Preoccupied by Iraq and next year's US presidential election, the Bush administration appears to have consigned the Middle East conflict to the diplomatic back-burner, loosening most constraints on Israel.
US President George W. Bush's response to Israel's weekend air strike on Syria following a Palestinian suicide bombing in Haifa stopped only just short of explicit approval.
So far the US has restrained Israel from killing or expelling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, but shuns the elected Palestinian leader as fervently as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon does.
Washington's partners in a "quartet" of international mediators -- the EU, Russia and the UN -- discount any serious new US effort to promote the peace "road map" that envisages a Palestinian state by 2005.
"We are very worried. The Americans are discreetly disengaging from the Middle East," a European diplomat said. "Clearly the Middle East demands a lot of energy and the US administration needs that energy for other purposes."
Steve Simon, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation, cited three disincentives for greater US involvement.
"First they are fully extended in Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan," he said.
"Second, because things have degenerated so far, the administration probably can't see how they can usefully intervene," Simon said, noting uncertainties over Sharon's domestic political problems and the disarray over Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie's efforts to form a cabinet.
"Third, you have the complexities surrounding a US presidential election, which usually dictate caution."
Faltering effort
Israelis and Palestinians agreed that Washington's enthusiasm for Middle East diplomacy has chilled for now.
"US engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian political process is frozen, but not dead," said Palestinian analyst Hani Habib. "Things will be left to the balance of power, which means Israel will have a free hand, with US silence and support."
Amotz Asa-El, executive editor of Israel's conservative Jerusalem Post, said the pre-election withdrawal was predictable and unrelated to calculations about how to win the Jewish vote.
"Washington's support for Sharon has not been unswerving. Were it so, the Bush administration would have backed Sharon's big dream of a Greater Israel without a Palestinian state," he said.
"But the fact is that he has been persuaded to abandon this and adopt Washington's pragmatic line," Asa-El said.
Sharon may have endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state, but Palestinians have no confidence that his version would be more than a derisory caricature of their aspirations.
Asa-El argued that the road map had died because Palestinian leaders had refused to meet its requirement that they crack down on militant groups. They had thus forfeited US goodwill.
However, the quartet diplomats who crafted the road map wanted parallel measures from the Israelis, such as halting settlement activity and violence against Palestinians.
"We never had a clear signal from the US that they would hold Israel to account on targeted killings and retaliations for bombings, pending more of a crackdown on the Palestinian side," said Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East program at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Nor, she said, had Washington clarified what Israel must do to help former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas consolidate a ceasefire agreed with militant groups. The truce collapsed in August. Abbas resigned on Sept. 6.
Only on Tuesday did Qurie, closer to Arafat than Abbas was, get a small emergency cabinet sworn in to fill the vacuum.
Arafat factor
"The absence of a government was extremely damaging to the political process," the European diplomat said, describing the US-Israeli policy of isolating Arafat as a "total mistake."
But Bush seems to accept Sharon's argument that Arafat and militants fighting Israeli occupation are "terrorists" just like those who attacked the US on Sept. 11, 2001.
"We would be doing the same thing," Bush said when asked about Sharon's threats on Tuesday to hit Israel's enemies anywhere -- though the US president also called for caution.
Simon said Israel's attack on Syria, with its potential to expand the conflict, was a complication Washington could have done without, but Bush felt unable to criticize his ally.
"He connects what he construes to be the absolute right of the US to protect its homeland with Israel's situation."
Nonetheless, worries over Iraq, the Middle East impasse and adverse polls may have dampened the Bush team's ambitions to reshape the Middle East after deposing Saddam Hussein.
"Because their hands are full, their plans to remake the region via regime change are on hold," Hollis said.
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