Israel, the U.S. and the Age of Terror
By ROGER COHEN
Published: November 7, 2004
THROUGHOUT its first term, the Bush administration held that the road to Jerusalem passed through Baghdad. Even before the 9/11 attacks, but especially after them, it shunned the very term "peace process," which it saw as a synonym for sterile Middle Eastern chatter. The new approach was firm: only a regional democratic transformation, beginning in Iraq and extending to a corrupt and terror-tainted Palestinian Authority, could unlock the door to an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
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But with the symbol of that corruption, Yasir Arafat, comatose in a Paris hospital, Iraq mired in conflict, Europe pressing for a signal of a new George W. Bush, and images of violence in Gaza feeding anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, the question was asked last week: Has the time not come for the administration to adjust its approach to Israel and put peace in Jerusalem first?
Two new seasons seem to have come at once - the post-Arafat era and the second Bush term. Their promise for the Middle East, and beyond it the war on terror, may prove fleeting if different times do not also bring different policies.
After all, in historical terms, Mr. Bush's largely uncritical embrace of Ariel Sharon's Israel is an anomaly. The emergence of the Jewish state in 1948 was greeted with ambivalence in Washington; Secretary of State George Marshall argued against the immediate recognition that President Harry Truman gave.
Soviet support of radical Arab regimes during the cold war slowly dissolved American uncertainty, replacing it with active backing of Israel. But aid was not unconditional. After the 1967 and 1973 wars, the United States became the most credible broker of "land for peace," a position that, during the presidencies of Mr. Bush's father and Bill Clinton, involved a measure of prodding of both sides. Perhaps it is inevitable that the pendulum will swing back toward such a stance.
But the arguments against a change of policy remain vigorous; they begin with the conviction that the current approach is working and that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed the world, giving the United States and Israel a shared vulnerability to terrorism, and what they have called a shared stake in smashing it.
Three years later, Prime Minister Sharon, strengthened by robust backing from Mr. Bush, has suppressed Palestinian violence, decimated the leadership of the militant group Hamas, and demonstrated that the military road leads nowhere for the Palestinians. Even before Mr. Arafat collapsed, his rule had done so, prompting a growing internal debate on Palestinian governance and leadership.
Conservative supporters of Mr. Bush scoff at the suggestion, embraced in every European and Arab capital, that the American tilt toward Israel and the failure to move toward a settlement are the most important single factors in feeding the anti-American radicalism that produces terrorism.
"It's fantasy land to think some change in Middle East policy would have an effect on the terrorists," said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "For years, you had Bill Clinton focusing like a laser on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, and did that discourage bin Laden from plotting to destroy us? These people want Israel eradicated, so there's no way you can accommodate them."
In this view, Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon may have shunned a process, but they have achieved a degree of peace, or at least relative peacefulness. By beginning to focus on changing autocratic Arab societies, the argument goes, Mr. Bush has also undermined those societies' debilitating tendency to divert attention from internal problems through hate-Israel campaigns.
Whatever the adjustments Mr. Bush makes to his second-term cabinet, these arguments will continue to carry weight, not least because they have also proved resonant in domestic political terms.
Mr. Bush may feel a personal inclination to respond to Prime Minister Tony Blair's insistence, in a congratulatory message after the election, that Israeli-Palestinian peace is "the single most pressing challenge in our world today." But Mr. Bush's own political landscape - complete with Israel-loving Christian evangelicals and Jews who voted for him in Florida - is very different from that of his British ally.
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