SHIFT? :

Bush's Turn Against Arafat Signals a Big Strategy Shift (PATRICK E. TYLER, June 30, 2002, NY Times)

Mr. Bush's position that Mr. Arafat must go and that not much else can happen until he does is a significant gamble by the president, one offering the Palestinians the carrot of strong American support for Palestinian statehood. To many, it seems a long shot, though a prominent Palestinian columnist in the London-based (and Saudi supported) newspaper Al Hayat called for Mr. Arafat to step aside.

With the abrupt shift in strategy, some administration officials, Arab leaders and Middle East experts are wondering whether the United States is in effect disengaging, putting its policy on hold while Mr. Arafat remains defiantly in place. [...]

Until this spring, the White House had shunned any idea that it would undertake risky peace initiatives like the ones that President Bill Clinton tried in his final year in office. Mr. Bush's national security team considered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a brutal sideshow, not one that involved America's strategic interests.

So the Bush team came to office saying they wanted no part of Palestinian peace negotiations. After a few especially horrific attacks on Israel, they briefly tried to get peace talks moving, but the Palestinians weren't serious. The President announced he's done until the Palestinians get serious. I'm having trouble discerning the radical shifts in all this. It seems like they've pursued a reasonable and measured strategy, that has kept American interests at the forefront, Israel's interests just behind, and has been skeptical, even distrustful, of the Palestinians right along. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 30, 2002 9:02 AM