- President George W. Bush faces a crisis that will make
or break his presidency. Ironically, to use his words applied to Yasser
Arafat, Bush finds himself in a situation of his own making.
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- Last week, the president was publicly humiliated by
Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who arrogantly ignored Bush's repeated calls
for the Israelis to stop their military operation and pull out of the West
Bank. The secretary of state was also publicly humiliated. The king of
Morocco kept him cooling his heels for two hours before consenting to see
him and then, in front of the press, embarrassed him with a hostile but
legitimate question, "Why are you here instead of in Jerusalem?"
All of the Arab leaders, in fact, instead of heeding Bush's demand that
they condemn terrorism, laid new demands on the United States.
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- Bush seriously misread Sharon. That's probably because
he is ignorant of the Middle East and its history. I think he relies on
his staff to give him little yes-or-no choices to make. If Bush had
bothered
to read the British and Israeli press or, God forbid, one or two books
on the conflict, he would have known: Sharon started the intifada; Sharon
has been the one who has refused to negotiate for the past 14 months;
Sharon
has systematically destroyed the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo peace
process; and Sharon does not intend to yield an inch of the West
Bank.
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- All of this time, Bush has apparently thought that if
the Palestinians would just lie down, Sharon would resume the negotiations.
Apparently, he wasn't aware that Arafat did keep the peace for three weeks,
and Sharon's response was to start a program of systematically
assassinating
Palestinian political leaders. Bush, of course, routinely condemns every
act of resistance by the Palestinians, and the most he has ever said to
the Israelis is, "Gee, I hope you show some restraint."
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- So now his reputation and that of the United States is
at stake. It isn't just the Arab world that is fed up with Israel's
brutality
and flaunting of international law and America's one-sided support for
Israel. It's the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. Serious
demonstrations against Israel and the United States are taking place all
over the world.
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- So here's Bush's dilemma: Sharon will not stop his
military
operation. Sharon will not negotiate with the Palestinians. Bush will have
to force him. The reason Sharon feels confident in humiliating the
president
is because he believes that the Israeli lobby has such a lock on Congress
that it will prevent Bush from taking any measures to punish him for his
defiance. Hence, when Bush butts heads with Sharon, he will also have to
butt heads with the Israeli lobby.
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- The question upon which the success or failure of his
administration depends is, does Bush have the guts to do that? I don't
know. We'll just have to wait and see. If Bush caves in to Sharon, American
prestige will plummet, and his coalition for his war on terrorism will
fall apart. Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will eventually
start a wider war in the Middle East, for which Bush will be justly
blamed.
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- The reason this is a situation of his own making is that
Bush should have pressured Sharon into negotiations 14 months ago, instead
of falling for Sharon's ruse that he wouldn't talk while Palestinians were
resisting the occupation. Bush should have been equally critical of the
Israeli violence. It has apparently taken him 14 months to realize that
the Palestinian violence is provoked by the Israeli violence.
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- His popularity, while still high, is already starting
to drop, and if he lets Ariel Sharon walk all over him, I predict he will
be a one-term president. The larger question for the American people is
this: Who runs American foreign policy, the elected president or the
Israeli
lobby?
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- Charley Reese can be contacted at briarl@earthlink.net.
© 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. http://reese.king-o
nline.com/Reese_20020419/index.php
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