If George Bush were a true friend of Israel, he would seize the
investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as an excuse to stay
home tomorrow. Unless he has a rabbit in his hat, this will be the
third time in the past half year that the U.S. president shows the
Palestinians and the entire Arab world that they are wasting their time
by trying to end the occupation by peaceful means. Not only have
matters not improved since he troubled dozens of leaders from around
the world to come to Annapolis in late November, 2007; since then, the
occupation has been progressing, while the vision of two states has
been receding. The number of new buildings erected in the settlements
in the last few months rivals only the number of roadblocks that have
been added since Bush last visited Jerusalem, in January.

Bush
is an accomplice to an offense far worse than all of the criminal
offenses of which Olmert is suspected combined. Every speech made by
the president is one more bit of exposure of the nakedness of the
Palestinian circles who tied their collective fate to the Annapolis
declaration, which pledged to `make every effort to conclude an
agreement before the end of 2008.` In light of the stasis in the
negotiations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) seems
likely to resign even before Olmert does.

The failed gamble of
the United States also undermines the standing of leaders in Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Every fruitless visit by Bush to Israeli
Jerusalem pushes the Arab League further and further away from its own
peace initiative of March 2002, and provides more ammunition to Iran
and Syria in their struggle for hegemony in the Middle East, over and
above the moderate Sunni axis. Gaza and Lebanon are just the beginning.

If
Bush cared about Israel remaining a Jewish country, he would not have
let Abbas leave the White House last month bruised and battered. The
Palestinian president told him that when the Palestinian delegates to
the talks saw the Israeli positions, they thought Olmert and Tzipi
Livni were playing a joke on them. In addition to all of the
`settlement clusters,` including, of course, the territorial `fingers`
of Ariel, Ma`aleh Adumin and Givat Ze`ev, the Israelis demanded to
remain in control of the entire Jordan Valley, almost to the outskirts
of Nablus, while leaving intact all of the Jewish settlements in that
area – all in all, some 600 square kilometers, amounting to about 10
percent of the territories. Israel also demanded that all of Jerusalem,
including the Holy Basin surrounding the Old City and the Old City
itself, would remain under Israeli sovereignty; Palestine would be
given control only over the Temple Mount, which is held by the Muslim
Waqf authorities in any case; not a single refugee would be allowed
back under a Palestinian right of return, and Israel would not
acknowledge any responsibility for the fate of the 1948 refugees.

Either
Bush does not understand or he does not care what will happen here in
the coming months if someone does not succeed in bringing the
negotiations back to the Clinton-Taba outline. Abu Mazen`s close circle
is pushing him to end the talks and abandon the two-state solution.
Moreover, he is being urged to dissolve the Palestinian Authority
immediately, which would wipe what remains of the Oslo makeup off
Israel`s face. At the last convention of the PLO`s executive committee
and in a meeting with reporters, Abu Mazen handed out copies of an
article by Adnan Abu Ouda, born in Nablus and formerly a minister in
the Jordanian government, calling for the unilateral dismantling of the
Palestinian Authority.

A paper recently released by the Reut
Institute, in Tel Aviv, presents a compilation of evidence that the
foundations are being laid for a Palestinian demand for a single state
and for a return to the armed struggle against Israel. The paper also
suggests that even among the leaders of Israel`s Arab population, there
is dwindling support for the two-state solution and a turn instead
toward embracing the idea of a bi-national state.

`I am willing
to make decisions that will entail painful compromises,` Olmert
declared at a state dinner for Bush in January, adding, `We have no
interest in delaying matters. We don`t want to procrastinate with the
negotiations, lest changes for the worse take place on the Palestinian
front. And we certainly don`t want to delay the negotiation process
when we have such political assistance [from the U.S.].`

What
kind of assistance did he mean? Speaking of the Jewish outposts at the
time, Bush announced decisively: `they ought to go …. we`ve been
talking about it for four years. The agreement was, get rid of
outposts, illegal outposts, and they ought to go.`

What will the president say tomorrow?