Bush, Sharon Prepare to Display Their Skills as Statesmen

Back in the days when he proudly bore the nickname “Bulldozer,” Ariel Sharon seemed to love to provoke U.S. presidents.

As an army general sometimes accused of brutality, as the defense minister who engineered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as the housing minister who planted Jewish settlements across the West Bank, Sharon infuriated presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton.

But when Sharon visits the White House this week for his first official meeting with President Bush as Israel’s prime minister, he is expected to be on his best behavior. He hopes to convince Bush that he is today a more mellow statesman whose carrot-and-stick approach to the Palestinians is the most realistic way of reviving the moribund Middle East peace process.

Each man clearly hopes to take the measure of the other--and to try to dispel fears that neither is quite up to the task of bringing an end to half a century of Arab-Israeli conflict.

Sharon wants to show Bush--and the U.S. public--that he is a pragmatic politician who is determined to do what is necessary to succeed in a job he had sought for almost 30 years.

Bush, derided by opponents as an intellectual lightweight inexperienced in the subtleties of foreign policy, hopes to demonstrate his grasp of complex issues to a demanding audience in Israel--and to Israel’s friends in the United States.

Both Agree on Fundamental Issues

At first glance, Sharon and Bush appear to have plenty of common ground.

Both have signaled dramatic breaks with the policies of their predecessors. They share the view that the Clinton administration was too deeply involved in negotiations with the Palestinians when Ehud Barak was Israeli prime minister, and they agree that the United States should encourage the parties to solve their problems on their own.

They also agree that peace talks cannot resume until Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat takes steps to reduce the violence that has raged in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the end of September--after Sharon staged a high-profile visit to a disputed Jerusalem holy site.

On a personal level, the septuagenarian Israeli and the baby boomer American have little in common. But U.S. and Israeli experts think they are far more likely to hit it off, despite the generational differences, than did Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the last Israeli leader from Sharon’s right-wing Likud Party.

Clinton and Netanyahu had similar personalities--ambitious, often reckless and supremely confident of their ability to talk their way out of almost any difficulty. The two men loathed each other, insiders say.

“There is great symbolism to this visit in view of the rocky record we’ve had with this gent in the past,” said Geoffrey Kemp, White House Middle East expert in the Reagan administration. “But he has picked a Cabinet that we can deal with. Sharon can be a charming guy when he wants to.”

But Sharon knows that no matter how friendly his reception this week, relations could quickly sour if the administration decides the measures he takes to quell the violence in the region are too harsh or too risky.

Israelis handed Sharon a mandate to crack down hard on the Palestinian uprising when they elected him by a landslide over Barak in February. But if tough measures aren’t accompanied by a renewal of talks, the moves could jeopardize the U.S. administration’s efforts to rebuild a coalition of moderate Arab regimes opposed to Iraq and might increase the risk of dragging the region into war.

In the less than two weeks that Sharon’s government has functioned, there already has been friction with the administration over policies toward the Palestinians. Sharon has flatly refused a U.S. plea that he release sales taxes that Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians warn that their bureaucracy is in danger of collapsing without an infusion of funds.

The administration also has protested the Israeli army’s cutoff of Ramallah, the cultural and political center of the West Bank. That protest was followed by Israel’s easing of the blockade and by an announcement, after the first meeting of Sharon’s security Cabinet on Wednesday night in Jerusalem, that Israel will ease other restrictions on Palestinians.

Bush Favors Broader Middle East Policy

Instead of the Clinton administration’s emphasis on Israeli negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians, Bush has said he will pursue a much broader Middle East policy intended to contain Iraq and refurbish Washington’s alliances with Arab governments. The Arab-Israeli peace process is seen as only one part of that regional policy.

The new U.S. focus fits nicely with Sharon’s objective of consolidating his domestic support, reassuring Israel’s traditional American friends and establishing a working relationship with Washington that doesn’t pressure him to do anything he doesn’t want to do.

Nevertheless, top administration officials say they don’t want to see the Israeli-Palestinian peace process put on ice forever.

“We have to give Mr. Sharon time to put his government together . . . and give him time to formulate a negotiating position which he feels he can support and sell to the Israeli people,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has told Congress.

He said the process that led to last summer’s failed Camp David peace talks has “come to a standstill.” But Powell quickly added that the Camp David summit, followed by negotiations in January at the Egyptian resort of Taba, nearly succeeded.

“It came very close,” Powell said. “I’d like to say it was about there. But it is not there any longer.”

The Palestinians say they want to resume peace talks where the Taba negotiations left off. Israel and the United States consider that idea to be a nonstarter.

But Sharon’s notion that talks, once they resume, will be about long-term interim arrangements rather than a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been greeted with some skepticism in Washington. The Palestinians say they won’t resume negotiations on Sharon’s terms.

“Barak wanted an end of conflict and his place in history,” said Shlomo Avineri, professor of political science at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “Sharon’s message is: ‘We can’t make peace with the Palestinians. Let’s just have conflict management.’ I’m not sure that he and Bush will see eye to eye when it comes down to the nitty-gritty.”

The administration’s plan to adopt a more regional strategy also could produce U.S.-Israeli friction down the road. Middle East experts in the U.S. say that if Bush follows through on his announced intentions, he will have to give a far higher priority to Washington’s relations with the Arab world, especially Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, than Clinton’s Israel-centered policy did.

“The United States needs to treat Egypt and Jordan as the keys to agreement,” said Stephen P. Cohen, a scholar at the Israel Policy Forum, a Washington think tank. Cohen said Clinton tried to work out a common strategy with the Israelis and then tried to sell it to the Palestinians. That didn’t work.

Cohen said an Egypt-Jordan strategy would focus on working out a deal that the Arabs could accept and then trying to sell it to Israel. Although Sharon now says he favors Bush’s regional approach, he may grow nostalgic for Washington’s emphasis on Israel.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II are scheduled to visit the White House next month.

Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington who is a close advisor to the prime minister on relations with the United States, said he thinks Sharon and Bush will find more to bind them together than to push them apart.

“It has become evident to everyone that the possibility of reaching a permanent, final peace treaty with the Palestinians is not there,” Shoval said. “This also seems to be the attitude of the administration, which says, ‘Stability now, peace whenever possible.’ ”

Sharon, Shoval said, also will spend time on Capitol Hill during his brief visit, working to repair relations with lawmakers whom Shoval said Barak neglected because of his close ties to Clinton. And he will be addressing the policy conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

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Curtius reported from Jerusalem and Kempster from Washington.