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Robert Novak (back to story)
April 15, 2002
The GOP for Sharon
WASHINGTON -- Conservative sage William J. Bennett, blunt as ever, last Thursday
said publicly what elected Republican officials say privately. President Bush's new
Middle East peace initiative, said Bennett, is "making very angry ... his entire
political
base. A firestorm is starting to build -- a firestorm of criticism." That defined the
political threat to the president for seeking peace between Israel and the
Palestinians.
The transcript of Bennett's remarks (in his new role as a CNN contributor) was
perused, but not officially commented on, by senior aides at the White House. They
are concerned. Bennett may have exaggerated a little, but not much. I telephoned
several prominent Republican conservatives, some of them elected officials, who
were in unanimous agreement with Bennett while declining to go public.
The implications for George W. Bush are horrendous. From his first day in office, he
has tried to avoid his father's alienation of the conservative Republican base.
Nevertheless, his aides tell me, the president intends to proceed with peacemaking
even if it means undermining his political game plan. It does cause Bush to tread
carefully, however.
That reality is appreciated in Israel. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been able to
brush off, with impunity, U.S. demands for military withdrawal "without delay" from
the Palestinian territories. When Sharon refused at their meeting Friday to give Colin
Powell any timetable for ending the military offensive, the secretary of state did not
publicly insist. Sharon has called Washington's bluff.
Congressional criticism of the Bush peace initiative has publicly come from the usual
suspects -- partisan Democrats with large Jewish constituencies, such as Sen.
Charles Schumer of New York. ("We're telling Israel, which is simply trying to defend
herself, to pull back, " Schumer complained last week.) Bush doesn't worry about the
Chuck Schumers. What bothers the White House are the Bill Bennetts.
Bennett represents gradual but accelerating escalation of support for Israel from the
Republican Party's dominant conservative wing, especially from the Christian
religious right. When 46 years ago a Republican president in the midst of his re-
election campaign took a tough stand against the Israeli attack on Egypt, Dwight D.
Eisenhower did not have to worry about his party's base. Conservatives then tilted
toward the Arabs. The move by the American right, overwhelmingly non-Jewish,
toward Israel has intensified over the last 10 years.
Some Israeli policies are more popular with Republican conservatives than others.
The Oslo agreement and the former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's failed peace
initiative are not. Sharon's Bismarckian policy of settling the Palestinian question
with
blood and iron are.
Even more popular than Sharon is former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who
was lionized by Republican lawmakers in Washington last week during an apparent
campaign trip to get his old job back. Netanyahu is even tougher than Sharon in his
stated intent to bring peace by destroying the Palestinian Authority and exiling Yasser
Arafat. When Netanyahu pleaded with Republican senators not to "pressure" Israel
to stop defending itself in an implicit criticism of Bush, no senator spoke in defense
of
the president.
Nor did White House spokesman Ari Fleischer question the propriety of Netanyahu's
electioneering on Capitol Hill. Instead, Fleischer -- echoing what senior aides are
saying -- contradicted reality and what Sharon himself told Powell by insisting that
the
Israelis really are obeying the president's demand, however slowly. In a calculated
White House hedge, Fleischer stressed that Powell's Israeli-opposed meeting with
Arafat was the secretary of state's idea, not the president's.
Since hedging won't get Bill Bennett back on the president's side, Bush might
consider the words of a distinguished Israeli Knesset member: former Justice
Minister Yossi Beilin. In a PBS interview Thursday, he asserted "this operation has
cost us a lot, not only in our international image, which has deteriorated, but I
believe
that mainly we increased ambitions on the Palestinian side to take revenge, and we
increased the hatred toward us." Beilin also called the Palestinians "not a group of
terrorists like al Qaida" but a "big nation with several millions of people" who long
ago
chose Arafat as their leader.
Middle East specialists at the State Department agree with Beilin. For President
Bush to publicly concur would feed Bennett's firestorm.
Contact Robert Novak | Read his biography
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
townhall.com
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