POLITICAL ANALYSIS Backing Sharon risks alienation

Bush's closer alliance with Israel will gain Jewish votes in pivotal states.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
By signaling a major shift aligning U.S. policy with Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush may have turned Arab and Muslim sentiment further against the United States as he seeks the region's help in Iraq.
One thing is clear: By endorsing three aspects of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral approach to dealing with the Palestinians -- Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, permanent retention of some Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and an end to the "right of return" of millions of Palestinian refugees to homes and lands they held in Israel before 1948 -- Bush has upended two decades of U.S. policy.
But at the same time, he appears to have cemented the view widely held across Arab states that the United States is no longer the "honest broker" it once was in the Middle East.
When Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visits the region to solicit help on Iraq, he is likely to hear more about the Arab perception that the United States is once again presenting a set of faits accomplis that run counter to Arab positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What experts say
"With Arabs and Muslims already so suspicious of the U.S. and with the situation in Iraq reaching a critical point, this change could not have come at a worse time," says Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.
"This is a flat rejection of the standpoints of moderate Arabs and as such plays into the hands of the radicals and extremists."
The president used Sharon's visit to Washington Wednesday to signal the policy shift. Calling Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza "courageous," Bush said that "realities on the ground" made it unrealistic to expect Israel to withdraw all settlements from West Bank lands it seized in 1967, or to accept the return of millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 partition.
At the State Department, officials say the "good" of the new policy is being lost in the focus on the controversial. But they acknowledge that the announcement will not make a smooth visit to the region for Armitage, who plans to visit Gulf countries next week.
"The withdrawal from Gaza is good; that's a positive thing," says a State Department official. "The bad side is to say we're not going to prejudge final-status issues, and then to rush headlong into that. It wasn't necessary to do that [now]."
The question of why the shift was made this week turned many analysts to the political realities Bush and Sharon face: Bush an election in November, and Sharon a crucial vote in May by his Likud Party on his disengagement plan. American endorsement of so many of Sharon's goals will certainly boost the prime minister.
At the same time, the Bush administration's closer embrace of Israel is seen helping the president with Jewish voters, who traditionally have stuck with Democrats. Some political analysts think it could be enough to tilt the vote in such states as Florida or Pennsylvania.
Here's the problem
But analysts like Gerges say what may be good politics does not make for good strategic policy for a region the administration has placed at the top of its priority list.
"What we're seeing is an approach that is motivated by short-term political goals rather than by a long-range, strategic vision," he says.
Inside the red-roofed cottages of Givat Ze'ev, one of at least six West Bank settlements Sharon has said will remain in Israeli hands, there was satisfaction Thursday with the U.S. shift.
"Bush is being very realistic, and when you are realistic, it is easier to solve things," says David Sharabi, a resident. "We saw that no matter how much we tried to placate the Palestinians, it did not work. Bush understood that after all of the games by Clinton and others, there was a need to tell the truth. You simply cannot uproot tens of thousands of Israelis."
The problem is that Palestinians feel the same way -- and believe they have international law on their side. "Does [Bush] own the Palestinians and the rights of the Palestinians that he can give them away?" asks Khaled Maadi, an unemployed catering supplier in Bidu, an Arab town that has been the site of anti-Israeli protests.