Helene Cooper: After the Mecca Accord, Clouded Horizons, New York Times, February 21, 2007

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News Analysis

BERLIN, Feb. 20 – With Iran steadily gaining power in the Middle East, the United States recently made a strategic decision to encourage Saudi Arabia to take a more active role in diplomacy in the region. Two weeks ago, the Saudis took a bold step, mediating an accord between warring Palestinian factions whose battles in Gaza had left more than 100 dead.

But that agreement, signed in the holy city of Mecca, brought Hamas – which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization – into a unity government without requiring that it recognize Israel or forswear violence against it. And that added to the already formidable challenge the United States faces as it tries to accomplish another strategic goal: getting the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table for peace talks for the first time in six years.

The Saudi-brokered pact largely torpedoed the American-sponsored meeting on Monday between the Israelis and the Palestinians that was meant to jump-start peace talks.

The crosscurrent is a case study in how the divergent worldviews of America and Saudi Arabia, its closest Arab ally, will color the two countries’ attempts to quell violence in the region and put a brake on Iran’s ambitions, analysts say.

To be sure, both the United States and its Sunni Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, say they want peace between Palestinians and Israelis and the creation of a Palestinian state. For the Saudis, the end of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities would mute a rallying cry for militants, intent on upending the status quo in the region, who say Arab leaders have done too little to help Palestinians.

So why did Saudi Arabia broker a power-sharing agreement between Hamas and the moderate Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Fatah faction at the same time that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had decided to try to revive peace talks?

One reason, no doubt, is that Saudi Arabia – as a leader in the Arab world – wanted to help end the Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence by Hamas and Fatah. But another big reason, analysts said, is that the war in Iraq has intensified the split between Sunnis and Shiites, and deepened a power struggle between the Sunni royal family of Saudi Arabia, and Iran, which is largely Shiite.

Although the United States is rooting for the Saudis in that power struggle, the two countries have some distinctly different ideas about how Saudi Arabia should fight for its leadership role in the region.

The Bush administration has a view that pits America, its Arab allies, Israel and Europe against Iran, Syria and groups, including Hamas, that the United States considers terrorists.

While that alignment may work for the Bush administration, it is not necessarily how America’s Sunni Arab allies view the world. In the battle for influence in the Middle East, Hamas is a prize Saudi Arabia is willing to fight for.

Put simply, in the past year, Iran has been wooing Hamas, which is Sunni. The Saudis did not like that. So they fought to get Hamas back.

“The Saudis did a switcheroo,” said Martin Indyk, the United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration. “The U.S. views the Middle East as a battle between the moderates against the Iranian-led extremists. But our regional allies see this as a divide between Sunnis and Shiites, and Sunni extremists like Hamas may be extremists, but they are Sunnis first.”

“The Saudis,” he said, “don’t want Hamas on the Shia side, on the Iranian side.”

The fight over Hamas began in earnest last year when the United States and Europe cut off most of the $1 billion in direct aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas took control by besting Fatah in legislative elections. Unable to cover its bills – or even to meet payroll for many of its civil servants – Hamas turned to Iran, which provided it with $120 million. Saudi Arabia meanwhile, shied away from giving much aid to Hamas.

On Dec. 7, the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, in his first tour abroad as Palestinian prime minister, went to Tehran, where he met with Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia responded quickly to the deepening ties between Hamas and Iran. On Dec. 29, he sent a plane provided by the Saudi royal family to carry Mr. Haniya and other Hamas leaders to Saudi Arabia, where Mr. Haniya had a private audience with the Saudi king, according to Palestinian officials.

As all of this was going on, Ms. Rice was working with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, to organize peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to present Mr. Abbas as the only leader capable of leading the Palestinians to their own state.

It was a complicated set-up; the American-Israeli hope was that Mr. Abbas, empowered by peace negotiations, could call for new elections and see his Fatah party beat Hamas. Mr. Abbas had threatened several times to call the elections because talks on a unity government were stalled.

But less than two weeks before the scheduled Israeli-Palestinian meeting, Saudi Arabia brokered the power-sharing pact: Hamas and Mr. Abbas would politically cohabitate in a national unity government.

In announcing the agreement, Saudi Arabia promised $1 billion in aid to the Palestinians. The Saudis pressured both sides to reach a pact; Mr. Abbas said he did so because he could not stand to witness intra-Palestinian bloodshed.

The pact put an end, at least temporarily, to the bloodletting. It also put an end, at least temporarily, to Ms. Rice’s attempt to restart peace talks. Ms. Rice flew to Jerusalem for the scheduled meeting anyway, which began on Monday morning with a stilted three-way handshake between Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert at Ms. Rice’s hotel, with Ms. Rice standing in the middle. After about an hour of discussions about the Mecca accord, Ms. Rice tried to move the discussion to the peace agenda.

“Let’s go upstairs and talk about your future,” she said, according to a senior Bush administration official. The three went up to her 10th-floor suite, overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City, where she broached what she has termed the “political horizon” – diplomatic speak for the contours of an eventual Palestinian state.

“She pushed for it in the meeting, but Olmert was adamant about not going for it,” said a Palestinian official familiar with the talks.

The reason: the Saudi-brokered Mecca accord. In the end, the Israelis said they refused to open peace negotiations with a unity government that includes Hamas.

Helene Cooper: After the Mecca Accord, Clouded Horizons, New York Times, February 21, 2007

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