Next steps for US after the Gaza vote

The always threatening waters of Middle East affairs turned all the more treacherous for the United States after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party on Sunday soundly rejected his plan for withdrawal from Gaza - a plan President Bush strongly endorsed when Mr. Sharon visited the White House last month.

With Sharon politically weakened and America's other Middle East partners alienated from the US for its ever-closer alignment with Israel, the US finds itself with a marooned policy for the region at a crucial moment - as it seeks international help in Iraq and broad political reforms across the region.

Sharon's defeat also demonstrates how the turn of events in the region is determined increasingly by minorities on all sides holding extremist views - suggesting in turn the region's need for the moderating and leveling role the US has traditionally played.

Right now that role appears to be sidetracked. By publicly endorsing Sharon's Gaza plan along with key concessions Sharon had sought - including first-ever official recognition by the US that some Israeli West Bank settlements will probably be permanent - the Bush administration infuriated both Israel's Arab neighbors and European partners.

Now with Sharon in a crisis that could force elections in Israel, the US is on shaky ground with even its best friends in the region.

The US meets Tuesday in New York with its international partners with whom it is working for Middle East peace - the so-called "quartet" of the US, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. But questions of "how did we get to this low state?" are likely to dominate any ideas for moving forward.

One hope emanating principally from the State Department is that Sharon's defeat within his own party will prompt the Israeli leader to shift away from the more extreme positions of his Likud base. In that vein, some Israeli political analysts are suggesting Sharon could opt to form a new and broad national coalition government that would better reflect the general Israeli population's strong support for Sharon's plans, including the Gaza pullout.

But others see that as wishful thinking, noting that both Likud's vote against Sharon and recent anti-Israeli Palestinian violence demonstrate how the moderate, compromising positions that once dominated the search for peace have been taken hostage by the extremes.

"What we are seeing is how, in the absence of a moderating center from the US or from within the region, the power of the ideological extremes is dominating," says Stephen Cohen, national scholar with the Israel Policy Forum in New York.

Likud's unequivocal defeat of Sharon's Gaza plan shows how "the Israeli settlers movement has taken an inordinate amount of power," says Mr. Cohen, "and that should be a very important lesson for the US."

At the same time, he says, the particularly gruesome killing Sunday of a pregnant Israeli settler in Gaza and her children means that "Likud rejectionism is being more than matched by Palestinian terrorism."

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