McCain, Traveling Along a Tightrope

Bush Policy Is A Presence as He Meets With Leaders

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 24, 2008; A06

PARIS -- Standing along the edge of the Gaza Strip and flanked by a hero of the Israeli military, Sen. John McCain last week invoked the tough rhetoric of President Bush, warning of Iranian influence in the Middle East and cautioning against negotiations with terrorists.

A day later, standing outside London's 10 Downing Street, McCain found himself arguing against his president as he eagerly recounted for reporters his lengthy conversation with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about the need for worldwide action to prevent global warming.

Throughout a week-long trip that took him to more than a dozen meetings with leaders in five countries, McCain walked a fine line on Iraq and other issues as the all-but-certain Republican nominee confronted perhaps the central dilemma of his presidential campaign -- the question of what role Bush and the legacy of the past seven years will play in his campaign for the White House.

At home, the answer may determine how well McCain succeeds in keeping his Republican base happy while also attracting the independents and Democrats he will need to win in November. And, win or lose, it will shape his image abroad, where a debate is already raging over whether a McCain presidency would be a de facto third term for the embattled incumbent.

In every city, foreign leaders and journalists attempted to reconcile what they deemed the two sides to McCain: his bellicose rhetoric on Iran and North Korea -- which is more aggressive than Bush's -- and his desire to heal the rift with Europe's leaders by closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, ending what he regards to be the use of torture by American forces and reducing pollution.

Europeans "see him as a trusted hand, knowledgeable," said Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has advised Democratic candidate Barack Obama on foreign policy. "But I think they are a bit worried about him."

Gordon said many Europeans were stunned when U.S. voters reelected Bush in 2004 despite the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. "If we now, after all this, elect someone who agrees with the Iraq policy and is perhaps more hawkish on Iran, they will be surprised," he said.

McCain repeatedly insisted last week that his government-funded trip was not a campaign stunt aimed at voters. Rather, he said, it was a fact-finding mission similar to trips abroad taken regularly by members of Congress in both parties.

"I'm here assessing the situation," McCain barked at an Israeli reporter in the border town of Sderot near Gaza, after flying over Israel with Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "It would not be frankly appropriate for me to talk about what I would do as president."

But the trip was by no means exclusively an information-gathering exercise for McCain.

He paused for a fundraiser with about 100 wealthy American expatriates living in London, who gathered at the ancestral home of Princess Diana and dined on duck salad and ice cream flamb¿. (His aides said the campaign reimbursed the government $3,000 for travel because of the political nature of the fundraiser.) McCain also gave numerous interviews to U.S. television network correspondents who followed him across the continent and to local newspapers in each country, which touted exclusives on their front pages. And he was hardly treated like a member of Congress by world leaders now eyeing him as a potential equal.

In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy led McCain into the ¿lys¿e Palace past a throng of cameras, where the pair sipped cappuccino around a large table set with grapes. In Israel, he walked past Chagall stained-glass windows to meet with President Shimon Peres at his ceremonial home. In London, protocol dictated the absence of a red carpet at 10 Downing, but there was a photo op in the White Drawing Room.

McCain's political advisers say those images were a valuable reminder to voters of a key asset. "This trip has shown the world Senator McCain's foreign policy credentials and highlighted the depth of his knowledge on international affairs," Rick Davis, his campaign manager, wrote in a memo to supporters.

But there were missteps as well. By incorrectly saying that Iran was training al-Qaeda insurgents rather than Shiite extremists, McCain sparked days of headlines questioning that depth of knowledge he so often boasts of on the campaign trail.

And at the Western Wall in Israel, overzealous photographers sparked a near-riot with police officers, overshadowing McCain's visit to the holy site.

"Was it a good trip? Yeah, it was good" was how one of McCain's senior advisers summed up the journey as the senator from Arizona headed to London for a few days of downtime with his wife, Cindy. "The impression that came back to the American people was someone who was deeply comfortable there in a way that showed he's ready to be president."

McCain's partners on the trip were his two closest allies in the Senate, Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who now describes his political affiliation as "independent Democrat," and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). In an interview as he traveled by train between Paris and London, Graham said McCain's long-held position on Iraq demonstrates his independence from Bush. While embracing Bush's "surge" policy in Iraq, McCain has never shied from saying that the administration bungled the planning and preparation for the conflict.

"When he thought it was going badly, he was pushing back against the administration. When he thought the policy was going right, he was right with him," Graham said. "The idea that John is an extension of another politician will fail miserably."

Democrats are already trying to morph McCain into Bush, counting on the president's sagging poll numbers and the unpopular war in Iraq to drag McCain down, especially among independents.

In a biting Internet ad that seems a foreshadowing of attacks to come, the Democratic National Committee mocked McCain as nothing more than a clone of Bush. "Why is this man so happy?" the ad asks, showing a picture of a laughing Bush. "Because he found someone to promise a Third Bush Term."

Democrats also hammered McCain for turning a policy trip into a political one and called on him to reimburse the government for the tens of thousands of dollars it would have cost to charter a plane for the exercise. At a news conference at the ¿lys¿e Palace, one reporter asked whether the trip had been a "taxpayer rip-off."

All three senators became indignant. "I'm proud to have taken this trip," McCain declared. "I'm proud to have built up the relationships I have with the president of France and with other leaders."

Lieberman called McCain's willingness to travel the world "one of his great attributes." And Graham noted that McCain had been to Iraq eight times since the war began. "We know the differences between Iraq this year and Iraq last year. These trips have been unbelievably valuable," he said.

And yet, throughout the week there were telltale signs of the presidential campaign.

At the Western Wall, a gray-haired man in the flowing garb of a rabbi repeatedly stood on a stool and yelled: "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. John McCain, the next president of the United States of America."

And when McCain's motorcade pulled up in front of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a lone American tourist yelled out, "Mac is back!"

In Search for Peace, a Shrinking White House Role

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 2, 2008; A16

When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush -- it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.

The conversation signaled a growing rapprochement between Egypt, which receives nearly $2 billion in annual aid from Washington, and Iran, a country that the Bush administration has tried to isolate as a possible threat to U.S. interests in the region.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads back to the Middle East this week, three months after Bush hosted a peace conference bringing together Israelis and Arabs in Annapolis, prospects for peace have shifted dramatically. There has been little clear movement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, while the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas has shown increasingly that it can set the region's agenda.

Hamas rockets have continued to rain down on Israeli towns, prompting deadly counterattacks by Israel amid increasing speculation that Israel will invade the narrow coastal strip housing 1.5 million Palestinians that it abandoned just two years ago.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration. "The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in," he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. "Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians," he added.

The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was "an exercise in public relations" and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.

Rice's first stop, on Tuesday, will be Cairo, where she will consult with Mubarak and other Egyptian officials on Gaza. She then will shuttle between Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to head off a deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas while pushing for progress in the nascent peace talks.

The architecture of Annapolis established by Rice includes four key tracks, all of which are supposed to operate simultaneously: high-level talks on "final status" issues such as the division of Jerusalem; incremental changes in security, Jewish settlements on the West Bank and roadblocks hindering Palestinian movement; jump-starting the Palestinian economy; and greater Arab involvement. The final-status talks have been shrouded in secrecy, while little has happened on the other tracks, participants said. The number of roadblocks has increased, according to U.N. estimates.

"Politically, I have not heard anything that is good," a senior Arab diplomat said.

Organizers of a Palestinian investment conference scheduled for late May, designed to bring Arab businessmen to Bethlehem, have expressed concern that senior Arab executives will be forced to wait for hours in humiliating checks at roadblocks, potentially spoiling the mood for investment.

The lack of movement has added to the skepticism, even in Israel. A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week showed that 69 percent of Israelis surveyed believed the talks would not bring peace, while 78 percent believed the talks were being held only for political reasons.

During a recent visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad charged that Israel has "not done a thing materially on the ground to help my government." Israeli officials counter that Israel has taken steps to bolster the Abbas government, but that some efforts -- such as new restrictions on settlement growth -- cannot be publicized because of the tenuous political situation in Israel.

Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Abbas and now advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine, faulted the Bush administration for not nurturing a process that it started. He noted that the administration has appointed three generals to assess various aspects of the issue, but that few people in the region understand their roles. Rice's two-day visit this week is her first substantive trip since the conference in November.

"There is no push from the Americans," he said. "We are still waiting to see what they will do. It is surprising how little has happened. If you guys are going to run out of steam, why create all these expectations?"

"It is a big question mark," said Martin Indyk, director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "The impression one gets is that this administration is out of juice."

Most observers give the administration six months, until the Democratic and Republican conventions, to show that progress on the peace talks is possible. But the Annapolis conference has been increasingly overshadowed by the conflict over Gaza.

The Annapolis talks were designed to bolster Abbas so he could overcome the challenge from Hamas. In 2006, the militant group unexpectedly won Palestinian elections that the Bush administration had supported, beating Abbas's Fatah party, and a unity government between the two sides went sour when Hamas seized control of Gaza last June. The administration had hoped that if Abbas could seal a peace deal, it would give him the popular support to oust Hamas, which has called for Israel's destruction.

Neither Hamas nor Iran was invited to Annapolis but, as Ahmadinejad's courting of Mubarak suggests, the administration's effort to divide the region into "moderate" and "extremist" camps has not succeeded. After the phone call between the two men, Iran's foreign minister declared that diplomatic ties with Cairo would soon be restored.

