Europe will take half-a-yes for an answer rather than risk further estrangement from the Bush administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Good idea. Damage control in U.S.-European relations is a more immediately realistic goal than is lasting peace in the Holy Land. And it is the only way Europe can hope to have a role in eventual peacemaking.

The profound gap that separates American and European perceptions on the Middle East remains. But senior officials in key European governments swallow hard and bury from view their deep disappointment over the strong support for Israel’s policies voiced by President Bush in his June 24 Middle East speech, which also failed to back Colin Powell’s proposed peace conference.

Instead, the Europeans are praising Bush’s fresh commitments to ending Israeli occupation and to establishing a Palestinian state that will live in peace with Israel. Bush may have shot only 2-for-10 from the rhetorical floor, but the Europeans are treating the two as potential winning baskets.

“It is now clear that all the major actors agree on a two-state solution, based principally on the 1967 borders. This is the basis on which everyone will now proceed,” Dominique de Villepin told me in Paris last week before leaving on his first trip to Washington as France’s new foreign minister. “And we all agree the Palestinians have to undertake major reforms for this to work.”

Germany took “the dynamic elements” of Bush’s speech as a point of departure for its own ambitious new diplomatic action plan, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told me here. He characterized the action plan as an attempt “to build a bridge from the present to full independence for a fully responsible Palestinian state.”

The Fischer plan was informally presented earlier this month to an internal European Union working group and to the “Quartet,” composed of the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations. It provides a detailed timetable to establish an Emergency Palestinian Authority immediately, hold elections next year, declare a provisional state at the end of 2003 and start final status negotiations on borders and other issues in 2004.

But the most interesting gadget it proposes is the appointment by the U.N. Security Council of its own representative to oversee the sweeping remake of the Palestinian government. Fischer described publicly for the first time in our conversation his insistence that “we resolve the biggest shortcoming of the 1993 Oslo accords, which put everything in the hands of the Tunis group,” a reference to the exile branch of the Palestinian movement headed by Yasser Arafat.

Bush has demanded Arafat’s departure as a price for U.S. cooperation in peacemaking. The Europeans say Palestinians must choose their own leader. But an unspoken goal of the Fischer plan is to provide a face-saving way out for Arafat and his cronies.

“President Arafat should appoint a strong and independent prime minister to get this process started,” Fischer said, adding:

“You have to have active international benchmarking of the progress made, or not made, on reform. There must be someone watching and reporting as the Palestinians build new institutions. We need someone able to judge how well they are doing on financial transparency, and able to control the lawmaking process, as was done in East Timor and Kosovo. In the Middle East, the United States is best able to undertake this role.”

And unlike other European proposals, Fischer’s plan does not involve American or other international peacekeepers separating Israelis and Palestinians a mark of realism in my view. “That isn’t practical now, although international monitors might help at some point.”

Europe has come a long way from its previous knee-jerk support for Arafat and other Arab brigands. Caught between a rising tide of anti-Israeli sentiment at home and a U.S. administration that seems to value neither their support nor their advice, European governments are desperately looking for middle ground with Washington on this explosive issue. Providing Arafat with a fig leaf is a welcome change from fighting to save his skin.

Twin fears of even greater explosions of Middle East violence that would inflame Muslim majorities within their borders, and of a breakdown in relations with an increasingly self-absorbed Washington drive European governments to prospect for nuggets, or even flecks, wherever they can be found in U.S. policy.

This change presents the United States with an opportunity to take the lead in shaping a new international consensus on the Middle East. At times desperation produces moderation and an openness to new ideas. The Fischer plan suggests this is such a moment in Europe.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.