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HERB KEINON:
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The road not traveled

Glance back at the headlines that graced the newspapers in the two weeks preceding Rosh Hashana last year and you will noticesomething striking. Everything, at least on the diplomatic front, looks painfully the same.

"Sharon: We won’t let Arafat ’put on a show,’‘ declared one headline."’American envoy arrives to urge PA reform,"read another.

"Peres: Palestinian reforms needed for diplomatic progress," proclaimed a third, referring to then foreign minister Shimon Peres.

Around the world, Jews will be taking stock tomorrow, measuring distances traveled. For those monitoring diplomatic developments in the region, this chore will be easy. The Jewish Year 5763 saw precious little diplomatic progress: It was a year of distances left untraveled.

Travel, indeed, seems a most apt metaphor, since 5763 was the Year of the Road Map. All diplomacy revolved around the road map — when it would be unveiled, what would be inside, whether Israel’s reservations would be included.

Indeed, it was just a week before last Rosh Hashana that Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country at the time held the European Union’s rotating presidency, announced a trip to the Middle East to discuss a "road map" for peace.

The idea was straightforward enough. US President George W. Bush, in his June 2002 seminal speech on Middle East policy, called for new Palestinian leadership and pledged that "when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions, and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East."

Bush marked out the goal, and the road map was to be the playbook on how to get there. The road map then became the world’s preoccupation.

The first Sharon government was in its final throes, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud challenger Binyamin Netanyahu were eyeing a primary campaign struggle, so Israel paid little attention to Moeller and his "road map." Besides, it was a European plan, and Israel traditionally pays scant notice to European plans.

That was the first miscalculation.

Soon US State Department officials, who saw it as a convenient way to implement Bush’s vision speech, adopted the plan.

The government then dismissed the State Department’s interest in the plan as well, overestimating the Middle East policy differences inside the Bush administration.

THE PRIME Minister’s Office invested way too heavily in the wishful thinking that Secretary of State Colin Powell is a bit player when it comes to drawing up Mideast policy, and that the real power rests with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Vice President Dick Cheney — all of whom understand and are sympathetic to Israel’s positions. Wrong. Call it miscalculation number two.

The third miscalculation was that the road map would be buried by the war in Iraq, and that a US victory there would dramatically alter the situation here.

Many in the highest levels of power in Jerusalem were intoxicated by the prospect of a US defeat of Iraq. Not only would the defeat of Saddam Hussein remove a major strategic threat from Israel’s door step (it did), but it would also be a table-clearing event that would open up all kinds of new opportunities with the Palestinians (it did not).

The hope was that a swift defeat of Saddam, and a victory for Iraqi democrats, would embolden the moderates among the Palestinians and give them the courage to shunt aside Yasser Arafat — their own Saddam Hussein. The expectation was that either the Palestinians would, after watching the fall of Baghdad, kick Arafat upstairs to some ceremonial position, or Israel would — in the prevailing jubilation over the downfall of Saddam — somehow be given a green light to otherwise dispose of the PA chairman.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas did emerge, but he emerged anything but emboldened. Saddam Hussein was dethroned, but it had no impact on Arafat. Like a bad dream, Arafat emerged from the Mukata to smile widely, and flash the "V" sign, yet another day. More significantly, he continued to pull the Palestinian strings.

Israel spent much diplomatic energy trying to put the road map off until after Iraq in the hope that Iraq would render the road map outdated. The repercussions of a resounding victory in Iraq would create a new road here that would require a different map — one Sharon could more easily live with.

But rather than the events in Iraq positively changing the situation in the Palestinian Authority, fear that the events in the Palestinian Authority will negatively impact on what America is trying to do in Iraq is keeping the Israel government from doing what it feels it must do — removing Arafat.

Despite various twists and turns, Sharon’s overarching diplomatic goal remained the same last year as it was when he first took office in 2001. This policy was summed up succinctly by Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief and National Security Council head who resigned recently because he was marginalized inside the Prime Minister’s Office.

In a recent interview with Haaretz, Halevy said, "A permanent settlement is impossible. Therefore, our goal should be to create a credible, responsible Palestinian partner with whom we will be able to reach a situation of coexistence and a gradual building of confidence and long-term interim agreements. I see no other course. On this central matter the prime minister is right."

This year saw little progress toward that goal. With Arafat calling the shots, creating a credible, responsible Palestinian partner has proven impossible.

Sharon, in his Herzliya address in December, clearly accepted the idea of a two-state solution. In that speech he said something very clearly to his friend George Bush that all the world could hear: "I’ll give you the Palestinian state, if you deliver me a Palestinian people with new leadership and new institutions."

Bush has been unable to deliver; he counted on Abbas, but was disappointed.

By delivering the Herzliya speech, however, Sharon kept Bush in his corner. By convincing the president he is genuine in his willingness to accept a Palestinian state, Sharon has managed to keep the warm ties with Washington. And in Sharon’s thinking — model 2003 — this is an invaluable strategic asset.

When the road map still looked as if was in play earlier in the year, much was written about Sharon’s pronouncements about a willingness to evacuate settlements, and at one point cryptically referring even to Shilo and Beit El. The question that was asked over and over was what had gotten into the prime minister, what happened to the father of the settlement enterprise.

Had Sharon sold out, gone soft, turned De Gaulle?

Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri was quoted in The New York Times earlier this year with one answer: "Sharon moved from the position of a general who thinks in terms of mountains, to a statesman who thinks in terms of strategic alliances. It is not a softie position, but a position that tries to be realistic, pragmatic."