Meanwhile, Hamas has gained popularity as Israel has attempted an economic blockade of Gaza. Hamas bulldozers burst through the Gaza-Egyptian border in January, while Hamas rockets last week reached Ashkelon, an Israeli city of 120,000 that generally had been safe from Hamas attacks.

Egypt would like to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas while giving the Palestinian Authority control over border crossings, Arab diplomats said. But those would be difficult negotiations as public pressure increases in Israel for a ground invasion of Gaza. In the best-case scenario for Israel, that would wipe out Hamas's leadership, but it could also prove as vexing as Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Some argue that Hamas's strength can no longer be ignored. Before the Annapolis conference, a group of U.S. foreign policy specialists -- including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton -- wrote Bush to argue that "a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation." But State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday, "It's pretty hard to say that Hamas has a legitimate role to play in this process if their main policy is to promote terror."

Palestinians Halt Talks, Killings Mount

By IBRAHIM BARZAK
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 2, 2008; 11:00 AM

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israel sent missiles slamming into the office of Gaza's Hamas prime minister Sunday, pressing on with an offensive that has killed nearly 70 Palestinians in two days. The moderate Palestinian president suspended peace talks with Israel.

At least 54 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians, were killed in Gaza fighting Saturday, the deadliest day in more than seven years of violence, Palestinian medical officials said. Another 14 Palestinians, one of them a 21-month-old girl, were killed or found dead Sunday. Two Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday.

Since the latest bout of fighting erupted on Wednesday, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, according to an AP tally based on Palestinian medical officials and militant groups.

"We are following the aggression against our people in Gaza," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters. "I've conducted contacts with various leaders, with the Security Council, with the EU and with Arab leaders to work to stop this aggression," he said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said peace talks with Israel had been halted.

"For the time being, the negotiations are suspended because we have so many funerals," he said. It was unclear when the talks, relaunched last November at a U.S.-hosted summit, would resume.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit this week to try to spur progress in peace talks. Instead, she will likely spend her visit trying to put out the latest fire.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's office was empty at the time of Sunday's pre-dawn airstrike. But the raid was seen as a tough message to the Hamas leadership, which Israel holds responsible for repeated rocket barrages launched from Gaza.

Haniyeh spoke to leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, asking them "to stop this aggression," said government spokesman Taher Nunu. He also called for reconciliation talks with Fatah, the rival Palestinian faction headed by Abbas and ousted from Gaza by Hamas last June.

Israel's response to incessant Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israeli communities drew hard international condemnation. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon accused Israel of "disproportionate and excessive use of force."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected the criticism and vowed to press on with the Gaza offensive.

"With all due respect, nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens," he told his Cabinet.

Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, said an even broader Gaza operation was in the cards, aimed at crushing militant rocket squads but also to "weaken the Hamas rule, in the right circumstances, even to bring it down."

Israel regularly clashes with Gaza rocket squads, but intensified its operations after militants fired salvos last week into Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 closer to Israel's heartland than previous targets. By striking Ashkelon, some 11 miles north of Gaza, Hamas added pressure on Israeli leaders to exact a high price for the increasing sense of insecurity felt in southern Israel.

The onslaught failed however to stop rockets from battering southern Israel. Nine were fired at southern Israel by midday Sunday, including one that struck a house in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot less than a mile from Gaza, the military said. One rocket lightly wounded four Sderot residents, Israeli rescue services said.

About 50 rockets and mortars were fired Saturday, injuring six Israelis.

Haniyeh's office was one of about a dozen targets Israeli aircraft and ground troops struck before dawn.

Overnight, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl and five militants died of their wounds, and six Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids, including the baby girl who died from shrapnel wounds, Palestinian medical officials said.

The bodies of two women also were unearthed from the rubble of an earlier Israeli airstrike.

Since the latest round of fighting erupted Wednesday, at least half of those killed were militants, according to Hamas and medical officials. Gaza health officials said about 200 people have been wounded, 14 of them critically.

The normally bustling streets of Gaza City were eerily empty Sunday. Schools and universities were closed. The sound of verses from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, pouring forth from mosque loudspeakers mingled with the roar of Israeli warplanes and unmanned drones in the sky.

Hamas blocked off roads to government buildings and security installations to protect civilians from possible Israeli strikes.

Hundreds gathered outside Gaza hospitals waiting for bodies to be brought out of morgues for burial. Many, like schoolteacher Tawfek Shaban, a 44-year-old father of five, were holding small radios, listening to the news.

"Shame on the Arabs, shame on the Muslims, shame on humanity ... When they will act to stop Israel?" Shaban asked. "There is no safe place in Gaza."

The Saturday toll was by far the highest since the second Palestinian uprising erupted in late 2000.

Abbas, who leads a rival government in the West Bank, suspended peace talks with Israel, his office said. On Saturday, Palestinian leaders from both Hamas and Fatah called Israel's assault a "holocaust" and "genocide."

In a symbolic move, Abbas donated blood to Gaza residents at his West Bank office.

Hamas remained defiant and threatened to retaliate.

"The Zionists will not enjoy security in ... all the colonies around Gaza as long as their crimes continue," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing.

Olmert said "attacking Hamas strengthens the chance for peace."

"I'm sure that beyond certain statements, the Palestinian leadership, the one with whom we want to achieve peace, also understands that," he said.

Olmert and Abbas have set a year-end target for reaching an accord.

Abbas has ruled from the West Bank since his Hamas rivals violently seized control of Gaza last June. But the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza has threatened to unleash a backlash against him in the West Bank.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli troops shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy after several hundred youths threw stones and bottles at an Israeli checkpoint in the city center to protest the killings in Gaza, according to Palestinian medical officials.

In Ramallah, home to Abbas' government, thousands of schoolchildren demonstrated against Israel. Some accused Abbas of being an Israeli agent, and protesters threw stones and cars, burned tires and forced shopkeepers to close their stores.

Israel Takes Gaza Fight to Next Level in a Day of Strikes

By STEVEN ERLANGER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY

GAZA — Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 54 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, the Israelis said, especially after Ashkelon, a large city 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets of Iranian design.

Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But at least 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.

More than 80 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; in addition to the soldiers, an Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.

The fighting brought harsh criticism from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who reportedly threatened to call off negotiations with Israel over a peace treaty. “We tell the world: watch and judge what’s happening, and judge who is committing international terrorism,” Mr. Abbas said in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, who has referred to the rocket firing as useless provocation, said last week that armed conflict remained an option if negotiations failed.

An Israeli spokesman, David Baker, said that Israel was conducting “defensive measures” to protect its civilians from rocket fire against cities, which Mr. Baker called terrorism. “We have over 200,000 Israelis in range of Palestinian rockets. We cannot allow this to go on.”

The Israeli deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, said the military was engaged in “an enlarged operation and not a major ground operation” of the type Israeli politicians have been pressing for. Mr. Vilnai told Israel Radio that “we are using mostly air units” and that Israeli forces “are permanently engaged in Gaza, and what we are doing now is within the scope of such activities.”

Early Sunday, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement condemning the escalation of the fighting and urging Israelis and Palestinians “to immediately cease all acts of violence,” The Associated Press reported.

The statement, though not a formal resolution, also stressed that the violence “must not be allowed to deter the political process” aimed at “establishing two states — Israel and Palestine — living side by side in peace and security.”

About two dozen rockets landed in Israel on Saturday, including seven Katyusha-style rockets in or near Ashkelon, lightly wounding a woman and two children just after midnight. Saturday afternoon, another rocket hit the Ashkelon marina shopping center, wounding three others, the Israeli military said.

Israeli troops began their operation just after midnight, concentrating on a hilly area near crowded Jabaliya, within two miles of the Gazan border, where many of the rockets have been launched from among the civilian population. Late Saturday, the Israeli military confirmed that two soldiers had been killed and that seven others, including an officer, had been wounded.

In Gaza on Friday, Hussein Dardouna, 50, was burying his son, Omar, 14, killed while playing with his friends by an Israeli strike aimed at a rocket-launching team. “I couldn’t identify the body of my son,” he said. “It was very hard until I found the head of my son. I’m against these rockets, but I am afraid. What can I do? If I protest they will hit me, they will kill me.”

A woman at the funeral said: “Everyone is afraid now. Where is Abu Mazen, where is Haniya?” she asked, referring to Mr. Abbas and the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya. “Come and protect us.”

The Israeli operation killed at least 10 fighters from Hamas, which has run Gaza since it drove out Fatah forces in fierce internal fighting last June.

Most residents hid in their homes. The Palestinian dead on Saturday included at least four children.

Hamas said that one girl, Malak Karfaneh, 6, died Friday night from an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, but residents said that a Palestinian rocket had fallen short and landed near the house, killing her and wounding three siblings.

Israeli officials say that up to half of Palestinian rockets — mostly crude, inaccurate Qassams — fall inside Gaza. But when Hamas broke open the border with Egypt, Israeli officials say, the militants were able to bring in more of the manufactured Katyusha-style rockets as well as antitank missiles and concrete, for building fortifications.

The United Nations agency that deals with Palestinian refugees closed down the 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza.

“We are living in the middle of the battle zone,” Rami Muhammad Ali, 21, told Reuters by phone from Jabaliya. “We wanted to flee the house, but we’ve been trapped since last night.”

