By Ryan Jones
Sep 04, 2005
Far from freezing the defunct ?Oslo? peace process as originally hoped by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel?s withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria appears to have accelerated the birth of the State of Palestine.
Sharon has long been a proponent of a protracted process, affording Israel the opportunity to amply evaluate the Palestinian Arabs? compliance with their peace commitments.
When he first introduced his ?disengagement? plan, the prime minister asserted it would grant Israel the ability to play the game by its own rules and stave off what had been a wild rush to establish the region?s 22nd Arab state.
But the aim of the Bush Administration, the force that most strongly drives the land-for-peace process, remains the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state with at least provisional borders by the end of the American president?s second term.
?If you're confused about where the Bush administration is heading after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, don't be,? wrote Aaron Miller in the International Herald Tribune on Friday. ?President George W. Bush has developed a no-lose secret weapon that he hopes to deploy by the end of his administration: a Palestinian state with provisional borders.?
Miller, a former advisor to six US secretaries of state on Israeli-Arab negotiations, said Washington is cognisant of the fact a full and final agreement is unlikely to be concluded in the next two years because of ongoing ?Palestinian? terrorism and Israel?s current determination to retain control over Judean and Samarian settlement blocs.
But that doesn?t mean US President George W. Bush can?t oversee the declaration of ?Palestinian? sovereignty within provisional borders, in accordance with his 2002 Middle East policy speech, Miller pointed out.
?Senior administration officials don't talk much about it publicly, but everything the administration has done is inexorably leading toward that end.?
PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, however, is looking at a much shorter timetable with greater permanence.
"We hope that a Palestinian state can be achieved next year, Allah willing. What is important is to have the state,? Abbas told the Associated Press Saturday.
Both Abbas and his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, have repeatedly insisted that state be established in its final borders with full sovereignty from the outset, contrary to American ideas of a provisional state.
?A temporary Palestinian state is absolutely not acceptable. We will never accept a state with temporary borders,? Qureia told reporters in Gaza last week.
Meanwhile, prime ministerial hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu pointed out what The Jerusalem Posts?s Caroline Glick said the ?monolithic Israeli press in its babbling leftist bubble and their champion Sharon has refused to admit: The State of Palestine was established last week in Gaza.?
?To all intents and purposes, Sharon has already established a de facto state in the Gaza Strip, whether we like it or not,? Netanyahu told reporters last week after announcing his candidacy for chairman of the ruling Likud Party.