The Blame Game Goes On

There is no evidence on the ground here that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s shuttle diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians did anything to defuse the conflict he left seething behind him Wednesday.

And it is far from clear that either Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat or Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is entirely unhappy with Powell’s failure.

Powell secured neither an Israeli military withdrawal from Palestinian areas nor a clear statement from Arafat that he was renouncing violence and recommitting himself to negotiations. In Bethlehem, Israeli tanks remain pointed at the Church of the Nativity, where more than 100 Palestinian gunmen are holed up. In Ramallah, Israeli soldiers are still bunking down on the grounds of Arafat’s battered and increasingly fetid headquarters.

Throughout the West Bank, troops and tanks continue to move in and out of Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and militants who went underground when Israel launched its sweeping offensive March 29 say they are itching for revenge.

With his state-in-the-making in ruins and his international prestige badly battered, Arafat might have been expected to embrace the terms for a cease-fire. But during his final, stormy meeting with Powell on Wednesday, the Palestinian leader refused to meet Israel’s demand that he hand over the alleged killers of an Israeli Cabinet minister or accept an Israeli proposal that the gunmen in the Church of the Nativity surrender and face trial in Israel or go into exile.

Instead, Arafat emerged to denounce the international community for failing to end Israel’s stranglehold on his headquarters or the Bethlehem church.

In his defiance, Arafat gains points both with his own increasingly embittered people and across an Arab world appalled by the scenes of destruction in the West Bank that they see on their television screens each night.

Arafat’s insistence that he will offer no concessions until Israel ends its incursion has put moderate Arab regimes on the hot seat, hard-pressed to explain to their angry citizens why neither the Arabs nor the United States is forcing Israel to pull back. The first suggestion of displeasure from an Arab leader came Wednesday, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak canceled his meeting in Cairo with Powell, offering no further explanation but that he was “indisposed.”

Israeli commentators said Powell’s failure to achieve a cease-fire offered certain political advantages for Sharon, who has declared Arafat an enemy of Israel and appears bent on dismantling not only armed militias in Palestinian areas but also the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority that Arafat leads.

Powell said Sharon promised that Israel will pull out of all areas except Bethlehem and Ramallah in the coming week. Sharon, commentators here say, will spend that week inflicting greater damage on Arafat’s administration. And in comments to reporters after Powell’s departure, Sharon said Israeli tanks and troops will continue to ring Palestinian cities, poised to reenter whenever Israel feels it needs to.

Predictably, Israel and the Palestinians blamed each other for what both agreed was a failed attempt to achieve a cease-fire or an Israeli withdrawal. Palestinians accused Powell of giving Sharon a green light to continue his military campaign. Arab moderates warned that the Bush administration’s prestige was damaged by its failure to compel Israel’s withdrawal from recaptured Palestinian areas.

“When Powell leaves everything the way it was when he came here, this indicates that Sharon is going to attack” more Palestinian targets, said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “We have nothing against the secretary. All we can say is that Sharon did a good job of torpedoing his mission here.”

Israeli officials put the blame squarely on Arafat, saying his refusal to renounce violence, hand over militants or recommit himself to achieving a negotiated settlement blocked progress.

“What Powell really said is: The onus is very clearly on the Palestinians; it is up to the Palestinians to end their violence,” said Zalman Shoval, a foreign policy advisor to Sharon.

But Yossi Sarid, leader of the left-wing opposition in Israel’s parliament, assailed Powell for failing to achieve a cease-fire and for taking a lead on Sharon’s proposal for a regional conference to discuss issues between Israel, its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians.

“If the United States will prepare and manage the international conference the way it did Powell’s mission,” Sarid said in a statement, “then it had better give up the idea of this conference already.”

The Bush administration, Sarid said, “has lost its authority over the parties.” To salvage the situation, he said, it should “impose a solution on the basis of full withdrawal for full peace or give up its vision of saving the free world from fundamentalist zealotry.”

Powell, for his part, apportioned blame to both sides during a news conference in Jerusalem shortly before he left for Cairo for talks with the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers.

But it will take more than even-handed blame to move Sharon and Arafat from their entrenched positions, said Joseph Alpher, an Israeli strategic analyst.

“Powell was just trying to reason with everyone, and that’s not good enough right now,” he said. “At the heart of the problem is the fact that we don’t have enough common ground to make any progress. You need political concessions from Sharon to get security concessions from Arafat. Neither leader has a realistic strategy for peace, so you’re going to have to clobber them, to smash heads together.”

Powell needs to enlist the help of moderate Arab states and the European Union to pressure Arafat by threatening to cut off funding and end diplomatic support, Alpher said. The secretary also needs to lean on Israel by holding up funding for some projects and publicly criticizing Sharon’s policies.

Despite the meager achievements of Powell’s mission, it is what comes next that will determine whether it was truly a failure. The secretary said he will explore Sharon’s proposal for a regional conference. But the agenda for such a conference, and the participants, has yet to be decided.