Why is US President George W. Bush coming to Israel and Palestine this week?
This visit, his first here as president, was tacked on to a wider sweep of the
Gulf countries and seems to have been born almost as an afterthought following
the Annapolis meeting of late November. Ostensibly, it is intended to give a
push to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process announced at that meeting. That
is certainly one way of seeing the visit.
According to leaks to the Israeli press, Bush’s visit will be exploited by
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to pursue negotiations aimed at providing American
validation for Olmert’s concept of the shape of a future Palestinian state:
concessions to Israel’s security concerns in the air and on the ground,
including in the Jordan Valley and the settlement blocs. In other words
Olmert, according to this take on Bush’s visit, intends to recruit additional
US support so as to strengthen his negotiating position vis-a-vis Palestinian
leader Mahmoud Abbas and, accordingly, enhance his image in the eyes of the
Israeli public. Any connection between this direction of events and the actual
success of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is coincidental: Olmert has to
convince Abbas, not Bush.
Bush and Olmert will also certainly discuss the interface between the
Israel-Arab peace process and the American-Arab-Israeli effort to block Iran’s
nuclear effort in the current post-National Intelligence Estimate phase. Bush
intends to reassure Israel that the US understands its security concerns
regarding Iran, even though his anti-Iran policy has been rendered toothless
by the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Hopefully, Israel and
the US will also discuss Israel’s legitimate security concerns for the
inevitable moment when Washington gets down to serious negotiations with
Tehran.
Then too, one purpose of Bush’s visit is apparently to offer moral support and
photo opportunities to his good friend PM Ehud Olmert, who will on January 30
confront a highly critical Winograd final report on his performance during the
war in Lebanon a year and a half ago. Olmert is currently pulling out all the
media stops and political maneuvers in an effort to maximize public sympathy
in anticipation of the report.
There is one thing Bush is apparently not coming to do. He will not put heavy
pressure on Olmert, publicly or in private, to start carrying out his roadmap
phase I obligations and energetically remove outposts–he has already
relegated the task of monitoring that effort to a committee. “I will talk
about Israeli settlement expansion, about how that is… an impediment to
success”, Bush told one interviewer last week. That’s about as heavy as the
pressure will get. Olmert will survive it. Nor will Bush publicly tell the
Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership that unless and until they find a way to
reform the Fateh party and restore their rule in the Gaza Strip their peace
efforts cannot bear fruit.
In other words, Bush is not coming to make a serious effort to advance a
substantive peace process. His visit, like the Annapolis conference that
preceded it, does not represent a major turning point in his administration’s
approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this regard, his latest
attempt to frame the objective of his final year in office as “defining the
outlines of a Palestinian state” is decidedly less ambitious than actually
solving the conflict. Yet even this new and more modest goal won’t be achieved
if it depends on substantive American input. This visit, like Bush’s
Israeli-Palestinian peace process in general, looks to be all hype and
superficiality. Yes, Bush is a “known quantity” (on whose watch, he argues,
the parties should wish to make a peace deal)–but that’s part of the problem.
Perhaps it’s better that way. Since 9/11, most of what Bush has touched in the
Middle East has gone sour. His democracy reform project enfranchised militant
Islamists. His conquest of Iraq has destabilized that state and enhanced and
empowered Iran’s hegemonic drive there and in the Levant. The US occupation of
Afghanistan is bogged down, and Bush is liable to be known as the president
who “lost” Pakistan. His encouragement 18 months ago for Israel to deal a
lethal blow to Hizballah in Lebanon (where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
announced the “birth pangs of the new Middle East”) pushed the Olmert
government to multiply its mistakes there. His administration’s initial effort
to build up Palestinian security forces in the hope of undoing the damage of
US-sponsored elections helped trigger Hamas’ military takeover in Gaza half a
year ago. Now his drive to denuclearize Iran has fizzled.
No matter. Both Olmert and Abbas are in any case too weak to sustain a
successful peace process.
Reading and watching Bush’s pre-visit interviews to the mainstream Israeli
press is almost a surreal experience. His friendship with and admiration for
Ehud Olmert override any inclination to see Israel’s prime minister as the
vast majority of Israelis see him. His insistence that “freedom”, “liberty”
and “democracy” will win out in the Middle East flies in the face of the
disastrous course of events catalyzed by his administration’s efforts in the
region.
The upcoming Bush visit will be no less surreal.- Published 7/1/2008 (c)
bitterlemons.org
Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet
publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies
at Tel Aviv University and a former special adviser to PM Ehud Barak.
