David Parsons, June 3, 2003

US President George W. Bush is holding a summit with friendly Arab leaders on Tuesday in the Sinai resort of Sharm e-Sheikh, a site that is widely associated with Middle East peacemaking but more accurately symbolizes the fruitless "photo-op" diplomacy of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, that Bush has sought to avoid.

More than two year's into his presidency, Bush opened his first major foray into the Middle East today at the same Egyptian resort that featured so prominently in Clinton's failed efforts to broker a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians under Oslo.

It was here that Clinton staged the emergency "Summit of Peacemakers" in March 1996 to rescue Oslo from the brink following a horrific wave of Hamas suicide bombings in Israel. Billed as a major anti-terror conference, the real reason for the gathering was hard to disguise: Israel's acting prime minister, the dovish Shimon Peres, was losing ground fast to Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu in a crucial Israeli election and needed a boost.

Thus, Clinton summoned some 13 pro-Western Arab rulers - several of whom are also at today's summit - plus an impressive line-up of other heads of state (Russia's Boris Yeltsin, Britain's John Major, the UN's Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to name a few) for a photo shoot with Peres that was aimed directly at the Israeli electorate. It failed, as Netanyahu won a slim victory while Hamas largely went untouched.

It was also here at Sharm e-Sheikh that Clinton brought together Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in October 2000 to announce the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire in the recently erupted Palestinian intifada. Despite the optimistic tone, it was a truce that never materialized and the violence and terror are with us to this day.

When the Bush Administration inherited the raging Palestinian intifada from Clinton in January 2001, they subtly blamed it on his mishandling of the Arab-Israeli conflict, suggesting he had harmed the prestige of the presidency by trying to micro-manage the dispute. Bush officials quietly vowed to be the "un-Clinton," largely by remaining above the fray.

When reporters questioned the wisdom of this approach, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer once suggested that Clinton's intimate brokering of the conflict was an attempt to "shoot the moon" that left Washington with zero results and Israel facing increased Palestinian terrorism. Though he quickly retracted his comment tying Clinton to the surging Palestinian terror campaign, Fleischer had signaled that Bush indeed was extremely cautious about getting burned by the region's intractable problems.

But in line with the old adage, "If you don't go to the Middle East, the Middle East will come to you," the September 11 mass terror attacks on American soil brought the region's ills right to Bush's doorstep. Benign neglect was no longer an option.

Bush reacted quickly by launching a worldwide war on "global terror," but carved out an exception for the Palestinian version of this growing menace. Spurred on by the Saudi royal family and his European allies, Bush unveiled his "vision" of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and later decided to achieve it by 2005 through implementation of the so-called "road map" to Palestinian statehood.

When Arafat was caught red-handed orchestrating terror attacks, Bush delivered a landmark speech last June 24 in which he conditioned US support for such a state on the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership untainted by terror and corruption. But these preconditions have since been watered down in the three-phase road map, with Israel being required to make parallel concessions in exchange for an eventual end to Palestinian violence and terror.

Many Israelis and their supporters abroad now sense Bush is on the verge of repeating Clinton's mistakes during the ill-fated Oslo peace process.

In assessing why Bush is suddenly engaging in the Middle East, two things are clear. First, he believes recent developments mean the region is now ripe for his personal involvement. In his view, Afghanistan and Iraq have been freed from terror-sponsoring regimes, and a new Palestinian leadership is emerging to serve as a negotiating partner with Israel.

Secondly, deep down Bush is convinced that the creation of a Palestinian state is in Israel's and America's best interests, though he remains skeptical about whether the players in the region are committed to his vision of two states living side-by-side in peace. That is why he is stopping by Sharm e-Sheikh on the way to tomorrow's Israel-PA summit at Aqaba, Jordan, to press Arab leaders to assume their responsibilities in implementing the road map - meaning shun Arafat and starve Hamas.

But two articles published today shed some interesting light on Bush's chances of success, both indicating he lacks a basic knowledge concerning the minefield he has just entered.

First, a Ha'aretz columnist based in Washington recounts a recent incident suggesting that when Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was appointed as the new Palestinian Authority prime minister in April, Bush thought he was a young, energetic reformer, still unaware that he has been Arafat's top deputy in the PLO for decades. Washington is banking on Abu Mazen to dismantle Palestinian terror militias and deliver the PA's end of the bargain, and the fog concerning his true identity and intentions must soon lift.

Then in today's Washington Post, an anonymous canvassing of various administration officials reveals that Bush loathes delving into the details of the region's complex disputes and remains skeptical of intervening deeply in the negotiating process. While Clinton may have pored over the maps to locate every Jewish settlement in Judea/Samaria and Gaza, Bush considers them trivial to an ultimate agreement.

"He does not have the knowledge or the patience to learn this issue enough to have an end destination in mind," one administration official told the Post.

Such complaints from inside Bush's circle of advisors and aides do not bode well for Israel. Abu Mazen shares much of Arafat's baggage and it is frightening to think Bush does not know this. Is he also ignorant of the background of the new/old PA security ace, Mohammad Dahlan, who has been implicated in several terror attacks on Israeli school buses? What other discomforting truths is he being insulated from?

To have any hope of avoiding Bill Clinton's legacy of failure, the Bush administration must scrap the pretenses about a "reformed" Palestinian leadership and a looming Hamas ceasefire, and instead engage in some tough and decisive diplomacy with the Arab parties.

It can begin in Sharm e-Sheikh, with the host Egyptians.

Bush emerged from today's session assuring that the Arab leaders in attendance have agreed to take practical steps to close off sources of funding and arms to terrorists and to prevent terror from "gaining a foothold" in their lands.

If the Bush Administration is truly interested in holding the Arab states to this pledge, they can demand that Egypt immediately close off the arms smuggling tunnels along the Gaza border that supply critical weaponry for the intifada. Israel has discovered dozens of such tunnels in a small stretch opposite Rafah, and Egyptian security forces could put them out of business by sundown today if they wanted.

Without such determined actions, this summit could go down as just another wasted photo-op astride the waters of Sharm e-Sheikh.

David Parsons is the Editor of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) News Service.