Abbas heads to U.S., wants Bush to pressure Israel

I often hear people give credit to former President Bill Clinton for steering this country through unprecedented economic growth and prosperity during his time in office. However, most people who study technology and economics have stated that he happened to be in office when the tech boom and the internet boom hit at once and that economic growth occurred despite his being president, not because of it. It may come to pass that people will be saying the same thing about peace between Palestine and Israel and the presidency of George W. Bush. He's had the good fortune of being president in a post-Arafat world and now with Abbas in control, there's a very good chance that the region may actually settle into something that resembles a moderately peaceful region. When you combine the baby steps toward democracy in Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia with a crawl toward peace in Israel and Palestine, Bush's legacy may just end up being that he brought democracy and prosperity to the Middle East. Critics and cynics will say that all of the above happened despite Bush, not because of him to wit I can only answer that they said the same about Clinton.

Here's a story about Abbas' first visit to the White House from Reuters:

RAMALLAH, May 23 (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants his first White House visit this week to yield assurances from George W. Bush of pressure on Israel to start heeding a "road map" peace plan, aides and diplomats say.
But Abbas has scaled back expectations of concrete promises from Bush of "final-status" negotiations on a Palestinian state once Israel evacuates the occupied Gaza Strip in three months.

Thursday's meeting has great symbolic importance as the first by a Palestinian president since 2000, when Middle East peace negotiations collapsed into violence for which U.S. officials often blamed Abbas's late predecessor Yasser Arafat.

Washington, keen to embark on the long-stalled "road map", has welcomed Abbas's vow to seek statehood by peaceful means as well as a ceasefire he declared with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February and persuaded militants to respect.

But diplomatic momentum has diminished.

A spate of truce violations by Gaza militants, who say they are avenging Israeli assaults, have exposed Abbas's shaky grip. Meanwhile, Israel has suspended ice-breaking gestures like military pullbacks in the occupied West Bank.

Abbas wants to ensure there is movement towards talks on a state after Israel scraps Jewish settlements in Gaza -- slated for August -- and for that he needs Bush's support.

But Abbas's aides said he did not now anticipate a Bush pledge of talks on "final-status" peace issues like borders. Israel rejects such talks until Abbas subdues militant factions, a precondition for carrying out the "road map".

"Abbas doesn't have high expectations that Bush would commit to push Israel to enter final-status negotiations after it pulls out of Gaza," a senior Palestinian official said.

"But he does want assurances from Bush that he will make Israel implement the road map after the Gaza pullout (to set the stage for) a sovereign, territorially contiguous state."

He meant mainly a halt to Israel's expansion of large West Bank settlements. This contravenes the road map, but Sharon cites a Bush pledge to him in 2004 that Israel would not have to cede all the West Bank under any realistic peace deal.

POSSIBLE MILITANT THREAT

Abbas is expected to impress on Bush the threat he believes he will face from militants, especially the growing Islamist Hamas movement, if Palestinian hopes for a viable state through negotiations are dashed after a Gaza pullout.
Palestinians welcome the prospect of taking over Gaza. But Sharon has made clear Israel will keep larger tracts of the West Bank as the trade-off, absorbing what Palestinians say would constitute the centre of a future state.
Many analysts say that if Sharon slams the door to talks after uprooting all 21 settlements from Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank, militants will resume major attacks.

Israel says no road map process is possible without an end to Palestinian militant activity. Palestinians say Abbas will have difficulty stopping it unless Israel also meets obligations under the plan, such as freezing West Bank settlement activity.
Washington has praised new Palestinian security reforms and wants Israel to help Abbas weaken the appeal of militants by doing more to ease restrictions on civilian movement in the West Bank. Both matters are initial "road map" requirements.
"But the Americans are not ready to confront Israel on other sensitive broader issues that could pose a problem for Sharon or disrupt the disengagement plan," one Western diplomat said.

Nationalist Jews are escalating a protest campaign against the pullout, denouncing it as "a reward for terrorism", and opinion poll support for the plan has slipped a little in reaction to fresh barrages on Gaza settlements by militants.

ISRAEL TO PRESS BUSH

Sharon's top security adviser Dov Weisglass will precede Abbas to Washington on Tuesday to urge the White House not to promise the Palestinian leader any concrete steps towards statehood, a senior Israeli political source said.
"Weisglass will explain to the Americans that there are growing fears in Israel of 'Hamas-stan' in Gaza after we leave, and that giving Abbas a prize before he has stamped out terrorism would damage Sharon's case for proceeding with disengagement," the source told Reuters.

Abbas will bring Bush up to date on reforms, praised by U.S. officials, in which he has retired force commanders who ignored his orders to rein in militants, merged feuding security agencies and tried to recruit militants as policemen.
"President Abbas will try to get the message across that changing the culture of terrorism works better than (forcibly) dismantling the infrastructure of militant groups. Luring those groups into the mainstream will moderate them," Rafiq Husseini, chief of staff of Abbas's office, told Reuters.