Mission impossible: Bush
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
He
came, he left, and then the lights went out.
The
blackout that affected Gaza as a result of a fuel blockade imposed by
Israel in retaliation for rocket attacks by Palestinian militants is
emblematic of the failure of President George W. Bush’s recent
Middle East tour.
It
would have been a miracle of Biblical proportions if it had been any
different. After giving Israel virtual carte blanche against the
Palestinians and Lebanon and doing nothing to promote peace during
most of his two terms, a wounded Bush now pretends to solve the
Middle East problem in record time.
Bush
talked of the necessity of a state for the Palestinians and, in an
apparent effort to seem evenhanded, spoke of the need for Israel to
withdraw from occupied Arab land in order for there to be a viable
Palestinian state. Underneath the rhetoric, however, it was a
different story. When Bush referred to the need to adjust the 1949
Israel-Palestine border to account for “new facts on the ground,”
namely Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, it was clear that it
was back to the old policy, and it would be the Palestinians who
would have make the adjustments and to settle for what Israel would
be willing to give them.
Bush’s
visit to Israel and Palestine did succeed in establishing a series of
dialogues between the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But the chances that these talks
will succeed appear dim. Hamas won the Palestinian election that the
United States worked so hard to bring about, but Israel will not
negotiate with Hamas, and the United States seems to have adopted the
kind of Israeli policy exemplified in the fuel blockade, in the U.S.
case collective punishment of the Palestinians through harsh
sanctions to retaliate for their electoral choice. But excluding the
winner of a democratic election from the peace table and punishing a
population through harsh sanctions for choosing the wrong leaders is
no formula for peace.
Israeli
bombing, targeted assassinations, and fuel blockade of Gaza, which
started before the Bush visit and continued after the president’s
departure, show that the President’s efforts did nothing to relieve
the suffering of the Palestinian people or help moderate Israeli
policies, changes essential to promoting a climate for peace.
But
Bush’s failure in the Middle East was more far ranging. Bush also
failed to persuade Arab allies to adopt his bellicose approach to
Iran. Indeed, while Bush was in the region, Sheik
Mohammed Sabah Salem Sabah,
the foreign
minister of Kuwait, a U.S. ally, arrived in Tehran and said: "My
country knows who is our friend and who is our enemy. Iran is our
friend."
The
United States sorely needs a new Middle East policy. That need
precedes the Bush administration. But Bush’s policy, unlike that of
Clinton and especially Carter, has been an unmitigated disaster.
Unfortunately, the chances that any of the candidates running for the
U.S. presidency will chart a new course for American policy in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are low. Breaking from the United
States’ virtually unconditional support for Israel would require
enormous political courage and capital, more than any of the
frontrunners seem capable of mustering or acquiring.
