Admin tool. Steven R. Weisman, who's never met an administration official he wouldn't offer deep background to at the drop of a hat, is serving up his slice of A1 today as a billboard for the big BushCo Likudniks ("Bush to Accept West Bank Plan in Talks With Sharon"). Weisman writes as a Times foreign-policy mandarin, which means that he has the delicate task of producing simultaneously maximum opacity (for the general public, aka us ordinary schmoes who read the Times) and maximum clarity (for the crowd who have the decoder chip already implanted). But if you, an ordinary schmo, would like to get a glimpse of what's really going on behind the curtain, it's simple: just invert pretty much everything Steven R. Weisman tells you, and you too can play along just like the big boys. On those terms, Weisman's written a pretty informative article. Here are the key points:

Bush is set to give Sharon everything he wants on the issue of West Bank settlements. Weisman reports that "President Bush is planning to issue a declaration on Wednesday that his aides say will recognize Israel's right to retain some Jewish settlements in the West Bank as part of any peace accord with the Palestinians." Further, Bush will "assert that Palestinian refugee families that once lived in Israel should live in a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, rather than in the Israeli lands they continue to claim." And here's the key: Weisman claims that these declarations "appear to fall short of what Mr. Sharon had been seeking — an acceptance of five specific settlement blocs and an outright rejection of the Palestinian "right of return" to Israel." (Weisman later calls the planned declarations "limited concessions," just to nail it down.) In other words, Bush's upcoming statement will "fall short" of fulfilling the Sharon wish list in exactly the way that the dealer's extra-super-because-he-likes-me discount (with a rustproofing bargain thrown in!) on that new car falls short of what he tells me he quotes the suckers. If Bush doesn't actually read from a Sharon-provided script, apparently that counts as not giving Arik everything his heart desires.

The "road map" is dead. Bush Middle East policy is, whatever helps our pal Arik. Wesiman quotes his backgrounders as saying that "by endorsing longstanding Israeli objectives, Mr. Bush was hoping to give Mr. Sharon political support for his plan to pull Israeli forces and settlers from Gaza and small parts of the West Bank." It looks like Ariel Sharon doesn't want to negotiate with any Palestinian entity that might, er, take a negotiating position, and that's just fine with Bush. Sharon's unilateral disengagement policy is intended, says Weisman, as "a substitute for the faltering negotiations over the last two years under the so-called road map pressed by the Bush administration, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations."

Before endorsing Mr. Sharon's withdrawals, the United States has managed to get Israel to say the pullout should not be seen as a substitute for the "road map" but only as a "parking place" while Israel waits for a suitable negotiating partner to emerge on the Palestinian side.

But as Mr. Sharon's visit approached, the administration has sounded increasingly supportive of his pullout plan. On Tuesday, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said the plan represented "a historic opportunity to move forward" toward a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

Exactly—we're "moving forward" toward negotiating a Palestinian state by making sure that no negotiations with anything or anyone that might constitute such a state will take place. Gutsy, how the U.S. "manages" to get Sharon to agree to paste rhetorical fig leaves on his intentions. I'd say that "parking place" pun (get it? road map ...) indicates just exactly how serious everybody involved is at this point about the supposed Bush peace plan.

Big "Fuck you!" to the Palestinians. My favorite part of the article.

The [Bush] statement would be that Israel's future borders would have to recognize "demographic realities" since 1967.

That language, officials said, was code for at least some settlements in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers number some 230,000.

The language that would implicitly reject the complete Palestinian "right of return" would be similarly opaque, according to administration officials, in that it would simply reiterate Israel's identity as a Jewish state and suggest that Palestinians should move, in any final accord, to their own state rather than to Israel.

By offering such limited concessions to Mr. Sharon, the administration seemed to be hoping not to alienate the Palestinians, who have rejected Mr. Sharon's plan to keep some settlements.

"Seemed to be hoping ..." Shhhh! It's a secret! We're going to use language to confuse the Palestinians! Because, I guess, the Palestinians, alone among all the diplomatic players involved, don't read the New York Times. A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies ...

Dance, Colin Powell, dance! Weisman won't name his Administration sources, of course, but he's glad to offer a few hints:

[Richard Boucher] declined to specify the details of the negotiations with Mr. Sharon, but other administration officials said they had been extremely intense. On Mr. Bush's side, the negotiators have been Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser; Elliott Abrams, director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; and William J. Burns, chief Middle East diplomat at the State Department.

The Israel-firsters apparently hate William Burns, but notice who's playing the hand for the White House. And, in case anybody misses the point about who's in charge here:

The administration has also sought to win European and Arab support for Mr. Sharon's pullout plan, and understanding for the words Mr. Bush feels he must offer to facilitate it.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell talked Tuesday about the Israeli-Palestinian situation with Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher of Jordan, according to Mr. Boucher.

After which, he executed a series of smart backflips, looking for all the world as if he weren't dancing on strings, then folded himself back into his box ...

A small sugggestion: Could the Times see its way clear to providing some kind of translation key the next time Weisman produces one of these things?

posted by michael  3:26:36 PM  
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The ether ate my blog homework. Looks like my last post on Saturday didn't get properly uploaded to the Salon blog server. Sorry about that—I was away visiting family for a couple of days, on short notice. We now return to our regular posting schedule.


posted by michael  9:16:14 AM  
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