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The Mandate

- Tuesday, February 8, 2005 |

Secretary of State Rice avoided two major pitfalls in her visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority – she declined to name a “special envoy” from the President to the “peace process” and she called on the Arab states to fulfill their obligations, trending toward the necessary “Middle East peace” and away from “Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Furthermore, she didn’t visit Arafat’s grave and didn’t give the Palestinians any new money. The importance of these cannot be overstated.

Then again, she handed a flawed mission to Lt. Gen. William Ward, USA (deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, and chief of staff of the U.S. Seventh Army), the point man for monitoring the security commitments of Israelis and Palestinians as well as offering the Palestinians assistance in building their security services. While Lt. Gen. Ward is, no doubt, well qualified to monitor military matters and train troops, the mission as defined by Dr. Rice is problematic. The mission comes in two parts, she said:

To “make sure the parties understand each other and we understand what the parties are doing, so we can raise it at the appropriate level” if action is required.
To “provide a focal point for training, equipping, helping the Palestinians to build their security forces and also for monitoring, and if necessary, to help the parties on security matters.”

The State Department says Lt. Gen. Ward has no political mandate, but the first part – translating for the parties – is entirely political. In the past it has been the habit of the translator – Tony Zinni, Dennis Ross, George Tenet, etc. – to try to smooth over substantive disagreements between the parties rather than resolve them. The temptation to do so here will be directly proportional to the U.S. investment in the mission.

Lt. Gen. Ward’s primary task is to ensure that Israel’s pullout from Gaza is “coordinated” with the PA. But Israel, the clear victim of aggression from Gaza – including more than 75 mortar rounds over last weekend – has to determine the pace of the pullout based on its own security parameters. What if Israel moves more slowly than the Palestinians want? Will they ask Lt. Gen. Ward to push Israel? Will he have an independent opinion of how fast Israel should move? What if Israel engages in operations in Gaza for which Lt. Gen. Ward doesn’t see the need, or of which he doesn’t approve? The U.S. cannot and should not judge Israeli self-defense in a war the Palestinians initiated.

His second task is to work with the Egyptians and Jordanians to help improve Palestinian security forces. [JINSA Reports will deal with that next.] He will be invested as a partner in this; they will be “his” soldiers. It therefore seems unlikely that he will be able to maintain neutrality toward Israeli decisions of which the Arab trio doesn’t approve, and less likely to agree that Israel is correct in its assessment of any disputed situation.

Yet again we are reminded of the old U.S. Army saw, “Tell me what you want done, don’t tell me to ‘do something’.” Mixing the mission of “monitoring” both sides with the mission of training and guiding one side smacks of “doing something.”