Bush Likely to Start Term With Mideast in Crisis

In an unwelcome inheritance, President-elect George W. Bush will face a Middle East in crisis when he takes office, giving him little time to hone his own approach to half a century of conflict.

It is looking increasingly likely that President Clinton will fall short of his objective of brokering an Israel-Palestinian peace settlement during his final three weeks in office. That will leave Bush with a violence-plagued region fraught with political instability--just the sort of crisis Washington can’t ignore for long.

So far, Bush has given no hint of how he will deal with the volatile region.

The president-elect’s most extensive comments on foreign policy since the election came as he chose Colin L. Powell as his secretary of state two weeks ago. When listing the six principles that he said would guide his diplomacy, Bush put the Middle East peace process--”based on a secure Israel”--squarely in the middle.

Powell said the new administration will remain “very much engaged” in the Middle East peace process and promised that the United States will be a “friend to all sides.”

Powell also said the incoming administration will closely monitor Clinton’s last-ditch effort to broker a comprehensive peace agreement resolving such emotional disputes as borders, Jewish settlements, security, refugees and the future of disputed Jerusalem.

Clearly, Bush’s approach to the region will be affected by the outcome of Clinton’s effort. From Bush’s standpoint, however, there is peril whether Clinton pulls it off or not.

If, as now seems likely, no peace agreement is reached before Clinton leaves office, Bush will almost certainly face escalating violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Almost as soon as he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, Bush will have to determine if his government will intervene to try to restart peace talks, or at least to contain the violence. Either way, he will have to act even though he may not be ready.

But even if Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat sign an agreement, Bush will still face difficult decisions. If Bush throws his support behind the pact, he will automatically endorse Barak’s campaign for reelection in balloting scheduled just two weeks after Inauguration Day. Barak has made it clear that his peace policy will be the central issue of his uphill contest against Ariel Sharon, the hawkish opposition candidate who has said he will tear up any treaty Barak negotiates.

With Sharon holding a substantial lead in polls, Bush would risk getting off on the wrong foot with Sharon if he supported an agreement. But it would be difficult for him to oppose one.

As president, Bush’s father had an unusually tense relationship with Israel, especially when compared with Clinton’s efforts to be a pal to two of the three Israeli prime ministers in office during his tenure.

But Middle East experts say it would be a mistake to assume that the incoming Bush administration will pursue the same policy in the Middle East as the previous Bush administration. Nevertheless, some of Israel’s strongest supporters are nervous.

“One can have the concern without having to blame the son for the sins of the father,” said one pro-Israel academic who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. “At the moment, Bush is heading for the first all non-Jewish Cabinet since Eisenhower. This has not gone without notice, although most of Israel’s best friends in government are not Jewish.”

But this academic added quickly that Bush “said all the right things” during the election campaign about maintaining U.S. support for Israel.

Other experts say the elder Bush is getting a bad rap from some supporters of Israel. After all, then-President Bush helped bring about the Madrid conference of October 1991, which launched the current round of negotiations.

Although the final results didn’t come until Clinton had taken office, the Madrid process led directly to a formal peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, an interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and the most extensive face-to-face negotiations between Israel and Syria.

Much of the friction between the first Bush administration and Israel can be attributed to Yitzhak Shamir, the often prickly Israeli prime minister whose term overlapped most of Bush’s. Relations between Bush and Israel improved markedly when Yitzhak Rabin replaced Shamir as prime minister.

Clinton’s reputation for close relations with Israel reflects his friendship with Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish right-winger in 1995, and with Barak. The president’s relationship with right-wing Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office after Rabin and preceded Barak, was as tense as Bush’s had been with Shamir.

Most regional experts predict that the younger Bush will have a difficult relationship with Sharon if the Likud Party chief wins the February election.

Like his father, the president-elect has said he hopes to maintain good relations with the Arab side of the Middle East equation.

“No administration will challenge the U.S. relationship with Israel, but Bush may show some additional sensitivity to the Arabs,” said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor who specializes in Middle East issues.

Telhami said it is likely that Bush’s Middle East policy will be driven more by events in the region than by the attitudes he brings into the Oval Office, even if he would prefer to step back from Clinton’s intensive diplomacy.

“Eventually, every administration reacts to crisis, and in the Middle East you can always count on crisis,” he said.

At a news conference Thursday, Clinton suggested that if he fails to broker an agreement, Bush will have little chance of doing so.

“I think that if it can be resolved at all, it can be resolved in the next three weeks,” Clinton said.

Telhami said Clinton may prove to be correct on that, at least in the short term.

If there is no deal before Clinton leaves office, Telhami said, “it will most likely mean that Barak will not get reelected. It is not impossible to get an agreement with Sharon, but it will take a long time and it will not happen before there is more violence.”