The Washington Post argues that the president’s desire to mend relations with Europe conflicts with his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the Bush administration has insisted on reform within the Palestinian Authority, the Europeans want to put more pressure on Israel. The Post paints this as a wide gulf, but the piece fails to mention Tony Blair’s trip to Israel last week, where he too argued that reforms were necessary for “the Palestinian side to become a proper partner for peace with Israel”:
Viability cannot just be about territory. The viability has to be that of a state that is democratic, that is not giving any succor or help to terrorism and that uses the help that it is given from the outside in a proper and transparent way.
Saul Singer, in the Jerusalem Post, writes that this “means that taking democracy seriously is no longer just the quaint province of George W. Bush and Natan Sharansky, but has spread…to Europe. It also means that the conference that Blair is proposing for next month in London might, for a change, advance peace.” The London conference aims to help Palestinians build democratic institutions. At the same time, some 600 Palestinian politicians and intellectuals, in a public statement called “What We Want from the Elected President,” are calling for a “firm commitment to democratic deals” and “the implementation of good governance, mainly the rule of law, transparency and accountability.”
The Post repeats the idea that Bush “keeps giving Israel a pass” and “has devoted little attention to the issue.” But Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn argues, “Under Bush, Sharon has adopted a policy that is the reverse of what he believes in, and has accepted severe limitations on his own freedom of action.”:
Bush and his people have gone beyond declarations and have tried to have an impact on the reality of the Middle East. They have forced the Likud government to support a Palestinian state. They have forced Sharon both to promise to freeze settlements and evacuate outposts, and to agree to close American inspection of construction in the territories. They have forced him to return to the Palestinian Authority tax money that Israel owed the Palestinians, and they have made it clear to the Palestinians that, if they want a state, the price tag is internal reform and a change of regime.
All of which might be described as a synthesis of American and European approaches to the peace process.
— Steven
The Dish 