Bush must show leadership on Mideast

Fifty-five percent of Americans believe the United States shouldn’t get more involved in Middle East problems.

I can sympathize. The daily dose of disaster from Israel and the West Bank makes it hard to watch CNN. You want to weep, switch off the tube, or just hide under the pillows.

But the violence will get worse if the Bush administration continues its feckless effort to avoid serious involvement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. I wasn’t reassured by the president’s Mideast speech of Thursday, forced on him by growing criticism of U.S. inaction, or by his sudden dispatch of Colin Powell to the region. Neither will make a difference without an aggressive new U.S. effort in the Middle East.

I know that presidents dread being ground up in the Mideast peacemaking maw. So, let me make the case for why George W. should fully engage.

1. This wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and brutal Israeli retaliation is reversing a trend decades in the making toward Arab recognition of the Jewish state.

Despite periodic reversals, the trend has headed in one direction for 25 years, from Henry Kissinger’s 1974 shuttle, through Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem, through Camp David I (the peace with Egypt) through the 1993 Oslo accords and the 1994 peace with Jordan. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah followed with his proposal for normalizing Arab states’ relations with Israel.

But Palestinian bombers and Israeli reoccupation threaten to wipe out 25 years of progress. Israelis now believe that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians are reverting to a 1948-style war aimed at wiping out Israel. Palestinians and other Arabs believe Ariel Sharon has no interest in peace.

Both sides are geared up for a war of attrition that promises endless Israeli and Palestinian casualties, and disaster for U.S. policy in the region. This prospect thrills only Mideast terrorists.

“At threat,” says Adnan Abu Odeh, a former Jordanian official who worked for peace for decades, “is the very idea of peace itself and the legitimacy of the Arab regimes who made peace with Israel.” Also at threat is Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative.

2. Neither the leader of the Palestinians nor the Israeli leader is capable, or even desirous, of reversing course. Arafat believes he can drive Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza by force and with international assistance. Sharon believes he can crush Palestinian resistance by full military reoccupation. Both are wrong.

3. Even if both leaders underwent a miraculous conversion, their angry publics wouldn’t trust the other side to deliver. No one explains this better than Sen. George Mitchell, author of the Mitchell Plan for getting both sides back to the table.

“The Israeli concern,” Mitchell said on The Lehrer News Hour, “is that if they do everything that our report asks for” they’ll get “six more suicide bombers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem next week.” In other words, concessions will be seen as weakness.

The Palestinians’ concern is about what they’ll get in return for stopping the violence, which they see as their best leverage. Mitchell says Palestinians fear they’ll get little but “endless more years of discussion (with Israel) with a dramatic increase in (Jewish) settlements (on the West Bank) that makes the ultimate Palestinian state … impossible.” Sharon makes clear he’s interested only in a “long-term interim” settlement and isn’t likely to stop expanding settlements.

Who can break through this mistrust? Mitchell says, “It can only be done by the United States.” But that would require a concerted U.S. effort to squeeze both sides.

It would require President Bush to do more than talk about an Israeli settlement freeze, an Israeli pullback, and a return to the negotiating table; he’d have to press Sharon to do both by a date certain. He’d also have to persuade moderate Arab leaders to strong-arm Arafat into stopping terrorism.

Renewed American engagement might just pull the region back from the brink. Without an action plan (and none was evident in the Bush speech), Powell would be better off staying home lest he become the scapegoat for the administration’s failures.

If George W. is watching opinion polls, he’ll let the region implode. If he’s a leader, he’ll lead.


Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her e-mail address is trubin@phillynews.com.