Beyond the Illusions

One way to read President Bush's speech yesterday on the Israeli-Palestinian situation is to compare it to his historic address from the Rose Garden on June 24, 2002. In both cases, Mr. Bush outlined his policy calling for a Palestinian Arab state alongside, and at peace with, Israel. This time around, however, Mr. Bush softened the conditions attached to the goal of Palestinian statehood.

It was a mistake, though it has to be said that Mr. Bush is entitled to his share of them. Back in 2002, the president said that American support would require the Palestinians to "embrace democracy, confront corruption, and firmly reject terror." Quoth he: "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

The 2002 speech, the first in which an American president publicly endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state, came after a year in which the administration had made it clear that it would not treat with the Palestinian terror master and kleptocrat, Yasser Arafat. It also came less than a year after the attacks of September 11, 2001. As Dr. Johnson might have said, 9/11 concentrated the American mind on the threats emanating from Islamic terrorism.

Most welcome was Mr. Bush's pointed remark that Israel's survival as a "Jewish state" is a basic condition; this amounts to a rejection of the Palestinian "right of return." Mr. Bush is evidently gambling against long odds that the deteriorating circumstances among the Palestinians highlighted by the Hamas take-over in Gaza, requires a lowering of the bar. The Palestinian leader on whom Mr. Bush is placing his bet, Mahmoud Abbas, has been either unwilling or unable to meet the standards set in the 2002 speech. With the Iranian-backed Hamas looming in the wings, Mr. Bush seems focused on the mere survival of Mr. Abbas and his political allies.

The idea is that if Mr. Abbas is able to rein in the militias, centralize the use of force, and revive the economy in the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs will see the benefits of cooperation with the west and compromise with the Jewish state. But without reforms the Palestinian Arabs have been unwilling to make, much of the $190 million Mr. Bush pledged yesterday in the way of aid will disappear.

Weapons will be turned against Israelis. The call for an international conference this fall will generate pressures that will, as always, fall disproportionately on Israel. It is a measure of the administration's view that Secretary Rice plans to lead the conference, insisting on limiting the role of Prime Minister Blair, the former British labor premier who is the diplomatic quartet's newly appointed special envoy. But we have the sense of Ms. Rice that she has yet to achieve the wisdom on this beat that, say, Secretary Shultz earned the hard way.

Mr. Bush's call for Arab states to end "the fiction that Israel does not exist," specifically by "stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media, and sending cabinet-level visitors to Israel" ahead of the conference is likely to fall on deaf ears. The argument is that such a step, implicit in the Saudi peace plan, would soften internal Israeli opposition to territorial concessions. But it is a stretch to imagine that the Saudis will agree to extend diplomatic recognition before there is a solution to the Palestinian matter that appeases some sectors of Arab opinion. In any event, two of the major Arab states at issue, Egypt and Jordan, already have diplomatic ties with Israel.

The demands for Israel to remove unauthorized settlement outposts and to cease settlement expansion are completely inappropriate in the current context. Mr. Bush also called on Israelis to "reduce their footprint without reducing their security" in the West Bank. We suppose the president is referring to checkpoints and other steps put in place to render more difficult the work of would-be terrorists. The request of Israel is essentially to square the circle. This is the same problem with the request that Israel open the Karni crossing to allow for traffic to flow from Gaza to the West Bank.

Most disappointing was Mr. Bush's description of the "stark" alternatives facing the Palestinians. The Hamas way is depicted as "murderers in black masks and summary executions," and is contrasted against the vision of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad for "a peaceful state called Palestine …" In reality, many Fatah members are themselves "murderers in black masks" who engage in "summary executions."

It's hard to imagine that Mr. Bush himself has many illusions about all this. Prime Minister Olmert and Mr. Abbas each has his own needs for the illusion of at least the possibility of a "breakthrough" of some kind. Nothing is going to disguise the fact, however, that Israel is not the central issue in a Middle East that is the cockpit whence a war is being waged not only against the Jewish state but against the entire west. So the real premium will be in our side advancing in the bigger war, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and, increasingly, in Iran.