http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/874557.html
It is difficult to think of an
American president who has caused
more damage to Israeli interests
than the president who is considered
one of the friendliest to Israel
of all time.
No leader has done more
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/874557.html
With friends like these...
By Akiva Eldar
Heavy clouds will float over today's
summit in sunny Sharm el-Sheikh.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza,
Jordan and Egypt will be hovering
above the four leaders participating
in the talks,
as will the zealots of worldwide jihad.
Iran and Hezbollah will be
with them on the other side,
while the extreme right-wing
national religious camp awaits
in the corner.
It is hard to say which
of the leaders' chairs is
shakiest and to guess where
the next evil will come from -
from Syria,
which once again has
remained on the outside;
from Al-Qaida,
which is rearing its head in Iraq
and casting its eye on the horizon;
or from the Egyptian opposition,
which smells weakness in the
leadership and is amassing
power in anticipation of
the inheritance battle.
And who isn't coming to this sad party?
The United States,
the superpower with the lion's
share of responsibility for the
deteriorating situation in the
Middle East.
Who stayed home?
President George W. Bush,
the one whose semi-hallucinatory
dream of democratization has become
a genuine reality of anarchy;
whose adopted vision of two states -
Israel and Palestine -
has become during his tenure a distant dream.
It is difficult to think of an
American president who has caused
more damage to Israeli interests
than the president who is considered
one of the friendliest to Israel
of all time.
No leader has done more than Bush -
by commission as well as omission -
to destroy the Palestinian Authority
under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
It was Bush who imposed the
wretched elections on the
Palestinians,
despite Hamas' refusal to fulfill
the terms of the Oslo II Accords
concerning the participation of
political parties in the democratic
process.
Bush gave his blessing to sacrificing
the road map on the altar of unilateral
disengagement,
an act of charity toward the Palestinian
"refusal front" and a death blow to the
already damaged peace camp.
When Hamas was dragged into the
unity government and the cease-fire
agreement, with great effort,
the Bush administration spared
no effort to defeat the new alliance.
And now,
after cooking up the stew,
Bush is leaving his "friends"
to eat it alone,
while exhorting the use of obsolete
tricks to raise the dead, such as
removing checkpoints in the West Bank
and releasing Palestinian prisoners.
The two-state vision will have
to wait for the next president.
What's the rush?
It's a good thing Bush
wasn't around 30 years ago,
when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat
decided the time had come to end the
war with Israel and regain the Sinai
Peninsula.
Bush would probably have recused himself,
saying something like,
"they can handle their
own negotiations with Egypt.
If the prime minister wants
to negotiate with Egypt,
he doesn't need me to mediate,"
as the leader of the free world
said after his meeting last week
with Ehud Olmert,
with regard to the U.S. stance
on promoting a peace process
with Syria.
There is no way of knowing how
Israel and the entire Middle East
would look today had former U.S.
president Jimmy Carter,
considered problematic for Israel,
sent Sadat off to work things out for
himself with prime minister Menachem
Begin instead of inviting them both
to the peace summit at Camp David.
American intervention was one of
the primary considerations leading
to the Egyptian,
Palestinian and Jordanian
decision to reach a diplomatic
settlement with Israel.
Bashar Assad knocked on Bush's door
and asked him to send a representative
to talks with Israel,
despite America's overt declarations
concerning their special relationship
with Israel and their commitment to
its qualitative superiority.
The U.S. president's shrugging off
of responsibility for the peace process
that began in Madrid in 1991,
under his father's baton,
ruined one of Israel's most
important strategic assets:
the belief,
which bought a grace period from its neighbors,
that the only place that was selling tickets
to Washington and the right to enjoy its
favors was in Jerusalem.
Officials in Olmert's government
are sighing in great relief over
the lowering of the American profile.
To understand the
depth of these leanings,
one must go to Damascus.
Vice President Farouk Shara
interpreted Bush's statements
using the following harsh,
but accurate, words:
"The American president does not
want peace between Israel and Syria."
Israeli intelligence officials are
already warning that the opposite
of peace is imminent war between
Israel and Syria.
This means that Bush is refusing
to help prevent another round of
blood-letting.
What an outcry would erupt here
were he to refuse to aid us by
shipping a cannon or a helicopter
over,
and sending us out alone with
the Arabs to handle the next war.
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