About a year and a half ago, while President George W. Bush was basking in a popularity rating of over ninety percent, I wrote that if he were to take a particular diplomatic initiative he would not be re-elected. He did, and what seemed mad then, is no longer. Today, Mr. Bush is seen by all as definitely defeatable. Allow me to explain.



A lot has happened since April 2002 - the time I wrote that article - including the war on Iraq, the continuation of the world-wide war against al-Qaeda, and the declaration of George Bush?s vision for the Middle East. A lynchpin of that vision is his ?roadmap? for a Palestinian State.



It is the latter policy initiative, and Mr. Bush?s efforts to implement it, that will cause his political downfall. Sounds absurd in a country where ?it?s the economy, stupid?, where, in general, foreign policy plays a poor second fiddle to domestic issues, and where Israel?s welfare interests directly only two percent of the American citizenry (American Jewry).



In that article, I came to the conclusion that every elected post-World War II president?s place in U.S. history is highly correlated to one factor - the degree to which he is dedicated to the territorial integrity of the State of Israel. That this is so seems incredibly hard to understand, given the predominance of domestic economic dynamics in U.S. presidential politics. Yet it works.



Geopolitics and theology, for most self-described sophisticates are mutually exclusive. In particular, any attempt to explain political events via religious causes is the antithesis of modern political analysis. However, as a born-again Christian, President Bush certainly believes that God is concerned with, and is intimately involved in, the affairs of the world. Most born-again Christians see the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and its survival and prosperity as necessary conditions for the ?second-coming? of the Messiah. Thus, Bush?s ?vision? of a Palestinian state ? by necessity, a terrorist state carved out of Israel ? constitutes a most dangerous threat to the survival of Israel. It is clear to them, and to every clear-thinking person with knowledge of Islam and of the Palestinian Charter and the goals contained therein, that the Palestinian state, if it ever comes into being, will have as its predominant goal the destruction of Israel. Anyone denying that basic tenet is smoking something illegal.



So, the question is: Why would George Bush betray one of the basic tenets of his Christian fundamentalism? And why did he allow 140 Saudis ? some close relatives of Osama Bin Laden ? to escape the U.S. by plane immediately after the September 11, 2001 disaster? It appears that the Bush family?s financial ties to the Saudi royal clan led him to compromise his loyalty to his religious beliefs and to his nation.



Bush?s concern for the welfare of the Saudi royal family went very far, as far as staging the now apparently fraudulent claim of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, so as to create the urgent need to have the U.S. attack Iraq. That invasion relieved Saudi Arabia of the threat of Iraqi invasion. With Saddam removed from power, the U.S. was able to comply with the Saudi request to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia. This relieved the unstable regime of the internal threat from the radically anti-American Islamic terrorists, due to its very close relations with the U.S.



Soon afterward, Bush worked with the Saudis in agreeing to endorse their plan for the self-emasculation of Israel in return for Saudi recognition of the Jewish State. Bush, in effect, repeated in 2003 Chamberlain?s plan of 1939, in which the latter sacrificed Czechoslovakia in order to appease Hitler. Bush is sacrificing Israel by offering the so-called Palestinians Judea and Samaria (Sudetenland) from which they will launch attacks on the Jewish State (as did the Nazis on Czechoslovakia) in their attempt to destroy it.



All is set for the destruction of the State of Israel, God forbid, except for one thing. God forbade it. No major world leader has taken into account the fact that, since world War II, God?s finger has been guiding world history in a particular way ? first for the sake of the rebirth of the State of Israel, later for its expansion, and then for its economic and military successes. Every U.S. president whose policies were anti-Israel, especially as they relate to attempts to force Israel to relinquish parts of its God-given territory, either was not re-elected or was denigrated to poor standing as a U.S. president in the eyes of history. To prove the point, let?s review the record.



Before George W. Bush, the four worst elected post-World War II presidents in declining order were George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. All four were also very bad vis-a-vis Israel, trying to force it to relinquish Judea and Samaria for the so-called ?Palestinian people? ? a ?people? created by the anti-Israel world community only after the Six Day War in 1967. In that war Israel captured the aforementioned territories from Jordan, whose annexation thereof in 1948 was unrecognized by the entire world, except for Pakistan and Britain.



