(of Egypt) relies on the $2 billion he gets every year from the United States, under the auspices of a Congress dominated by the pro-Israeli lobby. King Abdullah of Jordan gets much less, but his regime, too, depends on US support.
Ariel Sharon is the Siamese twin of Bush and cannot move without him. It is barely conceivable that he would do anything, big or small, that would upset Bush. Abu Mazen, for his part, is playing va banque in the hope that Bush will help the Palestinians to cast off the occupation and establish their state.64
So why did the Americans not come to Sharm? Because they are not ready to risk taking part in a process that might fail. They will come when success is assured. And today it is not.
The second absentee was Yassir Arafat.
The conference would not have taken place without his mysterious death. It deprived Sharon of the pretext to put peace in "formalin," as described by Dov Weissglas, his closest advisor, who sat next to him throughout the conference.65 No Arafat, no pretext. Israeli propaganda, which worked so hard to portray Arafat as a devil, will have to toil hard to do the same to Abu Mazen.
Abu Mazen succeeded in slipping the name of Arafat into his speech, but only in an indirect way. But he-like every Palestinianknows that it was the 45 years of Arafat's work that laid the foundations on which Abu Mazen is now building his new strategy. Without the First Intifada there would have been no Oslo, and without the Second Intifada there would have been no Sharm-al-Sheikh conference. Only the violent Palestinian resistance, which the Israeli army has not been able to put down, has brought Sharon to the round table.
The Israeli army knows by now that it cannot stamp out the insurgency by military means. The Palestinians have recovered their selfrespect, much like the Egyptians after Yom Kippur. Many of them also believe that in his second term of office, Bush will impose withdrawal on Israel.
Incidentally, the demonization of Arafat has by no means stopped since his death. On the contrary, it goes on with great fervor. The left and the right in Israel, in heart-warming unity, declare in almost every article and TV talk show that Arafat was the great obstacle to peace. Not the occupation. Not the settlements. Not the policy of
Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon. Only Arafat. Fact: Arafat died and hoplathere is a conference.
The game played by Condoleezza Rice was especially amusing. She visited the Mukata'ah, where every stone shouts the name of Arafat.