Diplomatic fallout from a bomb

The terrorist bombing that killed Israelis and Kenyans at an Israeli-owned seaside resort in Kenya last week is complicating American diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.

As has happened repeatedly since Sept. 11, 2001, violence aimed at Israelis seems to be inexorably pushing the American and Israeli views of the world closer together - potentially posing problems for America's broader interests in the region.

The latest attacks will likely embolden Israeli efforts to get the US to adopt its view that there is no difference between America's war on terrorism and its own battle against Palestinian militants.

At the same time, the Kenya bombing, because it took place outside Israel and because Al Qaeda may have been involved, makes it harder for the US to treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as something different from the US terror war.

The US, of course, has an interest in seeing that differences between the two aren't fully erased. First, it wants to continue to play the role of honest broker in the Middle East peace process. But it also doesn't want to alienate the Arab world at a time when it is trying to build support for a possible war with Iraq.

The prevailing Arab view, as well as that of many other nations, has always been that the Palestinian struggle for a homeland makes their conflict different than from the radicalism of Al Qaeda.

Yet this bombing, which could be Al Qaeda's first on an Israeli target, follows persistent Osama bin Laden rhetoric equating his Islamic extremism with the Palestinian cause - making the task of keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside the global terrorism box more difficult. And that, in turn, complicates America's relations with the Islamic world.

This week US officials are fanning out through the region, from Turkey to the Persian Gulf, enlisting cooperation and assistance for an eventual American-led war with Iraq. And next week, the Bush administration is set to host in Washington a ministerial meeting of the so-called "quartet" countries - the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - to work towards a "road map" for achieving an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

State Department officials say the US will be "accentuating" this latest American effort in the peace process as it seeks cooperation against Iraq. But they also recognize the impact that violence against Israelis is having.

Continuing US attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the upcoming quartet meeting, "is something we're going to accentuate" as US officials visit countries in the region over coming days, a State Department official says. "It's a theme we're going to be employing" beyond those meetings, he adds, as part of a US effort to keep the peace process on its own track.

But the official also acknowledges that the US effort is complicated by indications, including the Kenya bombing, that others besides Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are pressing the conflict into the broader terrorism context.

"If we really start to see a refocusing of Al Qaeda on Israel or any clear evidence of Palestinian ties to Al Qaeda, it will certainly revive the questions we've faced [since 9/11] of whether our emphasis should be more on counterterrorism than on policy for promoting" settlement of the conflict, he says.

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