Palestinian officials hailed Mahmoud Abbas' meeting with George Bush as a "significant and historic" turning point in Palestinian-US relations. It is too soon to say, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem Whatever else, last week's meeting between presidents Bush and Abbas thawed the frost that has long coated US- Palestinian relations. In a ringing endorsement, Bush vowed to stand by the Palestinian leader "as you combat corruption, reform the Palestinian security services and your justice system and revive your economy". There were practical gestures. Bush authorised $50 million in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, skirting Congressional objections that the Palestinian treasury was a black hole. He expanded the role of his envoy, General William Ward, from "overseer" of Palestinian security reform to "coordinator" between the Israeli and PA forces. He reiterated American opposition to settlement construction and any other activity that "contravenes [Israel's] roadmap obligations or prejudices final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem". According to Israeli sources, Bush also showed understanding to Abbas' request that disarming the various Palestinian militia be postponed until after the PA parliamentary elections, a tacit nod to Abbas' contention that the way to domesticate Hamas is through incorporation rather than confrontation. Perhaps most significantly Bush said that "any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 armistice lines must be mutually agreed to". For PA Foreign Minister Nasser Al-Kidwa, this US pledge to some extent "balances" the one granted Ariel Sharon in April 2004: "in the light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers [i.e. settlements], it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." None of this played well with Sharon. "The Palestinians came out feeling no pressure to fight terror, and that they don't have to take immediate action," he told a US delegation in Jerusalem on 30 May. "Questions are being asked -- what happened to Bush's promises? People say the whole disengagement plan is a bluff. I need calm to carry out the disengagement, and this is causing me difficulties." Restoring PA-US relations to something like normalcy is perhaps the key component of Abbas' strategy to end the armed Intifada, resume a political process on the basis of the roadmap and, critically, move on to final status negotiations. Very simply, he believes he must drive a wedge between the US and Israeli governments to create a divide in Israeli opinion that will either force Sharon to negotiate or hasten his fall from office. Was the Washington meeting the thin end of the wedge? Abbas approached Bush with three requests: a commitment that the Gaza disengagement plan would be an integral part of the roadmap rather than its substitute or prelude; that pressure would be exerted on Israel to fulfill its roadmap obligations, especially a freeze on settlement construction and the withdrawal of the army to positions held prior to the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000; and an articulation not just of the "vision" of a Palestinian state but concrete assurances as to its content, parametres, timeline and mechanism for realisation. It is not clear whether Abbas received any answers. While believing disengagement could mark a "way back to the roadmap", Bush made it clear that for now it remained a unilateral Israeli step, to be "coordinated" with the PA rather than negotiated as part of an overarching peace process. PA officials were also told there would be no real pressure on settlements this side of the disengagement, save perhaps for discrete interventions to prevent irrevocable decisions such as the ground-breaking of the E1 corridor in occupied East Jerusalem. Nor did Bush approve Abbas' proposal to move immediately to final status negotiations. On the contrary, he affirmed that the Israeli preferred sequence remained his: first an end to all forms of armed Palestinian resistance, then the establishment of a Palestinian state "with provisional borders" and lastly -- and only lastly -- a return to final status talks. For Abbas this is the longest of hauls. In the worst -- but still likeliest -- case it means a managed impasse lasting not only for the duration of the disengagement but up to and beyond the next Israeli elections scheduled to be held sometime next year. There is an emerging consensus among Israeli analysts that, post-disengagement, Sharon will resist all pressure to return to negotiations and swing radically to the right, not only out of ideological conviction but to face down his main electoral adversaries -- which is not the Labor Party or Israeli "peace camp" but Likud rivals like Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If this is the future, Abbas may not be a part of it -- not out of a failure to impress his leadership internationally as the only real successor to Arafat but due to the frailty of his policies and constituencies at home. In Gaza the cease-fire is slowly but surely disintegrating, fuelled by Fatah- Hamas arguments over the recent local elections. In the West Bank his security reforms are meeting bureaucratic inertia and division, with rival security forces fighting over the spoils in Ramallah, Jenin and Hebron. And there is a real possibility that the parliamentary elections will be delayed, hostage to a Fatah leadership (young and old) that clings still to power rather than accountability. Without some kind of political breakthrough Abbas may find what Arafat found before him: that international kudos, including receptions on the White House lawn, means little to his people unless accompanied by a political process that ends the occupation which "began in 1967" and reaches an agreed and just solution for the refugee problem that was born in 1948. (see p.8)
