authorities have something to hide. Washington can help to set the parameters of an inquiry that documents any Israeli excesses in Jenin, as well as the wave of terrorist attacks that provoked Israel's military response.
Even if they can end the siege in Ramallah and the impasse in Jenin, negotiators still will be far removed from broader agreements that can restore Israelis' sense of security and ensure Palestinians' dignity and autonomy. Months of obscene violence have, at least for now, destroyed the region's constituency for peace. President Bush at least deserves credit for stepping in more aggressively, even though he surely realizes how long the road to peace will have to be.