Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday June 26, 2002 The Guardian
In the seemingly endless litany of Middle East violence, it was two suicide bombings in two days last week that fractured Yasser Arafat's tenuous relations with the Bush administration once and for all.
The president's rose garden address on Monday not only marked a clear break with the past in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it also reflected a decisive shift in the constellation of forces within the administration itself, which have blown US policy back and forth for the past 18 months.
Last Tuesday the president was on the point of making a landmark speech on Middle East policy intended to provide momentum for a planned regional conference in September. It was going to be tough on the Palestinians, calling on them to transform their society along democratic, non-violent lines, and there were the usual rebukes for Mr Arafat in particular. But it went no further - until a Palestinian theological student climbed on board a bus on the outskirts of Jerusalem and blew himself up, killing 19 people.
A senior administration official said that "before the suicide bombings started again" the address would have been relatively uncontroversial: "We had planned to report more on our consultations and use that as the way forward. This gave the president a new passion."
The official added: "So in that sense, I think the violence did change the character of the speech. Finally you have to say something has to change, something has to be different."
After the second suicide bombing on Wednesday, the speech was put on hold. That meant that the president had the weekend to reconsider what he was going to say.
"My understanding is that there was a meltdown over the weekend," a diplomat familiar with US Middle East policymaking said. "Additional elements were added, including the removal of Arafat, which reflect Bush's gut instincts."
George Bush has never made much of a secret of his contempt for Mr Arafat. Some observers believe it dates to a visit he made to the Middle East in 1998, while still the governor of Texas. Ariel Sharon took him on a helicopter tour of Israel and the occupied territories, providing a commentary that dwelt on security. Mr Arafat was travelling and unable to meet him.
Once he arrived in the White House Mr Bush brought on board a team of radical conservatives in the Pentagon and the vice-president's office, who shared Mr Sharon's view that the conflict could only be contained, never resolved, and that the Israelis should be allowed a free hand to look after their own security.
Against this background it is a testament to the tenacity of the secretary of state, Colin Powell, that the president was ever persuaded to get involved in Middle East peacemaking at all, and that the final rejection of Mr Arafat as a negotiating partner took as long as it did.
With the Saudi royal family threatening to break its alliance with Washington if the US did not act, Mr Powell was able to persuade the White House to agree to an address to the UN general assembly in which he would call for the eventual creation of a state of Palestine.
The general assembly, and the speech, were postponed by the September 11 attacks, but the ensuing "war on terror" provided a reminder of how much the US needed the cooperation of the Arab states and the use of their military bases. The address was finally delivered on November 10.
But the pro-Israel hawks, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, continued to lobby for a breaking of ties with the Palestinian leadership. Their arguments were given clout in January by Israel's discovery of an arms shipment from Iran on the Karine A, a ship apparently paid for by one of Mr Arafat's aides.
Later in the same month, while Mr Powell was on a trip to central Asia, Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld attempted something of a policy coup, making a concerted push for branding Mr Arafat a sponsor of terrorism. On his return Mr Powell was forced to fight a rearguard action, insisting that there was no one else to deal with on the Palestinian side and that dumping Mr Arafat would be unpalatable to moderate Arab states, whose support the US needed if it were to topple Saddam Hussein.
Mr Powell won the round and convinced Mr Bush to issue a call for peace in April which put the onus on both sides to step back from the brink. When Mr Powell met Mr Arafat in Ramallah a few days later he made it clear it was his last chance to convince the White House he was committed to curbing terrorism.
But with each suicide bombing Mr Powell was becoming more isolated, particularly after the Israelis produced documents seized from Mr Arafat's Ramallah HQ, apparently implicating him in the funding of suicide bombers.
By mid-June, with no end to the killing in sight, the president acknowledged that he had to make a policy declaration to satisfy the demands of the Arab states, and ultimately clear the ground for a military campaign in Iraq. But by calling for the removal of Mr Arafat as a precondition for a Palestinian state, the ball would be hit back into the Arab court. Meanwhile, the administration would avoid alienating the powerful pro-Israel lobby and its allies on the conservative right.
Mr Powell declared himself comfortable with the policy yesterday, but he pointedly put off a planned trip to the region to sell it to the Arab world. He may suspect it cannot be sold. The Bush speech is almost as much a defeat for the secretary of state as it is for Mr Arafat.