Abbas Calls for Action on Peace Plan

Facing a no-confidence vote at home if he fails to make progress, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas plans to press President Bush today to help negotiate Israeli concessions and prevent the new “road map” for peace from slipping into stalemate.

The momentum generated by Bush’s Middle East trip last month has already dissipated, with both Palestinians and Israelis reluctant to take the next big steps and the United States apparently unwilling, or unable, to make either side budge beyond symbolic measures.

The White House hopes to persuade Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will meet with Bush on Tuesday, to follow through on the first phase of the peace plan. But the process is moving so slowly that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged in an interview with Arab media released Thursday that it will be difficult to make the 2005 deadline for a Palestinian state.

During rounds Thursday on Capitol Hill, Abbas spoke of the intense domestic pressure on his fragile, new government to secure a further pullback of Israeli troops from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the release of thousands of prisoners, and the easing of travel restrictions on Palestinians within the West Bank.

“The process remains fragile. There are many skeptics who do not believe the road map will succeed, and there are those who do not want it to succeed. They must be proven wrong, and the only way to do that is through action,” Abbas said in a speech Thursday evening to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Palestinians are increasingly agitated about an Israeli security fence, which they claim appropriates large swaths of Palestinian land and will leave them with less than half of the West Bank. Tens of thousands of Palestinians would also be stranded on the wrong side of the fence.

Abbas also wants an immediate freeze on Jewish settlements, a goal shared by the Bush administration. The settlements are home to about 250,000 Israelis. As requested, Israel has dismantled eight illegal “outposts” in the West Bank, but 11 new ones have gone up.

“Of the most strategic importance is ceasing the construction of the separation wall and freezing all settlement activity,” Abbas told the council. “The vision of two states cannot be realized if Israel continues to grab Palestinian land.”

Reflecting the skepticism among Palestinians, Abbas told the council that previous U.S. attempts to win a full freeze on settlements had failed “and there is no reason to expect things to be different this time.”

Abbas painted a bleak picture of the challenges he faces without “the tools of governance” -- territory divided into “small disconnected areas” separated by trenches, dirt mounds and more than 160 checkpoints. “The economy is in ruins, with extremely high poverty rates and unemployment figures,” he added.

In talks on Capitol Hill, Abbas said that the $20 million in recent U.S. aid to the Palestinians was welcome, but not enough, and that he hopes assistance is increased soon.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised Thursday to seek additional funding. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chief Democrat on the committee, said he was impressed with Abbas’ “sense of determination and optimism.”

The trip could be a make-or-break moment for Abbas’ short political career, according to Palestinian officials and analysts.

The meeting at the White House today, his first as prime minister, is supposed to be a reward. Bush deliberately refused to meet Yasser Arafat because the U.S. contends that the Palestinian Authority president has failed to end suicide bombings and attacks by extremist groups. But Abbas, a technocrat with little charisma and less than 2% support at home, needs to return with much more to keep his political prospects alive.

“He needs to show concrete results to prove that his policy is working for the Palestinian public,” said Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist and analyst.

“There are a lot of doubters -- the public is represented by a parliament that can easily vote [Abbas] out of government. And the militant groups have given him a chance, but they won’t go on forever in holding off their activities as long as they don’t see any movement like a prisoner release,” Kuttab added.

During his meeting with Bush, Sharon is expected to announce plans to release between 400 and 500 prisoners -- excluding any “with blood on their hands,” his foreign minister told reporters in Washington this week. But with between 6,000 and 8,000 Palestinians held by Israel, the gesture is unlikely to satisfy an increasingly disgruntled Palestinian population.

At every stop, including talks with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Abbas called on the U.S. to tell Israel that the prisoner release is the key to generating greater support for the peace plan and securing a permanent cease-fire.

Most prisoners were detained without charges and had no connection to violence, Abbas told the council. “Besides the legal and humanitarian grounds for releasing prisoners, there is a forceful political logic to it: Releasing them would strengthen the moderate elements among the various groups and create a sense of inclusion for these groups,” he said.

At the same time, Abbas will come under pressure from the White House to dismantle extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The revived peace process has hit yet another of those chicken-or-egg roadblocks, in which both sides contend that they have exhausted their ability to move forward unless the other takes the next step. Israel says it cannot pull back from more West Bank cities unless the Palestinian Authority dismantles and arrests militant groups, which Abbas says would be tantamount to declaring a civil war.

In his speech, Abbas pledged that any violators of the cease-fire would be punished “promptly and forcefully.” His government is committed to “one authority,” with weapons in the hands of only “those entrusted with upholding the law,” he said.

Yet he also noted that this principle must be “under the framework of political diversity,” an allusion to the political and social wings of Hamas that provide Palestinians with basic services. Abbas has been reluctant to crack down on militant groups because of his precarious political support and the limited capability of his security forces.