Secretary Rice prods Mideast players to table

Ahead of Wednesday's Arab League summit, the US secretary of State said a Palestinian peace deal is not 'inconceivable.'

from the March 28, 2007 edition

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US to help set up new 'benchmarks'

The current stepped-up diplomatic effort is running up against some daunting political obstacles: a newly formed Palestinian unity government that doesn't recognize Israel, continuing violence in the West Bank and Gaza, President Mahmoud Abbas's difficulties in brokering a deal to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's anemic public approval ratings. That has made Israel reluctant to engage in any sort of discussion that resembles a negotiation.

"The time is not now for formal negotiations," said Rice, who said the purpose of the biweekly Olmert-Abbas meetings would be to "develop this fundamental foundation of confidence."

To build mutual trust between the sides, Rice said the US would help Israelis and Palestinians set up "benchmarks" for smoothing the passage of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip, and shoring up often broken cease-fire.

Rice acknowledged for the first time that the November 2005 agreement to open Gaza's border crossings – the only Israeli-Palestinian signed agreement in the Bush administration's term – had not alleviated economic hardship in Gaza.

Indeed, as Rice was in Jerusalem Tuesday conditions worsened for Gazans. A sewage reservoir broke, causing a flood that killed at least four people. Also Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund reported that resources to fund the Palestinian government dropped one-third compared with the previous year.

To reassure the Palestinians and Arab countries about the US's seriousness, Rice has pushed the sides to discuss what she refers to as the "political horizon" for peace. She sought to win an Israeli agreement to discuss negotiating positions on thorny final status issues such as Jerusalem, borders, and refugees as part of parallel and separate discussions with the US as the intermediary.

America's aim to be 'honest broker'

But Israel reportedly balked at the idea of broaching those topics because it would skip key preconditions for final-status negotiations set out in a four-year old US peace plan known as the "road map."

Observers say the dispute may be a sign of a US desire to create more of a differentiation between its approach and Israel's and correct the impression that it sided with Israel on most issues.

"It signals to the Arab world that the US is returning to be an honest broker," says Arie Kacowicz, a professor of international relations at Hebrew University. The expert said that the Rice's recent diplomatic shuttling was reminiscent of predecessors who took a proactive role in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking like Henry Kissinger.

"There is a real value that she is signaling we are back in business and we are serious," he says. "[But] that doesn't mean you'll see a permanent agreement tomorrow."

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