He described the scene, saying, “Rockets and missiles are whistling by all the time, and the building has been shaken by mines the Palestinians are setting off against the Israeli soldiers.”

A Hamas military spokesman who calls himself Abu Obeida said, “The Zionist forces have failed in Gaza before.” Hamas, under some political pressure from the effective isolation of Gaza and deteriorating conditions there, seems to be trying to lure Israel into a major ground operation.

The Israelis have been cautious, with little desire to reoccupy Gaza and take full responsibility for its 1.5 million inhabitants, nearly 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. The Israeli security cabinet will meet during the week to discuss Gaza, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arriving as well.

She has defended Israel’s right to defend itself but has urged restraint. A major Israeli operation would most likely put a crimp in American-sponsored peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.

A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said late Saturday: “We call for an end to violence and all acts of terrorism directed against innocent civilians. There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense.”

Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem, and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza.

Rice to Press Mideast Peace Discussions

The Associated Press
Friday, September 28, 2007; 2:19 PM

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the Middle East next week to press Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts amid doubts from some Arab states about the usefulness of an international meeting she plans to host in the fall, the State Department said Wednesday.

Rice will make stops in Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sept. 19 and 20 to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas to build on recent positive steps and lay the groundwork for the upcoming meeting that President Bush announced in July, spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Her visit will follow an agreement reached between the two sides this week to set up senior negotiating teams with an eye toward reaching a general outline of a peace deal in time for the conference, which has yet to be scheduled but is expected in November.

"She's going to talk to each side ... about how we can help move that process forward," McCormack said. He would not rule out the possibility that Rice would bring Olmert and Abbas together for a three-way meeting.

The brief trip comes as the United States is trying to build support for the international meeting but has met resistance from traditional Arab allies concerned that it might not produce much.

Egypt and Jordan, which both have peace deals with Israel, along with Saudi Arabia have said they are not interested in attending the session unless it has a chance of achieving concrete results.

McCormack said Rice would be consulting with those three countries, along with other potential participants following her trip next week and that Washington agreed the meeting should not be just a show.

"Nobody wants to see just a photo op, we couldn't agree more," he said.

Another Tour Ends Without Solid Plans On Mideast Peace

Rice 'Encouraged' by Interest in Meeting

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 3, 2007; A10

SHANNON, Ireland, Aug. 2 -- After years of setbacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out this week to make one more push toward Middle East peace on behalf of an administration that has less than 18 months left in office. She got some polite nibbles, but not yet the big bite needed to ensure that President Bush's call last month for an international meeting of the region's major players will yield substance.

Many Arab governments want a full-blown conference that produces a broad and specific agreement, while the administration has talked instead of a meeting to explore options and ideas. The basic problem is one that has plagued the peace process for years: the wide gap on issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- and the tough negotiations required to resolve them.

After her talks Thursday with the Palestinian leadership on the last leg of her four-day trip, Rice addressed growing concerns among Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world that yet another U.S. effort will not get off the ground or will fizzle once the parties get together. She tried to assure all sides that any meeting would be "substantive and meaningful" and advance a two-state solution resulting in a Palestinian state. Bush "has no desire to call people together for a photo op," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

En route back to Washington, America's top diplomat conceded that "we haven't given much thought to how" the meeting will look and said preliminary diplomacy will require at least two more trips to the region. The tentative plan is to hold the meeting in November, U.S. officials say.

"I didn't issue invitations, but I was really pretty encouraged by the interest in it, by the willingness to discuss it, by the open-mindedness about the states that might attend," she told reporters traveling with her. The presence of countries that have not made peace with Israel -- notably Saudi Arabia, author of an Arab League regional peace proposal -- is vital to the credibility of any conference.

"We're going to try. All you can do is take advantage of an opening, and I think there is an opening," Rice said. People in Israel and elsewhere in the region see Abbas's government as one "which is serious, which is professional, which is focused on delivering security for people on the ground," she said.

Rice said the U.S. goal is to weave together several elements in the peace effort. These include new bilateral talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who are scheduled to meet Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho; special envoy Tony Blair's work to build up the Palestinian capacity to govern; and the wider regional diplomacy with eight U.S. allies in the Arab world -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The latest U.S. effort, often referred to as the "West Bank first" strategy, seeks to exploit the political split between the two main Palestinian factions. The armed Islamic movement Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, seized full control of the Gaza Strip this June, ending a power-sharing arrangement with the rival Fatah faction. Abbas, a Fatah leader, then formed his own government in the West Bank. The United States is seeking to aid Abbas, strengthen his security forces and foster peace talks with Israel that will eventually win popular support and isolate Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel.

But in its current regional approach to peace, the Bush administration is effectively sidelining a policy shift Rice heralded in 2005: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region . . . and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This week, the administration announced its largest arms sale package, worth at least $20 billion, to Saudi Arabia and five Persian Gulf sheikdoms, offering some of the Middle East's most undemocratic governments more muscle and a greater sense of security, to win support for U.S. goals.

On her last stops in Israel and the West Bank, Rice's mission met with skepticism. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in an interview that Bush's July 16 initiative could backfire if the U.S.-orchestrated meeting is "only a verbal, feel-good exercise."

"There's a real sense that it may be too little, too late," she said. "As usual, American presidents leave it to the end of their term to deal with the Palestinian crisis for the legacy of an outgoing president."

The Israeli press cast doubt on whether the traditional Arab players even represent the real powers anymore.

"Iran has all but completed a hostile takeover of the anti-Israel camp, which now consists mainly of Tehran's proxies and allies -- Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda," the Jerusalem Post editorialized Thursday.

Rice Backs Appointed Palestinian Premier and Mideast Democracy

By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 2 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, embracing an appointed Palestinian prime minister here in the West Bank, said Thursday that the United States still supported democracy in the Middle East. But she defended the American refusal to recognize the earlier, elected, Hamas-led government.

Standing next to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, during a news conference here, Ms. Rice said, “We believe strongly in the right of people to express themselves and their desires, in elections.” But, she added, once elected, “ you have the obligation to govern responsibly.”

She said that the United States and other Western nations had been right to boycott Hamas and the elected Palestinian government. “You can’t have one foot in the path of terror and one foot in the path of politics,” she added.

Ms. Rice met with Salam Fayyad, the prime minister selected by Mr. Abbas after he ousted the Hamas-led government.

Mr. Abbas of Fatah has been seeking to consolidate his power since a June coup left the rival Hamas movement in power in the Gaza Strip. He has held out the prospect of new elections soon. He appointed Mr. Fayyad after firing the Hamas-led government of Ismail Haniya.

Hamas won a legislative majority in January 2006, but Fatah never agreed to accept it, and the United States and Israel refused to deal with Hamas, which they classify as a terrorist organization, unless it accepted Israel’s right to exist and agreed to give up violence.

Ms. Rice said it was up to the Palestinians to decide when to hold a new vote, but the Americans, like the Israelis, have told Mr. Abbas they will not accept a renewal of a unity government with Hamas.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that he would not try to reconcile with Hamas unless they “reverse everything they did” and “apologize to the Palestinian people — then we might reconsider.”

It would be nearly impossible for Mr. Abbas to hold an early vote unless Hamas agreed to one. Mr. Abbas told Ms. Rice that he was ready to work with Israel on a “declaration of principles” as an interim step toward a full peace agreement, an idea floated last week by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Such a declaration, as envisioned by Israel, would outline the contours of a future Palestinian state, without immediately tackling the most explosive issues, like final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that once such a declaration had been negotiated, “what is important is that we arrive at a result and that we know what that result is, what is the roof that we need to reach, but the stages of implementation can be agreed on later.”

Separately on Wednesday and Thursday, Ms. Rice met with Mr. Olmert and other senior Israeli officials to discuss plans for Mr. Bush’s fall conference on Palestinian-Israeli peace.

Her meetings in the West Bank ended a three-day swing through the region that included stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where she pressed for Arab support for the conference.

Ms. Rice’s trip was the first high-level American visit to Israel and the West Bank since the Gaza takeover.

Since then, Mr. Abbas — and the world — have largely left Gaza to itself to be governed by Hamas, focusing aid and diplomatic efforts on the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas’s Fatah forces remain in control. The United States, Israel and the European Union have all welcomed the dissolution of the Palestinian government.

Mr. Bush quickly unfroze $86 million in aid, which was put into the deep freeze after Hamas won the 2006 elections. On Thursday, Ms. Rice signed a so-called framework agreement with Mr. Fayyad, which ostensibly released the first $10 million in aid. The money is intended to strengthen Mr. Abbas’s security forces.

A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, criticized the Rice visit and the release of the aid.

“She came to incite one Palestinian side against another,” he said. “She came to provide $80 million to stamp out resistance forces. Rice did not come to the region to establish a Palestinian state, as she and her master Bush claimed, but instead she came to support one Palestinian party against another, and to support the Zionist occupation.”

In a statement, Mr. Olmert praised the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said Wednesday that his country was leaning toward attending the Middle East meeting, but wanted it to be substantive. Mr. Olmert “shares the same approach, that the international meeting will be serious and meaningful, and he welcomes the participation of leaders of Arab countries in the meeting,” his office said.

But Israeli officials also emphasized that, unlike the Saudis, the Israelis believe that the core issues of the conflict should be discussed in a bilateral format with the Palestinians, rather than in an international framework that might make them more difficult to solve.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the most delicate issues should not be addressed immediately.

