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When it comes to Israel and Palestine, it seems as though the U.S. can do little more than hope for the best. A senior State Department official grimaced last week as he watched TV pictures of Palestinians rallying to Arafat's compound in Ramallah. "Ignoring him is better than making him the center of attention," said the official. There was little the State Department could do. After 2 1/2 years of trying--and failing--to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a glum official admitted, "We have no weight with the Israelis." Yet Sharon still fears the White House, so on Thursday night National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called a senior Israeli official to try to get Jerusalem to back down from its pledge to eject Arafat. Washington has kept in constant touch with Ahmed Qurei, better known as Abu Ala, appointed Palestinian Prime Minister by Arafat on Sept. 7. A Palestinian official claims that the U.S. has told Abu Ala, "Don't worry, the Israelis won't kick Arafat out."
But if the White House still has some muscle with the Israelis, it has less and less with the Palestinians. Washington pressed Abu Ala to appoint an emergency Cabinet that would take control of the Palestinian security apparatus and crack down on Hamas and other radical groups, but Abu Ala backed down under pressure from Arafat and others. Some in the Administration wondered whether the new Prime Minister was already compromised. "The U.S. has made it pretty clear," says this official, "that we won't support someone who is the voice of Yasser Arafat."
IRAQ: HELP WANTED
In the case of Iraq, the administration is dealing with the new reality by trying to internationalize the task of reconstruction. Inevitably, given the scarcely disguised disdain that some in the Administration have shown for the U.N., the decision to seek a new Security Council resolution was branded a reversal of policy. And inevitably, members of the Administration, who would not admit to error if the Inquisition put them through an auto-da-fe, scoffed at the very idea, stressing their flexibility, reminding skeptics--how could anyone have thought otherwise?--that they have been multilateralists all along. "We've been making course corrections virtually on a weekly basis," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz last week. Surprisingly, given the animosity between Washington and Paris this year, that view is endorsed by a senior French diplomat. "They very pragmatically see that the situation has got to change," this diplomat says, "and they're trying to fix it."
It was plain that Iraq needed fixing months ago. With continued attacks on U.S. troops and mounting pressure to bring them home, the Administration started looking for ways to bring in more foreign soldiers. They first sought to get troops from India, Pakistan and Turkey, among others, into the theater of operations. But since none of these nations would commit without a new Security Council resolution, desultory discussions took place in July on the possibility of a new U.N. mandate. They didn't get very far. Bush left for his vacation in Crawford, Texas, calling for a greater international presence in Iraq but avoided saying whether the U.N. would have more authority there.