A Risky Embrace of Sharon

Heads of state besieged by domestic critics often find relief in visiting a friendly ally. And so it was Wednesday for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is mired in a political corruption scandal at home. At the White House, Sharon beamed broadly during a joint appearance that earned him President Bush’s lock, stock and barrel endorsement. Sharon left happy, but the cause of peace will suffer.

Bush was right to praise Sharon’s proposed withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank and to back his rejection of the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” that would probably spell the end of the Jewish state. But he went much too far in also assenting to Sharon’s declaration that any disengagement plan would leave a number of large Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This policy is neither “historic” nor “courageous,” as Bush put it, but a guarantee of deeper conflict.

A pullout from Gaza represents a consensus in an Israeli society weary of protecting dangerously isolated outposts. Sharon, long a fervent supporter of settlements, is now willing to anger Israeli hard-liners who cling to a fantasy of retaining all the territory captured after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Sharon faces a possible revolt of small religious parties over the Gaza declaration and would have to count on Labor Party votes to avoid a parliamentary no-confidence vote.

But using the Gaza withdrawal as a cloak for retaining West Bank settlements adds another daunting roadblock to a peace settlement. The “road map” plan for Palestinian statehood that Bush supported rests on hammering out the West Bank issue in final negotiations. Bush’s declaration that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiation will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949” is a radical move for the United States, upending decades of official U.S. policy. If the terms for peace are handed down unilaterally by Israel and backed by the U.S., Palestinians will see little incentive to join any negotiations.

In his press conference Tuesday, Bush conflated 9/11, the Bali nightclub bombings and Palestinian suicide attacks as all “the same ideology of murder,” lumping Hamas with Al Qaeda in a rhetorical stretch with possibly steep consequences. Bush’s blanket endorsement of Sharon is also likely to fuel violence between Israelis and Palestinians -- and against the U.S.

The Palestinian-Israeli impasse is about land and a viable state, despite Palestinians’ despicable use of suicide bombers against innocent civilians. Negotiations, as distant as they may appear, offer the only possible path to peace.