Bush Making First Visit to Israel As President

WASHINGTON _ With an eight-day tour of the Middle East starting this week, President Bush hopes to spur negotiations among Israeli and Palestinian leaders vowing to make peace and lay the groundwork for two independent states by year’s end.

Yet analysts say the president will arrive in the region with too little to promise and too late in the game during this _ his first visit to Israel as president _ to offer any real hope of securing a lasting peace.

Bush, also touring several Arab nations, will address more than the role they can play in encouraging reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. He also will explain his vision for democracy in Iraq and his concern about the potential security threat posed by Iran.

The president’s departure Tuesday also marks the start of a globe-trotting year for a leader who has ventured abroad relatively little, as he attempts to secure a legacy in world affairs.

Bush will travel to Africa this year to tout the U.S. commitment to combating AIDS and malaria, seeking a doubling of U.S. aid over the next five years. He will travel to China for the summer Olympics and to Japan for an annual summit of Pacific Rim nations, and most likely will make other, as yet unannounced stops.

Yet observers suggest that he will not be able to lay claim to any new legacy in one final tour de force of international diplomacy.

“It’s just a simple fact of life,” said Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You can’t, as president, leave a legacy in the form of an agenda for the next president. The only legacy you can leave is what you actually accomplished while you were in office. And at this point in time, with effectively a year to go, your legacy is what you’ve done, not what you would like to do.”

What Bush would like to leave in the Middle East is some real prospect for the “two-state solution” he first articulated early in his presidency, becoming the first American president to endorse a permanent state for Palestinians. Yet events in Israel, including the opposition of Hamas leaders who have gained control of the Gaza Strip, have made that prospect no more likely today.

At a fall summit of Israeli and Arab leaders that Bush convened in Annapolis, Md., Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to formally open negotiations with a goal of establishing a framework for peace by the end of 2008. Talks since then have been stymied by controversy over Israeli settlements in the West Bank and ongoing violence _ including a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip last week that drew Israeli airstrikes in retaliation.

But the Bush administration maintains that the willingness of some Arab nations to cooperate _ as evidenced by the participation of several in that Annapolis conference in November _ offers reason to pursue these negotiations in earnest this year.

Bush’s visit offers “an opportunity for the president to discuss with Israelis and Palestinians their efforts toward a negotiated peace and achievement of the president’s vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security,” said Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser.

“I think just his going there is going to advance the prospects,” Hadley said when asked what Bush hopes to gain there.

Critics contend that Bush’s own unwillingness, until recently, to become personally engaged in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations does not bode well for progress in his last year in the White House.

“Just showing up isn’t going to convince anybody,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on the Middle East. “He’s a lame duck. He’s got one year to go. Just showing up is something you do in your first six months _ not your last year.”

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, contends that Bush is not inclined to engage in the level of detail that must be resolved to advance the talks.

“This president doesn’t like to tee things up. He’s a closer. He likes to close deals,” Alterman said. “And this deal is not ready to be closed. It requires a lot of setting up and a lot of tedious work, exactly the kind of work this president thinks isn’t his job and doesn’t particularly enjoy.”

“So I think he will demonstrate that it’s in play; he will seek to show that there is momentum,” he said. “He wants to deal with principles or he wants to deal with bringing the agreement home. But that’s not where these negotiations are right now.”

The White House counters that it has methodically worked toward reaching the opportunity that exists today, first by refusing to recognize the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, then backing former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, and now buoying the promise of two Israeli and Palestinian leaders who want to secure peace.

“The president has been working fairly consistently over seven years to put in place the building blocks of what now offers an opportunity for peace,” Hadley said. “And he has seized that opportunity; that’s what Annapolis was all about. And this trip is an opportunity for him to show his own personal commitment by going to the region and hearing from the parties directly, and encourage them to seize the opportunity that is before them.”

Analysts, though, say the opportunity is overstated: That neither the Israeli nor Palestinian leaders carry the clout necessary to enforce the keys to the so-called road map for peace, which includes a Palestinian crackdown on militants and an Israeli freeze of settlement-building, and that the staunch opposition of Hamas to any reconciliation poses only increasing peril.

“There isn’t some easy, simple step the president can take, and it’s not the fault of the administration, it is simply the level of realities and problems in the region,” Cordesman said. “These are issues … which have shaped this region and have been building up for a long, long time, and they are not going to go away with one visit. Nor can they go away in any given case with some kind of gesture from the president of the United States.”

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(c) 2008, Chicago Tribune.

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GRAPHIC (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20080104 Bush Itinerary

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