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The most shocking aspect of President Bush’s current visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories is how little the media seems to care. Yesterday, Bush’s meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were towards the bottom of almost every major news outlet’s feed. On CNN’s website, the “Mideast misery tour” was outranked by reports of outlandish Ron Paul literature (this is news?), while The New York Times placed John Kerry’s endorsement of Barack Obama well ahead of Bush’s peace plan. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if a headline featuring John Kerry precedes you, consider yourself irrelevant.
Indeed, as my contentions colleague Noah Pollak noted on Wednesday, Bush’s Middle East jaunt is wholly uninspiring. For a president who dared to dream about a democratized Middle East and the defeat of radical Islam, Bush’s current approach towards the region has disappointingly fallen back on old, unrealized ideas.
Consider the basic outline Bush presented yesterday for Israeli-Palestinian peace: two states; adjustments to the Green Line that “reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous”; and compensation for Palestinian refugees. Bush also struck a typical rhetorical balance, calling for Israel to “to end the occupation that began in 1967,” while also referring to Israel as “a homeland for the Jewish people” and “Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people”—an implicit rejection of Palestinians’ “right of return” to Israel-proper.
But if Bush’s principles sound a bit too familiar, he is hardly alone. In Lebanon, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah slammed Bush’s attempt to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians as, “a direct cover for liquidating the Palestinian cause and displacing the remaining Palestinians under the so-called Jewish state.” Hamas official Osama Hamdan echoed these sentiments, declaring Bush’s statements, “direct incitement against the Palestinian people encouraging aggression and Zionist settlement and consecration of the division in the Palestinian arena.” Meanwhile, Syria used the opportunity to inch closer to Iran, with Information Minister Mohsen Bilal calling on other Arab states to cozy up to Tehran and abandon Washington.
Indeed, despite eight bloody years since the breakdown of Camp David, little has changed in the region. The U.S. President, now a Republican, still optimistically asks Palestinians, “Do you want those who have created chaos to run your country, or do you want those of us who negotiated a settlement with the Israelis that will lead to lasting peace?” Yet the Palestinians, now partially controlled by Hamas, remain highly skeptical of rapprochement with Israel, if not entirely hostile towards it. The Israeli Prime Minister, now of the centrist Kadima party, hasn’t changed much either: he still speaks glowingly of peace with the Palestinians, even while his government fortifies settlements in which it has vowed to cease construction. The Bush administration has long contended that Israeli-Palestinian peace is essential to undercutting Iran’s regional influence. If this remains the case, then no news emanating from Bush’s current trip to the region is hardly good news.
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