YESTERDAY, Colin Powell delivered the Big Speech That Wasn’t.
For two months, we’ve been told, the secretary of state has been preparing a new American plan to jump-start the so-called “Middle East peace process.”
But in Louisville, Powell added nothing new to the wishful thinking that has long passed for State Department policy when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, he spoke airily about the American “vision” of a world in which Arabs and Jews would live together in peace.
In Powell’s vision, Arabs would accept Israel’s existence, cease inciting hatred against Jews, stop oppressing their own people and foster the growth of economic, political and religious liberty. In Powell’s vision, Israel would no longer occupy the West Bank and Gaza, the lands that would form the new state of Palestine.
The use of the word “vision,” which echoes President Bush’s remarks at the United Nations last week, is very telling. Speaking for the Bush administration, Powell was acknowledging that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is more in the realm of fantasy than practicality.
When it came to actual policy, Powell simply reiterated the administration’s support for the “confidence-building” measures proposed by a commission headed by Sen. George Mitchell – which the Israelis accepted months ago as the basis for a resumption of talks with the Palestinians.
He also announced that two American officials would be traveling to the region.
And that was pretty much it.
“President Bush and I are convinced that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved,” he said. But don’t you believe it. The lack of specificity to Powell’s speech represented a major retrenchment by the secretary of state, his staff and the administration as a whole.
Before Sept. 11, Powell was prepared to plunge the United States into the innards of the “peace process.” He had evidently fallen prey to the fantasy that has plagued every secretary of state since William Rogers back in 1969 – the fantasy that with his participation, somehow the Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved and resolved.
In the weeks following the terror attacks, conventional foreign-policy solons were certain that the only way to solidify the “coalition against terror” was for the United States to take “the lead” in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – because, it was said, without Israeli concessions the Arab “street” would throw the region into chaos.
That view was evidently shared by the State Department. Foggy Bottom sources told The New York Times in a clearly authorized Oct. 2 leak that Powell had intended to use a September appearance before the U.N. Security Council to spell out a dramatic new plan for a Palestinian state.
So what happened?
For one thing, the war’s going so well that the fears of a collapsing “coalition” no longer matter, even to coalition-crazy types like those at State.
For another, Arafat has spent the last few months lying directly to the faces of American officials about his efforts to quell violence.
Two weeks ago, he said he had forced the arrest of terrorist leader Ataf Abbayat – only to be proved a liar when the Israelis killed the supposedly jailed Abbayat on a West Bank road.
An Israeli intelligence official told the Knesset that incidents like this had driven the U.S.-Arafat relationship to an “all-time low.”
Now, Powell did speak more forthrightly yesterday about a Palestinian state than any official before him – but support for the creation of that new country has been official U.S. policy since mid-1999. Otherwise, the speech was a harsher condemnation of the Palestinian leadership than anybody expected – and therefore an implicit acknowlegement that the Israelis have not been acting cavalierly over the past year.
Powell talked openly about the way the Palestinians incite hatred against Israelis, and how they want to use violence to achieve what can only be achieved by negotiation.
He did take Israel to task for the hardships its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has imposed on the Palestinians. But even this was couched in language surprisingly generous toward Israel. “The occupation hurts Palestinians, but it also hurts Israelis,” he said.
It appears that Powell’s “vision” of a happy, peaceful and prosperous Middle East simply cannot blind him and the administration to the reality, which is that Israel wants peace and the Arabs don’t.
E-mail: