talks to Graham Usher of the challenges facing Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon's intentions with the roadmap was one of the architects of the Oslo accords, the driving force behind Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon and now the leader of Israel's left-wing Yahad (formerly Meretz) Party. He is also one of the authors of the Geneva Accord, a virtual peace agreement signed between the Israeli and Palestinian "peace coalition" in 2003. No sooner had Abu Mazen been sworn in as Palestinian president than Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon started to deal with him in the same way as he dealt with Arafat -- he froze all contacts, sealed Gaza and threatened a major military strike. Do you think Sharon wants to destroy Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) "as a partner"? You might be right. But, if so, Abu Mazen must demonstrate that he is not working for Sharon. And since Sharon cannot demand that Abu Mazen obey his orders, Abu Mazen cannot expect Sharon will compensate him for any actions he takes. Abu Mazen has to work as though Sharon does not want him to succeed -- regardless of whether this is the case or not. His working assumption should be that he is working against the will of Sharon. If he adopts that approach, he will survive. If he adopts the alternative approach -- if he says I have achieved "quiet" in Gaza and now I want Israeli action on the checkpoints and the prisoners -- he will fail. Sharon is not going to give him these things. But Abu Mazen needs these things if he is to survive. Then he should look to the world. And I think the world will help him. Britain is ready to retrain the Palestinian police in Gaza, the European Union is providing money and George Bush would rather have Abu Mazen as the Palestinian president than Yasser Arafat. If these are the interests of these forces, they will have to act. You see the package is not Abu Mazen acts and Sharon reciprocates. Whatever Abu Mazen gets, he will get from the world. I think he understands this. When I saw him [last week], I asked him. "You have your demands and there are demands on you to end the violence. Are you ready to reach an agreement with Hamas and put your own house in order even if you know you will get nothing from Sharon?" His answer was yes. But isn't a confrontation in any case inevitable -- given the contradictory views the two sides have of the roadmap? Yes. We now have two leaders with totally different readings of the roadmap, even for the first phase. Abu Mazen wants the Palestinians and Israelis to carry out their commitments in parallel; Sharon wants them to be sequential, with the Palestinians always taking the first step. Through sequencing, Sharon hopes to prevent any further development, so that we don't even reach phases two and three. If we do reach the second phase, Sharon will propose an interim solution, based on a Palestinian state with provisional borders and without any reference to a permanent solution -- a Bantustan solution, imposed unilaterally but with a Palestinian acceptance. But Abu Mazen will not be able to accept this -- not at least without an agreement on the bases of a permanent solution. And Sharon cannot accept this because he knows what those bases are -- the Clinton plan and the Geneva Accord. Sharon is buying time. He wants to end his terms in power without reaching the moment of truth with the Palestinians, without giving up those things he believes Israel cannot give up -- the division of Jerusalem, a solution for the refugees and an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders. This is why we have this diversion called the disengagement plan. It's a diversion from the first phase of the roadmap. Once we reach the roadmap there will be a collision. If disengagement is a diversion, why is your party supporting it? Because it is the only game in town, because of the very important precedent it sets for the future. I think we have to accommodate it while telling the Israeli leadership and public what should happen the morning after the withdrawal from Gaza, which is not to put the peace process in formaldehyde (as Sharon wants) but to move to a permanent solution -- to say very clearly that the next step after Gaza is Geneva. In the meantime we will push for more coordination between Israel and the Palestinians on the disengagement so that eventually it becomes part of an agreement. We will also raise our voices against the targeted killings, the retaliations and the West Bank wall. What would you do about the wall? I would destroy it.