In Gaza City on Wednesday night, at least one Palestinian was killed when Hamas tried to arrest a member of Islamic Jihad after he fired into the air at a wedding.

Medical officials said that in subsequent clashes between Islamic Jihad and Hamas’s Executive Force, acting as the police, one Executive Force member was killed.

Helene Cooper reported from Ramallah, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

After Gaza

Middle East Report N°68
2 August 2007

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Hamas’s takeover of Gaza and President Abbas’s dismissal of the national unity government and appointment of one led by Salam Fayyad amount to a watershed in the Palestinian national movement’s history. Some paint a positive picture, seeing the new government as one with which Israel can make peace. They hope that, with progress in the West Bank, stagnation in Gaza and growing pressure from ordinary Palestinians, a discredited Hamas will be forced out or forced to surrender. They are mistaken. The Ramallah-based government is adopting overdue decisions to reorganise security forces and control armed militants; Israel has reciprocated in some ways; and Hamas is struggling with its victory. But as long as the Palestinian schism endures, progress is on shaky ground. Security and a credible peace process depend on minimal intra-Palestinian consensus. Isolating Hamas strengthens its more radical wing and more radical Palestinian forces. The appointment of Tony Blair as new Quartet Special Envoy, the scheduled international meeting and reported Israeli-Palestinian talks on political issues are reasons for limited optimism. But a new Fatah-Hamas power-sharing arrangement is a prerequisite for a sustainable peace. If and when it happens the rest of the world must do what it should have before: accept it.

The events in Gaza have given rise to wholly conflicting accounts. For Fatah and those close to Abbas, they were a murderous, illegitimate coup that exposed the Islamists’ true face. The plan, they say, was premeditated and carried out with Iranian backing. They claim to have video proof of a Hamas-led plot to assassinate Abbas. Hamas, too, denounces an attempted coup, though one planned by Fatah elements determined to rob the Islamists of their electoral victory and overturn the Mecca Agreement between the two rival organisations. They say those elements were fostering lawlessness in the Gaza Strip and that the U.S., Israel and several Arab countries conspired to isolate Hamas as well as arm and train forces loyal to Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan in anticipation of a showdown. Hamas’s actions, they insist, were preemptive.

There is truth to both accounts. Evidence and eye-witness stories collected by Crisis Group suggest Hamas’s armed forces – the Executive Security Force and the Qassam Brigades – were strengthening their arsenal and taking steps in preparation for a fight. Their brutality and disregard for human life at the height of the confrontation also is beyond doubt. But Fatah cannot escape blame. From the moment the Mecca Agreement was signed, several of its officials and presidential advisers undercut it. They urged European governments to neither end their boycott of Hamas nor too closely embrace the unity government. Security plans in Gaza understandably could be read by the Islamists as attempts to bolster a force intended to confront them.

The Mecca Agreement’s collapse reflected conflicting domestic agendas: Fatah’s inability to come to terms with the loss of hegemony over the political system coupled with Hamas’s inability to come to terms with the limitations of its own power. But it would be disingenuous in the extreme to minimise the role of outside players, the U.S. and the European Union in particular.

By refusing to deal with the national unity government and only selectively engaging some of its non-Hamas members, by maintaining economic sanctions and providing security assistance to one of the parties in order to outmanoeuvre the other, they contributed mightily to the outcome they now publicly lament. Through their words and deeds, they helped persuade important Fatah elements that the unity government was a transient phenomenon and that their former control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) could be restored. And they helped convince important Hamas elements that the unity government was a trap, that time was not on their side and they should act before their adversaries became too strong. The crisis was not produced by the Mecca Agreement but rather by deliberate and systematic attempts to undermine it.

Recent events present a mixed picture. In Gaza, Hamas has made undeniable strides in restoring order. Alan Johnston, the kidnapped British journalist, was released, and Gazans testify to feeling more secure than in a long time. But the Islamists’ takeover of virtually all PA institutions, the curtailment of basic freedoms and harassment of Fatah members bode ill. Nor has Hamas found a way to cope with the closing of vital crossing points, the sharp drop in trade and the accelerating humanitarian crisis. In the West Bank, too, there are signs of progress, including steps to reorganise the security sector, the infusion of international funds, renewed Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and talk of political negotiations. There is also a darker side, however, including the suspension of basic laws, separation between Gaza and the West Bank and revival of obsolete Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) institutions at the expense of elected PA bodies such as the parliament.

The basic question, to which neither Palestinians nor the international community has responded, is whether it is possible to ensure security and move toward a two-state settlement with a politically and geographically divided Palestinian polity. Paradoxically, the more successful the strategy of strengthening Abbas, the greater Hamas’s motivation to sabotage it. Progress thus would create its own threats. If past is prologue, putting Hamas under pressure without giving it a reasonable alternative would lead it to escalate violence against Israel in the expectation that renewed confrontation would embarrass Abbas, torpedo diplomatic progress and alter intra-Palestinian dynamics. How can Abbas deliver a ceasefire without the Islamists and their allies? How can he legitimise a political agreement with Israel – which must entail difficult and unpopular concessions – if Hamas’s significant constituency feels excluded? How can he move toward building a state if Gaza is left out?

A more promising course would be for Fatah and Hamas to immediately cease hostile action against each other and begin to reverse steps that are entrenching separation between Gaza and the West Bank and undermining democratic institutions. In the longer run, they should seek a new power-sharing arrangement, including:

*
a clearer political platform, explicitly endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative;
*
a commitment to a reciprocal and comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire;
*
reform of the security services, to include de-factionalisation and integration of Hamas’s Executive Security Force;
*
reform of the PLO, expanding it to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad;
*
formation of a new unified government approved by the parliament; and
*
consideration of early presidential and legislative elections, although not before one year before the establishment of new government.

To facilitate this, Arab states and other third parties should offer their mediation and monitoring of any agreement. If an agreement is reached, the Quartet should be prepared to engage with a new government politically and economically.

Under current circumstances and given outside interference from various parties, reconciliation is hard to contemplate. Fatah must accept a truly pluralistic system. Hamas owes the Palestinian people answers as to its ultimate political goals and how it wants the national movement to achieve them. Israel must internalise the need to bring the occupation to an end. The international community must accept the right of Palestinians to select their own leaders. Ultimately, a stable Palestinian consensus and the Islamists’ inclusion in the political system are vital to any peace process. That was Abbas’s original intuition. It led to the January 2006 elections and then to Mecca. The parties’ understandable current anger notwithstanding, it remains the right one.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) and the PA Presidency:

1. Cease all mutual incitement and hostile actions and take appropriate disciplinary actions.

2. Refrain from measures in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank that affect the normal functioning, character and personnel of public institutions except where absolutely necessary to ensure law and order, and emphasise the temporary nature of any such measures.

3. Seek the reopening of Gaza crossings under a mechanism that could involve the Presidential Guard, a third party or the Palestinian private sector.

4. Seek return to status quo ante by:

(a) in the case of Hamas, agreeing to relinquish control over all PA and Fatah installations seized since 1 June 2007, immediately restituting private property to lawful owners; and

(b) in the case of Fatah and the PA presidency, agreeing to revoke the 19 June 2007 PLO Central Council resolution mandating early PA presidential and legislative elections as well as other presidential decrees and PLO Central Council resolutions issued since 14 June 2007.

5. Negotiate a new power-sharing agreement, including:

(a) formation of a new, unified government subject to Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) approval;

(b) a mandate for the PLO Chairman to negotiate with Israel on a political settlement of the conflict;

(c) commitment to present such a negotiated political agreement to a referendum or to national institutions for ratification and a pledge to respect the outcome of such a ratification process;

(d) commitment to a comprehensive and reciprocal Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, including halt to all military operations, action against armed groups and effective measures to end weapons smuggling;

(e) endorsement of the Arab Peace Initiative;

(f) integration of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into a reformed PLO;

(g) reform of the security services, including de-factionalising the PA security forces, integrating the Executive Security Force (ESF) into these forces and transforming them into a unified, coherent and disciplined force; and

(h) agreement to consider early presidential and parliamentary elections which, if held, would be no sooner than one year after establishment of the new unity government.

To Arab States, the League of Arab States and Third Parties in Contact with Both Sides (e.g., Turkey, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland):

6. Mediate between Fatah and Hamas, including by engaging with Hamas leaders.

7. Upon reaching an agreement, create a reporting, monitoring and dispute resolution mechanism to support implementation.

To the Quartet (U.S., EU, Russian Federation, UN):

8. Allow and encourage both Tony Blair and the future UN Middle East Envoy to engage in contacts with all relevant parties to the conflict, including the Hamas leadership and de facto authorities in Gaza.

9. Agree to engage politically and economically with any future Palestinian unity government formed on the basis of the Mecca Agreement.

To the Government of Israel:

10. Allow supplies and merchandise to move freely into and out of Gaza, including via the Karni crossing, under one of the arrangements mentioned above.

11. Facilitate the movement of goods and people within the West Bank and remove barriers that do not have a clear security function.

12. Pursue a comprehensive and reciprocal Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire and a speedy prisoner exchange.

13. Agree to begin negotiations with the PLO Chairman toward a two-state solution.

To the European Union and its Member States:

14. In all statements and contacts with the PA government in Ramallah, encourage reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

15. Provide assistance to both people and institutions in Gaza, as well as to those in the West Bank, and design assistance programs so as to avoid exacerbating the split between the West Bank and Gaza.

