This Time, Election Season Presents Opportunities for Israel, Palestinians

Americans pinning their hopes on Middle East peacemaking usually dread regional elections: When Israeli or Palestinian leaders need to act tough for their constituents, progress toward peace usually stops. That would seem to be the case now with both peoples going to elections soon — but some now feel the election season may accelerate the peace process instead of inhibiting it.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, running against the Labor Party’s Amir Peretz, a pronounced dove, is playing to Israel’s center, running on a platform that envisions Palestinian statehood.

Barely a month ago, before Peretz invigorated the Labor Party with his upset primary victory over Shimon Peres, the key showdown in Israeli politics looked like a match between two hawks: Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, both vying for a Likud leadership tussle then set for April.

Now Sharon has split from the Likud and set up his own centrist party, Kadima, and general elections are set for March 28. Running against a dove means Sharon is likelier to play to the middle.

The Bush administration has taken the cue, and is dismissing concerns that elections will get in the way of progress.

“Elections happen in democracies all the time,” U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week. “At the working level, the work continues. And that’s what we would expect to happen.”

McCormack made it clear that the administration expects Israel and the Palestinians to maintain momentum from the Rafah accords, brokered earlier this month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which opened the Gaza Strip to travel and trade for the first time since Israel evacuated the territory in early September.

“It’s there in black and white,” McCormack said. “Everybody knows what they agreed to. And it’s really a matter of just implementing the agreement at this point, which is going to require work.”

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan echoed that call Tuesday while marking the U.N.’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

“The electoral season should not be allowed to prevent the parties from the essential work of building mutual trust and following through with the implementation,” Annan said. The United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia constitute the “Quartet,” the group guiding the Middle East peace process.

McCormack specified progress in improving and modernizing transit stations for people and goods at Gaza crossings, targets Israel and the Palestinians have said are within reach.

Rice’s involvement represents a new level of involvement for the Bush administration. She delayed the Asia leg of her tour to make sure the Rafah agreement was hammered out.

“We realized we had to come to our senses,” said Saeb Erekat, the top Palestinian Authority negotiator, who was in Washington this week to meet with Rice. “This shows a third-party role can succeed.”

Democrats in Congress suggested they would push for a greater U.S. role.

“We’re at a time of real opportunity. The United States needs to show the same kind of resolve as Sharon,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Democratic whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, said Tuesday in a meeting with JTA’s editorial staff in New York. “This kind of opportunity might not come again in the short term.”

Hoyer said the U.S. should serve as a catalyst, not dictate terms of an agreement. One measure of U.S. involvement would be helping to defray the costs of resettling evacuated Israeli settlers in any future redeployment, Hoyer said.

The United States needs “to let Israel know that we are prepared to support the financial burdens that resettlement and withdrawal from the West Bank will entail,” he said.

The Bush administration also expects the Palestinians to move forward on the peace process ahead of Jan. 25 legislative elections.

In their meeting Tuesday, Erekat urged Rice to press Israel not to interfere in the elections. He claimed that Israel has failed to respond to seven requests to set up a joint committee ahead of the elections.

Israel is upset that the Palestinian Authority is allowing Hamas to run in the elections, noting that the Palestinians are obligated under the “road map” peace plan to dismantle terrorist groups.

Speaking after the meeting with Erekat, McCormack suggested that Rice made clear that there was a link between pressure on Israel and Palestinian performance in stopping terrorism.

“The secretary underlined the importance of the Palestinian political process continuing to move forward, with an eye toward parliamentary elections in January,” McCormack said. “She emphasized the importance of the Palestinian Authority living up to its obligations with regard to security as well.”

Hoyer also said action against terrorists is a prerequisite for U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

“The Palestinians know we are prepared to help them, but we’re not prepared to help them until they take steps that are essential to pursuing peace,” he said. Such pressure should take place privately, he said, not through public pronouncements.

Erekat was optimistic after his meeting with Rice. The tectonic political shifts in Palestinian and Israeli political cultures represent a “turning point,” he said.

But he wasn’t sure where that would lead.

“Have you ever heard a group of cats outside your window shouting?” he asked. “Can you tell if they are making love or fighting?”