Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the Middle East Quarterly, writing yesterday on “President Bush’s Broken Promises” in the Wall Street Journal:
On June 24, 2002, Mr. Bush declared, "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." Less than a year later the State Department reversed course, eliminating the cessation of terror as a precondition for engagement.
Actually it was not a year later (at that time, the Roadmap was issued, incorporating the dismantlement requirement as part of Phase I). Nor was it two years later (at that time, Bush formally assured Israel the Roadmap would be the sole means to a Palestinian state). Nor was it three years later (at that time, the President turned away suggestions about political negotiations, noting the Palestinians needed first to demonstrate in Gaza their ability to live side-by-side in peace).
It was this year, in his July 16 speech — when he called an international meeting for the fall for Israel to negotiate a “political horizon” for a Palestinian state, prior to the dismantlement of a single terrorist organization (not even the terrorist wing of Mahmoud Abbas’s own party; not even the people firing daily at Sderot; and certainly not Hamas, who now rules half of the putative Palestinian state; no one rules the other half).
In her press conference yesterday in Egypt, Condoleeza Rice was asked the following question:
QUESTION: (Via interpreter) (Inaudible) A question to Secretary Rice. What kind of reference are you going to use for the upcoming meetings [in the fall]? Is it going to be the UN Resolution 242? Is it going to be the Arab League? There is an Arab concern that maybe there are new terms of references or there is a change in the Arab League initiative.
It was a perceptive question. UN Resolution 242 does not call for the 1967 lines, but rather a withdrawal from an unspecified portion of the territories in exchange for “secure and recognized borders.” The resolution did not contemplate the re-division of Jerusalem, nor does it refer even implicitly to a “right of return.”
The Arab Initiative requires a return to Israel’s Auschwitz borders and expressly references UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (which the Palestinians mistakenly believe provides a “right of return”).
The Roadmap refers in its introductory language to the Arab Initiative, but pointedly does not mention either it or Resolution 194 in Phase III, specifying instead only UN Resolutions 242, 338, and 1397 as the relevant sources.
And of course the Roadmap requires two Phases before final status issues are addressed; the Arab Initiative contemplates a single “comprehensive” agreement without prior dismantlement of anything.
So it was an important question to Condoleezza Rice: what is going to be the basis of Bush’s international meeting, Resolution 242 or the Arab initiative? Here was Rice’s answer:
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Well, I think that we can build on the several UN Security Council resolutions and other proposals that have been put forward, other plans that have been put forward. We have, of course, the Arab initiative. We should remember we also have the roadmap that the parties and the region are – and the international community are all agreed to. We have various statements that leaders have made, that Palestinian leaders have made, that Israeli leaders have made. I think we will want to put all of that together to put forward the most positive agenda that we can.
You got your UN resolutions; you got your other plans; you got your Arab initiative; you got your roadmap; and you got your various statements. She’ll put them all together and produce a positive agenda for an international meeting, which the U.S. in 2004 promised Israel would not occur until Phase III of the exclusive way forward.