U.S. must rebuild its credibility in region

Tomorrow's presidential election in the United States is going to have a direct bearing on the Middle East situation, given the fact that the incumbent American president leaves the process unfinished. Middle East leaders will therefore be watching the polls very carefully, knowing that both Al Gore and George W. Bush are going to have a different approach towards the Middle East.
The approach of the two candidates is not radically different from each other, but the nature of Middle East issues translates even slight nuances into significant differences. While their fundamentals on foreign policy issues remain almost similar, Gore and Bush have in their speeches and debates enunciated their world views which are divergent in many respects. Many of these divergences do not apply directly to the Middle East, but it is safe to assume that they will influence policy in more ways than one, and hence affect the way that Middle East problems are tackled by the next U.S. administration.
What makes this even more important is the urgency of the situation, and the fact that Middle East will present one of the first challenges to the new president. One indicator of this urgency is that the venue for the latest Middle East developments will shift to Washington two days after the U.S. election. Yasser Arafat is scheduled to meet Bill Clinton on November 9. Clinton would by then have officially become a lame duck president, but this will not diminish the importance of the meeting. It may be a little distracting that America will be singing hail to the new chief as Arafat goes into the meeting with the outgoing chief, but the explosive situation in the Middle East cannot afford the luxury of waiting till the swearing in of the new man.
This new man will have Clinton's Middle East legacy to contend with. The jury is still out on this legacy but what is indisputable is that no other American president has been so personally involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as Clinton. It goes to his credit that he gave it his best shot. But he left it too late in his eight-year term.
History will judge the success and failure of his Middle East involvement (and history is never in a rush to pass judgement), but as his presidency draws to a close, an initial assessment can be made. Vague as this might be, such an assessment does highlight the American factor in the Middle East equation and what, if any, effect it has on the situation on the ground.
Camp David could have been the crowning glory of Clinton's legacy. Perhaps this is why he was in such a hurry to clobber together a deal. Perhaps this is why he closeted himself with Arafat and Barak for nearly two weeks.
But in his zeal, Clinton perhaps miscalculated. In his enthusiasm to solve the most intractable problem of this century, he failed to recognise its true nature, which is far more complex than a simple territorial dispute that can be settled with some give-and-take. Clinton simply overextended himself.
The bloody violence which broke out in late September not only erased the 'spirit' of Camp David, it has taken the situation to the pre-Oslo era. Mistrust between the two parties has never been greater. Is this Clinton's legacy?
If it is counted as such, he had no control over it. There was no one in the U.S. administration who could, till the Camp David meeting, say that the Oslo process was suffering from a deep malaise; that the seeds of destruction were inbuilt within the process itself and in the direction it had been forced to take by the Israelis and Americans.
It was only Arafat's weakness and his eagerness to preside over an independent state before his death, which brought the process as far as it did. But what also let it survive for seven long years was hope.
Palestinians were told repeatedly that their days of suffering were about to come to and end; that Israel would very soon vacate their land and they would be able to live freely and without exploitation in their own independent country. Having endured unparalleled hardships and misery for half a century, clinging on to hope was not difficult for the Palestinians.
America and Israel mistook this anticipation among Palestinians for abject approval of their leader's actions. Perhaps some of them also misunderstood it for weakness. This was a fatal mistake.
But this mistake might not have exploded into a bloody orgy of bullets and stones if Palestinians had not been painted into a corner. After all, for seven years the warped peace process had limped forward, and Arafat had continued to make compromise after compromise without any major backlash from his people.
Jerusalem broke this reverie.
The actual climax took place at Camp David, though its impact was felt two months later. At this secluded place, Clinton stretched the Palestinians so far that the thread snapped. The hero's welcome that Arafat received when he returned from Camp David should have alerted Americans and Israelis about the real mood on the Palestinian street. Instead of taking corrective measures, Clinton made two more mistakes: first he went on Israeli TV to blame Arafat for the Camp David failure, and then he hinted that he may seriously consider moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. These were utterances of a man who was seriously out of tune with Palestinian sentiments; and who till that time still thought that an agreement could be bludgeoned out of Arafat.
Unconsciously then, Clinton unmasked America's inbuilt bias, and stripped the peace process of all illusions that Palestinians might have harboured. He may have been well-intentioned, but he was not well-informed. This may well be his Middle East legacy.
Will his successor learn from his mistakes? If he does, he will start off with an advantage. For starters, he must know that it will be a mistake to try and pick up the threads left off at Camp David. He should recognise that while Camp David was in a way an attempt to successfully culminate the Oslo process, the mayhem of the last month has put a huge question mark in front of the Oslo process itself. The shots fired by Israeli troops have not just killed Palestinian teenagers, they have ricocheted off their bodies and pierced the armour of the Oslo structure. To repair this damage would mean travelling back in time, which even the American president cannot do.
Peace, the new president will have to realise, cannot be dictated. It must be agreed to. If Arafat had any leeway to compromise any further, this has been firmly demolished by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships. Arafat, once a prisoner of his own limitations, is now a hostage of his people's anger. Unless he harbours a secret wish for political harakiri, he will never go near Camp David, or even near its spirit.
The best option for the new American president would thus be to work towards rebuilding America's credibility, which would mean reviewing its approach towards Palestinians. As a practical step, the new president should also consider giving a greater role in the peace process to other prospective mediators like the United Nations and European Union. An 'honest broker' obviously has a problem on its hands when it is not deemed as being 'honest'.