Bush's tough sell on Mideast goals

With the White House largely focused on Iraq, President Bush's public return to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict surprised some observers both in the United States and abroad.

But the President's reason for taking up the issue in a widely scrutinized speech last week has much to do with Iraq.

The Bush administration has a vision for how regime change in Iraq can lead to a new era of expanding democracy and personal freedoms in the Middle East. But as it has worked to build international support for war, Mr. Bush and his staff have been stung by criticism that the US has dropped the ball on Middle East peace.

More critically, even some of Washington's closest allies worry that the US has sided too closely with Israel, adopting the Israeli view that all Palestinian violence is terrorism. In post-9/11 Washington, there is less tolerance for violence anywhere that was once called "freedom fighting."

Those perceptions have left international public opinion deeply skeptical of a war the US says would be fought in part with the goal of spreading freedom throughout the Middle East.

In this context the president's speech last week on Mideast peace and democratic prospects may have allayed some fears, but won't have silenced the guessing about US intentions.

That's because the Bush administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be seen two ways: as the strongest rhetorical support for an independent Palestine expressed by any presidency, or it can be interpreted as the closest-ever alignment of US policy with Israel.

"There's a certain paradox in the president's position," says Stephen Zunes, a Middle East expert at the University of San Francisco. "On one hand he's more explicit about a Palestinian state and actually using the name 'Palestine' than any president, but on the other hand he's embraced essentially unconditional support for [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon."

Europeans and Arabs hope there's something genuine in the former; Ariel Sharon is basking in the latter - and the White House is counting on both positions making their mark with each constituency until the Iraqi conflict is settled.

In his speech, Bush appeared to lay his personal integrity on the line in recommitting the US to the "two states, side-by-side" solution. But he linked progress in the region to removing Saddam Hussein from the neighborhood.

Reiterating the "two-state" language is widely viewed as a response to intense pressures the president has come under both at home and abroad. Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and most recently Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, have implored the president to make public the connection he sees between resolving the Iraq crisis and achieving a Middle East peace that includes an independent Palestine.

"Bush is doing damage control, he's addressing the anxieties of the Europeans and the friendly Arabs" about his administration's plans for the region, says Joseph Montville, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

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