Amman/Jerusalem/Gaza/Brussels, 2 August 2007

Fatah Militants Lay Down Arms to Bolster Abbas

By ISABEL KERSHNER

NABLUS, West Bank, July 19 — Scores of West Bank Palestinian militants taken off Israel’s wanted list as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas are handing in weapons and signing pledges to cease violence against Israel, saying they want to give Mr. Abbas a chance to consolidate his rule here.

Interviews and encounters with more than a dozen members of the gun-toting, notoriously unruly Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, associated with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah faction, indicate that at least in the West Bank they are taking an open-ended timeout.

“Everything must come to an end,” said Mahdi Maraka, an Aksa Brigades leader from Al Ein refugee camp here in Nablus, a traditional hotbed of Fatah militancy in the northern West Bank. “There are two tracks, the political and the military. Now is the time for the political stage.”

Nasr Kharaz, 31, an armed militant and spokesman for the Brigades in the West Bank, said, “The military wing of Fatah has stopped armed resistance at this stage.”

The Aksa Brigades, which first appeared in 2000, was one of the driving forces of the second Palestinian intifada. It was built by Fatah’s grass-roots leadership with the backing of Yasir Arafat as a nationalist force to rival the Islamic militants of Hamas in the armed struggle against Israel.

At the height of the intifada, the brigades — thought to number in the hundreds — carried out scores of shooting attacks on Israeli civilian vehicles and moved on to suicide bombings inside Israel.

But in the occupied West Bank in recent years, they have mostly confined themselves to engaging Israeli soldiers who have come looking for them on their turf. Associates of one of the Brigades’ chief architects, the jailed but influential Marwan Barghouti, say even they support the amnesty. In Gaza, by contrast, a more aggressive spirit of armed resistance lives on. There, men affiliated with the Aksa Brigades are still firing rockets at Israel.

In the West Bank, Hamas has been adhering to a unilateral ceasefire for its own reasons, its militants underground. All the recent suicide bombings in Israel have been carried out by the extremist group Islamic Jihad.

For both Israel and the Aksa Brigades in the West Bank, the emerging cease-fire is an experiment. The disarmed gunmen say they know exactly where their weapons are and who is safeguarding them. And Israel could always draw up a new wanted list.

But some of the Aksa militants say that the seven years of this intifada have achieved nothing, and all of those interviewed said they want to give Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of the embattled Fatah faction, a chance to negotiate an independent Palestinian state.

“We didn’t want to be obstacles in the way of the national project,” said Ibrahim Sahli, a senior Aksa commander for the northern West Bank better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Jabal, or father of the mountain.

The fatigue of war colors some of the men’s conversations. Inside Preventive Security headquarters in Bethlehem, an Aksa member named Khalil Abayat, 45, grinned widely, his face deeply tanned. He said he was five years on the run, “moving from one mountain to another, one cave to another,” sheltering in abandoned houses, with only fleeting visits home to his wife and 12 children.

His brother and cousin were killed by Israeli forces and two of his sons are in Israeli jails. Asked if he is retiring from the resistance, he said: “Enough. I’m exhausted. I just want to rest.”

In another room in the Preventive Security compound in Bethlehem, Amjad Khalawi, 35, told how he had let his hair grow to his waist since, as he put it, he “disappeared” in 2002. “I didn’t see anybody and nobody saw me,” he said. He looks forward to marrying the fiancée he has seen only once in those five years.

But for others, the politics are dominant. They want to aid Fatah, which is closing ranks, in its fight against Hamas, which violently conquered Gaza in mid-June.

After the takeover, Mr. Maraka, Abu Jabal and their foot soldiers took revenge in Nablus, burning and looting dozens of offices and institutions affiliated with Hamas. A month ago, when Mr. Maraka, 30, was interviewed in downtown Nablus, where he appeared with an M-16 machine gun and some armed cohorts in ski masks, he said that the moment Mr. Abbas “provides us with security from the Israelis, we won’t need these weapons.”

Last Sunday, with Israel seeking ways to bolster Mr. Abbas as a brake on Hamas, Israeli and Palestinian security officials announced that they had agreed on a list of 178 Aksa Brigades members to be offered immunity for past deeds; Mr. Maraka, Abu Jabal and most of their cell members were on it. Security officials would not say what any of the individuals on the list were wanted for, beyond saying that they had all been involved in “security-related activity against Israel.”

The gunmen signed a pledge to give up all anti-Israeli activity, handed in their weapons and agreed to remain inside local Palestinian Authority Intelligence or Preventive Security compounds for a week and in their home cities for the next three months. They say they are now relying on Mr. Abbas and the authority for protection from Hamas.

If Israel is satisfied that the former fighters are committed to their pledge, they will be able to leave their fugitive lives behind and become salaried employees of the official security services from which most of them originally sprung.

The deal has proved so popular that there is already talk of another list, and Aksa militants seem ready to line up for it. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be on it,” Mr. Maraka said, speaking in a second interview on Thursday in his temporary billet: a former prison cell now equipped with a TV set, a fridge and a whirring fan, at the authority’s intelligence headquarters in Nablus. Abu Jabal, a portly figure, speaking under a vine outside his home in Al Ein, said he was on a brief “vacation” from the Preventive Security headquarters in the city, where he was spending the week.

Both men were relaxed and joking, the weapons that had so long defined them conspicuously absent.

Ahmed Balboul, reputedly one of the most wanted men in Bethlehem, was not on the first list, but hopes to be on the next. Meeting openly in Manger Square, he came unarmed. “I could hand over five rifles for the cameras and buy another 10,” he said. “Our intentions are more important than the rifles, and our intentions are turned toward negotiation.”

Naturally, there is deep skepticism about how long any lull in the violence can last.

“In Palestinian history there are no beginnings and no ends,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of Passia, a Palestinian research institute. “There are unfolding chapters, like waves in the sea.” The Aksa men are swimming with the tide, he said, “but they don’t know where it will take them.”

Like the some other groups in the first intifada — the Black Panthers and the Fatah Hawks — and Fatah’s military wing, Al Asifa (The Storm) before them, Al Aksa Brigades may yet reappear, or be reincarnated under different name.

Much will now depend on Israel’s willingness to adhere to the cease-fire with Fatah and engage in a serious peace effort toward the establishment of a Palestinian state, many Palestinians say.

“Deactivating terrorists is a step,” said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “Let’s see if it works, and if it does, we can move forward.”

Whatever happens, said Qadura Fares, a Fatah politician in Ramallah and an associate of the jailed Mr. Barghouti, “there will never be a vacuum.”

“It will be filled,” he said, “with either dialogue and peace, or another round of confrontation.”

Mr. Maraka, for one, is making sure that the next generation is prepared to continue the struggle if need be. At the intelligence headquarters in Nablus, he proudly showed video clips on his cellphone of his sons, ages 10 and 8, firing an Israeli Galil assault rifle and an M-16 on a barren mountainside.

Iranian president visits Syria

Ahmadinejad warns 'enemies of the region,' presumably U.S. and its allies, against military action.
By Ziad Haidar
Special to The Times

July 20, 2007

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with regional allies in the Syrian capital Thursday, pledging a unified defense against any potential military confrontation with the United States and its allies.

The Iranian leader was here to congratulate Syrian President Bashar Assad on his election to a second seven-year term and to shore up an alliance of U.S. opponents that appears to be gaining strength in the Middle East.

"The enemies of this region should drop their plans to strike the interests of this region, for these enemies will burn by the fire of the people," Ahmadinejad said in a joint appearance with Assad. "Both countries are united in a frontier facing common enemies to the region."

Iran and the United States are at odds over Tehran's pursuit of nuclear technology. And both Iran and Syria back armed Islamist groups, such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, that oppose Israel, a staunch U.S. ally.

In Damascus, Ahmadinejad reportedly also met with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Meshaal of Hamas and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah of Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group.

Both Syria and Iran and the Islamist organizations they support have been gaining ground in elections and in battle against more moderate pro-Western opponents.

Ahmadinejad and Assad, appearing after a closed-door meeting, said they discussed regional conflicts, including political and military tensions in Lebanon and Palestinian infighting.

"We discussed the issues that are enforced by the conspiracies planned against the Middle East," Assad said at the joint news conference.

Though the two countries largely agree on policies in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and in Lebanon, they diverge on Iraq, which Assad on Thursday called a priority.

Syria sympathizes with the secular Sunnis of the Baath Party that was booted from power in Baghdad, whereas Iran supports the Shiite clerics and politicians now running the country.

Even within Syria's strictly controlled political climate, tensions over Iraq have burst to the surface. Several months ago a group of Syrian scholars scolded a visiting Iranian diplomat, accusing him of promoting a vision of Iraq that excluded large numbers of Iraqis.

Syria would like Iran to push the Iraqi government to review a law excluding former Baathists from government posts as well as to draw more Sunni tribes into the political process.

"Syria has shown interest in the establishment of a strong central government in Baghdad, while Iran is bargaining on a loose state dominated by Shiite clerics," said Marwan Kabalan, an analyst at Damascus University's Center for Strategic Studies. "Iran plans a weak and … friendly Iraq, while Syria seeks a relatively strong secular Iraq with a clear Arabic identity."

Though Syria's secular regime and Iran's Shiite theocracy make odd bedfellows, some analysts see their partnership as a tactical alliance against the U.S. and Israel.

