Phil Reeves er ein edrueleg journalist i the Independent. Han teiknar det
same biletet av amerikanske posisjonar i dagens kommentar: Ein
administrasjon som sklir sakte i retning vilkårslaus støtte til Sharon, avdi
administrasjonen er djupt kløyvd i spørsmålet. No har presidenten sklidd til
de facto støtte til Israel sin rett til å gjennomføra raid når dei sjølve
vil inn i palestinskkontrollert territorium. Igjen står same spørsmålet att:
Er det konflikten mellom "realistane" og dei "ideologiske" i Whasington, der
realistane langsomt blir utmatta og sett til sides?
Hans Olav Brendberg, Hitra
(frå the Independent)
Sharon unmoved by Bush as suicide bomb kills girl, 15
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
12 June 2002
An Israeli girl aged 15 was killed yesterday in a suicide attack by a
Palestinian bomber on a restaurant in a busy street of the Israeli coastal
town of Herzliya.
The blast wounded eight people and also killed the bomber. Another bomb
found on his body was defused.
The news came as a mantle of gloom fell on the world of Middle East
diplomacy over the prospects for a successful return to peace talks between
Israel and the Palestinians.
Ariel Sharon's mission to the United States has offered little hope of
ending the violence. The Israeli Prime Minister's White House talks with
President George Bush provided further evidence that the Bush administration
is divided over policy, and has yet to decide whether its task is merely to
try to manage the crisis or to push for meaningful negotiations.
Monday's meeting, the sixth between the two leaders, was embraced as a
triumph by Mr Sharon's aides; Mr Bush did not take Mr Sharon to task on key
contentious issues: Israel's rejection of a full withdrawal from the
occupied territories; continuing settlement building, and daily Israeli army
raids into Palestinian-run areas. But it fuelled frustration within the US
State Department and among the Europeans, who felt Mr Bush should have done
more to push Mr Sharon into offering a "political horizon" to the
Palestinians.
There was also disappointment in the Arab world, where pressure has been
building on the Americans to set a negotiating timetable, a move Mr Bush
declined to make.
And there was anger among the Palestinians themselves. The Palestinian
information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Mr Bush of encouraging
Israel which yesterday began to build the first stage of a 350km (220-mile)
fence sealing off parts of the West Bank to continue a "policy of racist
separation and siege".
Mr Sharon went to America intending to block any attempt to draw him into
negotiations until his two demands had been met: a complete end to
Palestinian violence and a fundamental overhaul of the Palestinian security
services.
US State Department officials and the Europeans consider these preconditions
unrealistic, unless they are accompanied by simultaneous progress along the
political track. But Mr Sharon, who the Palestinians believe is
systematically blocking talks so that he can continue consolidating Israel's
grip on the West Bank, emerged with his conditions intact.
And that was not the Israeli leader's only triumph. Mr Sharon has made no
secret of his desire to get rid of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, a
move that the US State Department believes would produce a dangerous vacuum
in the occupied territories.
Mr Bush appears to have refrained from any strong warning against Mr
Arafat's expulsion, saying only that the Palestinian leader was "not the
issue", and expressing disappointment in his performance. It was left to the
White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, to point out to reporters that
Washington did not regard Mr Arafat's expulsion as a solution.
This is not the view taken by some of the more hawkish elements of the Bush
administration; it is questionable whether Mr Fleischer's words will be
enough to stay Mr Sharon's hand if there is another serious suicide bombing.
While Mr Sharon was meeting Mr Bush in the White House, Israeli tanks and
troops were well inside Palestinian-run territory in the West Bank, the
so-called Area A. In the past, Mr Bush has repeatedly demanded an end to
such incursions. This time, he did not condemn them but referred instead to
Israel's "right to defend itself", leading one US official to observe that
there appeared to have been a "de facto change of policy" on such raids.
In the end, Mr Sharon cashed in skilfully on the Bush administration's
indecision and division. "We don't know where we are at the moment," a US
government source told The Independent. "The administration hasn't made up
its mind yet." The Arab nations, and the Palestinians, are hoping matters
will become clearer when Mr Bush makes a policy statement on the Middle
East, expected within 10 days.
In the meantime, the Palestinian bombings and Israeli raids and
settlement-building continues. A bomb exploded near an armoured bus in the
West Bank earlier yesterday, injuring three teenage students from a
religious seminary at a nearby Jewish settlement who were returning from
picking cherries. The blast was in a field near the Kiryat Arba settlement
outside the city of Hebron.
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