Like It or Not, Bush Needs Sharon

As if President Bush didn’t have enough troubles already. Now Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose country receives more aid from Washington than any other, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose presence graced the White House more than any other leader during the Clinton years, have collaborated to create a vortex of violence. This unrest risks not only the lives and welfare of their peoples but also the reluctant coalition of Arab supporters that Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have cobbled together to defeat “terror with a global reach.”

U.S. leaders faced with the exasperating difficulties between Israel and the Palestinians often have remarked that Washington cannot want peace more than the primary parties do. Today, the Bush administration would be satisfied with peace and quiet, and it wants it far more than the players do.

The administration had viewed the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a tiresome sideshow to the central, strategic challenges in the Middle East and had seemed content to let others define the parameters of diplomacy. But the events of Sept. 11 pushed Washington to reconsider its laissez-faire attitude toward the continuing violence and the broader question of a restoration of diplomatic dialogue on final-status issues.

The Bush administration is by inclination reluctant to pressure longtime ally Israel to satisfy the needs of a less powerful Palestinian leader who is looked on with ambivalence. Nevertheless, the White House is considering “a framework for a framework” for ending the violence and resuming final-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Both Arafat and Sharon are having trouble adjusting to Washington’s newfound attention. Their contest for U.S. approval is being conducted in the same fashion as their battles in the streets of Ramallah and Bethlehem--a zero-sum struggle in which one’s gain can come only at the other’s expense.

Sharon’s natural preference is to place Arafat in the same dock as Osama bin Laden, and he has been encouraged by Bush’s war against terror to think that the United States will permit him to do so. Palestinians have obliged his preferences by assassinating an old friend and cabinet colleague, creating the conditions for the gravest Israeli assault to date on what remains of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

Sharon’s well-planned, if not well-conceived, outburst just days before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began--when he warned Washington, “Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense”--can be viewed as a warning to the Bush administration of the costs of trying to force Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority under conditions not of Sharon’s choosing. Sharon suspects that Bush, like his father, is maneuvering to replace a Likud-led government with one that is more to the U.S. administration’s liking. As long as Sharon suspects that Bush has it in for him, he is unlikely to make up with Arafat.

Arafat, for his part, seeks to encourage diplomacy that Sharon opposes. The Palestinian leader needs a U.S. ally to pressure Sharon to end the violence on terms that can win popular Palestinian approval. But he has yet to be persuaded of the advantage of a comprehensive confrontation with militant Palestinian opponents of Israel.

Washington alone cannot provide this currency. Bush needs Sharon, who has to be convinced or cajoled into restraining his impulse to see any Israeli concession to his foe as a “victory for terror.” Only then can the prospects for a sustainable end to Palestinian-Israeli violence improve, enabling Bush to wage war on terror without distraction.