Competing visions of Mideast peace face Abbas, Sharon

[mike_c]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0118/p07s01-wome.html

By Ben Lynfield | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

JERUSALEM – Just a week after moderate Mahmoud Abbas easily won an election to replace Yasser Arafat, much of the optimism that accompanied his victory has given way to a familiar sense of intractability in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Mr. Sharon remains intent on keeping as much of the West Bank as possible and is reluctant, at least for now, to move toward a resumption of negotiations according to the road map, the analysts say. The road map calls on the Palestinian Authority to dismantle "terrorist capability and infrastructure" and on Israel to freeze settlement construction.

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Sharon's strategy "is to buy time, to keep as much territory as possible, to convince the Palestinians that by fighting Israel you won't get anything and that if you achieve anything it is by negotiations and not terrorism. And that what is given won't be too generous," says Menachem Hofnung, a Hebrew University political scientist.

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In the view of Akiva Eldar, coauthor of "Lords of the Land," a history of the settlement movement, Sharon has not changed his intention of annexing at least half of the West Bank ever since he outlined it during a cabinet meeting in 1977. By suspending contacts with the Palestinian Authority, Sharon is seeking to undermine Abbas's standing as a peace partner in the eyes of the world, Eldar says. "Sharon does not want a partner because he knows what a partner means: giving up the West Bank."