Change of direction in the Mideast

By endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for disengagement in Gaza Wednesday, President Bush effectively ended America's long term role as "honest broker" in the Middleast for many in the Arab world.

The president not only signaled "a major shift aligning US policy with Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," writes The Christian Science Monitor, he dramatically altered Arab perceptions of US ability to foster a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bush "upended two decades of US Policy" by his "unilateral approach to dealing with the Palestinians," the Monitor reports.

"For the first time" editorializes The Washington Post,

an American president has put the United States on record as supporting Israel's eventual annexation of parts of the West Bank and as rejecting the return to its territory of Palestinian refugees. Whatever happens in the coming months - Mr. Sharon's political future is uncertain, as is President Bush's - those written commitments will reshape the diplomacy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of the United States in any future peace settlement.

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Arab reaction to Bush's announcement was immediate and highly partisan.

"No state, especially if it is a mediator, has the right to cancel the rights of one party," Hossam Zaki, the spokesman of the 22-member pan-Arab body, told the Arab News.

The Lebanese Daily Star reports that "Arab leaders and analysts said Thursday a US policy shift regarding Palestinian refugees' status and West Bank settlements has eroded any hope for peace and could lead to more bloodshed and extremism in the region."

And the Los Angeles Times quotes Lebanese President Emile Lahoud:

It undermines hope for a just and comprehensive peace, inflames feelings of enmity toward America and opens the door toward retaking these rights by force, through all legitimate means of resistance.

Predictably, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat saw no middle ground in President Bush's action.

Sharon told New York Times columnist William Safire that " Something in his [Bush's] soul committed him to act with great courage against world terror. Though under constant pressure, the man has not changed his mind."

Arafat went on television immediately afte the announcement on Thursday and said Palestinians "will never give up the goal of achieving freedom and independence and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital." They "will never give up the "right of refugees to return to their lands."

Many editorials were starkly polarized.

Newsday salutes Bush for his sober realism and gives him:

Credit for getting out of the rut of the peace process and trying something new. When he embraced the revolutionary proposal by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday, the president was acknowledging what should be self-evident: There is no Mideast peace process left.

While Pakistan's Daily Times, offers a blunt prediction:

This development signals to the Palestinians that negotiations alone will not do. If there are indeed 'realities on the ground', which Israel has created through use of force, and if they are to be worked into an uneven agreement, then the Palestinians can argue that the only way to an honorable peace is for them to try and change the ground realities. And that can only happen on the ground. Corollary: more violence.

If there were words reaching for a center, they necessarily were cautious, qualified, and groping. The Fort Wayne Gazette ends its editorial just hoping the parties involved will continue to seek a path to peace.

The impasse is about land and a viable state, despite Palestinians' despicable use of suicide bombers against innocent civilians. Negotiations, as distant as they may appear, offer the only possible path to peace.

Also...
• Prime Minister Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement ( Jerusalem Post)
• Blair backs Israeli pullout plan ( CNN.com)
• Balfour renewed ( AL-AHRAM )
• Germany says Israeli settlements plan must be negotiated ( EUbusiness)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Jim Bencivenga .