Responding to Abdullah’s blunt warning that Sharon could drag the Middle East “over the cliff,” the president demanded that Israel peacefully end its sieges in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Bethlehem.
The Ramallah siege, in which Israel is holding Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under effective house arrest, is especially sensitive. Sharon refuses to remove Israeli troops until Arafat hands over five men, four implicated in the murder of an Israeli cabinet minister and a fifth said to have organized arms deliveries to the West Bank. Israeli officials have refused to rule out the use of force to seize the suspects-a possibility a Western diplomat in Israel calls “unthinkable.”
After what aides called a “very warm, very personal” meeting with the Saudi leader, the U.S. president made it clear that the impasse in Ramallah and Bethlehem is holding up any planning for a revival of peace talks. Bush said the United States shares a vision with Saudi Arabia of Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. But turning to the short term, he said the Palestinian Authority must “do more to stop terror,” and “Israel must finish its withdrawal, including resolution of standoffs in Ramallah and Bethlehem, in a nonviolent way.”
Until now, the president had avoided putting the onus on Israel to end the twin sieges. Bush’s demand that Israel pursue a “nonviolent” solution implies that Sharon must back down in both instances.
Bush reaffirmed his point in responding to questions. “I made it clear to [Abdullah] that I expected Israel to withdraw, just like I’ve made it clear to Israel. And we expect them to be finished.” Later, a senior aide said ending the sieges was one of Israel’s “responsibilities” and that their continuation was holding up U.S. diplomatic efforts. “We need to get through this so that we can get on with other things,” the aide told reporters.
Meanwhile, Arafat announced in Ramallah on Thursday that a military field court had tried and convicted four men for last October’s murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. The men were sentenced to between one and 18 years in jail. In earlier talks with both sides, U.S. officials had proposed as one option that the Palestinians conduct a “serious trial” with international monitoring. Sharon had rejected the suggestion prior to this week’s summary proceedings, and scoffed at Arafat’s announcement, as well.
In Bethlehem, where more than 100 armed Palestinians have taken sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity, Israel yesterday allowed nine youths, two monks and a lawyer to depart the Christian holy site along with the coffins of two people who died during the siege. Two more policemen surrendered to Israeli troops today. Sharon has offered the gunmen inside the choice of facing an Israeli trial or deportation, but negotiations that began this week have failed to resolve the impasse.
In other incidents today, Israeli troops re-entered the West Bank town of Qalqilya to arrest suspected militants and used tear gas and stun grenades against hundreds of Palestinians protesting Arafat’s confinement in Ramallah. Sharon has promised Bush that no harm will come to Arafat in his compound. But the Palestinian leader is surrounded by dozens of armed men, and any Israeli attempt to storm the compound could lead to a bloodbath.
The blunt-spoken Abdullah warned Bush of “grave consequences” for the Middle East and for U.S. allies and interests in the region if Washington did not rein in Sharon, according to Adel Al Jubeir, an adviser to Abdullah. “If Sharon is left to his own devices, he will drag the region over the cliff,” Al Jubeir said.
Although Bush said the two delegations spent “a lot of our discussion” on how to get “back on the path to peace,” the talks ended with neither Bush nor Abdullah indicating what the next steps would be. Indeed, the most important aspect of the talks may be that they took place at all, for up to now Abdullah has refused repeated invitations to meet Bush in person. Should Sharon respond to Bush’s call to end the twin sieges, the Texas talks could mark a breakthrough.
Bush signaled the importance of the meeting by having Vice President Dick Cheney present and sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to accompany Abdullah from Waco airport. The gravity of the meeting was underscored by Bush’s attire: a suit and tie, in place of the casual clothes he prefers to wear at the ranch. But Abdullah signaled his wariness of Bush’s Mideast policy-the president dismayed Arabs by calling Sharon a “man of peace” last week-by failing to spend the night at the ranch. (By contrast, both Britain’s Tony Blair and Russia’s Vladimir Putin did stay over.)
Although he had little of substance to report at the press briefing after the summit, Bush said he had established a “strong personal bond” with Abdullah. “We spent a lot of time alone, discussing our respective visions, talking about our families,” Bush said. “I was most interested in learning about how he thought about things.” He had warm words of praise for the crown prince, speaking of his “leadership” and “enormous influence” in rallying the Arab world to his vision of peace. Abdullah did not reciprocate, at least in public.
A senior U.S. official who briefed reporters said it was a “very warm” and “very personal” meeting. “It’s especially important in this part of the world to have good personal relations,” the official added. “[And] it’s important to this president to have good personal relations.” Bush told reporters that in view of Abdullah’s plans to stay in the United States several days longer, there would be further contacts between the two sides. U.S. officials, however, said they had no further details about when these would take place.
