Tested by Zion Read Online Free PDF Page B

side. And he noted that the PA was still run by Arafat alone and did not represent the Palestinian people. We need to make sure that the principles in the June 24 speech are reinforced and not undermined, Bush said. Bush's remarks were yet another sign that the president and his secretary of state were not on the same wavelength.
    Two days later, Bush met with the Quartet at the White House. We need to move forward, he told them. Arafat was a failed leader and working with him would fail as it had in the past. The argument that “there is nobody else” was wrong; Palestinian democracy would produce new leaders. The others worried about Sharon, but Bush said he had spoken with Sharon andthought he would move forward – if the terrorism stopped, which was, again, why Bush had put security issues first. When Bush said he remained fully committed to establishing a Palestinian state, he was asked whether the 2005 timetable still stood. Not unless the terror stops, he answered. When Powell (interestingly, it was he and not the EU representatives or Kofi Annan who raised the issue) said the problem of Israeli settlement activity was sure to arise again soon, Bush shot him down and said that pushing the settlements issue at the wrong time would not yield anything. Anyway, Bush said, does anyone here believe that the terror would stop if Israeli settlement activity stopped? The key is to get a new Palestinian leadership that calls for peace and can deliver. Arafat is not that guy.
    So, six months after the Bush speech of June 24, the year 2002 was ending with principles clearly stated and a strong desire for some forward movement – but little progress on the ground. The Roadmap text was finalized, though not yet published officially. The Quartet was in place and was now the main mechanism for coordinating the views of the Bush administration with those of the Europeans, the UN under Kofi Annan, and Russia. Yet Arafat remained in power and terrorist attacks continued, so the main demands of Bush's June 24 speech remained unmet. Perhaps the greatest progress had come on the Israeli side, where Prime Minister Sharon, the long-time leader of Israel's right wing and the head of Likud, its strongest right-wing party, had endorsed Bush's proposals. Like Bush, he had abandoned policies that flatly opposed Palestinian statehood and now accepted that goal – to be sure, under circumstances that would be difficult to reach. When the Israeli elections were over, the next task would be the one that had evaded the Americans and the Quartet: real Palestinian reform, of the sorts Bush had spoken about on June 24 and Sharon had demanded more belligerently on December 4.
The New NSC Staffer
    I entered the scene in December 2002. I had been offered positions by both Powell and Rice in April 2001 and, having spent eight years at State in the Reagan administration, decided to take the White House job. The position was “Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organizations.” In the NSC hierarchy, under Rice came her deputy Steve Hadley, and then the various senior directors (for geographical areas such as Africa, the Middle East, or Europe or for subject areas such as economics, counterterrorism, human rights, or intelligence). As the senior director for the small directorate known as “Democ,” I handled the UN, foreign aid, and promotion of human rights and democracy.
    In the Reagan State Department, I had been assistant secretary for human rights when George Shultz moved me to a regional slot – assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, in charge of Latin America. My history repeated itself at the NSC: In the fall of 2002, Rice moved me from a functional to a regional office, to be senior director for Near East and North African Affairs. Up to that point, the NSC staff members handling Israeli-Palestinian affairs had been from the CIA and had been Arabists, comfortable with the approach of State's Near East