Gamble on Sharon Goes Awry for Bush Likud Vote Against Plan a Blow to U.S. Credibility

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Monday,
May 3, 2004; Page A15

President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks
ago when he forcefully embraced Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed
Israel key concessions on a final peace deal. The
backlash in Arab and European countries was especially
intense, but administration officials argued Sharon’s
plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled
peace process.

Now, the Likud Party’s overwhelming rejection of that
plan has left the administration’s credibility in the
Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not
soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be
harder for the administration to claim that Bush’s
support of Sharon has made a difference. Moreover, the
Likud vote comes when the image of the United States is
already greatly damaged by accounts of psychological
and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S.
soldiers.

"The real objective of giving Sharon the blank check he
left with was to shore up his political support at
home," said a State Department official speaking on the
condition of anonymity. "We paid a very high price and
did not get a return." Samuel W. Lewis, a former U.S.
ambassador to Israel, said the vote yesterday "is an
embarrassment diplomatically" for the Bush
administration and "now they have the worst of both
worlds." He faulted the administration for giving in to
many of Sharon’s key demands, including saying that in
a final peace deal some Israel settlements in the West
Bank would be retained and that Palestinians would have
to give up their right to return to lands they lost
during Israel’s war of independence. Instead, he said,
Bush should have given just general support to the
plan.

The administration’s next step is unclear. U.S.
officials, fuming that Sharon did not wage a strong
lobbying campaign once he had Bush’s support, still
hope Sharon will be able to push his plan through
because polls show that most Israelis support it.
Calling Sharon’s proposal "a courageous and important
step toward peace," the White House said in a statement
last night that it would consult with Israell "about
how to move forward."

The administration in recent days has tried to
emphasize its concern for the Palestinians, such as
floating an economic stabilization plan for Gaza after
the Israeli withdrawal, in part relying on financial
support of the World Bank, officials said. As part of
the diplomatic offensive, national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice last week called some Arab countries
that were behind in making payments to shore up the
Palestinian Authority.

Tomorrow, at the United Nations, Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell is to meet with European and U.N.
officials to win support for the plan. Later in the
week Jordanian King Abdullah, who angrily postponed a
visit to Washington after Bush’s embrace of Sharon, is
coming here to meet with Bush.

Sharon, knowing the president faced a potentially close
election in November, had threatened to cancel his trip
to Washington if the administration did not bend on
some of his requests, outlined in an exchange of
letters made public after Sharon’s White House visit.
The diplomatic fallout was immediate: Besides Abdullah
canceling his visit, British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
one of Bush’s closest allies, said he could not endorse
Israel keeping settlements. French President Jacques
Chirac said such unilateral actions were "doomed to
failure" and harshly criticized Bush’s move. "One
cannot unilaterally modify international law, nor
preempt the results of a negotiation which sooner or
later will be obviously necessary," he said. Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak declared after the announcement
"there exists today a hatred of Americans never equaled
in the region."

Sources said Abdullah, in a private letter to Bush,
asked for his own letter that would provide
acknowledgment that the Palestinians would receive
compensation, such as territory, if Israel retained
settlements. State Department officials have drafted
such a letter but it is not clear whether the White
House is inclined to grant the king’s request. Egypt,
which would play a crucial role in policing the border
between Gaza and Egypt to prevent arms smuggling once
the Israelis withdrew, also has sought public
assurances from the White House.

The administration had hoped to assuage European anger
and win some sort of endorsement of the plan, when a
Middle East coordinating group known as the Quartet —
the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the
United States — meets in New York tomorrow. But that
will be more difficult in the wake of Sharon’s defeat.
"We have to prove there is a process underway and we
weren’t played by Sharon," the State Department
official said. "But we’ll get hammered and our judgment
will be questioned beyond belief."

Seeking to mitigate the diplomatic backlash,
administration officials have emphasized that the
letters with Sharon stressed that a final peace deal
needed to be negotiated between Israel and the
Palestinians — and that the letters also committed
Israel to take steps to ease Palestinians’ suffering.

Moreover, they have argued that for Israel to leave
Gaza — and four small settlements in the West Bank —
would represent the best hope of restarting the peace
process. "We have to seize the moment," Deputy
Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told Congress
last week. "I’m not going to sit here and kind of give
you a bunch of eyewash that all our friends in the Arab
world are really behind this; they’re not, but they do
see some positive elements."

But the debate in the Arab world, one Arab diplomat
said yesterday, was not whether the Sharon plan was
positive but how the U.S. position has changed. Arab
officials privately said they feared Sharon had lured
Bush into a diplomatic trap. Although Bush
administration officials had said for weeks they were
not negotiating with the Sharon government, merely
listening to ideas, Arab officials believed every line
of the letters between Bush and Sharon was carefully
argued and negotiated, with Sharon winning most of the
concessions.

While Sharon remained publicly committed to the
U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map," Arab
officials were dubious. They viewed Sharon’s plan as an
effort to freeze the process. In a little-noticed
letter between Rice and Sharon’s chief of staff, Israel
promised a key U.S. goal — "territorial contiguity" of
a Palestinian state — in only the northern West Bank.
The Israelis pledged to aim for "transportation
contiguity" in the rest of the West Bank, meaning a
state scattered among Israeli settlements and linked by
roads and bridges.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61482-2004May2?language=printer