The Bush Doctrine, Israel and the Peace Process

Norman Podhoretz’s article in the April issue of COMMENTARY — “Israel and the Palestinians:  Has Bush Reneged?” — is essential reading.

The article responds to the Power Line post “The Bush Doctrine Today and Tomorrow” and the JCI post “The Fall of the Fourth Pillar,” both of which argued that the “fourth pillar” of the Bush Doctrine — the principle that the U.S. would not support establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders had engaged in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantled their infrastructure — had fallen victim to a new “peace process,” one with immediate Phase III final status negotiations that violated not only the “Roadmap” but the formal U.S. commitment to abide by it.

Late last year Power Line, in “Condi’s Confusion,” called the Bush administration’s efforts to create a Palestinian state a “study in weakness and confusion” that defied “every marker it has laid down.”  On the day the Annapolis conference convened, Power Line published “Send in the Clowns,” and followed up a day later with “When Words Lose Their Meaning.”  The prior JCI posts on this subject include “Bush’s Old Promise and New Plan,” “Stuck in the Tight Sequentiality of the Roadmap” and "Where the Peace Process Went Wrong." 

All of these posts have links to other materials that serve as further background to the issues discussed in the Podhoretz article.

The issues are of critical importance, as the Bush administration prepares to spend its last nine months trying to birth a final status agreement to be implemented by others. We’ll review one of the most interesting points in Podhoretz’s article tomorrow.  The article deserves the widest possible discussion.