WASHINGTON, 2 May 2003 — When President Bush released his long-awaited road map to Middle East peace on Wednesday, he did not do it in a sun-dappled Rose Garden ceremony or a televised East Room address. He issued a written statement read by his spokesman.
That low-key sendoff can be seen as a metaphor for the hesitancy with which Bush has accepted the role of peacemaker between Israelis and Palestinians. In terms of domestic politics, political strategists say, Bush has more to lose from pushing too hard for a Middle East peace deal than he does from failing to win an agreement.
Bush’s closest political allies, religious conservatives, are fiercely protective of Israel and would resist any signal that he was pressuring the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The biggest advocates of the action Bush took Wednesday — Democrats and liberals — are unlikely to support Bush in any case. And while Bush would obviously benefit from a peace deal in his pocket when he campaigns for re-election next year, even optimists regard that as a long shot.
“I don’t think he gets anything politically if he has a peace deal,’’ concludes Jack Abramoff, a pro-Israel Republican lobbyist who is close to House leaders.
That reality helps to explain why many Middle East analysts do not have high expectations for the road map. For Bush to produce a peace accord, they figure, he must be willing to apply pressure to the Israelis. But that runs counter to his own instincts and his domestic political environment.
Reaction to Wednesday’s release of the road map showed the perils for Bush if he were to push hard for an agreement. The evangelist Pat Robertson, normally a Bush supporter, said Bush was trying to “placate’’ British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Europeans. “Land for peace has never worked yet, and I don’t think it’s going to work now,’’ he said.
Richard Land, another of Bush’s usual allies who leads the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the release of the road map is one of only a few initiatives by the Bush administration that have distressed the religious right. He said it was “not a wise thing’’ to get entangled with the United Nations, as the road map would allow, and warned of a “real problem’’ if it appeared that Israel is being pressured “to make concessions that endanger its security.’’
Few people expect Bush to do any such thing. In the minds of many Jewish and pro-Israel leaders, Bush made clear last year that he would not pressure Israel to make concessions on territory or on settlements unless the Palestinian leadership reformed itself and cracked down on violence. By doing so, and by his earlier refusal to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, “he has built up a tremendous reservoir of goodwill within the Jewish community,’’ said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Changing that course “is unthinkable,’’ Brooks said, and could quickly undermine Bush’s standing among Jewish donors and voters, whom the GOP has targeted in recent years.
“He’s got more to risk by having the perception of pressuring Israeli policy than he does by not taking (the peace process) on,’’ said one American Jewish leader. “He didn’t come into the job to win the Nobel Peace Prize; he came in to do what’s right for our allies.’’
By contrast, many of those in the Jewish community urging the administration to push hard for peace are unlikely to back Bush’s re-election next year. Jerome Segal, president of the Jewish Peace Lobby, released a letter Wednesday from 100 rabbis encouraging the administration to go even further and put forward a concrete peace proposal. But even if the White House does what the rabbis want, he added, “I think the chances that they will vote for Bush are quite small.’’ The administration and its allies say this has nothing to do with domestic politics. “Not at all,’’ says Republican consultant Ralph Reed, who is close to the White House. Reed points out that the road map does not anticipate a resolution before 2005 — after Bush’s re-election campaign.
Bush has long shown a reluctance to get involved in Middle East peacemaking. He witnessed the difficulties encountered by his father and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, when they antagonized Jewish groups by applying pressure on the Israeli government. Bush was also determined not to “shoot the moon,’’ as his spokesman put it, in an unsuccessful quest for Middle East peace, as President Bill Clinton had done. Bush entered the fray only last June, when spiraling violence made inaction untenable.
Indeed, the very notion of Wednesday’s road map was less a Bush idea than a response to an Arab request for help. Several weeks after Bush stepped up his involvement in Middle East policy, Bush heard a plea for Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the Oval Office. “What we need is a road map,’’ Abdullah said, according to a person in the room.
Bush turned to William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for the region. “He wants a road map,’’ Bush said to Burns. “Can we give him a road map?’’ The terms of the road map, formally released Wednesday, have been widely known since last fall.
Bush will have some time before he is forced to choose between political pressures at home and diplomatic pressures abroad. If the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, fails to control violence, the road map will be moot regardless of Bush’s actions.
“If the bombs keep blowing up, we won’t get to the first green light on this road map,’’ said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
By contrast, if Abbas amasses true power and succeeds in restraining violence and cracking down on terrorism, even hard-liners among pro-Israel Americans will expect Israeli concessions.
“If he starts to demonstrate that he is a different kind of Palestinian leader, the expectation is Prime Minister Sharon will deal with him and President Bush will deal with him,’’ said Nathan Diamant, policy director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.
The test will come if the road map enters a “gray area,’’ according to Steve Rosen of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, in which Abbas achieves some progress, and Europeans push for a “date certain’’ for a Palestinian state despite continued violence. “I’d be astonished if George Bush embraced the idea of moving toward a Palestinian state while a terrorist organization is in full force,’’ Rosen said. “That would be a confrontational situation, but I don’t see any chance of it occurring.’’
