| THE VISIT by the US President, George W. Bush, to the Holy Land represented potentially the biggest boost to the Middle East peace process in recent years, in the view of many regional and international commentators.
But the view is that his visit is unlikely to have provided sufficient momentum to reach the target set by the US of a full peace settlement before the end of this year.
On the positive side, Mr Bush appeared to adopt a more even-handed attitude to the two parties in the conflict than his administration had done before.
After meeting the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr Bush got off to an assertive start with a statement urging the two sides to start serious negotiations on the establishment of a “viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent” Palestinian state.
He went on to say that “there should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland of the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognised, and defensible borders.”
Christian Aid joined a number of governments and international organisations in welcoming Mr Bush’s remarks. William Bell, the Middle East policy officer for Christian Aid, said that the US President had “at last recognised that the occupation remains the main obstacle to a viable solution to the conflict in the Middle East.
“We hope that this will translate into genuine pressure on the Israeli government to dismantle all the physical aspects of the occupation throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. This will be an important step towards peace if, but only if, it comes together with an agreement that guarantees the full sovereignty of both Palestinians and Israelis.”
But the reaction of most Arab commentators was far less enthusiastic. A newspaper in Jordan said that “rather than pushing the peace process forward during his visit to the West Bank, Bush used the opportunity to mobilise the region against Iran. Statements alone about the desire for Arab-Israeli reconciliation will not achieve peace.”
Jonathan Kuttab, a Christian lawyer, and formerly a member of the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel, said that there had been “a lot of disappointment on the Palestinian side. Nothing concrete came out of the Bush visit, and, unlike previous visits by heads of state and high officials, there was no suspension of targeted killings, no Palestinian prisoners were released, no road blocks removed. None of these symbolic gestures that we have seen in the past, that eased the day-to-day tensions a little bit, took place.”
Aside from the many contentious and emotive issues on which Arabs and Israelis differ, the continuing split within the Palestinian community could be one of the biggest obstacles in the way of peace. The main headline in a pro-Abbas newspaper in Jerusalem read: “Bush ends his historic visit to Palestine with a promise to achieve a peace settlement by the end of the year”; but the Hamas-controlled media in the Gaza Strip spoke of Mr Abbas as a traitor to the Palestinian and Arab peoples.
Mr Bush may have spoken in more realistic terms than before about what needs to be done to achieve peace, but his visit has done little to foster optimism that the remaining hurdles can be cleared in the final months of his presidency.
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