Envoy's peace prospects no better than before

LEE HOCKSTADER THE WASHINGTON POST

JERUSALEM -- The first time retired Gen. Anthony Zinni waded into the stormy waters of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, last December, he not only failed to stem the fighting, but his trip coincided with a burst of deadly clashes that frustrated his peacemaking and marked a visible failure for American diplomacy.

Now, following the bloodiest spell of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 20 years -- nearly 150 people killed in the first eight days of this month, including about 34 Palestinians on Friday alone -- Zinni has been dispatched back to the region with his brief essentially unchanged and his prospects for success no rosier than before.

The problem, according to some Israeli and Palestinian analysts, is not only the accumulated venom of 17 months of violence between two bitter enemies at war over the same meager patches of land in Gaza and the West Bank. It is also, they say, the nature of American policy at this juncture and Zinni's mission itself.

According to U.S. officials, Zinni has focused exclusively on security issues like checkpoints, arrests and mortar fire. To do more, Washington has decided, could be seen as rewarding violence and terrorism, a view also pushed hard by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government. As a result, Zinni has been under orders to avoid the basic political questions -- settlements, borders, refugees, Jerusalem -- at the heart of the dispute that divides Israelis and Palestinians.

Just say no to violence

Following the line set by his superiors in Washington, Zinni has taken a Reaganesque approach -- Nancy Reagan, in this case. His just-say-no-to-violence message, directed largely at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, lacks a political dimension that the Palestinians insist is essential for progress. By treating the violent symptoms alone and ignoring or putting off the underlying political dispute, they say, Zinni makes his mission almost impossible.

"I'd be happy to hear that something has changed in terms of his brief," said Yossi Alpher, a former Israeli Mossad intelligence official and a respected strategic analyst. "But the Americans don't want to get their hands dirty with the political aspect of this conflict. They're sticking strictly with the issues of violence."

A retired Marine Corps general, Zinni was named as Washington's special envoy last fall, reporting to Secretary of State Colin Powell. His appointment represented a reversal of sorts for the Bush administration, which took office determined to avoid the intensive -- and ultimately failed -- diplomacy that occupied the Clinton administration's time and energy in its final year.

Despite that reluctance, Washington decided to dip into the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, at least partly at the behest of allied Arab leaders who feared the fighting's potential for destabilizing the region. And so, following an oft-delayed policy pronouncement by Powell renewing America's commitment to peace in the Mideast, Zinni was dispatched to the region last December.

On the eve of his arrival, Israeli forces assassinated a Palestinian militant blamed for planning a string of suicide and other attacks. The assassination triggered a wave of Palestinian reprisals, which in turn provoked Israeli counter-attacks, that overshadowed Zinni's shuttle diplomacy.

Two-week shuttle

For two weeks, Zinni shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian officials, arranging two- and three-way meetings and plumbing the depths of security disputes. Palestinian officials asked the American envoy "what's in it for us" -- why they should lay down their weapons in a gesture they regarded as tantamount to surrender without Israeli commitments to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and hand over more captured territory to Palestinian control.

Zinni's response was to try to convince the Palestinians that Washington would offer them diplomatic support and eventual recognition of an independent Palestinian state on territory to be determined later in negotiations with Israel. But to the Palestinians, the American's offer was too little, and much too vague.

And they have sees no change in his approach in the intervening months.

"It seems that his agenda is only security, and anybody who only talks security will have no chance of success," said Ghassan Khatib, head of a Palestinian think tank in Jerusalem. "Any intervention to have success needs a political dimension. And I think the strategy in America is still not to interfere, and to let the Israelis solve the problem by force."

Finally, Zinni was recalled by Washington and returned home to spend the end-of-year holidays with his family. In early January he made a brief return visit, which was overshadowed by the disclosure that Israeli naval commandos had seized a Palestinian freighter in the Red Sea full of weapons, explosives and ammunition purchased from Iran and headed for Palestinian militant groups.

President Bush, said to be angry at the news and at Arafat, refused to send Zinni back to the region. Officially, the administration said a return trip was not worthwhile as long as the violence continued, even though the American mediator's stated mission was to achieve a cease-fire, not wait for one.

But with violence escalating for the past few weeks, Washington felt under increased pressure to be re-engaged, or at least be seen to be. But Zinni's security-oriented marching orders have not been publicly altered.

Just a day after the president announced he was dispatching Zinni to the region, administration officials said they were unsure whether the envoy would be carrying any new proposals for reaching a cease-fire and nudging the two sides toward adhering to a security blueprint worked out last year by CIA Director George Tenet.

A State Department official said Zinni was likely to try arranging three-way meetings between Israeli, Palestinian and American security officers in hopes of bringing about a truce. It was unclear, the officials said, whether Zinni will remain in the region until he succeeds in restoring calm or depart with the task unfinished as he did in his last two visits.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to main Home Page Stories index