President Bush's criticism of Israel's settlement policies is not going to be enough, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem Last April -- "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres" in the West Bank -- President George Bush averred with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it was "unrealistic" that any final peace treaty with the Palestinians would involve Israel withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines. Nor, given Israel's character as a "Jewish state", that Palestinian refugees would have the right of return to anywhere other than a state in the West Bank and Gaza. It wasn't quite the same love-fest this April when Bush and Sharon met at the presidential ranch in Crawford Texas. True, Bush reiterated those commitments, together with the pledge that Israel has the right to "defend itself by itself" -- cipher for Israel's right to retain its nuclear arsenal. But there were also discordant notes. One was Israel's ongoing settlement expansion, fuelled by its latest decision to build 3,500 housing units at the Maale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank. The Americans are fully aware that should the E-1 project proceed as planned it will not only integrate Maale Adumim with West Jerusalem but disintegrate Palestinian East Jerusalem into ghettoes, isolate them from the West Bank and end any possibility of a permanent solution to the conflict. "I've been very clear. Israel has an obligation under the roadmap. That's no expansion of settlements," said Bush in Crawford. Sharon was slightly less short in his rejoinder. "It is the Israeli position that the major Israeli population centres [in the West Bank] will remain in Israel's hands under any future final status agreement with all related consequences." And "Maale Adumim is one of the Jewish population blocs and ... we are very much interested that there will be contiguity between it and Jerusalem." A second was the status of the roadmap and when it is to be again unrolled. Bush apparently believes that the dynamic released by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza this summer will somehow evolve into "a process, the roadmap". Sharon is adamant there will be no evolution unless the Palestinian Authority "dismantles the terrorist infrastructure" and achieves a "complete cessation of violence, terror and incitement". Finally, there is the question of Mahmoud Abbas. In the preamble to the Crawford meeting Sharon vented to the Americans his "disappointment" with the new Palestinian president, complaining that he was "not abiding by his promises" and speculating on whether his rule might soon collapse. Publicly Bush was having none of it. "I believe President Abbas wants there to be a [Palestinian] state that will live in peace with Israel ... I appreciate the fact that [he's] taken some action on security. We want to continue to work with [him] on consolidating the [Palestinian] security forces." Privately, however, Bush grilled Sharon on the strength of Abbas within the PA and whether it is capable of assuming control when Israel leaves Gaza. The Americans are right to be concerned. A hundred days into his presidency Abbas is looking like a "featherless chick", not only to Sharon but to his own people. "Abu Mazen is not being held accountable for decisions that are clearly the responsibility of the international community -- such as the settlement expansion and construction of the wall," says Palestinian analyst Haidar Awadallah. "He is being held accountable for domestic issues like reform -- things Palestinians believe he can change." There is little change on the ground, though, and it is not only because Israel has frozen further prisoner releases and its already painfully slow redeployment from West Bank cities. Since his election Abbas's aides have repeatedly said that unifying the PA's dozen or so security forces into three tops his agenda. This is crucial not only "to restore a sense of personal security to the Palestinian citizen" but to break the back of those opposed to Abbas's reformist agenda within the security forces and other parts of the PA bureaucracy. Three months on and "not a single real move to unification has occurred", admits a member of the PA's National Security Council, except for token gestures like the appointment of Nasser Yusuf as interior minister and the "resignation" of Haj Ismail Jaber as head of the West Bank National Security Forces. "We are facing a crisis in which orders issued by Abbas are ignored by Fatah and PA officials," says a Palestinian deputy minister, who refused to be attributed. He puts some blame for this on Abbas and his timidity in facing down his opponents despite wide public support for his reform policies. But he insists nothing will empower Abbas more in this internal struggle than Israel's swift implementation of the understandings reached at Sharm El-Sheikh and real American pressure on Sharon to freeze settlements. This has to be the essential Palestinian message when Bush meets Abbas later this month or early next, he says. Will the American president heed it or will he favour Sharon's view that Abbas may be no more a partner for peace than was his predecessor? "It depends on whether Bush sees the strategic consequences of an Abbas failure," says Palestinian analyst George Giacaman. "For now only one thing is clear: without a convincing peace process and with Israel's ongoing settlement and wall construction Palestinians will not tolerate the current situation for long. The only cease-fire that will last is one that is agreed in exchange for an end to settlement expansion."
