Abbas banks on US to produce results

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do. True, Abbas walked into his meeting with US President Barack Obama last Thursday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. But if there is to be a deal, Abbas must do two things.

First, he needs to agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood, and secondly, he must somehow overcome the huge split in Palestinian governance between his Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and hasn't yet accepted Israel's right to exist.

Yet, last Wednesday, as Abbas prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, he insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognise Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli colony-building and publicly accept the two-state formula.

Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures.

“We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze colony-building and recognise the two-state solution,'' he insisted in an interview. “Until then we can't talk to anyone.''

For veterans of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Abbas's bargaining position will be bone-wearyingly familiar: both sides invariably begin by arguing that they cannot act until the other side offers far-reaching concessions.

Netanyahu has suggested that the Palestinians should start by recognising Israel as a Jewish state, though he didn't make it a condition for a meeting with Abbas.

What is interesting about Abbas's position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments.

Clear policy

From its first days, the George W. Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: until they put an end to armed struggle, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the US was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.

Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank colony-building freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the US will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, while Arabs applaud.

“The Americans are the leaders of the world,'' Abbas told me and Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. “They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, ‘You have to comply with the conditions.'''

It's true, of course, that if Obama is to broker a Middle East settlement he will have to overcome the recalcitrance of Netanyahu and his Likud party, which has not yet reconciled itself to the idea that Israel will have to give up most of the West Bank and evacuate tens of thousands of colonists.

But Palestinians remain a long way from accepting reality as well. Setting aside Hamas, Abbas last year helped doom Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, by rejecting an outline for Palestinian statehood.

In our meeting, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 per cent of the West Bank — though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan.

He confirmed that Olmert “accepted the principle'' of the “right of return'' of Palestinian refugees — something no previous Israeli prime minister had done — and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of former US president George W. Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Playing for time

Abbas, however, turned it down. “The gaps were wide,'' he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full freeze on colony-building — if he did, his centre-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while US pressure slowly squeezes him from office.

“It will take a couple of years,'' one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession — such as recognising Israel as a Jewish state. Instead, he says, he will remain passive.

“I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze colony-building,'' he said. “Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality... the people are living a normal life.''

In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.