Can Bush Save the Middle East?

Should we be encouraged or discouraged by President Bush's historic visit to the Middle East this week? As I report in a time.com piece today, he's saying many of the right things. The White House is making much of the fact that Bush has developed such a close bond with Israel, that he'll be a president who can push the Israelis into difficult compromises without feeling they are being pressured or betrayed. There's certainly some merit in that argument. It was also heartening to see Bush inspecting a Palestinian honor guard in Ramallah today, after he had neglected active mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for most of his presidency.

But there are a couple reasons to be discouraged, judging from what Bush has been saying.

Bush is focused on his "with us or against us" security strategy, not democracy and justice. He sees the Middle East as a region teeming with Arab and Muslim extremists and America-haters, and views his principle role as defeating them in an epic struggle between good and evil. More than half his trip is devoted to calls on authoritarian Arab leaders--in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt--as part of his drive to build a coalition to isolate Iran. On Sunday in Abu Dhabi, Bush will deliver a speech on political and economic freedom. That will be seen as a contradictory, hypocritical message in the Arab world, given Bush's courting of Arab autocrats for his anti-Iran bloc. Nice words alone won't make America's huge role in the region a force for democracy and peace.

In line with the security emphasis, Bush is casting his effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict largely as an exercise in safeguarding Israel's security rather than addressing the Palestinians' right to political self-determination. He argues that a historic opportunity arose when Israeli leaders themselves recognized that a Palestinian state would enhance Israel's security--as if supporting the Palestinian dream of independence is basically a question of whether Israelis think it is a good idea or not. Bush's hope for achieving a breakthrough peace deal by the end of his term is laudable, but his plan contains the seeds of its own destruction. He indicates that even when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators come up with a detailed peace agreement, the Palestinian state will not actually come into being until violence stops and Palestinians establish a fully democratic government. That may be very well for the sake of Israel's near term security, but it gives anti-Israel Hamas militants an effective veto over a peace agreement that is ultimately necessary to defuse the 60-year-old conflict once and for all.

As for America's role now in breaking the deadlock, Bush plans to give Israelis and Palestinians "confidence and courage," and facilitate their negotiations, but appears to be shying away from using the White House's tremendous leverage to guide much less dictate the terms. Sadly, that may well doom the Annapolis process to failure, and perhaps trigger another cycle of terrible blood letting. The reality is that off and on negotiations between the parties for 15 years have failed to settle their differences. Israelis and Palestinians are currently being led by two of the most politically weak leaders in their history, who will not find it easy to make the huge compromises necessary if left to their own devices. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who helped negotiate the Camp David peace accords and is now an Obama advisor, made this point in a Financial Times Op-Ed this week:

"Bush must accept that an Israeli-Palestinian accord will not come about by itself and that the Israelis and the Palestinians by themselves will not reach it. Neither side is ready to offer a genuine compromise. Each side waits for the other to make basic concessions while professing a devotion to peace. Each side finds refuge in myths that justify intransigence."

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo