Bush in Jerusalem

Editorial of The New York Sun
January 7, 2008

President Bush will be greeted in Israel this week as a hero of the global struggle against Islamist terror and a great friend of the Jewish state but also with concern about American policy in respect of Iran and the future borders between Israel and any Palestinian Arab state. The emerging American policy reflects a contradiction, especially even if one assumes, as we do not, that the Palestinians Arabs can reconcile their desire for a state with their hatred of Israel. Arguing about the future borders makes sense if one reckons that a proper peace treaty can be achieved.

Mr. Bush himself is down-playing expectations about the peace process he sought to revive at Annapolis, telling Israeli Television that he believes an agreement which would define the character of a Palestinian state could be reached within the year. That's more modest than a peace treaty. And his visit comes in the wake of the release of the National Intelligence Estimate that acted to diffuse much of the concern about Iran's nuclear weapons program and left Israelis wondering whether they would have to stand alone.

No doubt the president will try to reassure the leadership in Jerusalem. According to the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Bush told Israel's Channel 2 that an Iranian attack on Israel would lead to "World War III" and that military options were still on the table if for no other reason than that they increase the possibility of a diplomatic resolution. But it's hard to see how Mr. Bush will be able to do this while his administration serves, as he promised at Annapolis, as monitor and "judge" of both Israel's government and the Palestinian Authority in respect of the so-called road map.

Secretary Rice has just chastised Israel for its announcement that it will build 300 new apartments at Har Homa. So the administration is being led athwart Mr. Bush's own April 14, 2004, letter to Prime Minister Sharon offering the assurance that "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion." Har Homa is precisely one of the communities to which the Bush letter referred.

Meantime Egyptian security personnel are failing to block terrorists from smuggling cash and weapons into the Gaza district. Israel agreed to pull back from that border, the so-called Philadelphi corridor, as part of its general disengagement in 2005. It sought to satisfy demands for "a return to the 1967 border." Right now, the downside at the Gaza-Sinai border outweighs any benefits accrued to Israel for complying with the long standing wishes of the international community.

So Mr. Bush will arrive in Israel as a situation is being created in which Israel can do nothing right. Using the 1967 border model as regards Gaza has not worked; articulating a policy that would leave a few percentage points of the West Bank inside Israel runs into American opposition. No wonder the Syrians are advising their Arab brethren, who convened yesterday at Cairo to consider Syria's operations in Lebanon, that they ought not wager on America remaining a dominant power in the region. Its message, in a nutshell, was the better bet is Iran.

Mr. Bush can increase the odds that a bet on Iran will fail by avoiding the temptations to argue with Israel about apartment blocs and instead focusing on the amity that he and Prime Minister Sharon restored to relations between America and Israel, while emboldening the Israelis — and others — in respect of the wider struggle in which American and Israel stand together.