Bush needs to help map the road to stability, peace with Palestinians

JOB AWAITS U.S. IN ISRAEL

Bush needs to help map the road to stability, peace with Palestinians

December 3, 2004

The leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are in an unstable state of transition and, in Israel's case, in the midst of a governmental crisis that could imperil Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

The Bush administration, which has largely disengaged itself from the conflict, needs to get its new national security team up to speed to address the turmoil in a constructive, non-partisan manner. Soon, when new governments emerge on both sides, an honest broker will be needed to mediate their hoped-for rapprochement and eventual move toward peace.

In Israel, a rapid concatenation of events this week threw the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into crisis. First the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, rejected Sharon's proposed budget. The Knesset then scheduled a no-confidence vote on Sharon's government. In turn, Sharon fired the five cabinet members belonging to his tottering coalition's second largest member, the Shinui party. That dissolved Sharon's power to govern and led him to try to form a new coalition with the opposition left-wing Labor party.

If Sharon cannot patch up a new coalition with Labor, which may make him a pariah with his Likud party's extreme right wing, he could be forced to call new elections. Were that to happen, Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements would collapse.

The political realignments and shifts in allegiances in Israel are dizzying. Left-wing and moderate parties who opposed the Likud-led coalition voted against Sharon's budget, yet they gave firm signs they would back Sharon's new coalition to save the withdrawal plan, which they support.

To complicate matters, in a development on the Palestinian side, Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian leader serving life in an Israeli prison for terrorism, has reversed himself and decided to stand for election as an independent candidate for president of the Palestinian Authority. Barghouti is the most charismatic and popular of the potential candidates, a virtual shoo-in for election. But could he govern from an Israeli prison? And what would that mean? President George W. Bush's designated secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice - not a notable Mideast expert - had better brush up on the Byzantine, deadly turns of Israeli and Palestinian politics.