With everyone waiting for US President George W. Bush to make his long-awaited announcement on the Middle East, Arab commentators and leading writers have divergent expectations of what he will say and what it could mean for the region’s immediate future.
A comparatively hopeful note is struck by London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, which portrays the US president’s meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal as completing the extensive round of consultations Bush has been conducting before meeting with his senior aides to put the finishing touches on his “peace initiative.” It says in its leader that Bush has consulted at great length and at the highest level with all sides concerned. This suggests that he now has a clear picture of the situation and is poised to take a “serious stand in tackling the crisis that is buffeting the region and threatening its stability.”

The Arab states and Israel have been locked in a “diplomatic battle” to gain American support for their views ahead of Bush’s announcement, Asharq al-Awsat notes. The fact that Ariel Sharon ordered two of his aides to remain in Washington to counter any impact the Saudi foreign minister’s talks might have, shows that Arab diplomatic moves are worrying him.
“If that reveals anything, it is that dialogue with Washington, and trying to convince it through an exchange of views, can achieve positive results for the Arabs, despite the power of the pro-Israel lobby, especially when what is at stake are undeniable legitimate rights,” the paper says.

It adds that “the next two weeks will be decisive” in determining the approach the Americans take to tackling the crisis, which Bush is expected to unveil along with details of the proposed international conference on the Middle East and its goals.
While conceding that there have been “worrying signs” of disagreement between rival camps within the Bush administration about the broad principles on which future peace moves should be based, Asharq al-Awsat says the “vision” Bush ends up announcing will be final.
“It needs to be clear, realizable, based on clear terms of reference that define the obligations and responsibilities of each side, and uphold justice in a manner that makes it impossible for anyone to reject it unless they are hostile to the very concept of peace,” Asharq al-Awsat says.

Talal Salman, publisher of the Beirut daily As-Safir, sees US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s remarks in his interview with the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat earlier this week about a “provisional Palestinian state” as a foretaste of the “magic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict” that the Bush administration has settled on “after profound reflection and exhaustive brain-wracking.”
“A provisional Palestinian people under a permanent Israeli occupation!” he writes, is what Bush has concluded is needed after talks with various Arab leaders who have been “inundating him with peace initiatives.” Their expositions of the justice of the Palestinians have persuaded him “that the Palestinian people are not a constant factor in the equation, but a transient or passing one, like a nomadic tribe that likes to remain on the move and hates settling down in one place.”

“In vain will Prince Saud al-Faisal attempt to salvage whatever can be salvaged out of the glowing results of the convivial meetings held on the Texas ranch between his uncle, Crown Prince Abdullah, and the American president,” says Salman.
Bush has made up his mind that the answer lies in a provisional Palestinian state under permanent Israeli occupation, though its terms might be subject to negotiations after a decade or so.

“A provisional state on territory segmented like a beehive,” with every town, village and refugee camp cut off by a “wall of tanks and permanent and moving checkpoints; with everything under helicopter surveillance; with squadrons of steel locusts everywhere, devouring the flesh of camps, villages and towns; and with death squads monitoring intentions and dreams, and targeting anyone they discover, determine, speculate, or suspect may have explosive materials in their blood.”

A “provisional state” is an innovation no one ever heard of before, Salman says. “A provisional state unrelated to the land or to the people. All other states are permanent. The Palestinian state alone is provisional, meaning that it is a stop-gap, and its role could be ended or the need for it could expire in a day, a month, or a year,” he writes. “Because it is provisional it does not need defined territory, nor permanent institutions like (God forbid) an army, nor the luxury of independence or sovereignty, nor the hassle of an economy, a currency, or relations with other sides. Sharon’s Israel will charitably shoulder all those burdens on its behalf.
“And, because it is provisional, there is no need to define the identity of its people, for it has nothing to do with them or they with it,” says Salman.

“This generous American offer means, simply, that all the existing Arab entities ­ complete with their peoples, regimes and sultans ­ are provisional states, the life span of each one of them (and of each regime) to be determined according to the degree to which it serves the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation,” he remarks.

Al-Hayat’s New York bureau chief Raghida Dergham, who interviewed Powell, acknowledges that Bush’s public remarks may not suggest that he is going to propose a practical and fair way of achieving his “vision” of a Palestinian state. But she says Powell sounded extremely confident that Bush’s critics will “eat their words” after he makes his announcement, which he is set to do “very soon.” When Bush finally shows his hand, “that should settle the debate,” she writes.

Dergham also challenges the assumption in the Arab world that Sharon got what he wanted from Bush during his latest visit to Washington. “That is a superficial reading,” she writes in her weekly opinion piece from New York for Al-Hayat. Sharon brought with him a vision that consisted of a collection of “no’s,” and the administration declined to adopt most of them, and openly challenged some, she says.
It refused to subscribe to his demand that Arafat be “dispensed with and marginalized,” or to his insistence on a total cessation of all violence before a political process could begin.

And while Bush seemed to endorse Sharon’s refusal to agree to a timetable for peace talks, Powell made clear that he could well do so later, and incorporate a timeline into the package he is poised to unveil. Powell also stressed that ending the Israeli occupation and freezing settlement activity were key US policy objectives.

The Bush administration has, moreover, snubbed Sharon’s attempts to ensure that it excludes other international players (namely, “quartet” partners Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) and various Arab states from an active role in the search for a peace settlement, and the convocation of an international conference to kick-start it, Dergham writes.

“None of this is consistent with Sharon’s outlook, and indeed it constitutes fundamental, and not token, American pressure on him,” she suggests.

Dergham adds that Powell has briefed the quartet about the idea of a “provisional” Palestinian state, which some see as a “trial balloon.” It originated in the Peres/Abu-Ala plan, which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak picked up and developed, and envisages establishing a Palestinian state without defining its borders. This is to entail not just a mere proclamation of statehood, but a complete Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip ­ including the Jewish settlements there ­ and parts of the West Bank.

Negotiations would then open on defining the border, for which various timetables are still being discussed, with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres suggesting three years and the Palestinian Authority proposing 18 months. Sharon wants a “long-term interim agreement” lasting eight years, but there is a huge gap between his thoughts on many aspects of the process and those of the other players involved.
Dergham adds that while the Bush administration seems determined to move forward on the Palestinian track, it is not neglecting Syria and Lebanon, and invitations may be issued to them soon to attend the proposed international conference.