A half-baked peace plan that simply won't work

After 18 months of insouciant inaction, punctuated by occasional futile clucking, President Bush yesterday delivered his first comprehensive policy statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was billed in advance as the speech that would do for the Palestinians what the Balfour Declaration of 1917 did for the Jews. Then, the government of the greatest empire the world had ever known promised a downtrodden and despised people an internationally recognised national home under British stewardship.

Now, we were assured, the leader of the last super-power would develop his earlier "vision" of a "viable Palestinian state" and set out a detailed road- map and timetable for movement towards a two-state solution.

Mr Bush unveiled his proposals yesterday with the grave aplomb of a maitre d'hotel raising the silver lid of a long-overdue entr?e. But the dish he exposed was a wretched hotchpotch, spoiled by a squabble in the kitchen and tepid after its long wait in the pantry.

Following the recipe of head chef Colin Powell, Mr Bush called for a " provisional" Palestinian state to be established quickly and for negotiations on a final settlement to be concluded within three years.

But he then allowed head waiter Dick Cheney, light luncheon waitress Condoleeza Rice and sommelier Donald Rumsfeld to add assorted condiments to ruinous effect.

The key condition that they inserted, and the central point that will be remembered after everything else is forgotten, was the call for "a new and different Palestinian leadership". This may be an indication that the restraining order that has held back Ariel Sharon since he came to power in February last year is about to be lifted: until now the Americans have insisted that whatever else the Israelis do, they must not touch Yasser Arafat and must not destroy the Palestinian Authority.

Now, it seems, Mr Sharon has been given carte blanche. The Israeli Prime Minister has long harboured a burning ambition to topple Mr Arafat and to pull the rug out from under what remains of the Palestinian Authority. He hopes to restore Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza, not in the form of direct military government but rather by a loose form of indirect rule through pliant collaborationists operating at the local level.

Three constraints have prevented fulfilment of this design: a red light from the United States, opposition within the Israeli security establishment, and muffled yelps from his coalition partner, the Labour Party. Now the US has changed its tune; Israeli military chiefs are preoccupied with the construction of their Maginot Line; and the Labour Party is ready to kowtow. The deputy defence minister, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff (Labour), has declared the Oslo peace agreements, signed by her father, Yitzhak Rabin, dead - killed, she said, by the Palestinian leadership.

Even more than usual, Mr Bush yesterday gave the impression of reading unfamiliar lines written for him by others. Unlike Mr Clinton and Mr Carter, this president does not care passionately about Israeli-Palestinian peace. Lacking close personal involvement in the issue, Mr Bush allowed his warring subordinates to compose an internally contradictory and incoherent policy statement.

Far from laying out a realistic sequence of stages towards implementation of his "vision", Mr Bush's plan erects roadblocks that will make diplomatic progress more difficult.

The speech was supposed to pave the way later this summer for an international conference, in which not only Israel and the Palestinians, but also Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others, would participate. That, in turn, was to provide a launch-pad for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks. But how can any such conference convene with a Palestinian representation denounced as unacceptable by the conference's chief orchestrator?

Mr Bush promised that "the United States, along with others in the international community, will help the Palestinians organise and monitor fair, multi-party local elections by the end of the year, with national elections to follow". Note that initial voting is to be at the local level - in accordance with the Sharon scheme. Democratic national elections to choose a new, uncorrupt, transparent national leadership of the Palestinians will take place only later.

But how can such elections be held at all when Mr Bush has already decreed the required result and so long as the Israeli army remains in occupation of the greater part of Palestinian territory? Of course, the Palestinians have much to learn from recent electoral experience in the United States. Also, no doubt, from Israel, where both major political parties have been under investigation for gross fund-raising malpractices prior to the last elections, and where the former leader of the thirdlargest party is currently serving a jail sentence for corruption. Perhaps Mr Bush has forgotten that the last Palestinian elections, in 1996, were monitored by a team headed by one of his predecessors. President Carter pronounced those elections generally satisfactory. They produced a runaway victory for Mr Arafat.

Mr Arafat is by almost universal consent a highly unsat i s f actory Palestinian leader - as many Palestinians have been saying openly in recent months. Visibly ailing, he was already on the way out. Mr Bush's speech does not accelerate his departure. It merely makes the position of any successor more difficult by making him look from the outset like an American stooge.

Instead of a "Bush Declaration" to set beside the Balfour Declaration, what we were given was something akin to another stodgy relic of the First World War: a Whitehall recipe for making "suet pudding without suet". This peace plan will retard, not advance peace.

Bernard Wasserstein is the author of Divided Jerusalem.