Bush the Divider

Although the Bush administration is now talking about talking to Iran, and although Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had a quick talk with her Syrian counterpart Walid Al-Moallem, the US hasn't yet totally backtracked on its policy of trying to freeze relations and communication with Iran and Syria. For one thing, the US is still preventing Israel from entering peace negotiations with Syria.

President Bashar Al-Assad has made repeated overtures to start peace negotiations with Israel since the beginning of the year, all of which have been rebuffed or ignored. Of all the seemingly intractable problems in the Middle East, the dispute between Israel and Syria is probably among the easier to solve. The general outline for an agreement is clear: Israel must give up occupied Syrian land in the Golan Heights while Syria must recognize Israel and stop supporting anti-Israeli militant groups Hizballah and Hamas. Israel's security establishment is divided about how sincere Assad is in making these offers, but two-thirds of the Israeli public is willing to give peace negotiations a chance.

So what's stopping Israel? George W. Bush. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has said as much himself: "We must not respond to the Syrian initiative while President Bush, Israel's most important ally, opposes all negotiations with Syria." Now that's in part a easy excuse for Olmert, who with rock-bottom popularity ratings may be too nervous to start negotiations on his own. But Israelis are starting to become restless with Washington's obstructionism. On Sunday, an opinion in the conservative Jerusalem Post thanked the President for loving Israel well but not wisely. "If Israel ends up going to war with Syria, I'm going to be very, very mad at George W. Bush," wrote columnist Larry Derfner. His "fighting spirit, his identification with Israel as the beleaguered, hated righteous warrior -- his thoroughly good intentions for this country -- have done Israel a world of harm."

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem