Stardate 20020624.2025

(On Screen): As poster David in my forum points out, the BBC's commentator completely misunderstands the purpose of today's speech by President Bush. BBC Washington Correspondent Rob Walsh writes:

Without continued and deep American involvement in the region, many critics are likely to argue that the president has laid out a vision for peace, he has little faith in ever seeing fulfilled.

In the short-term the Bush administration will now have to sell the plan to the Palestinians and their Arab supporters.

It won't be easy and is in many ways a task filled with irony.

Walsh evidently didn't understand: this wasn't a peace plan. It was a policy statement.

In a sense, this was a peace anti-plan. It was a statement by the United States that our government was no longer going to try to jump through hoops to try to appease the Palestinians and stop their violence, or to restrain the Israeli retaliation. The United States is no longer going to try to deal with a blatant liar like Arafat at all, because he can't be trusted. The United States isn't going to force Israel to make major concessions. The United States is emphatically not going to take an Arab point of view.

It signals the effective end of any pretense that the Oslo process can be revived, or that the Mitchell plan can still be effective. All previous offers and deals are now dead; we're starting from ground zero and this time we're starting with a series of demands on what the Palestinians will need to do to even get the time of day from Washington.

It says that the administration in Washington isn't even slightly sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians because they've brought most of their grief on themselves through intransigence, cruelty and stupidity. The Palestinians have been given plenty of chances to escape from this fate and have turned them all down. Every chance they had for peace and prosperity they've rejected, and now they don't get any more chances until they reform themselves.

At least, that's what I hope it says. The fear is that Powell and the State Department won't give up and will continue to fight to weaken this position. I hope not; I hope that Powell understands that Bush has now made a real decision and it is Powell's job to carry out this policy and not to subvert it. It's virtually certain that Powell will be embarking on a whirlwind tour of a number of important capitols, and I hope he realizes that it's his job to say to each head of state he visits that President Bush really does mean what he says about this.

Update: The WaPo makes exactly the same mistake:

Indeed, by writing Arafat out of the picture, Bush may have left Arafat no incentive to cooperate -- and Bush has yet to explain whom the United States or Israel would negotiate with in the coming months. Currently, there is no functioning Palestinian government that can stop the terrorist attacks or replace the Israeli army, and there is no leadership that has the authority or respect to negotiate with Israel.

On the contrary. What he made clear is that the US is through negotiating with anyone for the next few months. There will be no further negotiations until after substantive Palestinian reforms and a cessation of violence. (And the idea of Arafat "cooperating" is ludicrous.)