WASHINGTON — After weeks of pointed reproach directed at Israel, the Bush administration is publicly criticizing the Palestinians and taking tangible steps toward fighting terrorism aimed at Israelis.
The change in tone is being welcomed by an American Jewish community increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration’s actions over the past two months, most recently its condemnations of Israeli raids into seven Palestinian-controlled villages. The incursions followed the Oct. 17 assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi by Palestinian Marxist extremists.
Meanwhile, there is some hope that Israelis and Palestinians can renew peace talks. Israel Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who has met Yasser Arafat twice in Europe during the past week, has said he has a new peace proposal for the Palestinian leader to review.
The pressure might now be on Arafat to seriously consider Peres’ offer. Arafat is coming to the United States next week for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, but President Bush still refuses to meet with him. Palestinian officials have denied rumors that Arafat was planning to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood during the assembly. He will, however, address a U.N. session where Bush will be in attendance.
Nevertheless, a White House official said the Palestinian leader has not taken adequate steps to merit a one-on-one meeting with Bush. “We’re still sending the message that [Arafat] needs to do more,” the official was quoted as saying in the Jerusalem Post.
That comment followed a number of highly critical remarks hurled at Arafat and the Palestinian Authority over the past week by Bush administration officials.
David Satterfield, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, told the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine that the last 13 months of Palestinian violence has “become an ongoing process of calculated terror and escalation” that has led to Israeli actions that “proved inflammatory and provocative.
“There has been too little movement on critical issues involving basic questions of intent and will to bring the killing to stop.”
On Monday, Daniel Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Foreign Press Association in Tel Aviv that “words are not enough” for Arafat to prove he is against terrorism.
Kurtzer also said the Palestinian leader must do more to crack down on Palestinian militants and decide “where he stands on questions relating to terrorism.”
Israel also hopes it will receive a boost of U.S. support because of Peres’ peace plan, which was presented to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for review Sunday.
At this point, the Peres-Sharon initiative is premature, as not even a cease-fire, Sharon’s condition for renewed peace talks, has taken hold.
“It would be wrong to present a detailed plan right now, but if the Americans can see that we have an initiative that can serve as a starter and urge the Palestinians to adopt the [George] Tenet agreement, then why not try,” Ra’anan Gissin, Sharon’s spokesman, was quoted as saying.
Although the Peres-Arafat meetings were the first diplomatic contact in over six weeks, the plan has not been approved by Sharon to bring to the negotiating table yet. But Palestinian Authority officials have gotten wind of — and objected to — the peace draft’s reported contents.
The expected gist calls for the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in Gaza, which would eventually expand to the West Bank, with American security and economic cooperation. The status quo for sensitive issues such as Jerusalem and refugees would remain intact.
But U.S. pressure to do more is still being applied to Israel, which on Wednesday continued to yield to State Department demands to withdraw from its West Bank positions by pulling out of Ramallah. Tanks and troops remained in Tulkarm and Jenin, which the Israeli military regards as the most dangerous Palestinian cities.
Despite U.S. steadfastness on the issue, many Jewish observers saw the first signs of a more balanced perspective as the Bush administration intensified its war on terrorism even as it tried to keep Arab nations on board.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the administration had remained largely mute about Palestinian violence as it worked to assemble and maintain an international coalition against terrorism that included Arab nations.
At the same time, the U.S. government publicly condemned Israel for its policy of targeted assassination of terrorists and its advancement into Palestinian-controlled areas because it did not believe the Palestinians were doing enough to crack down on terrorists.
The contrast angered many American Jews and Israelis, most notably Sharon, who nonetheless canceled meetings in Washington with Bush and other government leaders this week, citing security concerns at home.
Administration officials hinted to Sharon that if he came to Washington, the administration would be forced to rebuke the policies of incursions.
But now the Bush administration has taken steps to isolate Palestinian terrorist groups previously ignored.
Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft named several groups believed linked to Arafat’s Fatah faction as possible terrorist organizations worthy of monitoring.
And the State Department last Friday took steps to freeze the assets of Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups already on the department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
The new designation subjects those groups to the executive order President Bush declared on the Al Qaida network shortly after the terrorist attacks.
Bush has told Jewish leaders in the past that he understands that meeting with Arafat is the “trump card” he holds over the Palestinian leader.
For his part, Arafat will use the podium at the U.N. meeting to discuss “international protection…to restore calm, resume negotiations and work for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, Arafat’s information minister, said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration was still deciding if Secretary of State Colin Powell will unveil a U.S. position regarding a Palestinian state when he addresses the U.N. body. Unconfirmed reports have speculated any Powell address would be based on former Senator George Mitchell’s earlier outlines.
Still, the violence continues. In the bloodiest such incident this week, a Palestinian gunman opened fire Sunday on a bus in the French Hill neighborhood of northern Jerusalem.
Two people were killed and some 50 injured when the gunman sprayed the No. 25 Egged bus with fire from an M-16 automatic rifle at the afternoon rush hour.
Police identified one of the dead as Shoshana Ben Yishai, a 16-year-old who immigrated to Israel with her parents from Long Island when she was 5 years old.
The gunman, a member of Islamic Jihad from Hebron, was shot and killed on the scene.
On Tuesday, after the Israel Defense Force withdrew from Kalkilya, an Israeli soldier, Capt. Eyal Sela, was killed in an ambush by three Palestinian terrorists near Nablus.
In an ensuing gun battle, Israeli soldiers killed the three Palestinian gunmen. Israeli officials hotly denied subsequent Palestinian allegations that the soldiers had executed the three after first wounding them.
On Monday, three Israelis were wounded when a bomb exploded in an Israeli settlement near Jenin. One suffered moderate wounds and the other two light injuries in the blast at a factory in Shaked. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Following the bombing, Israeli officials said the attack would delay plans to withdraw troops from Jenin.
On Wednesday, an Israeli undercover unit killed a Palestinian man in a village near Hebron. An Israeli army commander was quoted as saying that Issa Debabseh was wanted by Israel for the killing of a Jewish settler a few years ago. He was killed when he reached for a gun as the unit tried to arrest him, the commander said.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman in the Gaza Strip. Five other Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire near the settlement of Neveh Dekalim. The army said it returned fire after Palestinians fired mortars at the settlement.
Despite the continued violence, Peres expressed optimism Wednesday about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
“There is a good chance of restoring the peace process,” he said in Paris after meeting his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine.
Once the withdrawals are completed, “maybe we can see a cease-fire in the whole of the West Bank,” Peres said.