ISRAEL: Bush insists progress will be made creating peace in the Middle East. The evidence suggests otherwise, writes David Horovitz. in Jerusalem
Talking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, President Bush could not have sounded more upbeat.
With his Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, flying to the Middle East to try to drag Israeli and Palestinian leaders back to the negotiating table, the President was confidence personified.
"Of course we're going to make progress," he declared, as though the very idea of deadlock, hostility, violence and mistrust was unthinkable. "Yes, we'll make progress, absolutely."
The President has been immeasurably encouraged by the success, militarily at least, of his strategy in dealing with Saddam Hussein, and now purports to believe that his administration can succeed where all its predecessors have failed - in producing white smoke from a negotiating room peopled by Israeli and Palestinian officials.
So rosy is the view from the Oval Office, that the President is talking airily of a Middle East free trade area - an entire harmonious region, united in its appreciation for the US democratic example, importing and exporting to and from the US without taxes, tariffs or other obstacles.
Capitol Hill is doing its bit too. Legislation newly approved by a House of Representatives committee provides for colossal - albeit as yet unspecified - financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority if, as Mr Bush so publicly anticipates, the "roadmap" formula for Palestinian statehood and peaceful co-existence with Israel is implemented smoothly.
Plainly determined to dispel any notion of a pro-Israeli bias, the legislation, passed by the House International Relations Committee, uses language that is unprecedentedly supportive of Palestinian statehood. It asserts that "a stable and peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for".
So much for the rhetoric and the good intentions. Mr Powell begins his meetings here tomorrow in an atmosphere at odds with the robust optimism emanating from Washington.
To put it succinctly, Israeli and Palestinian leaders are certain that the roadmap will lead precisely nowhere in the foreseeable future, and equally certain that it is "the other side" which is to blame for this.
Specifically, the new Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, notes that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, has not formally accepted the roadmap formula, with its vision of phased progress to Palestinian statehood over the coming two years.
He believes that Mr Sharon has no intention of offering terms for statehood anywhere near as advantageous as those offered by the last Israeli prime minister, Mr Ehud Barak - terms that the PA's President, Mr Yasser Arafat, rejected at the July 2000 Camp David summit.
Mr Sharon, for his part, is quite impressed by Mr Abbas's repeated public pledges to halt the "armed intifada", but has concluded that it is Mr Arafat, rather than the new Prime Minister, who is pulling the intifada strings.
He believes that the "roadmap" has already been contravened by Mr Arafat, who continues to directly oversee several of the many armed "security" forces - networks that are supposed to have been reorganised under the direct authority of Mr Abbas and his security chief.
And he fears that the well-intentioned but weak Mr Abbas lacks the resolve and support to carry out the mass arrests and weapons seizures among the Islamic extremist groups and the Arafat-loyalist militias.
And in their scepticism, both men are absolutely right. Given that background, the day-to-day reality here remains violent and largely hopeless.
Mr Powell must try to turn that kind of bloody reality into a Middle East which accords with Mr Bush's optimistic outlook. An unenviable task? More likely an impossible one.