Danny Rubinstein published another insightful article on Palestinian public opinion and politics, and this time on the recent Bush-Sharon declaration.
Rubinstein is
the most knowledgable and balanced Israeli writer on Palestinian issues. As a general rule, if he chooses to write something, you can trust it to be an informed and intelligent opinion or report.
His report on the Palestinian view of the declaration sheds important light on this latest diplomatic step.
Like so:
What do the Palestinians find so frustrating and frightening in the Bush statement? There are four issues at stake:
1. The fact that the negotiations on the fate of the Palestinians are being conducted without them and without taking their position into account. Some of the Palestinian spokesmen said that the Israeli government could have received a substantial part of Bush's promises in negotiations and an agreement with the Palestinians. However, the Sharon government preferred to humiliate and ignore them. At the failed Camp David summit of July 2000, and in the formula that was afterward put forward in the Taba talks, the Palestinian representatives agreed to the presence of several settlement blocs; and both the Geneva Initiative of Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo and the accord of Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh contain understandings relating to the right of return. However, Sharon was having none of that, because he never saw the Palestinians as partners, only - always - as enemies.
[...]
4. The Palestinians were grieved to hear Bush's announcement against the background of an earlier meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The U.S. administration ostensibly needs Arab assistance in the Iraq crisis - but in the end it turned out that it doesn't regard such assistance as important. In other words, the Arab world is so weak and pitiful that it is unable to stop the sharp pro-Israeli turn in Washington's policy.