Their ties have deepened since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Syria and Libya were the only Arab countries that backed Tehran. Now oil-rich Iran helps bolster Syria's economy, which faces U.S. sanctions.

Iranian investment in Syria exceeds $1 billion, said Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, Iran's ambassador to Syria. Half a million Iranian pilgrims visit holy sites in Syria each year.

"The occasion is a chance to coordinate on recent developments in the Middle East," Akhtari told The Times, referring to Thursday's meeting. "We always consult each other since the Islamic Revolution."

Israel Releases 255 Palestinian Prisoners

Move Is Intended to Boost Popularity of Fatah's Abbas

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A08

BEITUNIYA, West Bank, July 20 -- Israeli police arrested Faten Daraghmeh four years ago in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel. The mother of seven children wore a vest packed with explosives, and she later informed her family that she had planned to blow herself up inside a crowded shopping mall. Instead she went to jail.

Now she is home. Daraghmeh and 254 other Palestinian prisoners walked out of their cells Friday and crossed into the West Bank here just before noon in an ecstatic eight-bus convoy -- Palestinian flags, Fatah party banners, and smiling faces poking out from open windows.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to release the prisoners, less than 3 percent of an estimated 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, to boost the popularity of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party at a pivotal moment in its political standoff with the rival Hamas movement.

But the first mass prisoner release in more than two years could harden the partisan divide between the armed Islamic movement and Fatah, a secular party that has the backing of the Bush administration.

None of those freed Friday were from Hamas, Israeli and Hamas officials confirmed, although a few were members of Palestinian factions other than Fatah. The vast majority belonged to Abbas's party, including Daraghmeh, who frantically waved a poster with the president's picture as her women-only bus passed through this crossing north of Jerusalem.

Three of her daughters waited with the chanting throngs for their mother, who had served just over half her sentence. As she appeared in the window, the crowd lifted up Noura, a 4-year-old in an embroidered tunic, and Shuruq, a 5-year-old in a frilly white party dress, to ride with their mother before the bus zipped toward Abbas's presidential compound for a partisan celebration.

"I'm thanking Abu Mazen very much," Daraghmeh, in her 30s, called from the window, referring to Abbas by his nickname.

Prisoners are venerated for their sacrifice in Palestinian society, and the issue is among the most emotionally resonant in the long conflict with Israel. This prisoner release, highly unpopular among Olmert's hawkish coalition partners, comes as pressure mounts on Israel from the Bush administration, Egypt and Jordan to do more to improve Fatah's standing in the West Bank.

Last month, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, sealing the political division of the two territories envisioned as the main components of a future Palestinian state.

Abbas immediately fired the Hamas-led unity government and appointed an emergency cabinet that now holds sway in the West Bank. But its political legitimacy has been challenged by Hamas and others because it continues operating without approval from the Hamas-dominated parliament. The Islamic movement won 2006 elections that were championed by the Bush administration.

After the emergency government's 30-day mandate expired last week, Abbas reappointed independent lawmaker Salam Fayyad as prime minister and made minor changes to the cabinet before installing it again. He has pledged to call early presidential and parliamentary elections, which his Fatah movement, struggling to rehabilitate its political image after years of corrupt, hapless rule, is by no means assured of winning.

Hamas, meanwhile, is running a parallel government in Gaza, where an already impoverished economy is nearing collapse because Israel has closed cargo crossings to all but emergency aid.

Fatah's support is hardly universal, even in the West Bank. "We hope that what happened in Gaza happens here in the West Bank," said Mahmoud Daraghmeh, Faten's older brother, who sells vegetables in their village near Nablus. "We want Fatah gone altogether. With Fatah, it's all lies."

Israel freed 898 Palestinian prisoners in two phases during the first six months of 2005. At the time, Abbas, newly elected as president, had successfully brokered a cease-fire with Israel among most of the armed Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

Israeli officials said that release was designed to strengthen Abbas, but in elections eight months later Hamas prevailed. Now, Olmert is pursuing a similar strategy, which includes transferring some frozen Palestinian tax revenue and granting a three-month trial amnesty to nearly 200 wanted Fatah gunmen in the West Bank.

In recent days, scores of Fatah activists and gunmen from its armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, have emerged from hiding. Many are sleeping at night for the first time in years, adjusting to a life outside of self-imposed confinement to avoid Israeli capture.

"I didn't see the sunshine, I didn't know if it was raining," said Amjad Kharawi, a 35-year-old Fatah activist, who turned himself in to the Palestinian Preventive Security headquarters in Bethlehem this week after five years in hiding. "I missed meat, all kinds of food, and coffee."

A scraggly beard reaching to his chest and his hair falling past his shoulders, Kharawi became a fugitive in April 2002 when Israeli forces arrived at his home in the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem looking for him. He said he is not a member of Fatah's armed wing and intends now to join the Palestinian security services and marry his fiancee, whom he has not seen since he went into hiding.

"Israel has always been responsible for weakening Abu Mazen," Kharawi said. "What I know is that he is my president, though, and I will abide by the decisions he makes."

Among those released Friday was Abdel Rahim Malouh, the second-ranking official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Abbas often works with the party, a Marxist movement with a small presence in parliament. Red banners bobbed above the crowd, and a number of the party's young activists danced and chanted while waiting for the buses to arrive.

Most of those gathered wore the black-and-white checked scarves of Fatah, including 25-year-old Suha Mousa, who awaited her brother. Murad Mousa, who was a student at al-Quds Open University at the time of his arrest for participating in stone-throwing demonstrations, served more than half of his nine year sentence.

"We couldn't sleep we were so excited after we heard he would be released," she said. "But it is a time of mixed feelings. We are happy about my brother, but there are many others still in there."

Gaza's economy barely alive

Since Hamas took over the strip, Israel has closed the border. Even as jobs are lost, one merchant gambles on a reopening.
By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer

July 20, 2007

GAZA CITY — Defying southern Gaza's dusty soil, sturdy little sprouts stand in neat rows before Zakary Hejazi.

The buds are a gamble: $162,000 worth of carnations. In the coming months, Hejazi hopes to export them to Europe.

But politics could make this harvest, and his business, wither.

"All the farmers are having nightmares," he said on a recent afternoon. "If the border closure continues, it'll be the death of the people — not just the flowers."

Since the Islamic militant organization Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, Israel has in effect sealed off the territory, closing border crossings to the import and export of most produce and other goods.

As a result, the already weak and aid-dependent Gaza economy is on the verge of collapse. Hundreds of factories have closed and tens of thousands of people are out of work.

On Monday, President Bush said the U.S. was giving $190 million in aid to the Palestinians. But the money is intended for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' government in the West Bank.

Israel, the United States and some European countries are trying to undermine Hamas, which they consider a terrorist group, by dividing the Palestinians and isolating Gaza.

But residents, business leaders and officials in Gaza said in interviews that they think Israel, not Hamas, is to blame for the economic crisis.

"People don't have anything against Hamas," said Mohammed Talabani, owner of a Gaza cookie factory. "It's Israel that is creating the crisis."

Talabani normally exports $750,000 worth of biscuits, wafers and ice cream to the West Bank every month. But there are no more exports, and the Al Awda factory is running out of imported cocoa, sugar and ice cream sticks.

Talabani has cut production by two-thirds, sending home hundreds of workers.

In the industrial sector alone, as many as 35,000 workers have been laid off, with losses amounting to $20 million, said Ali Hayak, the director of the Palestinian Federation of Industry. The problems add to Gaza's already considerable economic woes.

Official figures put unemployment at about 50%, but unemployment in effect is closer to 85% because many workers receive salaries that are so meager as to be meaningless, said Omar Shaban, a leading economist who blames both Israeli and Palestinian politicians.

Almost two-thirds of Gaza's budget comes from outside aid, he said.

"We cannot work without coordinating with the occupation," Shaban said. "We have to be logical. We have a responsibility for 1.5 million people in Gaza."

As many as 1.1 million of them are dependent on international aid, said John Ging, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. With the border all but closed, the last functioning part of the economy is collapsing, and the impending humanitarian crisis could overwhelm U.N. resources in Gaza, he said.

"If people are hungry, they will go to Hamas for help and aid," Hayak said. "But if the borders are open, people will be busy in their business, taking care of themselves."

Hejazi, for one, has been unable to get fertilizer to his hillside nursery. He is hoping his carnations might still make it through the sweltering summer and that, come fall harvest, the border will be open again.

Other farmers have already been forced to sell their produce for a pittance. Vegetables destined for Israeli markets instead have flooded the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip. One dollar now buys 26 pounds of tomatoes.

Palestinian textile producers, whose summer clothes may not make it to Israeli shops before the season is over, stand to lose as much as $5 million, according to observers and trade groups in Israel and Gaza.

Meanwhile, prices of imported materials have soared. Supplies of concrete are running out, and the construction sector has ground to a halt, delaying $93 million worth of United Nations projects — among them schools, refugee camp repairs and sanitation networks, Ging said.

Like Talabani, many Palestinian importers are forced to pay thousands of dollars in storage fees for goods stuck at the Israeli port of Ashdod, just north of Gaza City, and elsewhere. During the first two weeks of closure alone, Palestinian importers racked up $1.5 million in such charges, according to a report by Gisha, an Israeli-based advocacy group that promotes freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Hundreds of Palestinian traders and merchants who normally commute to Israel daily for business are also trapped in Gaza because of the border closures. And thousands of other Palestinians remain trapped on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing.

