The media has missed the full significance of some of the questions and answers in the joint press conference on the Middle East that George W. Bush and Tony Blair held last Friday — in part because they missed the significance of something that occurred the night before.
Last week, Natan Sharansky received a call inviting him to come to the White House to discuss his new book. On Saturday, The Jerusalem Post had this account:
Minister without Portfolio Natan Sharansky met in the White House with Bush for over an hour Thursday discussing his new book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror."
According to Sharansky’s office, Bush invited Sharansky and told him he had already read 210 of the book’s 286 pages. Sharansky told Bush "Very few people in the world believe like you do in the ideal of democracy for all people. You are going against the flow, and are the world’s dissident."
A few hours before meeting Bush, Sharansky met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who said that she too was reading his book, at Bush’s recommendation.
The theme of Sharansky’s book is summarized in Arch Puddington’s review in the current issue of Commentary:
Harking back to the cold war, [Sharansky] recalls how the first President Bush rejected his advice to adopt a policy that would encourage [democratic] forces. . . that were leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Bush responded that such a policy would undermine Gorbachev and foment instability. . . .
The need for stability, Sharansky concluded, is one of the most misused arguments in political life. “In its name,” he writes, “autocrats are embraced, dictators are coddled, and tyrants are courted.” . . .
Sharansky is especially critical of the Oslo Accords for creating an environment in which both Israeli leaders and outside powers conspired to ignore Arafat’s corruption and authoritarianism on the grounds that his leadership was essential to peace. . . .
[Sharansky] would like to see the goal of Palestinian democracy incorporated into the formal diplomatic stances of the United States and other parties involved in the peace negotiations. . . .
Puddington’s review described Sharansky’s “road map” for peace in the region:
It centers on a three-year period during which the outside world would collaborate to strengthen government and civil society among the Palestinians. After this period of institution-building, elections would be held and serious negotiations would begin toward a final peace settlement. . . .
Now here is the first question and answer from the Bush/Blair news conference on Friday, the day after Bush met with Sharansky:
[Q]. With Yasser Arafat’s death, what specific steps can Israel take to revive peace negotiations? And do you believe that Israel should implement a freeze on West Bank settlement expansion?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I believe that the responsibility for peace is going to rest with the Palestinian people’s desire to build a democracy and Israel’s willingness to help them build a democracy. I know we have a responsibility as free nations to set forth a strategy that will help the Palestinian people head toward democracy. I don’t think there will ever be lasting peace until there is a free, truly democratic society in the Palestinian territories that becomes a state. And therefore, the responsibility rests with both the Palestinian people and the leadership which emerges, with the Israelis to help that democracy grow, and with the free world to put the strategy in place that will help the democracy grow.
Six references in four sentences to democracy — in response to a question about a settlement freeze.
In response to the next question, about his support for a Palestinian state, Bush answered as follows:
I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state. . . .There’s no other way to have a lasting peace, in my judgment, unless we all work to help develop the institutions necessary for a [truly free] state to emerge: civil society, based upon justice, free speech, free elections, the right for people to express themselves freely. The first step of that is going to be the election of a new president, and my fervent hope is that the president embraces the notion of a democratic state.
In response to a question about naming a Middle East envoy — the perennial suggestion of those who think the key to peace is a high level person who will secure an “agreement” — Bush answered as follows:
[W]hat the Prime Minister and I discussed last night is, do not we have an obligation to develop a strategy? And the answer is, absolutely, we have an obligation. . . . We are going to develop a strategy, so that once the elections [for a new Palestinian president] are over, we’ll be able to say, here’s how we will help you. If you want to be helped, here’s what we’re willing to do. If you choose not to be helped, if you decide you don’t want a free, democratic society, there’s nothing we can do. If you think you can have peace without democracy . . . I will be extremely doubtful that it will ever happen.
And then the most surprising statement at the press conference — what Tony Blair said next:
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Yes, that’s absolutely right. I mean, what we will do is anything that is necessary to make the strategy work. The important thing is that, first of all, there’s got to be an agreement as to what a viable Palestinian state means. And what we’re really saying this morning is that that viable state has to be a democratic state. . .
[T]he bottom line has got to be that if you want to secure Israel, and you want a viable Palestinian state, those are two states living side-by-side, and they are democratic states living side-by-side.
And we’ve got the chance over the next few months with the election of a new Palestinian President to put the first marker down on that.
The emphasis on a multi-year strategy of developing a democratic Palestinian society as a condition of a successful peace — not on the familiar tactical bromides of a settlement freeze, or a new envoy, or more concessions by Israel — and the further recognition that the election of a pro-democracy Palestinian president is simply the “first marker” in that multi-year process, is extraordinary.
And perhaps even more extraordinary is the complete agreement between Bush and Blair on this strategy — one they “discussed last night,” after Bush earlier met for more than an hour with Natan Sharansky to discuss his book