Peace Offensive
Bush re-election, Arafat demise lay groundwork for new U.S. peace push.
RON KAMPEAS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Washington
t his first post-election news con-
ference, President Bush empha-
sized three times: Palestinian
statehood.
"I think it's very important for our
friends the Israelis to have a peaceful
Palestinian state living on their border,"
Bush said at his Nov. 4 press conference.
If anyone had any doubts, he noted that
he has espoused Palestinian statehood
for two years, since his June 24, 2002,
speech outlining the conditions for
Middle East peace.
"I meant it when I said it, and I mean
it now," Bush said Nov. 4.
Also significant was his agreement
with British Prime Minister Tony Blair
that Israeli-Palestinian peace was a cen-
terpiece of stability in the region. That
contradicts a central doctrine of the
president's first term: that the road to
Jerusalem leads through Baghdad — in
other words, that creating a stable demo-
cratic regime in Iraq would have a
spillover effect on the Palestinians.
With a major battle underway to
retake the insurgent-filled Iraqi city of
Fallujah, President Bush will be seeking
all the support he can get from
Europeans and from neighboring Arab
states.
A
"Our numbers are down significantly
in that part of the world," said James
Zogby, president of the Arab American
Institute, which tracks U.S. approval rat-
ings in the Arab world. "I fear that
absent a dramatic change in how we
approach the region, the problems will
remain.''
Blair wants a summit on the issue as
soon as possible, and White House
spokesmen have su ested that it will be
high on the agenda when he and Bush
meet in Washington this week.
Still, Bush is by no means the second-
term president unleashed that some
Jewish Democratic strategists tried to
raise as a bogeyman in the final days of
the election campaign. Bush's commit-
ment to Israel's security and his friend-
ship with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is
unwavering, those close to him say.
Central to it is his conviction that he
cannot ask of other nations what he
does not ask of the United States:
As long as the United States does not
truck with terrorists, nor should Israel, is
his credo.
However, that equation could change,
U.S, officials make clear, with
Palestinian Authority President Yasser
Arafat's departure from power. Asked
Nov. 5 how Arafat's declining health
impacted U.S. peacemaking, State
Department spokesman Richard
Boucher dangled the prospect of a
Palestinian state.
"The president is committed to his
two-state vision that he enunciated two
years ago, trying to achieve a democratic
and peaceful Palestinian state that can live
side by side with Israel," Boucher said.
Seize The Moment
The timing — a president released from
campaign concerns and a Palestinian
policy released from a tyrant — is too
good to pass up, suggested Stephen P.
Cohen, a scholar with the Israel Policy
Forum, an organization that promotes
U.S. engagement in the region.
"There is not likely to be a more
opportune moment for the question of
whether the Palestinians can move into a
more democratic process," Cohen said.
That constitutes a very important link-
age between the election of the president
to a second term and the future of
Israel-Palestinian relations."
Cohen, who meets regularly with
U.S., Palestinian and Israeli leaders, says
the sense of opportunity is pervasive,
extending to Israel's staunchest support-
ers in the administration, such as Elliott
Abrams, the top Middle East official on
Bush's National Security Council. "He is
one of the people who is learning to be
more interested in the solution to the
Arab-Israeli problem," Cohen said of
Abrams. "He won't be an obstacle."
President Bush speaks to reporters at his
post-election news conference Nov. 4.
The linkage between the post-election
and post-Arafat eras is not lost in
Congress, where even the most steadfast
of Israel's supporters regret the opportu-
nity missed in the summer of 2003
when Mahmoud Abbas — the moderate
who demonstrated a willingness to deal
seriously with Israel — grew tired of
Arafat's machinations and resigned as
Palestinian Authority prime minister.
Pro-Israel congressmen have said Israel
and the United States could have done
more to reinforce Abbas' political hand
against Arafat through substantive ges-
tures, such as larger prisoner releases and
a settlement freeze.
Now that Abbas is assuming the post-
Arafat leadership along with fellow mod-
erate Ahmed Qurei, two of Israel's most
unstinting supporters in the U.S. House
of Representatives — Middle East sub-
committee chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Rep. Robert
Wexler, D-Fla., a senior member of the
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