In the dying days of his presidency Bush has much unfinished business, and it doesn't involve a viable Palestinian state, writes Hassan Nafaa* By the time this newspaper hits the stands Bush will have already embarked on his week long tour of the Middle East which begins in Israel and ends in Egypt. The media has already begun to spew out the usual flood of reports and commentaries lauding the visit as proof of the sincerity of Bush's desire to personally sponsor and encourage Palestinian-Israeli negotiations set in motion at Annapolis in November last year, heralding the visit as an opportunity to reach a final settlement before the end of 2008, i.e. before Bush leaves the White House. How I wish such assessments were true. Who among us does not dream of peace and stability in this war-torn part of the world and the advent of an era in which its material and human resources can be turned towards securing development? But dreams are one thing and reality another. Whatever the illusions surrounding the Bush visit no good will come of it, not for the Palestinians or for Arab and Muslim peoples in general. The visit simply furnishes yet more proof of Bush's determination to serve the Zionist project until his very last moment in office. Should you think such an assessment is motivated by a bias that has no relationship to what is taking place on the ground, simply access the White House's webpage (http:// www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080103-2.html)www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080103-2.html)/iand go to Stephen Hadley's press briefing of 3 January, where Bush's national security adviser identifies the four main objectives of Bush's tour: - To reaffirm the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of our friends and allies in the Middle East, especially the Gulf nations. - To coordinate with the US's friends and allies in the region over ways to combat terrorism and extremism, and to promote freedom, peace and prosperity. - To support the young democracies and the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinians. - To discuss with friends and allies the challenges to the region, including the challenges presented by Iran, and ways to strengthen regional security and advance our economic ties to the region. The tour's itinerary, which Hadley outlines in detail, is carefully planned to serve these objectives. In addition to the expected meetings with Peres and Olmert, Abbas and Fayyad, Mubarak and the rulers of Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Bush's schedule includes some other noteworthy items. In Israel, the US president will lay a wreath at the Holocaust memorial. In Kuwait, he will inspect US troops stationed at Camp Arifjan, after which he will meet with Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus to be updated on the situation in Iraq. In Kuwait Bush will also take part in a roundtable on democracy and development attended by Kuwaiti women. After visiting the US Navy Fifth Fleet in Bahrain he will proceed to the Emirates where he is scheduled to deliver a speech in Abu Dhabi on, as Hadley put it, "the progress we have seen in the Gulf, the progress of the freedom agenda in the region, emerging economic progress, and how regional security is important for both continued economic growth and for the spread of freedom." You don't need great insight to read between the lines and see the real aims of the Bush trip. From an Arab perspective they could be worded as follows: - To deepen divisions between those powers in the region that the White House classes as "extremist", foremost among them Iran, and those it classifies as "moderates", championed by Israel, of course. We can therefore expect Bush to do his utmost to turn "moderates" against "extremists", even if this entails resorting to the old trick of supplying the former with false evidence to support claims that Iran presents the gravest peril to the region and that all possible measures should be taken to isolate and debilitate it and its allies, notably Shia Hizbullah. He will also try to impress upon the moderates the importance of continuing to isolate Hamas and refuse all attempts to encourage dialogue with it until it agrees to recognise all previous agreements signed with Israel, including the roadmap. - To showcase US military strength so as to deliver the message to Iran that Washington is determined to keep all options open, including that of military attack, regardless of what its own intelligence agencies say about the lack of any evidence that Iran intends to develop a nuclear programme for military purposes. As for the message to "friends and allies" -- notably Israel -- it is that they can count on America's continued protection during Bush's lame duck year. - To deliver a message to Syria, holding a carrot if Damascus distances itself from Iran and threatening with a stick if it insists on maintaining its strategic alliance with Tehran. The results of Bush's tour will be contingent, of course, on the type of carrots he is willing or able to offer his allies and those he wants to win over to his designs. We have a pretty good idea of the type of inducements he will present to the PA in an attempt to tempt them into an all-out war against Hamas. They're not much. The most he can offer is to pledge to persuade Israel to halt expansion of existing settlements and the construction of new ones and to dismantle the so-called "spontaneous" settlements that have not been approved by Tel Aviv. But Bush will still insist that major existing settlements be annexed to Israel, as promised in his letter of guarantee to Sharon. Because of his own ideological leanings and the small margin of manoeuvrability available to him to exert pressure on Israel Bush will also seek to pressure the PA and Arab governments to relinquish demands for the Palestinian refugees' right to return and settle for offering refugees the choice between "returning" to the "Palestinian state" after it is established or accepting naturalisation in their current countries of residence, along with compensation. Naturally it would be very difficult for any Palestinian "authority" to agree to such a solution, and equally difficult for Arab governments to fall in line, especially given the enormous pressures they will then encounter to normalise relations with Israel in advance of the creation of a Palestinian "state" on the pretext of providing Israel with the incentive to make "courageous compromises". It is not quite as clear what inducements Bush would, or could, offer Syria, especially considering Washington's current ambivalence towards Damascus. There have been reports -- perhaps deliberately leaked -- of a joint US-Israeli three-phase plan lasting until 2020, under which Israel will agree to withdraw from some of the Golan Heights, though it insists on keeping control of 300 square kilometres, supposedly in order to protect sources of water. The Syrian regime has staked its fate on restoring every last inch of occupied Syrian territory and is unlikely to accept any territorial compromise. Nor is there much in the plan that might convincingly entice Syria away from Iran and Hizbullah, certainly not when the alternative is to bow down before Israel's much vaunted military superiority. From the moment he stepped into the White House in 2000 Bush has been a fanatic supporter of Israel. First, he refused to meet, or have any contact whatsoever, with Arafat, a position that encouraged Sharon to lay siege to, and ultimately drive to death, the one person who could have convinced the Palestinian people to accept a compromise solution. Second, he branded Palestinian resistance movements as terrorist, giving Sharon the green light to hunt them down mercilessly. Third, he pledged US support to Sharon for Israel to annex vast tracts of land in the West Bank and reject the Palestinian right to return. Then came Bush's tacit support for the apartheid that severs half the West Bank and that is being pushed as the permanent boundary of a Palestinian state that some are trying to market as the fulfilment of the Palestinian struggle. Bush has given no indication that he has changed. The Bush "vision" of a two-state solution, unveiled in 2002, offers no grounds to substantiate claims that he has tempered his support of Israel. The vision was no more than another episode in US-Israeli bids to circumvent Palestinian demands and reshape alliances in the region in a manner conducive to eliminating the Palestinian resistance and to the eventual creation of a Palestinian entity that will be a state only in name, one purpose of which will be to dispel the Israeli nightmare of a "demographic bomb". If anything, Bush's trip to the region in the twilight of his presidency and against the backdrop of the failures of his administration's project in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, is more in the nature of the cowboy's parting shot, one target of which will be an attempt to secure PA recognition of the Jewish character of the Israeli state preparatory to the transfer of Palestinians inside Israel. Are his friends and allies in the region going to clear the way so he can take aim? * The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
