Israel announced on Monday a limited withdrawal from Palestinian territories, but only after teaching President Bush another lesson in Middle East politics: Friends are as likely as foes to defy him.
In the five days since he involved himself more deeply in the region’s political morass, Bush demanded four times that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pull back his troops. He also repeatedly called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to denounce terrorism and urged other Arab states to help broker a cease-fire.
For five days, they ignored him. So underwhelming was Israel’s statement about withdrawing from two Palestinian towns Tuesday that the White House’s reaction was little more than “It’s a start.”
Bush still is learning about the labyrinthine ways of Middle East politics. But one thing is clear: The president is following a path in the Mideast that is dramatically different from the one charted by his father, former President George H.W. Bush. The son’s course has been influenced heavily by two men neither he nor his father favored: Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton.
President charts own course
Bush’s Middle East policy has been shaped by two experiences. The first was Arafat’s allegiance with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein against the U.S. in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the second was President Clinton’s personal and ultimately unsuccessful 2000 effort to broker peace in the Middle East.
“He is finding his own way on this issue,” said Richard Fairbanks, a former U.S. chief negotiator in the Middle East peace process who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We’re in uncharted waters.”
Father and son–and all modern U.S. presidents for that matter–supported Israel but played peace broker. The difference in the Bushes’ approaches, former diplomats said, has more to do with the depth of the understanding of the region.
“It made a huge difference that the dad had experience,” said Edward Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. “He did not have to be educated on the issue. This president has to be educated on the issue.”
Unlike his father, who feuded with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Bush has demonstrated an unwavering support for the current conservative prime minister, Ariel Sharon, seeing in the Israeli leader a like-minded ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
The elder Bush viewed Shamir as an impediment to peace and blocked $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees intended to help relocate Soviet Jews to Israel, in retaliation for Shamir’s refusal to stop expanding settlements in Palestinian-occupied territories.
Sharon friendship criticized
The son’s relationship with Sharon, however, is so solid that critics claim the president has ignored–or at least been slow to react to–Israeli actions other U.S. presidents would not have tolerated, from targeted killings to the current military incursions into Palestinian areas.
Israel’s supporters explain Bush’s affinity for Sharon by pointing to a 1998 trip Bush made to Israel as he considered a run for the presidency. Sharon, then foreign minister, took Bush on a helicopter tour of the West Bank that Bush would later call “a remarkable experience.”
“On that trip, I think he felt a deep personal connection to Israel,” said one activist with a Washington-based Jewish organization who spoke on the condition he not be named. “And the two men formed a real and lasting connection.”
While Sharon has become one of the most frequent guests at Bush’s White House, with four visits in less than a year, diplomats and academics note that Bush’s view of the Middle East is shaped less by a feeling of kinship with Sharon than animosity toward Arafat.
The Bush family can trace its animus to the gulf war, in which Arafat backed Hussein, encouraging Iraq to fire scud missiles into Israel as Palestinians cheered. Many of Bush’s current advisers served his father then and remember Arafat’s position.
Arafat also has fanned the flames this year. Bush believes Arafat lied about his involvement in a shipment of arms from Iran to the Palestinians earlier this year.
Bush is furious, advisers said, because he believes that while Arafat talks of making peace in English, he instigates war when he is speaking in Arabic to Palestinians. Bush has demanded that Arafat publicly denounce terrorism in a speech given in Arabic. So far, Arafat has refused.
“He never earned my trust,” Bush said of Arafat on Saturday, a tough criticism from a president who gives great weight to his personal relationships with world leaders. “In order to earn my trust, somebody must keep their word,” Bush said. “And Chairman Arafat has not kept his word. He said he would fight off terror. He hasn’t.”
Bush’s emphatic support for Israel has surprised Jewish leaders, who found the son as indifferent as his father to their concerns when he was sworn in 15 months ago. American Jews, who voted overwhelmingly against Bush in the 2000 election, now sing his praises, though Bush aides and supporters dismiss any suggestions that his Middle East policy is being driven by domestic political considerations.
But others, including America’s European allies and Arab nations, have expressed disappointment with the president. Many compare his lack of foreign policy credentials and reluctance to engage in the region to his father’s lifelong interest in world affairs as an ambassador, CIA director and vice president.
Shadow of Clinton looms
Unlike his father, who brought the Israelis and Palestinians together for peace talks in Madrid, the current president is dismissive of such gestures. He points disdainfully at Clinton’s efforts to personally broker peace at Camp David two years ago.
Partially in reaction to Clinton, Bush kept the Middle East at arms’ length so long that some allies accused him of allowing the violence there to escalate.
Bush bristles at such criticisms and at accusations that his detachment has allowed American influence in the region to fade.
“This silly notion about somehow our government hasn’t been involved is just silly,” he said in a recent interview.
