Questions of Sincerity Over Bush’s Vision for the Mideast

The debate about President Bush’s speech last week on the Middle East boils down to a dispute over his sincerity. At home and abroad, his supporters argue that his call for fundamental political and social reform offers Palestinians a defined path not only to statehood but more prosperous, stable and orderly lives. His critics believe Bush has established a set of conditions he knows the Palestinians can’t meet as a pretext to indefinitely freeze negotiations toward independence. From that angle, the real goal isn’t reform, but delay.

Adding to the suspicion is Bush’s long-standing skepticism of nation-building. Bush’s plan for the Palestinians will require an international reconstruction effort as ambitious as the Clinton administration interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo or Haiti that most conservatives, and Bush himself in the 2000 campaign, disdained. Candidate Bush portrayed Clinton’s forays into nation-building as a luxury that distracted from the real work of defending American interests abroad. It’s a bit jarring to hear Bush now say that the best way to advance the American interest in a peaceful Middle East is to build a new Palestinian state.

Bush advisors note that his criticism as a candidate focused on the use of American military forces to provide security for nation-building, an idea not yet on the table in the Middle East. But Clintonites, like Eric Schwartz, a former senior White House advisor for peacekeeping, charge that the Bush team has neglected the civil side of nation-building, weakening the American capacity to help other nations build government institutions. “They are not as well organized, and not as well equipped and not as inclined to manage these sorts of issues,” charges Schwartz, now a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an organization that provides financial support to nonprofit groups to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.

The only way for Bush to quell these doubts is to produce a vigorous plan to implement the sweeping changes that he proposed in his speech. No one disputes the need. Every study of the Palestinian Authority has portrayed an administrative and legal chaos. Overlap, confusion and corruption in the delivery of basic services are widespread; clear lines of authority are rare. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health-care plan looks simple by comparison.

The result, which may be the point, is an absence of effective legislative or judicial checks on the authority of the executive branch headed by Yasser Arafat. Only in May, with international pressure growing, did Arafat finally sign the Basic Law (in effect, the Palestinian constitution) the Legislature approved in 1997 to demarcate, at least on paper, the separation of powers between the three branches of government. But since Arafat at times has simply refused to enforce court decisions he opposes, and has consistently blocked the Legislature’s efforts to exercise its ostensible oversight and budgetary authority, it’s not clear how much that paper is worth.

To his credit, Bush last week addressed all of these problems. He pledged American and international assistance to help the Palestinians write a new constitution, establish a truly independent judiciary, strengthen the Legislature, consolidate and restructure its security forces, reform its finances and hold fair elections.

In other cases that required such a fundamental civic overhaul, such as Kosovo or East Timor, the U.N. has temporarily run the country as a trusteeship while trying to strengthen the local capacity and expertise, notes Schwartz. Though probably the best answer, that’s not politically feasible for the Palestinians, who aren’t going to surrender the limited sovereignty they already exercise. Which means that any progress toward the goals Bush established will demand strenuous intervention, led by the United States.

The problem won’t be devising plans to create better Palestinian institutions; it will be creating a political environment that makes those plans viable. Already there is no shortage of ideas. CIA Director George J. Tenet has been meeting with Palestinian officials to consolidate their security forces; World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn recently presented National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with proposals for cleaning up a Palestinian governmental finance system that might make even Arthur Andersen blush. And the White House recognizes the U.S. will have to pony up more dollars to implement Bush’s vision.

More Palestinian terrorism, though, would quickly test Bush’s commitment. If he continues aid after more attacks, he’ll face charges of rewarding violence; if he curtails it, he’ll risk derailing the reform process he’s presented as the long-term solution to violence. For now, Bush officials say the administration would stay the course so long as a reforming Palestinian government makes a good-faith effort to stop the terrorists. But that’s much easier said before the bodies are bleeding on CNN.

The political challenges in Palestinian society are equally complex. While polls show a hunger for reform, the external pressure may make Palestinians rally around Arafat--raising the issue of whether a reform effort could coexist with a democratically reelected Arafat. It’s also unclear how any of these structural changes, much less fair elections, can occur while the Israelis have reoccupied Palestinian territories so comprehensively. Tanks aren’t the best backdrop for campaign rallies.

And even if reduced violence eventually allows Israel to pull back (as Bush urged), the more fundamental question is whether any moderate Palestinian alternative can emerge without concurrent progress toward independence and peace. “The conditions that bring moderates and reformers to the fore are conditions where those people’s vision [of peace] have credibility to the Palestinian people,” says Amy Hawthorne, an expert on Arab governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The essential contribution of Bush’s speech was to declare Palestinian reform a precondition for negotiation and independence. He’s right to conclude that negotiations without reform are a dead-end. But he may find it just as difficult to advance reform without negotiations.

*

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: www.latimes.com/

brownstein.