More on Rice's visit – and Mission apparently accomplished

This was probably the toughest moment yet in the whole Annapolis process. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice headed for previously-announced talks in the region just as the most ferocious and deadly Israeli military incursion in Gaza in years was abruptly wound up — possibly specifically because of her visit.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiators had angrily announced last weekend that they could not continue talks with their Israeli counterparts under the circumstances.

Palestinian students in their school uniforms left their classrooms in East Jerusalem on Monday, groups of girls, and then groups of boys, to demonstrate on the main Salah ad-Din Street against the Israeli military actions in Gaza — shouting, burning garbage in the street, and throwing stones — as the casualty toll mounted. One Israeli car was attacked, and its windows broken. Israeli police on big and sturdy horses pushed back the groups of school children, and four arrests were made. There were other less polite demonstrations and responses elsewhere in the West Bank, with at least one Palestinian death. And Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens also marched in protest in Arab towns in Israel.

For months, Palestinians have been saying with concern, the feeling of a new Intifada is in the air.

Rice arrived at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport by 12:30 pm on Tuesday – after already holding morning meetings in Egypt – and, for the first time, drove straight to Ramallah without talking to Israeli officials first. She arrived at the Muqata’a presidential compound by 1:35 pm.

The main focus of her visit was to get the Palestinian Authority leadership to agree to resume post-Annapolis “core issue” and “final status” talks with Israel.

At a joint Rice-Abbas press conference in Ramallah after their meeting, Rice appeared unusually accommodating and sympathetic. And Abbas appeared firm, even adamant. The Palestinian President said that there would have to be a cease-fire before negotiations resume.

Abbas repeated this position on Wednesday morning – but then reversed his position within hours (CNN called it a U-turn), either in response to a phone call from Rice, as some reports indicate, or in response to threats of a total cut-off of international aid, as other reports speculate, or because he really believes that ‘The peace process is a strategic choice”, as he himself said, believing it is the only way to give the Palestinian people better lives.

At the very least, it was an extremely gracious concession to a visiting guest, and it may yet cost him dearly.

Time Magazine’s Tim McGirk wrote later on his Time Magazine blog page that “It seemed like the most craven of climb-downs”, and he was not alone in this opinion.

What we know for sure now is that the parties have said they intend to resume negotiations.

In the Muqata’a press conference with Rice on Tuesday, the Palestinian President said: “We warned repeatedly that Israel must not insist on its security first (only)”, and said that “Security must be reciprocal for both sides, in the proper social and economic atmosphere”.

Abu Mazen stated with some intensity that: “No one, under any pretext, can justify what the Israeli military did (in recent days) when 120 died, including many children and civilians. We need a comprehensive and reciprocal truce in Gaza and the West Bank, so that 2008 is (can be) the year of peace”. He continued: “We want to work on activating the Fourth Geneva Convention. Security is vital for both parties, and it can only be achieved through a political solution, not military power…”

A Reuters correspondent in the travelling State Department press corps tried to press Abbas to specify what it would take to resume talks with Israel. The answer from Abbas was: “These talks are not a luxury, they are something very important”.

Nobody in Ramallah asked about the Vanity Fair article — though while the journalists were waiting for the press conference to begin, a colleague from Japan’s NHK television said Rice had been asked about it at a press conference in Cairo this morning, though her answer was not clear. (We later learned, from the U.S. State Department transcript of the Cairo press conference, that Rice said she had not – yet – read the Vanity Fair article which was already being widely circulated on the internet, but she was able to add that all the blame should be put on Hamas.)

The first (pre-approved — by Muqata’a press officials) question in the Ramallah press conference was from a Palestinian reporter who asked: “Can you tell us where negotiations stand now, because nobody sees any results?”

Rice replied: “We’ve been very active the last several days” and went on to add that the present problems can be blamed on Hamas “starting with the illegal coup”. Abbas said nothing.

Several of the minor characters in the Vanity Fair story were present in Rice’s entourage at the Muqata’a in Ramallah today – Elliot Abrams, along with David Welch, as well as Consul in East Jerusalem, Jacob Walles

The Vanity Fair article had reported that the magazine “has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by [Muhammad] Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.) … Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza. Some sources call the scheme ‘Iran-contra 2.0′, recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan”…

Ma’an News Agency reported Wednesday that Dahlan denied some of the allegations made in the Vanity Fair story.

The Vanity Fair article also reported that “Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. ‘The administration spoke with one voice: “We have to squeeze these guys”. With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead’.”

And, there’s more. The Vanity Fair article also said that “At the end of 2006, Dayton promised an immediate package worth $86.4 million—money that, according to a U.S. document published by Reuters on January 5, 2007, would be used to ‘dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza’. U.S. officials even told reporters the money would be transferred ‘in the coming days’. The cash never arrived. ‘Nothing was disbursed’, Dahlan says. ‘It was approved and it was in the news. But we received not a single penny’. Any notion that the money could be transferred quickly and easily had died on Capitol Hill, where the payment was blocked by the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Its members feared that military aid to the Palestinians might end up being turned against Israel. Dahlan did not hesitate to voice his exasperation. ‘I spoke to Condoleezza Rice on several occasions’, he says. ‘I spoke to Dayton, to the consul general, to everyone in the administration I knew. They said, “You have a convincing argument”. We were sitting in Abbas’s office in Ramallah, and I explained the whole thing to Condi. And she said, “Yes, we have to make an effort to do this. There’s no other way”.’? At some of these meetings, Dahlan says, Assistant Secretary Welch and Deputy National-Security Adviser Abrams were also present”…

Just as they were present in Ramallah again on Tuesday.

