Is now the time to talk peace in the Mideast?

Indeed, for most of its first term and into the second, the Bush administration said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not "ripe" for dedicated US diplomacy. President Bush did call for a Palestinian state "living side by side in peace" with Israel in 2002, but horizons for achieving that goal have been pushed off into the distance.

Now the United States is not just playing catch-up as it revives the peace process, analysts say, but is acting from a more difficult position.

"If they had really focused on this back in 2002 and moved with some vigor and balance on the Palestinian situation, there would have been a better chance for progress," says Michael Hudson, an expert in US regional diplomacy at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

"It's a pretty terrible moment for any progress," he says, noting the difficult straits the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships are in, and the perceived weakness of the US. "Bush is not seen to be in a position to press ahead for something to get done, and the Democrats also tend to be uncritically pro-Israel on this issue."

Beyond that, Mr. Hudson says the US is now encumbered by a much worse image in the region. "The US is seen so broadly as an expansionist colonial power as the result of Iraq that its good offices are not to be trusted," he says.

The controversy over Israel's use of US-supplied cluster bombs in last summer's war with Hizbullah in Lebanon is one current example of the kinds of issues that continue to tarnish the US standing in the region, analysts say. Such issues also complicate the domestic political environments for the region's Sunni Arab regimes that might be open to greater cooperation with the US and Israel, they add.

The emergence of such a "coalition" will depend on US actions, says Mr. Cohen of the Israel Policy Forum. "We need to be careful to make a distinction between potential coalitions and actual," he says. "Whether it happens depends on US behavior."

For example, he says Sunni Arab regimes are watching not just for US action in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but for assurances that the US will not forsake Sunni Arabs in Iraq.

Even more skeptical, Mr. Reich of George Washington University says the scenario of Sunni Arabs teaming up with Israel over Iran may be what Rice considers "logical," but not what Sunni regimes are ready for. "The Saudis, for one," he says, "aren't just going to set up the alliance implied in this 'realignment.' "

Page: 1 | 2