Bush's Speech: Next Steps
By Geoffrey
Kemp
From the June 30, 2002 edition of Al-Ittihad
On June 24th, President George Bush delivered his long awaited speech on the Middle East in the White House Rose Garden. He was flanked, not only by his Secretary of State Colin Powell and his National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, but also his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld’s presence was significant particularly since the speech contained little of direct concern to the Pentagon. Rather the gathering was a display of unity after some extremely divisive squabbling among Bush’s aides over the style and content of the speech.
The speech had been worked on for many weeks with inputs from many individuals and agencies representing very different perspectives as to the nature and direction of U.S. Middle East policy. According to the Los Angeles Times, the speech went through 28 separate drafts with the final version prepared by the White House staff. The decision to emphasize the shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and the call for the Palestinian people to replace them with new, untainted faces, was made when Bush himself was briefed on Israeli intelligence reports that linked Arafat to the financing of recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem. This information confirmed Bush’s own predilection to call for Arafat’s ouster. Thus the content of the speech, as delivered on June 24th, is believed to reflect Bush’s own personal views more so than his earlier Middle East speech on April 4th. The latest speech reemphasizes his stern judgments about the evils of terrorism and the choice before countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. He repeated his now well-known phrase, "nations are either with us or against us in the war on terror." He singled out Syria as a nation that must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations.
This black and white approach to international affairs has its admirers, especially within his own Republican Party. Furthermore, Democrats have been loath to criticize Bush’s rhetoric in public. However, in the U.S. press the speech has come in for considerable criticism. One distinguished Washington journalist, Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post, noted that while there was much to approve of in the speech, it was delivered in "Bush’s increasingly unconvincing apocalyptic rhetoric." The most serious criticisms of the speech are that it focused primarily on demands on the Palestinians to reform their society without providing any practical suggestions as to how they are to do this in the midst of an on-going war with Israel.
Although the President stated bluntly that "peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership" he did not explicitly mention Arafat by name thereby enabling the President of the Palestinian Authority to claim that the President’s words did not apply to him. The obvious dilemma the Bush administration faces is that if there are new Palestinian elections in the coming months, deemed to be free and fair by independent observers, and Arafat is reelected, with whom will the U.S. do business? This is but one of many practical problems that have to be addressed given the absence of any specific guidance for American diplomacy. There is no road map as to what steps that can be taken in the coming months to deal with the key issue, namely that the violence must stop to the point where Israel can withdraw from Palestinian cities, and Palestinians can then, in turn, move around and do what they have to do to implement constitutional reform and hold municipal and national elections. To enable Israel to withdraw its forces, Arafat’s own security forces will have to be deeply engaged in ending violence. It is not clear that they are capable of doing this. Furthermore it is these very same groups that are denounced by the Bush administration as tainted with terror connections.
Not surprisingly many Palestinian reformists have mixed feelings about Bush’s speech. They are delighted that at last the United States has taken seriously their own unremitting criticisms of Arafat and his governance which they have been making for years. And yet, at the same time, they regard Bush’s approach at this late stage to be patronizing and totally impractical.
Then there is the reference to the establishment of a "provisional Palestinian state" if and when new free and fair elections are held. No one has been able to explain what exactly a "provisional" state would look like. What would its powers be? Would it have borders? Could it join the UN? Some have said the administration has been deliberately vague on this issue, but vagueness will not forward the process. Only practical action on the ground will.
This is not to say the speech is without merit. Some of the conditions outlined by Bush could eventually have a profound impact on Israeli politics. It may seem that Bush has given Sharon a "green light" to continue his crackdown on the Palestinians. But if the Palestinians are eventually able to reform their constitution and Arafat is either replaced or given a more ceremonial role, then Israel would face a moment of truth and would have to take seriously Bush’s admonition that as progress is made towards security "Israeli forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to September 28, 2000," "that Israeli settlement activity must stop," and that "a Palestinian state can be born."
However unless Bush’s words are backed up by very practical action on the ground, including the return of the Secretary of State to the region and intense efforts to bring about a cease fire, the speech will end up with many other American Middle East plans gathering dust in a filing cabinet or on a computer hard drive.
