The trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah used to take around 20 minutes. But ever since the roadblocks, checkpoints, and cement wall barrier went up following the Second Intifada several years ago, it can take hours, depending on who you are. For Jewish settlers and those with U.S. passports or some NGO (nongovernmental organization) cards, there are the settler bypass roads, built for and used primarily by Jews living in the surrounding settlements and outposts. A diplomat can get through with relative ease. But lately, not too many diplomats -- certainly none from the United States -- have made frequent visits there.
Ramallah houses the Palestinian government and the Muqaata, the presidential compound where Mahmud Abbas sits and Yassar Arafat is entombed. Construction has begun on a large mosque in the heart of the compound, in tribute to Arafat. But the Fatah stronghold remains a secular city, with an active nightlife, good restaurants (that serve alcohol), and a vibrant but struggling business sector. The election of Hamas to the Palestinian Authority had done much to diminish Ramallah's function as a destination spot for visiting diplomats. Now it's back on the diplomatic circuit, partly because there is still a kidnapped Israeli soldier in Gaza while Qassam rockets, sent under the protective arm of Hamas, still fly into Israel.
This past Sunday, I saw armed young men in uniform from the Presidential Guard perched on every street corner. The streets around the Muqaata were blocked off for visits from a U.S. congressional delegation and the French and German foreign ministers. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will see these same uniformed guards on her visit this week. Would that she would see them -- and engage directly in this crisis -- more often.
Even with all the world's attention focused on Hezbollah and Israel's strikes against Lebanon, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute remains the core problem in the region. And it will still be there when the guns fall silent in the north. "There is very little linkage between what is happening in Lebanon and the Palestinian situation. It's not a Palestinian agenda," political analyst and former Palestinian Authority Minister Ghassan Khatib told me in his office. The crisis in the north remains acute -- but regarding the question of a lasting peace in the region, it remains a distraction.
Meanwhile, as the United States in particular shirks on its role as a mediator, the crisis has seen too much engagement from some other outside forces, especially the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. (He lives in Damascus under Syria's protection.) When Meshal engineered the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from just inside Israel's southern border a month ago, his action completely eclipsed efforts then under way among the Gaza-based Hamas leadership and the government's Fatah faction to present a united front. (Since the kidnapping, the Egyptian government has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that will return Shalit to Israel, followed by Israel's release of some prisoners, including women and minors, currently being held in Palestinian jails. An agreement among the Palestinian factions for a cease-fire in Israel's south is going to be discussed with Rice when she meets with Abu Mazen -- as Abbas is popularly known -- in Ramallah today, according to Israeli press reports. Prisoners, it seems, are now high on the agenda if diplomacy is to be restarted).
Prior to Meshal's meddling, Palestinian factions had been forging a partnership -- one that might even produce a unity government -- orchestrated as a result of a document negotiated and finalized at the end of June by prominent Palestinian prisoners held in Israel's Hadarim jail. That document marks the first time that all the Palestinian factions have come together to sign a statement of principles.
The key figure in the making of the prisoners' document is Marwan Barghouti, considered the leading figure in the generation known as “Young Fatah” that came of age during the First Intifada (1987-1993). Barghouti is often mentioned as a possible successor to Mazen in the event that the Israelis free him.
One of Barghouti's top allies is Qadora Fares, a 14-year veteran of Israeli imprisonment. Fares was freed in a prisoner release that occurred as part of the Oslo Accords. A former Palestinian legislator from the Ramallah district, Fares now runs an NGO called the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, which he founded while in prison, as well as a new NGO called the Palestinian Council for Development, Dialogue and Democracy. He is a signatory to the Geneva Initiative, which proposes a wide-ranging final resolution toward creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "I believe that if there is an official Israeli and Palestinian leadership that will sign Geneva, and we will take it to a referendum, there will be a majority [among the Palestinians]," he told me when I met with him in Ramallah.
"When there is no hope, Hamas tells the Palestinians that resistance is the only way we can achieve our rights," he said. The prisoners' document offers a possible first step, to convince Hamas and its supporters to embrace a program that recognizes Israel and to jump-start negotiations. The significance of the document, says Fares, is that in it, "Hamas said we should build a state on the 1967 borders for the first time. To sign a document is the first step to agree to the principle of a two-state solution… The Israelis should not read this agreement by Israeli eyes. As Fatah, it took us more than 20 years to make a change; with Hamas it took five months. I believe now that Hamas and Fatah and all the factions are ready to have a cease-fire in Gaza and the West Bank for six months and renew it every six months -- and a prisoner exchange. Abu Mazen can use this new climate to make a new government, new politics, and new messages."
The business community, too, seeks movement. Zahi W. Khoury, chairman of the Palestinian National Beverage Company, and a prominent East Jerusalem resident and Ramallah figure, told me that especially recently, the Bush Administration has been unresponsive to requests for meetings from the Palestinian business sector. "We asked as a business community to meet a number of times, with Abrams and Welch," he said, referring to Deputy National Security Adviser Eliot Abrams and David Welch, assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. "But they don't have time to meet with us."
As the crisis deepens in the region, now might be the time for Bush administration officials to make an attitude adjustment and encourage re-engagement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Jo-Ann Mort writes frequently about Israel for The American Prospect, The Forward, tpmcafe.com and elsewhere. She is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today's Israel?
