Word: statehooders
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...White House was drafting the President's Middle East policy speech, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal met with Bush and handed him a letter from his uncle Abdullah urging the U.S. to promote a "clear vision" in the speech, including geographical boundaries and a timetable for Palestinian statehood. Two days later, Abdullah personally phoned Bush to lobby for specifics. The Bush speech ultimately dodged the border issue, and though it did call for a Palestinian state within three years, it made clear that any progress toward that goal would have to come after the removal of Yasser Arafat...
...Bush administration's Middle East policy, which has thus far proved ineffective. The Bush administration is being warned even by its most amenable Arab allies such as Jordan that support for an invasion of Iraq is unthinkable in the absence of a firm timetable for rapid movement toward Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. But that's not a direction in which Sharon is heading, and the killing of Americans in a Palestinian terror bombing will raise domestic political pressure in Washington against any moves to press the Israelis along the diplomatic track...
...White House was drafting the President's Middle East policy speech, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal met with Bush and handed him a letter from his uncle Abdullah urging the U.S. to promote a "clear vision" in the speech, including geographical boundaries and a timetable for Palestinian statehood. Two days later, Abdullah personally phoned Bush to lobby for specifics. The Bush speech ultimately dodged the border issue, and though it did call for a Palestinian state within three years, it made clear that any progress toward that goal would have to come after the removal of Yasser Arafat...
...Sharon's Labor Party coalition partners would like to take that plan a step further, making Gaza and Jericho a pilot project for Palestinian statehood (in the same way as they served as the test-bed for the establishment of the PA under the Oslo Accords). But that would require the evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza, a step Sharon has refused to even consider. The latest attacks, however, appear to have frozen even the most meager version of the Gaza-and-Jericho first formula...
...signaled it has no intention of weighing in. That could change, of course, if violence once again spirals to levels that foment crisis in Arab capitals and threatens to turn regional allies against an invasion of Iraq. But as of now Washington's preconditions for moving to Palestinian statehood have essentially put the peace process on the backburner...