DEAD SEA, Jordan — Like nine American presidents before him, George W. Bush has finally and fully been lured into the Arab-Israeli imbroglio. But the conversion, from keeping the issue at a distance to being deeply and personally committed to it, was a slow process that took almost two years.
U.S.-brokered mediation over the new "road map" for peace now appears on the cusp of either breakthrough or setback. Whether his administration succeeds or fails, the outcome is likely to be a big piece of Bush's legacy.
Six pivotal events have gradually transformed the president's thinking. "It's been an evolutionary thing," said a senior administration official.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks forced the issue. In a United Nations speech designed to address the terrorist threat to modern civilization, Bush became the first U.S. president to formally call for an independent Palestinian state. He spoke of it briefly, however, as a principle -- in the 34th of 41 paragraphs. It was included, after lengthy internal debate, largely in the context of terrorism and as a signal that the United States wanted justice for Muslims too, U.S. officials said.
The administration, engrossed with Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, also didn't want to follow in the footsteps of the Clinton administration, which had failed in last-ditch peace talks at Camp David. Moreover, its new foreign policy team, weighted with pro-Israel neoconservatives, didn't believe that Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat was capable of making peace, the sources added.
So the pledge was basically left hanging.
The next turning point was instead an "eloquent message" and a somewhat gruesome video, both delivered by Saudi Arabia's imposing Crown Prince Abdullah during his visit to the president's ranch in April 2002, an administration official said.
The crown prince, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich country since King Fahd's debilitating stroke in 1995, was fresh from an Arab League summit where he had engineered an agreement to formally recognize Israel in exchange for the Jewish state ceding territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. That diplomacy was the carrot.
The stick was a video portraying Palestinian suffering since Israel cracked down on Palestinian territories in response to the uprising. It included "images you couldn't put on TV," said a State Department official.
