IN AN effort to bring about enormous changes at the last minute, President Bush will arrive in Israel Wednesday to begin an eight-day trip to a half-dozen countries in the Middle East. This will be his first state visit to all the countries on his itinerary except Egypt, and Americans must hope this belated trip to such a strategically vital region means Bush now recognizes the mistake he made in waiting so long.
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The number one item on his agenda should be to shepherd Israelis and Palestinians into a negotiated two-state resolution of their conflict. Bush has said he wants Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to fulfill the promise of the November peace conference in Annapolis, Md., by the end of this year. Part of his motive for such a deadline may be to salvage some meaningful achievement for his legacy. But there are also substantive reasons to prod both sides to get on with the forging of historic final compromises on the knottiest issues - borders, control of Jerusalem, and the rights of Palestinian refugees.
The Oslo peace process of the 1990s failed primarily because it strung out the obligations of each side over an extended period without defining the terms of a final peace accord. So neither side had much incentive to live up to its Oslo commitments.
Today the path to peace requires a comprehensive deal on all outstanding issues. Paradoxically, Bush's very blunders have induced a new alignment of forces in the region that could make possible the kind of breakthrough peace agreement that eluded former president Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000.
By invading and occupying Iraq, Bush broke down the wall of Sunni Arab power that once contained Iran. So Iran's influence now extends deep into the Arab world, in Lebanon and Syria. Perhaps most worrying for the Sunni Arab regimes, Tehran has succeeded in wresting from them the Palestinian card. Iran has become the primary sponsor of Hamas, which has a broad social and political base in the Palestinian population.
This strategic reconfiguration is behind the Arab League's offer to Israel of normalized relations with all 22 Arab states - once Israelis and Palestinians strike a two-state peace agreement ending their conflict. Simultaneously, Olmert has recognized that the status quo cannot continue, and that the only other alternative to a two-state deal is a single state for two peoples. This option, he said in the Jerusalem Post last week, "could bring about the end of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state."
Bush has misused American power in the past. In the last year of his presidency, he must not miss his chance to use that power in the right way for the right purpose - to "ride herd" on Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, as he once promised to do.
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