WHAT’S BOTH NEW AND REMARKABLE about President Bush’s plan for a Middle East settlement are two ideas that underpin his policy and have never before been applied to the Palestinians. Those ideas are regime change and democracy. Both are anathema to Bush’s own State department, the Arab countries supposedly allied with the United States in bringing about a peace settlement, and the European nations which support and finance the Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasser Arafat. Just as new and remarkable is the fact that regime change, with Arafat’s departure, and democracy, with local elections followed by a national vote, have not been offered as helpful suggestions or useful guidelines or options to be considered. Rather, in the president’s speech Monday, they were made mandatory if a Palestinian state is to be recognized by the United States. And of course without American recognition such a state is not going to be created in the first place. This is an entirely new approach to the Middle East by the United States. Instead of making increasingly generous offers to Arafat–the tack of previous presidents, especially President Clinton–Bush issued demands to be met, harsh ones for the Palestinians, less onerous for the Israelis. Six months ago, regime change in the Palestinian leadership was merely a glimmer in Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s eye. Democracy in the West Bank and Gaza was not even on the table for discussion. And in recent weeks, leaks from the Bush administration as the new policy was being crafted didn’t indicate the president would insist on either. Based on those leaks, many journalists concluded the president would present tough but achievable terms for Arafat to meet in order to gain provisional statehood. In effect, the president would be rewarding the terrorism that Arafat refused to crack down on. My own view was: Bush was going wobbly. I was wrong. As it turned out, the president was steady and courageous and candid. His policy was not shaped for Arab or European or even American consumption. It’s what he really believes. Regime change has long been a Bush talking point–when talking about Iraq. At the White House, the removal of Arafat was viewed as a desirable but unattainable outcome. Yes, his ouster was frequently advocated by Sharon. But Sharon’s tough talk wasn’t followed up with an order to the Israeli army to exile Arafat. In recent months, Bush came close to calling for Arafat’s replacement while never urging it explicitly. The fear was it would backfire, threatening diplomatic relations in the Middle East and perhaps strengthening Arafat’s position. The story was different at the State department. In its view, regime change is an idea whose time will never come. State officials are queasy about kicking Saddam Hussein out in Iraq. Ousting Arafat makes them downright apoplectic. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said repeatedly that Arafat is the chosen leader of the Palestinians and America must accept that. Now, with Bush’s insistence on Arafat’s removal, Powell has cynically taken credit for the idea in a front-page article in the New York Times. An important element of Bush’s adoption of regime change for the Palestinians is that it makes his Middle East policy consistent with his war on terrorism. The Bush doctrine holds that terrorists and those who harbor or support them are both guilty. Arafat has been implicated in terrorism, including the death of a American diplomat in Sudan, for more than three decades. He has resisted pleas to halt terrorism. As Bush said in his speech, “today Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing terrorism.” At best Arafat is a harborer of terrorists, at worst a terrorist himself. In either case, Bush decided, he’s not a fit peace partner with Israel. Like peace with a Saddam-led Iraq, peace with an Arafat-led Palestine simply isn’t possible. Bush’s insistence on democracy is reminiscent of American calls for democracy in the “captive nations” under Soviet control in the Cold War. Only this time, the president means it. Bush believes the Palestinian people are, in effect, a captive people whom no one really cares about. He wants to free them from their captors, Arafat and his henchmen. To the extent the idea of imposing democracy on the Palestinians got any attention at all in Washington pre-Bush, it wasn’t viewed as a viable option. Nor was the Israeli government insisting on it as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Only Natan Sharansky, the famous Russian emigre who is a member of Sharon’s cabinet, was actively promoting the idea. Then, during his visit to Washington in March, Sharon began promoting the idea. By that time, Bush was looking for ways to generate “new leadership” among the Palestinians. Full-blown democracy became the answer. Bush’s stunning change in Middle East policy is his fourth major foreign policy pronouncement in less than a year. Let’s review the bidding. On September 20, he declared his sweeping war on terrorism and those who abet it. In his State of the Union address on January 29, he singled out the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–for defeat. Last month at West Point, he downgraded deterrence and containment and adopted a new strategic doctrine to combat terrorist: preemption. And now there’s a new policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. In each case, it looked like Bush had lost control of events. But it turned out he hadn’t. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