When Hamas took control of Gaza last month, Palestinian border guards affiliated with the rival Fatah party fled their posts, leaving the crossings staffed only on the Israeli side.

Through intermediaries, Hamas officials have sought to resolve the situation with the Israelis, said Alaa Araj, an economics advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the dismissed Palestinian Authority prime minister.

Abbas, who is based in the West Bank, fired Haniyeh and his government after the fighting in Gaza last month. But Haniyeh rejected the termination of his administration and has continued to govern.

Araj said border guards affiliated with Fatah were welcome to come back to work as long as they were not corrupt.

But Israeli officials say they will not negotiate with groups they consider terrorists or that do not recognize the state of Israel.

"As long as Hamas doesn't rethink its position, things will stay the way they are," said Shlomo Dror, an Israeli government spokesman, highlighting that the Israelis have allowed the passage of tons of food, medicine and other aid.

"The Palestinians in Gaza can survive without the opening of the crossings," he said. "True, there are difficulties and the situation isn't good, but they're not collapsing tomorrow morning. There will not be starvation in Gaza."

But Ging of the United Nations said that, while important, food handouts are not a solution.

"It's not just about keeping people alive. But alive to do what?"

Israel pulled out of Gaza two years ago and has since intermittently shut down the border crossings, sometimes for weeks on end. However, the current stranglehold on commercial goods and material is unprecedented.

"Every time there is a closure, we say, 'This is the worst,' " Shaban said. "But this is the worst of the worst."

For their part, Israeli fruit growers cannot sell their produce in Gaza and are losing millions of dollars in revenue.

Israeli officials recently said Hamas had banned Israeli fruit from entering Gaza, but Hamas officials denied this, and it is unclear how fruit would be able to pass the closed border crossings.

Shaban said opening the border was the most pressing short-term concern but added that Palestinian politicians needed to develop the economy, paying special attention to successful sectors, such as flower growing.

In Hejazi's business, trade trumps politics.

He imports the seeds from Israel. He grows the flowers in Rafah, not far from demolished Jewish settlements. And he monitors prices online before selling his crop through the Dutch flower bourse in Europe. Carnations yearly bring $20 million to Gaza, create jobs and, with that, hope for the future.

"We need food, yes," Shaban said. "But we also need flowers."

--

roug@latimes.com

Special correspondent Hamada Abu Qamar contributed to this report.

Senators may block Libya envoy

Some U.S. senators are balking at sending an ambassador to Libya until it pays compensation to the families of terror victims. President Bush has nominated the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor to be the first U.S. envoy to Tripoli since the United States and Libya severed ties in 1980.

Bush this week tapped Gene Cretz, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

The United States and Libya re-established ties at a low level in 2004 after Libya agreed to end its weapons of mass destruction program and pay compensation to the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The four senators from New York and New Jersey – home states to many of the victims – said they would block the nomination until Libya had paid the $2.7 billion compensation stipulated in a 2006 agreement with the families.

"A promise made must be a promise kept," said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). "Libya has not made good on its promise to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, and it must be held responsible."

Menendez and the other three senators – Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York – are Democrats, and Lautenberg and Schumer are Jewish.

Cretz's appointment also comes as Libya has reaffirmed death sentences for six foreign nurses – one Palestinian and five Bulgarians – accused of poisoning children with the HIV virus as part of an Israeli plot.

Cretz, who has served posts in Syria and Egypt, has often been the top U.S. representative in Israel at Jewish memorial services, offering prayers in Hebrew. He spoke at the September 2005 funeral for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Inside Israel's Secret Talks with Hamas

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

Having secured the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston on July 4th, Hamas officials are now moving discreetly to negotiate freedom for another Gaza hostage — Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit, seized in June 2006 in a raid by Palestinian militants who had tunneled under the Israeli security wall around Gaza, is currently being held by kidnappers who include members of Hamas' own military wing, as well another radical group, the Popular Resistance Committees.

An investigation by TIME reveals a marked contrast in how the Israelis and Hamas view their complicated on-again, off-again negotiations over Shalit's release. The disconnect arises partially out of Israel's refusal to deal directly with Hamas, which they consider a terrorist organization. While some informed Israelis say they are "optimistic" that Shalit will be free "within weeks," Hamas officials are far more cautious — one offered the glum assessment that bargaining could drag on for another year.

Israeli military officials and Hamas officials told TIME that the two sides are able to negotiate on the issue via Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, and also in direct talks between Israelis and senior Hamas commanders imprisoned in Israel. The inmates then smuggle messages to the Hamas leadership via lawyers and relatives visiting them in prison.

One Hamas official told TIME that last spring, the militants proposed a deal in which Israel would hand over 1,400 prisoners — at first, 300 Palestinians would be released, and in exchange Hamas would move Shalit from Gaza to Egypt. The Israeli soldier would then be turned over to the Israelis, and another 400 Palestinians would be freed. Seven month after Shalit is safely home, Israel would then free another 700 prisoners. Included in the list were 100 "must release" Palestinians, all convicted of terrorist acts against Israelis. Israel balked at letting loose prisoners "with blood on their hands," who might strike again.

According to a senior Hamas official, that deal fell at the first hurdle: Israel refused to release only a handful of the prisoners on the Hamas list. Negotiations simmered until June, when Hamas seized control of Gaza from rival Fatah militiamen, and talks were broken off. Now, Israel is debating the possibility of freeing around 400 prisoners, including some on Hamas' top 100 list who are deemed unlikely to terrorize Israel again.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, according to a Tel Aviv-based intelligence official, is refusing to release any prisoners who aren't Hamas. (Hamas asked for freedom for members of other Palestinian factions, as well as foreign terror suspects in Israeli hands.) Apparently, Olmert wants to avoid Hamas being seen to gain legitimacy among the Palestinian public by securing prisoner releases, according to this source. To boost Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbbas in his struggle with Hamas, Olmert has vowed to release 250 of Fatah loyalists, a deal criticized by Palestinians as selfish on Abbas' part.

One Hamas offical says he doubts that the militant leadership would accept Israel's new terms, and he blamed Israel for attempting to "sabotage" the prisoner swap. Egyptian Intelligence Chief Suleiman was quoted in the Israeli press as telling Israeli leftist politicians recently that Olmert was "stalling" and must show some flexibility towards Hamas. The Israelis want their soldier freed, but are understandably reluctant to release a horde of potentially dangerous ex-terrorists.

The impasse arises because both Israel and Hamas believe that they hold the stronger hand and don't want to compromise. As canny observers of Israeli politics, Hamas knows that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could use the freeing of Shalit to boost his plummeting popularity. Meanwhile, the Israelis reckon that Hamas could capitalize on the exchange of hundreds of prisoners as a way to improve their support among Palestinians, and their international standing. Israel and Western government slapped an economic blockade on 1.5 million Gaza residents now living under Hamas' rule, and it would help Hamas' standing if these sanctions were loosened.

The Israelis toughened their negotiating stance believing that with international sanctions squeezing Gaza, Hamas might be desperate to strike a deal. And Hamas has certainly exhibited a new willingness to bargain: exactly a year after Shalit's kidnapping, his captors released an audio tape of the soldier pleading for Olmert to do more to release him.

Although Israel publicly refuses to deal directly with Hamas "terrorists," Israel's top hostage negotiator, Ofer Dekel, met recently with jailed Hamas commanders to persuade them to put pressure on their leadership to accept the new offer. Inside prison, Palestinian inmates are separated according to their allegiance to Hamas or Fatah, since otherwise they would clash, a mirror of their rivalry inside the Palestinian territories. Hamas prisoners are better organized and more disciplined than Fatah inmates, according to Anat Berko, a criminologist at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, who frequently speaks with the Palestinian inmates. She says that Hamas' efforts to free as many Palestinian prisoners as possible, and not just those belonging to Hamas, has earned the Islamic militants greater support among the 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Still, Hamas officials urge Israel to speak directly with them, since they were freely elected in the January 2006 Palestinian elections, and they now exercise control over Shalit's kidnappers in Gaza. "We are willing to talk directly to the Israelis," says one Hamas official. "So why are the Israelis play the ostrich with us? They're willing to talk with our men in jail but not to us directly."

Israeli Offers Direct Talks With Syria

By REUTERS

Filed at 1:49 a.m. ET

DUBAI (Reuters) - Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert in remarks aired on Tuesday offered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to begin direct negotiations to make peace in the Middle East, and advised him not to wait for American mediation.

"Bashar al-Assad, you know that I am ready for direct talks with you," Olmert told Al-Arabiya television.

"You (Assad) have been saying that you want the negotiations through the Americans. But they do not want to sit with you. I am ready to sit with you and talk about peace not war."

Negotiations between Syria and Israel collapsed in 2000 without resolving the fate of the Golan Heights, a mountainous plateau occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981 in a move declared null by the United Nations Security Council.

"I will be happy if I could make peace with Syria. I do no want to wage ware against Syria."

Assad has repeatedly expressed interest in resuming talk with Israel through a third party.

A Syrian foreign ministry official said last week, Damascus was ready for talks without preconditions and said Israel and Syria had solved some 85 percent of the problem in past negotiations.

Syria said last month, if Israel made concessions in peace negotiations, it would cooperate directly with Washington in helping to curb violence in Iraq and change its nature of its relationship with its ally Iran, an enemy of Israel and the U.S.

