New push for Mideast peace

The US has been under pressure from the region to find a way to relaunch the peace process. King Abdullah used a phone call with Olmert this week to call for Israel and the Palestinians under Abbas to take serious steps toward negotiations.

Some administration officials even speculate that Bush could use the anniversary later this month of his call in 2002 for a two-state solution as the occasion to bless a renewed peace push. But other analysts with close contacts within the administration believe this could just be wishful thinking on the part of the group of officials who have grumbled for years about the administration's lack of enthusiasm for the peace process.

In fact, some longtime experts in the diplomatic history of the peace process say there is a pattern of calls at moments of crisis for rededication.

"Anytime we go through a period of upheaval, change, and tumult in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we hear these same hopeful words – that this is a changed environment, that this is an opportunity and let's use it to move forward," says Bernard Reich, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University.

Yet while he says he is all for "seizing opportunities," Mr. Reich cautions that this is not akin to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat saying, "Let's talk peace," or even Yasser Arafat recognizing in the early 1990s that the world was changed.

The major hurdle Reich sees is that the hard bargaining of peace talks requires strong leaders – and the current "opportunity" does not fall when the principle negotiating parties have them.

"You have a weak Abbas" who is adjusting to a retreat to a portion of the entity he supposedly governs, "and a stronger [than Abbas] but still weak Olmert" who doesn't appear to have the backing he once did to negotiate the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, according to Reich.

One of the stronger of the leaders, Reich adds, is probably Ismail Haniya, whom Abbas dismissed as Palestinian prime minister when he named a new West Bank government. Hamas insists he remains the legitimate – because elected – head of government.

'No harm' in trying

Reich says "there is of course no harm in trying to move things forward," and Walker says it makes sense in a very liquid environment to focus on "giving moderate Palestinians a boost, " as the US and European Union have pledged to do.

Still, one of the questions the Bush administration will face as it tries to move ahead with partners it says it can work with is why it is isolating the leaders – in this case Hamas – who came to power through elections that it wanted as a sign of the region's democratization.

The administration can count on Hamas to trumpet that point to the region, as it already is. "This [attempt at isolation of Hamas] confirms the falseness of the international community's support for democracy," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Monday, according to the Associated Press.

One risk for the US is that the effort to build up Abbas as a partner for Israel will only sour Arab publics further on the West. That could happen if a split approach to the Palestinians is perceived as more of what many already see as a US policy of democracy that's only in America's image.

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