George H. W. Bush?s Secretary of State, James Baker, was one of the most bluntly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel diplomats ever. His relentless pressure on Israel to cede the territories and his interference in Israel?s election is well remembered.



At Camp David, Jimmy Carter brutally pressured Menachem Begin to accept the ignominious term that has haunted the Middle East ever since ? ?the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people?. That term has been used ever since as the basis for the ripping-off of Judea and Samaria, the historic heart of Israel, from the Jewish State.



In 1993, Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn as the broker in the mad agreement between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to give the ever-hungry Arabs a big bite of the Jewish lamb. Ten years and 1,100 Jewish murders later ? the equivalent of thirteen World Trade Center horrors ? it is clear that Clinton?s plan is a colossal failure.



Richard Nixon in his day also pushed Israel ? via the Rogers Plan ? to give the Arabs a twenty-second state, in its heart.



These presidents ? Bush, Carter, Clinton, Nixon ? are ranked 6, 7, 8, and 9 on the U.S. scale of elected post-World War II presidents, and are ranked remarkably close on the pro-Israel factor - 6, 8, 9, 7. (The U.S. ranking was determined by 75 distinguished scholars polled by the University of Illinois in Chicago on October 6, 2000.)



Regarding the five top-ranked U.S. presidents, they were, in declining order, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Johnson and Kennedy. With the exception of Eisenhower, whose high U.S. ranking is out of sync with his Israel ranking, all the rest are remarkably correlated on both scores.



Truman is number one vis-a-vis Israel due to his enthusiastic recognition of the State immediately upon its founding, and his repulsion of British efforts to rip the Negev from Israel and turn it over to Egypt. No other president ever actively worked for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the Jewish State.



Reagan is ranked second on the Jewish factor due to his great appreciation of the lone democracy in the Middle East, and the importance he assigned to its role in curbing Soviet influence around the Mediterranean basin.



Johnson is ranked third due to his insistence that Israel not cede any territory after the Six Day War without substantial diplomatic concession from Egypt and Syria.



Kennedy is fourth due to his being the first U.S. president to send Israel arms. His term ended tragically before the Six Day War, in which Judea ad Samaria were returned to the Jewish State.



Israel?s own political leaders encountered the same fate as their U.S. counterparts. That is, every single Israeli political leader after the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords has had a bad end ? physically or politically ? because all failed to renounce them. Rabin was murdered. His successor Shimon Peres, who had a guaranteed landslide after the murder, miraculously pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, and has not won a public election ever since. Binyamin Netanyahu lasted barely three years and lost to Ehud Barak after his agreement to give the Arabs control of Hebron, and his succumbing to Clinton?s relentless pressure to give them thirteen percent of Judea and Samaria. Barak lasted a year and a half after he incredulously agreed, again under Clinton?s arm-twisting, to cede control of the Western Wall -- Israel?s holiest site - and ninety-seven percent of Judea and Samaria.



Now it?s Sharon?s turn. After agreeing to create a Palestinian State, his administration is beset by corruption charges that will not go away. Within six months, he is expected to leave office.



As for Bush, given his dedication and hyper-involvement in efforts to create a Palestinian state inside Israel by the year 2005, he put himself on the road to becoming the worst U.S. president ever vis-a-vis Israel. As such, he is doomed to lose the election in 2004, and be ranked as a very bad president indeed.



In conclusion, anyone with an open mind can?t help but see the finger of God in all of this. It is truly incredible, yet so real. The lesson is clear. Any political leader who deviates from the will of God regarding Israel?s divine destiny is doomed. And what is Israel?s divine destiny? First, to be the home of the world?s Jewish people, a home where they can live and grow spiritually and materially. Israel?s borders are defined in the Bible, the real roadmap of the world. As such, all Arabs residing in Israel have to be transferred from it to Jordan. Jordan is the Arab state for the so-called ?Palestinians?. That is God?s vision for the Middle East.



Arab transfer is the only way to peace. Bush?s vision for the Middle East can only be accommodated if he declares that Jordan is the Palestinian State. Bush must make God?s vision his vision for the Middle East. This is his only hope for re-election and for historic greatness. He must alter his vision quickly - for time is running out.