The zigs and zags of American policy over the last three weeks are enough to make you dizzy. When Israel launched its invasion of the West Bank on March 30, President Bush responded by saying, “I fully understand Israel’s need to defend herself.” As the attack grew in size and severity and protests swelled on the streets of the Arab world, the White House switched gears. On April 4, Bush stood with Colin Powell in the Rose Garden and announced a new policy. It was a superb speech, condemning terrorism and pointing out, correctly, that Yasir Arafat had brought his troubles upon himself. Bush called on Arafat to condemn terrorism. He also called on Israel to “halt the incursions and begin withdrawal.”
Two days later, after Israel had barely acknowledged his call, Bush clarified that he meant “withdrawal without delay.” The next day, as Colin Powell was leaving on his mission, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Condoleezza Rice, “Are you ready to give [the Israelis] a few days to begin an orderly military retreat?” Rice replied, “No. ‘Without delay’ means without delay. It means now…” Two days later, when Israel announced that it was going to leave two towns, Bush called it “a beginning,” adding, “The Israelis must continue withdrawing.”
Of course they didn’t. By then, the Defense Department and the vice president’s office had declared war on the president’s policy. Having counseled the White House to ignore the Israel-Palestine problem for 15 months–advice that proved disastrously wrong–they were now determined to cripple Powell’s mission. They recommended that the president stop issuing statements supporting the secretary. Congress jumped in, with Democrats and Republicans falling all over themselves to side with Ariel Sharon rather than George W. Bush. The Christian right and the neoconservatives lobbied the White House nonstop, denouncing the secretary of State while he was meeting foreign leaders.
It worked. The White House caved. By April 11, Ari Fleischer was explaining that “the president believes that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace.” No further statements urging withdrawal or supporting Powell were issued. On April 15 the White House sent Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to speak at a rally whose purpose was to urge Israel not to withdraw–at the very moment that the secretary of State was in Jerusalem calling on Israel to withdraw! This was a Clintonian moment, recalling Clinton’s comments in Seattle that he sympathized with the protesters–who were protesting his policies.
Sharon knows Washington and read the signals. He called Powell’s bluff. Even when Sharon decided to move out of two more towns, he did not pay Powell the courtesy of announcing it at their joint appearance, choosing to do so on CNN later in the day. A senior Israeli politician confessed to me that he was surprised that Powell “had no arrows in his quiver.”
The president has decided to deal with defeat by calling it victory, making his policy even more confused. On April 17 he repeated his line that Sharon was a man of peace and insisted Israel had heeded his call. (In fact, the Israelis had begun the operation claiming it would take three to four weeks, and they have stuck to that timetable.) Bush then said he “understood” the need for the continuing siege of Ramallah. This explicitly contradicted his own Rose Garden speech, which had called for an immediate Israeli withdrawal–13 days earlier–“from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah.”
It is for Israelis to decide whether Sharon’s invasion will bring them security or insecurity in the long run. (For the most intelligent critiques of his policy, read Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz: www.haaretzdaily.com.) For America it has been a disaster. Since September 11 we have wanted to push the Arab world on two fronts: first on internal political reform and second on Iraq. But with tensions sky-high, these issues have been drowned out completely. Now the only conversation we will have with the Arabs is the one they always prefer to have–about Israel and Palestine. The big winners from Israel’s offensive are Iraq and the political extremists of the Middle East. Reform is on the retreat. The head of al-Azhar, the chief Islamic center in Cairo, had condemned suicide bombing in the wake of September 11. Last week he changed his mind. Martin Indyk, former ambassador to Israel, says, “In this climate the notion that we could get even Kuwait and Turkey to agree to an American intervention in Iraq is farcical.”
However we get out of this mess, one thing is clear. The president cannot pursue an effective policy without an undisputed foreign-policy spokesman. If he will not back his secretary of State out of conviction, he should do so out of calculation–or else replace him. For now he is following in the footsteps of another Southern governor with little foreign-policy experience who allowed his advisers to battle perpetually for control of foreign policy. Do we really want to go back to the Carter years?