The theme of Hamas-is-to-blame and Hamas-is-responsible was repeated throughout Rice’s meetings and comments during the trip – only President Abbas refrained from comments in this direction, exhibiting unusual restraint on this topic.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rice told journalists in a press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that “There are enemies of peace that will always try to hold hostage the Palestinian cause and the future of the Palestinian people for their own state. And Hamas, which in effect, holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands, is now trying to make the path to a Palestinian state hostage to them. And we cannot permit that to happen”.

Earlier on Wednesday, as the Israeli Security Cabinet was meeting on the situation in Gaza (the Security Cabinet later announced it had decided to continue Israeli military operations against Hamas in Gaza), Rice held a second meeting with Palestinian negotiators (Ahmad Qurei’/Abu Alaa’, and Sa’eb Erekat).

A spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem later confirmed to this reporter that this meeting was indeed held in the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem Consulate – a move with some weighty symbolic significance, as the PA has been insisting on Israel “reopening Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem”.

Palestinian President Abbas, who was not present at the meeting in the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, said again on Wednesday morning – before his abrupt change of mind – that “The negotiations must be started, but after the truce … Once the truce is achieved, the road will be open for negotiations”. He also said that Rice told him she would send an envoy (Assistant Secretary David Welch) to Egypt, and that “there are real efforts being exerted by Egypt for the truce”.

A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed that Welch went to the airport to head back to Cairo around mid-day Wednesday, even before Rice concluded her private meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

One result announced by Rice, in a press conference with Livni after their meeting, is that Welch would be going to Egypt “to look at the entire situation in the Gaza. We have been working all along with Egypt and with Israel, and indeed with the Palestinian Authority, to deal with the situation that has obtained in Gaza since Hamas’ illegal takeover there. That means security issues, it means humanitarian issues, it means trying to do something about the tunnels which continue to be a problem”.

There is still no indication of any deal near on the important issue of reopening the Gaza-Egyptian border at Rafah – which was breached to the world’s astonishment in a spectacular break-out by Palestinians from Gaza on 23 January. After a few days’ multi-million dollar shopping spree, the Gazans returned home to life under an otherwise near-total blockade, and subsequently under renewed Israeli attack.

It was Rice herself who had been able to engineer the break-through, in November 2005 – after staying up all night, in Jerusalem, and on her birthday – that resulted in the agreement on movement and access which allowed the Rafah crossing to open with PA personnel, plus the physical presence of European Union monitors and a real-time Israeli security supervision via video camera from the Kerem Shalom some kilometers to the south.

The Israeli Security Cabinet said, rather cryptically, in a statement issued after the conclusion of its meeting on Wednesday morning that the Israeli government would work “To reduce the strengthening of Hamas, including in coordination with – and by – Egypt“.

Earlier in the week, Reuters reported that “Israeli and European officials said one proposal under consideration would seek to open the Rafah border crossing to cargo, expanding on its former role for travellers only. Israeli defence officials said that could be acceptable to the Jewish state as a way of limiting its responsibility for supplying Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. But Egypt opposes any attempt by Israel to shift the burden, Western diplomats said … Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters in Jerusalem his bloc’s border monitors were ready to return to Rafah after a nearly nine-month absence provided any agreement includes Egypt”.

Solana was visiting President Abbas in the Muqata’a on Tuesday just an hour before Rice arrived.

The other result announced is that Lt. General William Fraser, who traveled to the region with Rice’s party and departed with it as well, will be holding what the Americans are calling a “trilateral” – a meeting Fraser will chair with Israelis and Palestinians participating – to review where things stand concerning the “Roadmap obligations” that both Israelis and Palestinians are supposed to fulfill. Rice stressed several times that both sides have a long way to go in this respect.

Rice also indicated, several times, that there needs to be improvement in the lives and situations of Palestinians on the ground.

Fraser’s “trilateral” will be next week, probably Thursday, (and not this week as the Israeli press has reported). A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed that Fraser will be returning in a few day’s time.

Rice told journalists traveling with her on the plane, according to a transcript released by the U.S. State Department, that “the report is to me, and it wasn’t a judgment on Roadmap obligations, it was sort of his first take on what needs to be done”.

It would appear, from Rice’s use of the verb’s tenses, that Fraser’s report has already been written and presented (to her, at least), and the conclusions it draws would then most probably have already been at least mentioned during her visit.

Rice continued, “But I expect that he will clearly talk directly to them [both parties – Israelis and Palestinians] about what needs to be done and ways to get it done. I don’t personally like the term ‘judge’ very much, because it sounds like somebody who sits above and hands down decrees. This is more an iterative effort of working with the parties to see if we can’t really make some group movement on these Roadmap obligations, and that’s how I expect Fraser will carry it out”.