Posted on: Thursday, April 15, 2004

EDITORIAL
Timing questionable for Bush's Israel tilt

President Bush insists that his embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan represents a tilt toward peace, not a tilt toward Israel.

That will raise more than eyebrows in the Muslim world, including in seething Iraq.

Besides abandoning the carefully fluid position of previous U.S. administrations on the expected parameters of Middle East peace in at least three regards, Bush at the same time endorsed a rather desperate political ploy by Sharon.

So why now? The timing seems perfect for saving Sharon's political prospects, but it couldn't be worse for a Muslim world already concerned with Bush's tough approach to an Iraq insurgency.

In exchange for Sharon's proposed unilateral pullout from Gaza (a disappointment to 7,500 Israeli settlers but not to those responsible for defending them), Bush now endorses:

• Permanent Israeli occupation of the six largest settlements on the West Bank.

• Lapse of any "right of return" for Arabs born and evicted from present-day Israel.

It's true previous administrations have taken the position that the Palestinians might never regain all their pre-1967 territory or right of return in Israel proper. But peace negotiators always used these claims as bargaining chips; there likely would have to be land concessions on both sides. No more.

• Endorsed the "temporary" security wall that Israel is building. Would that be temporary in the sense of the six temporary West Bank settlements that Bush now says are permanent due to "realities on the ground"?

Palestinians fear Sharon's plan is to coop them up in a series of disjointed cantons, hemmed in by the wall and connected by roads controlled by Israel.

Bush says it is now unrealistic to expect Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. That contrasts with an American legal opinion some three decades ago that held that the settlements were "inconsistent with international law."

Most countries agree with this, although in practice the various peace proposals in recent years have acknowledged that the existence of the settlements made a simple return to the old boundaries impractical. Some sort of land swap would be needed

No need for a swap now. Bush's tilt helps Sharon jettison captured territory it is inconvenient to control, and permanently claim the best.