JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s meeting with top Palestinian Authority members last week may have been more show than substance.
Some analysts believe Sharon was trying to project an image as a moderate and a peace-seeker.
His aim, they say, was to do this before his fourth scheduled visit with President Bush this week.
Sharon supposedly wants the Bush administration to see that there are other Palestinians to negotiate with besides the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat. The prime minister has made no secret that he is trying to push the United States to cut off whatever relationship still exists with Arafat.
Bush has refused to invite Arafat to the White House, but he also has declined to cut ties with Arafat entirely.
On the op-ed page in Sunday’s New York Times, Arafat denounced terror and said Palestinians want to live peacefully alongside Israel. The Bush administration praised the words but kept the pressure on Arafat to translate them into action.
Sharon and his defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, dismissed the op-ed piece, saying it represented nothing new from the Palestinian leader.
By holding a secret meeting last week — with Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Karia, top PLO official Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Rashid Sharon sent out several powerful, if contradictory, signals:
*He indicated that Arafat is not only “irrelevant,” as the Israeli Cabinet resolved in December, but also dispensable. Sharon’s tactic has been to distinguish between Arafat the man and the Palestinian Authority he heads. The meeting with Arafat’s lieutenants is evidence, Sharon aides say, that this goal of distinguishing between the two is achievable.
*He showed that despite the rhetoric about Arafat’s “irrelevancy,” Sharon continues to do business with him in some manner. After all, the meeting took place with Arafat’s blessing, and the three Palestinians reported back to Arafat afterward.
*He showed, some argue, that his refusal to negotiate “under fire” — his mantra since taking office — is not absolute. As became apparent, the meeting ranged far beyond security issues.
Sharon and his guests delved into the prime minister’s plan for a long-range “interim settlement” that eventually would lead to new permanent status talks.
Defending himself from criticism, Sharon said the meeting was the first time the Palestinians finally understood the steps Israel demands before the peace process can resume. Sharon and his guests reportedly resolved to institutionalize their forum by convening once every two or three weeks.
*He deflected growing criticism from Israel’s peace camp, whose members argue that the unity government’s tough line against the Palestinian intifada, now in its 16th month, is precluding any diplomatic horizon. Sharon’s meeting earned unaccustomed praise from the dovish leader of the opposition, Meretz Party leader, Yossi Sarid, who congratulated Sharon on “a good start.”
*Sharon outflanked the leaders of the Labor Party, Ben-Eliezer and Shimon Peres, who seek to portray themselves as indispensable peacemakers alongside the hard-line Sharon.
Ben-Eliezer held talks at Sharm el-Sheikh last week with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who still refuses to meet with Sharon.
Peres is engaged in ongoing negotiations with Karia; the latest session took place in New York last week, where both men were attending the World Economic Forum.
Sharon’s message — to his Palestinian interlocutors and the world — was that he alone is the Israeli address for any deal.
*Sharon signaled to his American hosts that there is a distinct gap between his positions and those of his far-right hinterland.
On the global agenda, Sharon’s aides are effusive in their praise of Bush’s recent State of the Union address that cited Iraq, Iran and North Korea as a worldwide “axis of evil,” and singled out Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah for criticism.