Bush stumbles in Mid-East minefield

Bush's supporters on the right want him to back Israel

By Justin Webb BBC Washington Correspondent

President Bush likes moral clarity.

But in the Middle East, if you aspire to being an honest broker, dealing with all sides and cajoling them towards peace, moral clarity is a luxury you cannot afford.

Of course you can express dismay when civilians are murdered by suicide bombers. The president has done that.

The bombing came as Bush and Sharon sat down to meet

You can also express a desire to know the truth when allegations are made of massacres by troops. The president has done that, too.

But what you cannot do is weigh up the two sides in the argument and announce that one is right and one is wrong.

The president would dearly love to be able to do that. Every sinew in his body is straining to find simple morally coherent policies.

But he knows - and if he ever forgets his advisers are on hand to remind him - that such moral coherence would be a disaster for the United States and for the moderate Arab nations whose leaders it wants to support and bolster.

Attempt at neutrality

The president's supporters on the right are frustrated.

They tell him that he ought to be able to choose between a democratically elected Israeli Government trying to protect its citizens and a Palestinian autocracy headed by a man the US regards as - to put it mildly - insufficiently opposed to terrorism.

But still the president tries to stay neutral.

Then, at the very moment the Israeli prime minister is sitting down in the Oval office of the White House chatting with President Bush, there is another murderous attack.

You're seeing a president and an administration that is not able at this point to make a decision to go one way or another. So you have a policy that is all over the place

Ivo H. Daalder of the Brookings Institution

Surely, now the moment to choose is at hand. Does the president seriously intend to tell Israel to abstain from a military response?

Would America keep to a political process if people in Mexico were blowing themselves up in Texas?

No wonder the president is said to be "troubled".

His instinct is to back Israel but he has to let his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, remind Israel publicly after this latest outrage that a political settlement is still the only long-term answer.

Long-term US-Middle East watchers are pretty contemptuous of the hand wringing at the White House.

Policy adrift

They say the president should bin his scruples, fix on a practical policy of engagement with all sides, and stick to it.

"When you don't know how to get from A to B, which is certainly the case with this administration, you are subject to the winds of the day," Ivo H. Daalder of the Brookings Institution told the Washington Post recently.

"You are seeing a president and an administration that is not able at this point to make a decision to go one way or another. So you have a policy that is all over the place."

The latest bombing will certainly have a short-term effect of increasing sympathy for Israel in the White House and probably the turning of a blind eye to a tough Israeli response.

But in a few days, in a few weeks, we will doubtless be hearing the President telling the Israelis "enough is enough" once again.

And the president - and his advisers - will be back to square one.