Bush Again in the Near East: a Goodbye Tour

The head of the Republican Administration returns to Israel amidst complete skepticism about a peace agreement

The American President George W. Bush arrived, yesterday, in Israel to participate in the sixtieth anniversary celebrations for the Jewish state and to push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, which he says he still believes in despite a growing skepticism at eight months before the end of his term. At the same moment that the American president was setting foot in Israel, the Israeli army was conducting a raid on the Gaza strip. This caused four deaths among the Palestinians, of which three were members of the Islamist movement Hamas, according to the Palestinian emergency services.

This is the second visit by Mr. Bush in Israel after that in January, dedicated essentially to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, a man who before January had never set foot in Israel in seven years of his presidency. The head of the White House then had to go to Jerusalem for meetings with Mr. Olmert in the presence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Head of Israeli Diplomacy, Tzipi Livini, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, and the Chief of Staff, Gaby Ashkenazi.

This trip takes place under somber auspices with negotiations that are at a standstill, the new suspicions of corruption that are weighing on Mr. Olmert and the alarming tensions in neighboring Lebanon. Mr. Bush wanted to preside before the end of 2008, and therefore of his term in January 2009, over a peace agreement bringing to completion the creation of a Palestinian state. It is this that Mr. Olmert and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, engaged themselves in trying to realize in Annapolis (United States) in November 2007, under the aegis of Mr. Bush.

In almost six months the skepticism that met the promise of resolving a conflict as old as the Israeli-Palestinian one, has only been further reinforced. Mr. Bush assured before leaving Washington that he continued to believe in an agreement that would be, according to him, a “description” of what a Palestinian state would be. “We are going to continue to work hard, and I think that we can succeed in defining a state (Palestinian) by the end of my presidency” he said on Israeli television. Mr. Olmert reported, Tuesday, “real progress” in the negotiations. And before the judicial troubles of Olmert, Bush prudently underlined that the negotiations were an affair of governments and not of people, while saying that, to him, the Prime Minister was an “honest guy”. The Republican Administration advised against waiting for a breakthrough. Mr. Bush didn’t foresee, at that stage, re-uniting Mr. Olmert and Abbas. He will meet with the latter on Saturday in Egypt, at the occasion of an economic forum.

The White House, which prudently emphasized that the trip was also motivated by the sixtieth anniversary of Israel, assured that it would not forget the difficulties endured by the Palestinians. “I tell them that I am profoundly worried for the Palestinians and their future” said Mr. Bush. In contrast to his previous visit, he will not go to the West Bank. The Palestinians have, however, announced protests today in Gaza and in the West Bank to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Nakba, the “catastrophe” that was Israel’s creation in 1948. The same day, Mr. Bush will pronounce his first speech before the Knesset that will be boycotted by deputies of Arab-Israeli parties. After Israel, he will reach Saudi Arabia tomorrow and Egypt Saturday where he is also supposed to meet with the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Sinoira.

The serious tensions persist in Lebanon between the majority supported by the West and the opposition led by Hezbollah, supported by Iran and by Syria.