Red Carpet Reveals Abbas’ Ascent

The White House protocol for back-to-back visits by the Palestinian Authority and Israeli prime ministers was carefully calibrated: Both men got a red carpet at Andrews Air Force Base. Both met with President Bush in the Oval Office for precisely half an hour. Both lunched with him in the same dining room in the White House. Both were served fish -- sole for the Palestinian, snapper for the Israeli.

For the first two years of Bush’s presidency, Israel and its prime minister, Ariel Sharon, were first in line at the Oval Office when it came to the Middle East. But in a clear sign that times are changing, the White House gave Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas the same honors Friday that it granted Sharon four days later.

“We treated them as equivalent,” National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said. “We view Abbas as a serious interlocutor, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, and dedicated to the cause of peace.”

The evenhandedness was a reflection of the administration’s oft-stated political goal: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side.

“It was a very conscious decision by the Bush administration to put Abbas on the same footing as Sharon,” said Edward Abington Jr., a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem who is now an advisor to the Palestinian Authority.

Under official protocol, the Bush administration was not required to roll out the red carpet for Abbas. The Palestinian Authority is not an internationally recognized state, and it doesn’t even enjoy the first criterion of statehood: territorial control.

The Palestinian Authority “has no real authority over the land,” Abington said. “From that perspective, to treat Abbas the same as the prime minister of Israel is remarkable.”

Abbas’ treatment also stood in stark contrast to previous visits by Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority president met with President Clinton in the Oval Office, but he was not accorded the trappings befitting a head of state.

The few differences in the two prime ministers’ itineraries are telling.

Sharon, who has been to Washington eight times since Bush became president, paid a routine visit to congressional leaders who have met with him many times before.

Abbas was making his first visit since he took office and got all the attention of the new kid on the block. He had warm, well-attended meetings with the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations committees.

Abbas also held a meeting with about 75 officials from American Jewish organizations.

“The surprise for us was how many people wanted to come,” said Stephen Cohen, who helped organize the meeting on behalf of the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based nonpartisan organization that promotes Middle East peace. “I think that indicates that support for the ‘road map’ [the U.S.-backed peace initiative] and Abbas’ leadership is very strong in the American Jewish community.”

Cohen said only two main organizations declined to attend -- the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- and both cited scheduling conflicts, not an aversion to sitting down with Abbas.

In contrast, smaller numbers of American Jewish groups had quietly met with Arafat in the past, Cohen said, and the meetings were usually contentious. While Arafat would make broad claims and criticize the Israeli leadership, Abbas refrained from criticizing Sharon and asked for no more, and no less, than what is promised in the peace plan.

“It was quite striking that he was careful to stick with the road map,” Cohen said.

Cohen and others also noted that to their knowledge, Sharon has never held a similar meeting with Arab American groups.

The upshot of the tandem visits appears to be a message from the White House that although Israel and its leaders will continue to enjoy a “special relationship” with Washington, they need to be prepared to share that relationship with the new Palestinian leadership.

In light of that, David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based policy center, said that some of the chumminess displayed by Sharon and Bush in their Rose Garden appearance Tuesday seemed a bit forced.

Although they called each other “George” and “Ariel,” Bush did not accede to Sharon’s positions, as he had done in the past, particularly on two current points of contention: Israel’s construction of a security fence and the growth of some Jewish settlements.

Cohen said the question of whether Israel can accept the Palestinians’ growing standing depends largely on whether it views the current period as one of conflict or conflict resolution. If the latter, Israel will view warm relations between Abbas and Bush as beneficial; if not, Israel will resent them.

“Are we still in a zero-sum conflict?” Cohen asked, considering the outcome of the dual summits. “My view is that a majority of people on both sides really want to solve this conflict.

“It will likely take a little longer for parts of the Jewish community and the Israeli community to buy into that fully. We are still in a period of low trust.”