Sharon and Bush to meet in Washington

I sure hope there's more shrewd planning behind this than meets the eye:

U.S. to declare Israel won't have to return to 1949 border Ha'aretz (Israel) 04/11/04 (my emphasis):

Israel will not be asked in the future to withdraw to the 1949 cease-fire lines (the Green Line) on the West Bank, according to a letter U.S. President George Bush is to present to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington this week.

According to the letter, the determination of borders in a final status accord will take into consideration "demographic realities" on the ground.

Sharon leaves tomorrow night for a crucial meeting with Bush at the White House on Wednesday. The main item on the agenda is Sharon's disengagement plan. ...

Israeli officials believe the section of this letter from Bush referring to final status borders is highly significant. They believe it constitutes U.S. recognition of Israel's future annexation of West Bank settlement blocs and the negation of a right of Palestinian refugee return to Israel.

So far as I can see, this move does nothing to actually further the peace process in the Middle East.  But it will put the US in the position of looking even more like an anti-Arab power than we already do.

The US' ability to help move the peace process forward has always depended on its being seen as some kind of honest broker by both the Israeli and Arab sides.  This seems like a move that will generate diplomatic bad will on the Arab side without really doing anything at all to advance the peace process for which even the Bush Administration nominally stands.

This comes not long after Sharon recklessly had the spiritual leader of Hamas killed, when he could have been arrested as Israel has done before.  And by doing so he helped to inflame the current situation in Iraq.  This latest move seems yet another signal to the Likud government that the Bush Administration does not expect it to cooperate even with America's immediate needs in the Iraq War.

I often see and hear people refer to the influence of the "Jewish lobby" in America in relation to issues like this.  There are Jewish voters and Jewish lobby groups in America, and they do support Israel.  That does not mean they back every hardline action of Sharon's Likud Party.  For that, we have the Christian Right.

Some conservative Christian groups, according to whose theology Jews are going to Hell for not believing in Jesus, even fund Israeli settlements in occupied territory.  The Christian Right is the most important influence on Bush's Middle East policy, and they generally oppose any moves toward peace negotiations, even those that Yitzhak Rabin's or Ehud Barak's governments undertook.

Commenting on the renewed violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the Iraq invastion in 2003, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay in America Unbound (2003) wrote (p. 171):

The violence was a painful reminder that the situation in the Middle East remained unchanged in important ways even after Saddam's ouster and Bush's personal engagement in regional diplomacy.  While Bush believed that he "changed the whole paradigm over there," it would take more than speeches and informal get-togethers to achieve peace in this deeply divided land.  Much would depend on Bush's staying power - on his willingness to spend his political capital to push and cajole the parties, including Sharon, into taking the steps necessary for making progress.  Success would require more than riding herd on the leaders; it might well require the deployment of significant American capabilities - from more money to troops - to push the two sides together and end the bloodshed.

This latest development doesn't show much evidence that Bush has the intention - or the "will" we keep hearing is so important in Iraq - to "push the two sides together and end the bloodshed."