Little for Palestinians in Bush rhetoric

WITH ISRAELI tanks besieging everything from the Church of the Holy Nativity to Yasser Arafat's compound, President Bush has finally taken the war between Israel and the Palestinians seriously enough to dispatch Colin Powell to the region.


All previous peace missions, including Anthony Zinni's, have been total failures for two fundamental reasons.

First, no US official has ever been allowed to tie American aid to Israeli policies, leaving them with little leverage over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Second, the fixation on having an immediate cease-fire while not addressing the ongoing causes of the conflict is an inherently unworkable strategy, because it fails to replace the violence with a viable political process.