Two serious misjudgments have endangered the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians this year. In the first, President Bush endorsed the plan put forward by Mr Ariel Sharon for Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in return for US undertakings about holding on to settlements in the West Bank.
In the second, Mr Sharon overestimated support for the plan in his Likud Party and has now suffered the humiliation of seeing it rejected in a party referendum. Unfortunately there is little indication that the Quartet group consisting of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the US is in a position to restore the road map towards peace following their talks in New York yesterday.
Mr Sharon's plan would disengage Israel from Gaza without relinquishing its capacity to intervene there. It involves dismantling the homes of 7,500 settlers within 18 months, consolidating the much larger and more numerous Israeli settlements on the West Bank, finishing off the wall/fence between it and Israel and securing undertakings from President Bush to refuse Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel.
It is an audacious proposal, with widespread support among Israeli citizens. But its unilateralism has been rightly rejected by the Palestinian leadership, who say it excludes their sovereign right to negotiate such changes. It is an unbalanced proposal and should never have been endorsed by the most powerful and influential broker of the peace process. In doing so Mr Bush lost the US credibility, prestige and friends, as former US diplomats have said in a letter echoing a similar British one sent to Mr Tony Blair last week. This has been compounded by the Likud's rejection of the plan, in a low turnout and a campaign dominated by ultra-nationalists who want to expel Palestinians from all the Israeli-occupied territories. As the Israeli Labour Party leader, Mr Shimon Peres, said, there is no justification to allow less than one per cent of Israeli voters determine this issue. It has badly weakened Mr Sharon politically by exposing his isolation within his own party.
Yesterday's statement by the Quartet said final details on borders and refugees must be agreed between the parties. Any withdrawal from Gaza must represent a complete end to the occupation. These are important statements of principle; but they do not address the unacceptable endorsement extended to Mr Sharon by the Bush administration in an election year. Today's meeting of the Euro-Med group in Dublin will give an opportunity to state such disagreements with US policy more vigorously.
