Bush Had A New Vision For Mid-East Peace--And Blinked

Bassam Eid, executive director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week on what started out as a new approach to Mid-East peace--

The real breakthrough of Mr. Bush's vision five-and-a-half years ago was not his call for a two-state solution or even the call for Palestinians to "choose leaders not compromised by terror." Rather, the breakthrough was in making peace conditional on a fundamental transformation of Palestinian society: "I call upon [Palestinians] to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. . . . A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism."

That is all forgotten now, as US policy has returned to the old ways in search of The Moderate Palestinian who will lead the Palestinian Arabs--and the Middle East--to peace and stability.

Under such a policy, everything is subservient to maintaining and supporting that mythical leader:

A few weeks ago, in a meeting with a high ranking official responsible for European foreign policy, one of us (Mr. Sharansky) spoke about the need to support the work of the other (Mr. Eid) in promoting democracy and human rights in the Palestinian territories. After the European leader expressed his deep commitment to peace, democracy and human rights, he asked the all important question: "What is his [Mr. Eid's] relationship to Abu Mazen?" After hearing that it was strained because of constant criticism of Abu Mazen's failure to reform, the official's enthusiasm quickly evaporated. "That will be a problem. We cannot do anything that will undermine Abu Mazen." This new-old attitude reminds one of the absurdity of those who refused to support democratic dissidents behind the Iron Curtain because they were undermining their leaders.

Bush's vision is dead--during his own term, and what is the likelihood that any of the presidential candidates can afford to depart from the accepted wisdom and actually pursue real change.

Technorati Tag: Bassam Eid and Natan Sharansky.