Bush's pro-Israel move stirs controversy

1.00pm

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush likely boosted his domestic political base with a dramatic pro-Israel shift in Mideast policy but the move has inflamed the atmosphere for achieving his major foreign policy goals, stabilising Iraq and defeating terrorism.

Experts say the two are linked because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the prism through which the Arab and Muslim world views America's occupation of Iraq.

Bush on Wednesday endorsed Israel's claim to parts of the West Bank seized in the 1967 Middle East war and backed a Gaza Strip pullout plan in a historic US policy shift that drew condemnation from Palestinians.

He also adopted the Israeli position that Palestinian refugees cannot expect to return to their homes inside Israel.

To Mideast watchers, the substance of Bush's remarks was not surprising. It has long been informally recognised that any final peace deal would involve a land swap and Palestinians ceding the "right of return" for refugees.

But that was to occur in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, with Palestinians trading those concessions for benefits. Negotiations are at an impasse.

"For the president to play the Palestinian card is viewed (by Arabs) as a sign, not only of American presumption, but also American hostility to Palestinian interests," said Jon Alterman, CSIS's director of Middle East Studies.

"It reaffirms not only a sense of bias in the Arab world but a sense of deep and pervasive bias. There's a sense that Bush gave away what wasn't his to give away," he said.

Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations predicted the US shift would have broad consequences.

"It's not helpful to final status negotiations. ... It will be incredibly incendiary at this moment when we are fighting a two-front war in Iraq (and) will have negative consequences throughout the entire Arab world," she said.

While endorsing Bush's new position in the context of negotiations, she said the way it was done meant "we've just poured petrol onto the region and thrown on a match."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to Washington this week needing US backing for his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. One concern is that extremists not read the withdrawal as weakness.

It may have been irresistible for Bush to make a dramatic pro-Israel gesture as he courts Jewish-American voters and the strongly pro-Israel conservative Christian community in what could be a tough US re-election campaign.

Twelve years ago, Bush's father took a hard line in an effort to bring Israel to the negotiating table after the Gulf War and that was seen as one factor in his re-election loss.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobby, praised Bush's policy shift and said it "could lead to a historic opportunity" to move forward toward peace.

US officials said supporting Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza set an important precedent on which to build a future peace deal -- the dismantling of settlements by Israel's fiercely pro-settlement right-wing Likud Party.

"(Bush) didn't say anything people didn't already know. It's political on both sides ... When it comes time to do something, a president who really wants to make a peace deal won't be hampered by this at all," a former US official said.

- REUTERS