Breaking a vicious cycle

In a continuing effort to find a way out of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Egyptian diplomacy is moving in various directions, with the emphasis on the American. Tarek Atia and Nevine Khalil report
After an exchange of written messages and public statements, Cairo sent a high-level team to Washington on Tuesday to consult with the United States on how to avoid an escalation of the crisis in the region. The team was led by President Hosni Mubarak's chief political adviser, Osama El- Baz, and included Egypt's ambassador to Washington Nabil Fahmi and presidential aide Maged Abdel-Fattah. They planned to meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. The team's mission is to discuss measures to calm down boiling tempers and escalating violence in the region. Over the past two weeks, written letters exchanged by Presidents Mubarak and George W Bush have addressed ways of breaking the cycle of violence and counter- violence. Both Mubarak and Bush expounded on ideas of ending confrontations, restoring stability, alleviating the suffering of the Palestinians and the return of the Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiating table.
The decision to send the Egyptian delegation was announced after an hour-long meeting chaired by Mubarak at Borg El- Arab, near Alexandria, on Monday. The meeting was attended by the travelling team as well as by Defence Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Information Minister Safwat El-Sherif. The meeting deliberated over last Friday's occupation by Israel of Orient House -- the unofficial headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem -- as well as ideas for putting in force a cease-fire and relaunching security and political dialogue between the two sides.
The gathering also reviewed a number of reports on political and security conditions in the Middle East resulting from the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel's retaliatory military actions.
Last week, Mubarak told Israeli television that the "the ball is squarely in Israel's court" to launch "rational and calm" negotiations with the Palestinians. The president called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "take risks" for peace by starting talks without demanding a total cease-fire as a prerequisite. "To stop terrorism, you need to negotiate and give people hope," Mubarak said in an interview aired on Friday. He told viewers that Sharon's actions were not encouraging, despite reassurances by the Israeli premier at the beginning of his tenure that he wanted peace. Soon after his election in February, Sharon relayed to Mubarak through security channels a message that he "understood the implications of war and that he wants to end his career with [an achievement in] the peace process." At the time, Sharon also expressed the hope of meeting Mubarak for consultations, but such an encounter did not materialise because of Sharon's iron- fist policies against the Palestinians.
Moving in yet another direction, Foreign Minister Maher met former Israeli Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin in Cairo on Sunday evening. For nearly two hours Maher and Beilin, a member of the Israeli left and a peace activist, discussed ideas Beilin had brought to Egypt for moving Israeli public opinion in the direction of condemning Sharon's provocative policies, which had not brought the security he had promised Israelis.
Beilin's visit came on the same day that a pro-Israeli Congressman, Gary Ackerman from New York, paid a visit to the Foreign Ministry. Although Ackerman made clear the US Congress's appreciation of President Hosni Mubarak's role in the peace process, he also appeared to justify Israel's use of US-built F-16 jetfighters to bomb Palestinians. "We would prefer that F-16s not be used in any conflict at all ... but there is a reality and we are trying to deal with the reality right now," he said.
Ackerman told reporters that the US spoke with some "moral authority" about the conflict. "We are trying to find the most appropriate voice in which to speak," the Congressman said. On Monday, President Bush indicated that he felt the US was doing enough for now, and that Yasser Arafat should do more.
In Maher's own words, Egypt wants the US "to cease issuing statements and begin serious movement." During the meeting with Ackerman, Maher told US chargé d'affaires Reno Harnish, who also attended, that the US should be "more impartial, more powerful, firmer and clearer" in its movements.
The flurry of diplomatic activity followed a suicide bombing in Jerusalem last Thursday which underlined the need for more strenuous efforts to prevent an already bad situation from getting even worse. This time there were no phone calls from Egypt to the Israeli leadership urging restraint. Instead, on the one hand, there was a clear-cut condemnation of the bombing and, on the other, there was an insistence that the bombing was a result of the failed policies of the Sharon government. The Israeli occupation of Orient House the next day triggered strong statements of condemnation. "I do not think I have heard of any country in the world that supports this decision which many, including the US, have considered a provocative act," Maher said.
Egypt and other Arab states are also considering other moves to present a unified stance against the Israeli actions.
"There are discussions over what type of meeting is required. Some think the follow- up committee [for Arab summits] should convene, others are asking for a full foreign ministers meeting," Maher said on Tuesday. He planned a meeting for yesterday with his counterpart from Jordan, Abdel- Ilah Al-Khatib, Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa, and PA President Yasser Arafat.
Arab claims that Egypt is limited by the 1978 Camp David agreements in the possible action it can take to put pressure on Israel were denied by a diplomatic source, who indicated that there was, rather, plenty of room to manoeuvre. The rules of diplomacy contained a wide variety of possibilities, the source said, mentioning that the Egyptian ambassador to Israel was recalled in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and returned only in 1986.
Referring to the current situation of the Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv, the source said, "The ambassador was recalled for a reason, and that reason still exists today."
Despite the meeting with Beilin, Cairo does not seem to be attaching much hope to this track.
Maher summarised the meeting as follows: "The whole idea is that Israeli public opinion is starting to move in a positive direction, and we have to encourage that, and suggest ideas to help the peace camps on both sides to move towards negotiations."
Additional reporting by Soha Abdelaty
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