Mideast: U.S. on Sidelines

With Israel’s assassination Monday of Palestinian hard-line leader Mustafa Zibri, the Middle East conflict has been shoved up another notch. This is deliberate. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seems to believe that he can batter the Palestinians into submission by systematically targeting prominent figures and razing the homes of suicide bombers. Israel is carrying out a limited war that uses tanks and fighter jets but does not involve a full-scale assault and reoccupation of Palestinian-controlled territory, which would draw international condemnation.

This was supposed to guarantee Israeli security. The opposite appears to be occurring. Without outside intervention, it is hard to envision a return to even the uneasiest peace. The absence of U.S. influence from the region is troubling.

Each time Israel assassinates another Palestinian or bulldozes a house, Palestinians become more inflamed. It is hard to feel much sorrow over Zibri, whose organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, carried out everything from airline hijackings in the 1970s to more recent roadside bombings and mortar attacks. But it’s ironic that Israel’s Sharon may be leading the recruitment drive for suicide bombers. Already PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has tapped into the general outrage over Israeli tactics to unify the disparate factions in the Gaza Strip. The tragedy, of course, is that Arafat’s inexcusable and cowardly refusal to accept then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s far-reaching and concessionary 1999 proposals for Palestinian independence led to the current escalations.

The Oslo peace process is dead. But this does not mean, as the Bush administration seems to have concluded, that any attempts at resuscitating Middle East peace are doomed. The administration is making the flip side of the mistake committed by Bill Clinton. In a monumental act of egotism, then-President Clinton thought he could single-handedly bring about peace. He ended up triggering a new conflict at Camp David because he underestimated Arafat’s obstinacy. But this is not a reason for the United States to abdicate.

There is indeed a moral difference between the Palestinians’ deliberate targeting of innocents and Israeli attacks against combatants, and President Bush himself has made it clear that he views Arafat as the culprit. But that, by itself, is not helpful. Egypt and Jordan are eager for the Bush administration to use its power to revive hopes for peace, as they fear a spillover of unrest from radical militants. But there is a neoconservative faction inside the Beltway that wants an all-out assault on the Palestinians, and the Israelis may be coming close.

Steady pressure by Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell could still make a difference. But if the fighting continues to escalate, the explosion of the Mideast into a general war is not farfetched.