President Bush presented a fresh U.S. approach to the Middle East peace process Monday. The most important aspect for all parties was the clear signal of continued U.S. involvement. The second and most problematic point was the U.S. requirement of new Palestinian leadership as a condition for leading the process forward.
The hardest part, of course, is the challenge of getting from the statement of a new approach to actual progress in negotiations concerning Palestine and Israel. Mr. Bush did not mention Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat by name, but it is clearly Mr. Arafat who has to go if the Palestinians are to meet the U.S. demand for new and different Palestinian leadership before the United States will support the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
This is very tricky ground that President Bush has stepped onto. It has the United States, in effect, rejecting the Palestinians' elected leader and telling them to choose someone else to represent them in negotiations.
It is also generally considered dangerous to insist on the replacement of one leader when one doesn't know who will follow. There is the real possibility that -- if the Palestinians decide to meet the American demand -- they will choose someone worse than Mr. Arafat, or they may simply re-elect Mr. Arafat.
Finally, the fact that the Israelis have wanted to say goodbye to Mr. Arafat for some time means that the United States has, in effect, accepted the Israeli position on the Palestinian leader. Let's hope the Israelis don't interpret that as permission to kill him.
On the other hand, a very sound, detached argument can be made that it is definitely time for Mr. Arafat to go. His lack of decisiveness -- an absence of what some would call common horse sense -- caused all of the efforts of President Bill Clinton to achieve a settlement to come to naught.
Mr. Arafat is a poor negotiator. His track record as head of the Palestinian Authority indicates that he is a poor manager and administrator as well. He is widely hated by the other Arab leaders who will have to put the muscle on the Palestinians to bring them to a settlement at the end of the day. Mr. Arafat has squeezed the other Arabs endlessly for money, whined about them and through his own haplessness played the Arab hand badly for decades.
There is reason to hope that change might break the cycle of despair that now constitutes daily life in Israel and Palestine. Looking at the Palestinians as a people with a legitimate claim to a state if one can be negotiated serves as a basis for guarded optimism that they will be able to come up with new, credible leaders.
Mr. Bush's tentative timetable of three years to a Palestinian state seems conservative. On the other hand, after 54 years, four regional wars and two bloody uprisings, a process moving steadily across three years, steered by an actively involved Washington, shouldn't sound bad at all to the Palestinians, to the Israelis and to all who are sick of the bloodshed.
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