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CONDI VISITS THE "NEW MIDDLE EAST." The State Department announced last week that Secretary Rice would be visiting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel, with the aim of engaging what she characterized as "moderate" Arabs. And here she is, in the region for the first time after the pointless war in Lebanon, which saw U.S. standing in the region plunge to new depths.Her deputy, Philip Zelikow, had hinted earlier in remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as to what this trip is about:
What would bind that coalition and help keep them together is a sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed, that they see a common determination to sustain an active policy that tries to deal with the problems of Israel and the Palestinians. We don't want this issue doesn't have the real corrosive effects that it has, or the symbolic corrosive effects that it causes in undermining some of the friends we need friends to confront some of the serious dangers we must face together.In other words, the U.S. was going to agree to restart some sort of peace process in order to get the ball rolling on sanctioning Iran. That was denied today by Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, with whom Rice met.The Bush administration's incompetence and ideology have combined to make a difficult situation between the Israelis and Palestinians much, much worse -- first, by hoping the issue would go away entirely and thus outsourcing policy to Ariel Sharon, second by wishing it would magically be solved by taking out Saddam Hussein, and finally by calling for elections and then trying to strangle the winning party (the admittedly unsavory Hamas) when it proved uncooperative. The latter has been weakened as it has been unable to pay civil servants' salaries, and Gaza is now in chaos. Washington is unlikely to make the needed adjustment in its policies to get the situation back on track. So with all due respect to experienced Middle East hands like Rob Malley and Aaron Miller, I doubt that much progress will be made on this trip.
