Condoleezza Baker

The reasoning behind Secretary Rice's decision to skip Israel and the Palestinian Arab Authority during a trip abroad next week was said by the State Department spokesman Sean McCormack to be connected to the parlous political situation in the Jewish state. "The political situation in Israel has become a bit more complex in the near term," Mr. McCormack told reporters by way of explanation.

These columns would be the last to dismiss worries about Israel's political situation, although it remains far more stable, resilient, and capable of decision-making than the two-headed "government" responsible for Palestinian Arab affairs. Prime Minister Olmert faces multiple woes, and the betting is that the coup de grace on his premiership will be delivered, between now and September, by when the Winograd Commission will publish its complete report on Mr. Olmert's failures of leadership during the war launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

At the same time, Mr. Olmert's coalition has, for the time being, the support of a large enough majority of the Knesset that, on paper at least, it is the most stable coalition in Israel's history. Yet Mr. Olmert could well face a revolt from within his own party, Kadima. Hints of that surfaced when the party 's number two, Foreign Minister Livni, publicly called on Mr. Olmert to resign. The coalition's second largest constituent, Labor, may bolt as soon as it chooses a new leader to replace the stumbling Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, later this month.

If Ms. Rice's decision looks like a "punishment" meted out to Mr. Olmert for his political weakness, it is also a rebuke for Jerusalem's lack of enthusiasm for the latest American plan, the "Acceleration Benchmarks for Agreement on Movement and Access as well as on the Gaza Security Situation." In the face of continued anomy in the Gaza District, the AMA seeks to open transport and the flow of goods into and out of Israel.

This would be logical were there guarantees that the expedited vegetable trucks would not be delivering explosives. Instead, the AMA states that its goal is for "Israel [to] allow the passage of convoys between Gaza and the West Bank to facilitate the movement of goods and persons, with appropriate security arrangements" and "To reach mutual agreement on a plan for facilitating movement of people and goods within the West Bank, and to minimize disruption to Palestinian lives by reducing the number of obstacles to movement to the maximum extent possible."

In theory, the "appropriate security arrangements" will rest on establishing "normal and continued coordination between the IDF, Presidential Guard, and other internal security organizations … " In fact, the failure to produce such arrangement has bedeviled a decade and a half of diplomacy with the Palestinians. The whole AMA in other words, is but another pie-in-the-sky scheme that is based on such a failure to appreciate the nature of the war being levied against Israel that it seems almost disingenuous.

Ms. Rice's cancellation of the prescheduled visit smacks of the Secretary of State Baker's notorious Congressional testimony back in 1990 when he gave out the White House's telephone number and, in a stern rebuke to Israel's leaders, said: ‘‘When you're serious about peace, call us." Mr Baker's underlying thesis was that it was principally Israeli intransigence on the issues of the day which was preventing diplomatic progress towards a resolution of Israeli-Arab conflicts.

It happens that the cancellation of Ms. Rice's visit was announced as the World Bank Technical Team released a report "Movement and Access Restrictions in The West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy." The report maunders on about how limited is freedom of movement and how the Oslo Accords — of all things — were based on the principle that normal Palestinian economic and social life would be unimpeded by restrictions. Only in the perfervid imagination of a multi-lateral institution could one people make war against another and expect unimpeded restrictions through their territory.

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So what to make of the State Department's renewed impatience? Israel's defensive tactics in the face of continued terrorism can hardly be the source of any deadlock, and it's a shame Ms. Rice has gotten involved in all this. But we're not losing sleep over the fact that the secretary is skipping Israel. These columns have long been against this, or any, American administration playing what is often called an "honest broker" role in the search for a Middle East peace. What we need to be doing in respect to the war between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish state is not brokering, but backing Israel. And more broadly, we need to avoid dwelling on modalities for peace before we have found a victory in the war.