Powell Finds Little Give in Mideast Impasse

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell ventured into the Mideast peace process Sunday in his first meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but he came away with no significant signs that his visit had changed the thinking of either party to the conflict.

Despite lengthy talks with Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Powell acknowledged that it will be “some time” before the two sides revive negotiations.

“They’re still now quite a bit apart,” he told reporters traveling with him.

The volatility of the situation since the collapse of the peace process was underscored when two Israeli settlers were shot by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, while Palestinians there and in the Gaza Strip staged demonstrations condemning Powell’s visit. Israeli security officials, quoted by Israeli state radio, blamed the shootings on members of Arafat’s Force 17 bodyguard unit.

Waving banners of militant Islamic movements, more than 2,000 demonstrators in Gaza chanted: “Colin Powell go home, your solutions will not intimidate us. Tell the killer [President] Bush that our people will not kneel and will continue to fight.”

Powell, who traveled through Israel and the West Bank in an entourage of bulletproof vehicles, with some bodyguards wearing flak jackets, pledged that Bush is prepared to help negotiate a revamped peace process but only when the situation on the ground improves.

Powell’s primary message to both parties was an appeal for an end to the five-month cycle of violence that has already killed 331 Palestinians, 61 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs. The uprising began after Sharon visited a hotly contested holy site in Jerusalem.

“There needs desperately to be a restoration of confidence, coordination and cooperation between the parties,” Powell said at a news conference with Sharon in Jerusalem. “To see so many lives torn by conflict only underscores the imperative of bringing a swift end to the cycle of provocation and reaction.”

At a meeting of Israel’s chief rabbis later Sunday, Sharon outlined what he wants from the Palestinians: Arafat should call for an end to violence in an Arabic-language broadcast to his people and should resume coordination with the Israelis about security matters.

Powell also called on the Israeli government to ease the economic “siege” imposed on the Palestinian Authority, to prevent its collapse.

“It’s necessary to lift the siege as soon as possible so that economic activity can begin again in the region,” he said during a 90-minute session with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in this West Bank city.

Powell warned that economic pressures undermine relations and prospects for stability in the Palestinian territories and contribute to the deteriorating security situation.

Hours later, the Israeli army revoked plans to cut Gaza into two sections, a move announced two days earlier in response to a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement.

The army cited “increasing humanitarian cases” and requests for passage between the two sectors as reasons for the policy change. But the gesture did not address the broader long-term problems, including Israel’s refusal to release $57 million in tax revenues to the Palestinian territories and allow free passage of Palestinian laborers from the territories to Israel.

Powell’s first round of discussions reflected the two fundamental problems associated with the deadlocked peace process.

In the process itself, the critical issue is the sequence of events, which has become a chicken-and-egg debate. Israel insists that the Palestinian uprising must end before it will renew negotiations, while the Palestinians argue that they are victims of Israeli violence and economic restrictions that must be removed before calm can be restored.

Sharon said he had outlined to Powell the steps he was prepared to take once the clashes end to ease the Palestinians’ dire economic situation.

The challenge, Powell conceded, is to determine “who puts the first key in the door and starts to turn the lock.” The Bush administration clearly sees a three-step process--involving restoring calm, lifting the economic blockade and coordinating security--as the precursor to renewed negotiations.

In terms of substance, the fundamental question is the point at which the talks should start. Arafat insisted that any negotiations with the new Sharon government will have to pick up where talks with caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak ended. Sharon has said he is not bound by his predecessor’s concessions.

“No government can basically erase the work of the previous government,” Arafat said at his news conference with Powell. “We look forward to resuming the negotiations from the point where it left off.”

He also said he looks forward to President Bush’s presiding over the finish of a process launched by his father’s administration at a Madrid conference in 1991.

Powell described his talks with Arafat on security issues as “brisk,” implying that he saw little imminent movement to end the uprising.

“He held the positions that he has held all along. The conversation was brisk on a number of occasions,” the secretary said.

Palestinians on the street indicated little interest in heeding Powell’s admonitions. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian doctor and political activist who joined the crowd of demonstrators in Ramallah, suggested that Palestinians will ignore calls to end confrontations with Israelis.

“A time comes when a people can no longer endure occupation and injustice. This is what is happening today in Palestine,” Barghouthi said.

After the talks, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters traveling with Powell that the “frank and candid” conversation was a “good start” but that he did not expect any immediate results.

And on a plane ride later between Jordan and Kuwait, Powell said he came away from his talks in Israel and the occupied territories “concerned about the region” because of violence that was worse than he had realized. But he also said that he was “encouraged” that Sharon seems to understand the challenges his new government faces.

The secretary described Sharon as “very reflective, very thoughtful, very engaged” in thinking about the steps needed to address not only Israel’s concerns but the issue of long-term relations with the Palestinians.

“He also, I think, understands that people are remembering him from another day,” Powell said, in a reference to Sharon’s career as a hard-line general and to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when local Christian allies massacred more than 800 women, children and old men in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, both then under control of the Israeli army.

Although the focus of Powell’s second day in the Middle East was the peace process, Iraq remained a recurrent theme. In the West Bank, several hundred demonstrators waved Iraqi flags and chanted “America! The criminal!”