The West, led by U.S. accuses Syria of backing insurgency in Iraq, and hosting militant Palestinian leaders on its grounds.

Analysts said Syria wants to regain the Golan now more than ever, after it was forced to withdraw its forces from Lebanon two years ago and U.S. led pressure on Damascus for its role in Iraq and Lebanon mounted.

Jordan Rejects Calls for Federation With Palestinians

By HASSAN M. FATTAH

AMMAN, Jordan, July 6 — Inside a drab cellphone shop, set deep inside the sprawling Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of this city, Muhammad Khalil and his friends were as gloomy as the fluorescent lights that flickered on the ceiling.

“Everything has been ruined for us — we’ve been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left,” Mr. Khalil said, speaking of the Palestinian cause. Just weeks earlier, he might have been speaking enthusiastically to his friends here, in their usual hangout, about resistance, of fighting for his rights as a Palestinian and of one day returning to a Palestinian state.

Last Wednesday, however, he spoke of what he saw as a less satisfying goal for the Palestinians here and one that raises concerns for many other Jordanians: Palestinian union with Jordan.

“It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank,” Mr. Khalil said, as his friends nodded. “The issue would be over if Jordan just took control.”

Even a few months ago, talk of a confederation with Jordan would have sounded quaint or even conspiratorial, 40 years after Jordan lost control of the West Bank in the 1967 war and two decades after King Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, formally ceded administrative control of the territory to the Palestinians.

But as the Palestinian territories have been engulfed in turmoil, with Gaza and the West Bank now divided economically and politically, as well as physically, talk of a less ambitious, but no less delicate, federation between Jordan and the West Bank has begun rippling through many Jordanian and Palestinian circles.

Some Palestinians who have begun speaking of confederation see Jordan as a last resort to bring about security and stability to the West Bank and to prevent it from falling under the control of the militant Hamas faction, as Gaza has. Israeli officials who have spoken of the idea also say Jordan could help peace efforts by taking over security conditions — shorthand, many fear, for Jordan inheriting Israeli responsibility for security there. In any event, when Israel and the United States have spoken of a Palestinian state, they have talked of a demilitarized one, so some solution for Palestinian national security would be needed.

Jordanian commentators also have begun warning that talk of a federation could put an end to the Palestinian national project and put Jordan itself in peril.

“You have a scenario-building exercise going on; Jordan is dealing with complex politics and they are trying to see where they will land and where it will leave the country,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of the Al Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, speaking of the debate about federation. “Jordan has not yet decided on this issue, but it’s clear the debate has begun.”

The nature of any possible union has many iterations. Some see it as possible oversight of the Palestinian territories by Jordan while others see it as a partnership between two nations. But King Abdullah’s position was clear.

In an interview with the daily newspaper Al Ghad on July 1, he sought to put to rest rumors of a possible change in policy on the matter. “I say clearly that the idea of confederation or federation, or what is called administrative responsibility, is a conspiracy against the Palestinian cause, and Jordan will not involve itself in it,” he said. “The Jordanians refuse any settlement of the Palestinian issue at their expense.”

Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of al Ghad, who interviewed the king, said: “He was extremely blunt in the interview. No discussion. It’s a no-go.”

Some analysts, however, said the king’s response helped underscore the level of pressure Jordan may be facing.

“King Abdullah made himself clear on more than one occasion,” said Musa Shtewi, professor of sociology at the University of Jordan. “But by having to do so, it means there’s a lot of pressure being put on Jordan to do this.”

King Hussein, Abdullah’s father, lost the West Bank during the 1967 war and had long hoped to one day reunite both sides of the Jordan River, Professor Shtewi and other analysts said. In 1988, however, he formally disengaged from the territory in a major policy shift that made the Palestine Liberation Organization the sole body responsible for the administration of the Palestinian areas.

Jordanian and Palestinian academics have long talked of the possibility of a political and economic federation. But after Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo peace treaty with the Israelis in 1993, Jordan’s official policy on federation became predicated on the formation of a Palestinian state.

The issue of confederation has become especially delicate among native Jordanians, who fear that a confederation could further empower Jordan’s large number of residents of Palestinian origin, estimated to be up to 60 percent of the population, at their political expense.

“This used to be an academic issue that never died away,” said Professor Shtewi, speaking of confederation. “But now, it has become a political and even an existential issue too.”

Rumors began circulating in May that Jordan might be rethinking its position, when Abdul-Salam al-Majali, a former prime minister, was the host of a meeting of Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates in the Red Sea Port of Aqaba to discuss ways of reinvigorating peace efforts. Mr. Majali, in an interview, said the issue of federation never came up.

But many Jordanian analysts and columnists reported that the meeting touched on the principles of establishing a confederation as a means to breaking the impasse in the peace efforts. Many analysts saw the meeting as a trial balloon intended to gauge the level of interest and resistance to a confederation.

“They don’t really want this, but they wanted to see what their options would be if it was forced on them,” said Mohammed Abu Rumman, a columnist with Al Ghad, referring to the Jordanian government. “Most people will tell you that the confederation scenario is going to happen. The only question is when.”

Palestinian activists, however, warn against taking Palestinian desire for stability as a serious change in their politics.

“Some Palestinians may regard this as a kind of solution, a way out of the problem for them,” said Talat Abu Othman, leader of the Jordanian chapter of the High Committee to Protect the Right of Return. “But these are temporary solutions and temporary solutions don’t fix the problem. Without a right of return, without rights, you will solve nothing.”

Mr. Khalil and his friends in the cellphone shop figure, however, that the wait is growing more difficult by the day. “Jordan wants peace for us,” he said. “Jordan wants us to get our rights.”

Mideast Policy in a Fantasy World

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, July 9, 2007; A15

During Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington last month, I asked a senior Israeli official to explain what the prime minister thought would be the result of his policy -- quickly embraced by the Bush administration -- of isolating the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. Since Hamas's coup against the secular Fatah party in mid-June, Israel has allowed in international aid convoys and continued to supply power and water, but otherwise sealed off the territory and its 1.5 million people.

His answer: As conditions worsened, Palestinians in Gaza would grow steadily more disgruntled with Hamas. Eventually, they would turn on their rulers, and the rump Islamic state that threatens to take hold between Egypt and Israel would collapse. Fatah -- which Israel and the United States are supporting in the West Bank -- would regain control.

In other words, Israeli policy is counting on Gaza's impoverished and largely uneducated population to stage the first popular revolution against a domestic government in the modern history of the Arab Middle East. It also assumes that people suffering from extreme privation will respond by demanding a more moderate government.

If this reasoning is far-fetched, it's at least consistent. Ever since Hamas won Palestinian elections at the beginning of last year, Olmert and the Bush administration have adopted a string of failed policies based on ever-more-unlikely scenarios. They began by betting that a diplomatic and aid boycott would either cause Hamas's collapse or force it to formally recognize Israel's right to exist. Then they calculated that the Middle East could be divided into "extremist" and "moderate" states, with the moderates -- including Saudi Arabia -- lining up with Israel against Iran and Hamas. Now they are supposing that they can back the weaker side in an intra-Palestinian power struggle and ensure that it comes out on top.

So far the result of these wishful strategies has been to make Hamas stronger and Palestinians as a whole more radical. The greatest threat to the Gaza regime at the moment is not Fatah but still more bloodthirsty gangs, such as Islamic Jihad and Army of Islam. Many people believe al-Qaeda will soon be a serious factor.

If there's one thing holding Hamas back, it is its own fanciful thinking. Take last week's release of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston, to which Hamas devoted itself soon after ousting Fatah. This was not a simple good deed or an attempt to restore order in Gaza. Hamas's leaders, such as the Damascus-based Khaled Meshal, were clearly calculating that by freeing a Western journalist they could gain international recognition. Like Meshal's earlier supposition that forming a "unity" government with Fatah would end the Western boycott, this was unfounded -- the European Union quickly announced that its policy toward Hamas was unchanged.

What the fantasies of Hamas and Israel have in common is the supposition that they can ignore each other -- except when they are exchanging missiles and bombs. Israeli policy consistently assumes that the Palestinian Islamic movement can be wiped out, or at least eliminated as a military and political force. Hamas bets that it can ultimately win international recognition and acceptance without abandoning its goal of destroying the Jewish state.

In reality, probably the only way forward in the Middle East is for Israel and Hamas to start to come to terms with each other, however provisionally, while accepting that Hamas's formal recognition of Israel, and Western acceptance of Hamas, will come at the end rather than the beginning of the process. Only if they decide on a full-fledged cease-fire will there be a chance to end the violence -- and head off the growing risk of another multi-front war in the Middle East. Only if Hamas agrees to free the Israeli soldier it is still holding hostage, Gilad Shalit, will there be a major Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners. If Israel is to stick to its promise to reduce roadblocks and illegal settlements in the West Bank, it will need Hamas's tacit cooperation -- one suicide bomb by Hamas would quickly reverse any Israeli retreat. And Western governments will find it difficult to do even rudimentary business with Hamas unless Israel goes first.

Why should Israel cut deals with an extremist movement dedicated to its destruction? Won't it undercut Palestinian moderates who still hope to negotiate a two-state settlement or encourage Islamist movements elsewhere in the Middle East? The answer is unsatisfactory but irrefutable: Ignoring reality, and Gaza, is a mistake that Israelis as well as Palestinians can no longer afford.