SHARON HAS said on innumerable occasions that from his perch in the Prime Minister’s Office he sees things invisible from anywhere else. He sees the whole gamut of threats and pressures coming to bear on this tiny land; he grasps the big picture.

What this wider view has done is convince him that close ties with Washington protects Israel more than holding on to strategic hills in Judea and Samaria.

Sharon’s settlement instincts, it is important to remember, were not driven by religious sentiment — not wanting to walk where Abraham walked — but rather by strategic considerations, wanting to keep Ben-Gurion Airport out of missile range.

For Sharon the general it was the hill that was of utmost strategic import; for Sharon the prime minister it is the strategic alliance with the US. The alliance with the US is now worth more to him than the hills — which explains why he has made clear he is willing to sacrifice some of them.

That he hasn’t had to sacrifice the hill, that Sharon hasn’t had to uproot the settlements this year, is because the Palestinians have still not produced the new leader, the new partner. Cynics say this suits Sharon just fine; that he doesn’t want to give anything up anyhow, and that Palestinian nihilism just serves his purpose.

But this question is academic. Sharon doesn’t have to sacrifice the hill until the Palestinians tackle the terror infrastructure. That Sharon convinced Bush of his sincerity, however, has cemented the strategic alliance with the US.

The key equation that has guided this government through so many of its decisions this year is whether the benefit of any particular action — be it whacking Hizbullah on the eve of the Iraqi war for diverting water from the Wazani River, to expelling Arafat — is worth the price of distancing the US. This equation is the stick against which all was measured last year, and which all will surely be measured against this year as well.

If the equation is not likely to change in the near future, what will likely change is the level of US involvement. With America now shifting into election mode, Washington’s policy will become more one of conflict management, than of conflict resolution. In other words, disengagement, less involvement.

This diminished involvement will, in turn, invite increased European involvement and their use — once again — of the argument that the Middle East is too sensitive and volatile a region to leave untended. Though the reflex in Jerusalem might be to discount this, to argue "who cares what the Europeans offer," the European initiatives should not be so readily discarded. These plans do not that easily go away. Remember, the Danes first brought the road map to our shores a little more than a year ago.

The bright side In a year of few tangible diplomatic achievements, two bright lights stand out — Israel’s burgeoning ties with India, and the maintenance of strong ties with Turkey despite the Islamic-based AKP party’s sweeping election victory there in November.

Even as Israel’s ties with its immediate neighbors — the so-called "inner ring" — continues to suffer from the ongoing war with the Palestinians, the country’s ties with the outer ring is blossoming. The near-royal manner in which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was greeted in India earlier this month is but one indication, albeit the most visible one.

Good-bye Cairo, hello New Delhi.

Since 1948, Jerusalem has advanced an "outer ring‘ regional foreign policy doctrine, whereby it seeks to advance ties with non-Arab countries nearby in order to counterbalance the hostility of the ’inner ring" neighbors. In the past, Iran and Ethiopia were linchpins of this policy, now the stars are India and Turkey.

Twenty years ago few would have imagined either country in this role. Back then New Delhi was firmly in the Soviet orbit, implacably hostile to Israel. Ankara, too, was in the throes of a pro-Arab policy.

But the end of the Cold War and the Middle East peace moves of the early 1990s — Madrid and Oslo — gave both countries an excuse to upgrade relations with Israel. Once they did, Turkey and India felt the benefits of the ties, and — even as Madrid fizzled and Oslo died — things took off.

What makes this even more impressive is that Turkey is a Muslim country, and India — with 140 million Muslims — has the second largest Muslim population in the world. Not only is Turkey Muslim, but its new governing party has strong Islamic roots (in the same sense that Shas has strong Jewish roots). Yet the ties remain strong because the ties are to Turkey’s — and India’s — advantage.

These benefits have ensured that Ankara and New Delhi continue to want to foster their ties with Israel, despite their traditional sympathy with the Palestinians, and despite their close ties to the Arab world.

What are these benefits? First are the arms sales. Israel provides both countries with quality military hardware they are currently hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

Turkey is unable to buy certain weapons systems in the US because of strong Armenian and Greek lobbies that place riders and amendments on all kinds of arms deals to Turkey. And India is still, to a certain degree, the victim of a US arms embargo clamped down after New Delhi detonated two nuclear devices in 1998.

Israel is more than willing to fill the breach.

Furthermore, both countries — until recently not reflexively thought of as part of the West — are trying to shore up their Western credentials. Israel provides a good entry point. No only do ties with Israel go over well in Washington, but ties with Israel improve relations with Washington.

Fears that India or Turkey’s close relations with Israel would damage their relations with the Arab world have not materialized. Turkish officials argue that they never got anything tangible from their support for the Palestinians anyway, and Indian officials maintain that since India is such an important strategic state, the Arab world will not want to endanger ties with New Delhi by making them conditional on a cold shoulder to Israel.

Israel, of course, is overjoyed, only too eager to help. Defense pacts have been established with Turkey, and counterterrorism working groups established with India. The ties provide financial oxygen for the military industrial complex — oxygen needed for Israel to retain its qualitative edge in arms.

And, no less importantly, the relationships have relieved the country’s sense of diplomatic isolation.

Who knows, India and Turkey may even one day join the US and Micronesia in voting against anti-Israel motions in the UN.