Bush Show of Commitment Gives Push to Peace Process

Having launched a new phase in his long-term effort to transform the Middle East, President Bush spent three days in the region and left it a different place.

But will his plan really work when so many other U.S. efforts have collapsed -- leaving presidents burned and Arabs and Israelis stranded in escalating cycles of bloodshed?

The president’s two whirlwind summits, with major Arab players Tuesday and the Israeli and Palestinian Authority prime ministers Wednesday, were the sequel to the war in Iraq that ended the rule of the Middle East’s biggest bully. And with similar blunt determination, Bush has taken on peacemaking.

This week, the president slowly began to unfold the new “road map” for peace, which had sat idle since it was crafted in December. In the wake of the summits, the politically vulnerable new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has formally won regional and international acceptance, strengthening his leverage to take decisive action at home. The Israelis and Palestinians have started talking again, no small achievement against the backdrop of the 32 months of the intifada.

Important players in the Arab world have also promised to work harder to quell the violence that has made the Middle East an unstable and volatile region for more than half a century.

History a Challenge

“There’s a hopeful direction to recent events in the Middle East,” Bush said during his first stop -- Sharm el Sheik, Egypt’s idyllic resort on the Sinai peninsula.

At the same time, however, the forces of regional history and the bitterness and suspicion sparked by the deaths of nearly 800 Israelis and more than 2,300 Palestinians during the intifada present obstinate challenges.

So does dissent from Jewish settlers and Islamic extremists bent on preventing the road map from leading anywhere. So does Yasser Arafat, the authority’s president, now somewhat marginalized but still the most powerful Palestinian leader.

The list -- including the most vexing issues of borders, refugees and the status of Jerusalem -- goes on. Based on the past, people on both sides of the regional divide are still expressing anxiety about what may -- or may not -- lie ahead. Bush faces the danger of being perceived as naive for his bold claim during the two summits that he is a man who does not tolerate failure.

On Jewish settlements, the most sensitive issue to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s power base, Nahum Barnea wrote in the mass-circulation Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot: “Bush does not understand what the debate is about. In his eyes, the settlements are simply a dumb investment in hopeless stock. Likewise for the Palestinians: Bush has no ear for their political nuances, for the constraints, for their difficulty in releasing themselves from the tradition of terror.”

Arabs, in turn, remain skeptical of America’s ability to really move Israel. “Bitter experiences in the past call for caution. We are much more pessimistic than optimistic,” Fahd Fanek wrote in Jordan’s influential Al Rai newspaper. “Sharon’s acceptance of the road map under pressure may be just mere tactics, after which he will jump at the first opportunity to back down and render the plan a failure.”

As they ended their tour of Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, U.S. officials acknowledged they must ensure that both Palestinians and Israelis follow up on their promises within days. “Frankly, we have asked both sides to start doing things right away,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters after Wednesday’s summit near the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba.

Washington must also move quickly to put in place a new coordinating committee, led by diplomat John Wolf, to help translate commitments into action before spoilers derail the process.

“We’re going to have a strong team here, and we’ll be on the ground and operating in the very near future,” Powell said.

But that could take several days or more -- plenty of time for violence to begin unraveling what Bush achieved.

A rule of thumb in the Middle East is that diplomacy is more often than not overtaken by destructive events. As Sharon and Abbas met in Aqaba, Israeli officials said they faced 63 “alerts” of Palestinian attacks, six of them “hot,” meaning they were in the operational stage.

The peace plan’s deadline, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2005 as part of a final settlement with Israel, is already tight. And the parties have already lost six months from the time the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia designed the plan.

Personal Touch

Yet all the parties claim to have come away energized -- and a bit more hopeful -- after Bush’s intervention. In this initial stage, serving as a catalyst may prove to be the president’s most tangible achievement.

“We were not sure going in if we’d get the commitment needed, but we came away very reassured of the U.S. and the president’s commitment,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said in an interview.

“We were struck and very impressed,” he said. “That’s what stands out from the last two days. The president spoke with a sense of mission and determination, and he did not mince any words.”

Although Bush has delegated the task of following up to Powell and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, with Wolf coordinating on the ground, the president is likely to find that the revived peace process increasingly demands his own attention too.

It’s an unusual position for him to be in.

During his first 17 months in office, Bush conspicuously avoided the Middle East quagmire. He appeared to have limited personal interest. He had a particular distaste for Arafat, who advisors told him was unable or unwilling to deliver a final peace. Besides, it was Bill Clinton’s issue, and Bush had an aversion to picking up almost any foreign policy initiative left behind by his Democratic predecessor.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon eventually pulled him into the region, first forcing him to confront Islamic extremism, at the time symbolized by Afghanistan. Urged on by administration hawks, he then turned to Iraq.

But like other presidents dating back to Dwight Eisenhower, Bush has repeatedly found other issues leading him back to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now Bush has placed much of his own legacy on the line with an initiative to achieve that elusive peace.

The irony of the president’s transformation was underscored in Sharm el Sheik, where his motorcade passed the “peace mural” put up to mark Clinton’s attempt to mediate during an earlier summit in the Egyptian city.

But the Bush team has clearly learned from Clinton’s experience. The administration, deliberately ignoring and isolating Arafat, compelled the Palestinians to select a new leader and begin reforms to put people in place who would not balk at taking controversial steps.

Bush also met with Arab leaders, a step that Clinton, who became engrossed in nitty-gritty details of the peace process, failed to do -- at enormous cost. Realizing that Arafat was not biting as the end of the talks neared, Clinton called on the same countries whose leaders Bush met with Tuesday. By then, however, it was too late.

Yet for all the skepticism and cynicism in the Middle East, even tough critics say Bush may stand a better chance -- a bit better, anyway -- of getting the process going.

“We realize that the American president is in need of burnishing his image as a man of peace, especially after gaining the reputation as a man of war as a result of invading and occupying Iraq without international support or legitimacy,” Hasan Kashef wrote in Al Hayat al Jadida, a semiofficial West Bank publication. “That said, no one expects President Bush, who has defeated all of his opponents, to fail.”