Israeli policymakers often distinguish between two sides of the Bush Administration: The State Department, bad side, and the Defense Department, good side. President Bush is invariably classified in over-optimistic Israeli terms as, at heart, on the good side. But the fact of the matter is that President Bush and Colin Powell share a vision of Middle East peace that is also shared by the Defense Department?s hawk of hawks, Paul Wolfowitz.



That vision is essentially the ?road- map plan?, and identical with Oslo and Geneva in that it posits the creation of a Palestinian Arab state West of the Jordan. This major point cannot be minimized or confounded by the fact that the Administration has a greater deal of ambiguity over such issues as the status of eastern Jerusalem, or the Temple Mount, than do the Beilin-Ayalon-Peres plans. The bottom line is that the United States believes that the ?solution? to the conflict is in a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel.



This conception, if one considers the Palestinians? past and present relation to everything the United States represents, does not seem to make much moral or political sense. The Palestinians have not only demonstrated a consistent American?flag burning hatred of the US for years, they have been the world ?godfathers? of international terror for close to three decades. Arafat is the spiritual mentor of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. The United States certainly knows of the part Palestinians have played in terror against specifically American targets. And it knows, too, the inveterate message of hatred for America and its values spread by the propaganda machine of the Palestinian Authority.



Perhaps even more importantly, Pentagon strategists must have a very clear idea of the character that any ?instantly created? Palestinian state would take. It would be no more democratic than the other Arab states of the area. And it would have as first item on its agenda the waging, through whatever means available to it, of unremitting war against Israel. There are no signs that any political group present now in the Palestinian reality, whether the ruling Fatah of Yasser Arafat or the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have any real agenda but the guerilla war to destroy Israel.



How then, one might ask, can the United States favor a policy that is so absurdly self- defeating, and can only lead to a far worse situation for its longtime ally and fellow democracy, Israel? The answer is, of course, not with the Palestinians themselves, no more than the answer of Kurdish statelessness is with the Kurds themselves. The answer is with American allies? pressure upon the United States. First, and above all, the oil and petrodollar provider Saudi Arabia, and secondly, the major state of the Arab world, Egypt. Their insistence on a Palestinian state is for them, at least in one sense, a means for diminishing pressure upon their own very fragile and troubled regimes.



A second source of pressure is the whole world community, spearheaded by America?s not very loyal European allies, who side with the Arab cause and see a Palestinian state as a step in its favor. The Palestinian state option, in this sense, is not so much an independent American policy, but the only option it seems to have to appease critical allies.



The fact, however, that the Administration has not really thought through the true consequence of the ?Palestinian state policy? indicates that, bottom line, it seems willing to sacrifice not only the interests of Israel, but perhaps its very existence.



Now how does this square with Bush and also Powell?s known sympathy for Israel, their unambiguous and strong defense of Israel?s right to exist? The answer here is that we all live with contradictions, and these contradictions are a part of policy-makers? plans and goals. Bush and his Administration believe, perhaps, that their plan?s realization will bring greater security to Israel. They simply, strategically and tactically, are wrong.



What is required is a total rethinking of the ?road- map option? and a movement toward some version of the Elon plan; a plan which gives Israel sovereignty west of the Jordan and promotes the creation of a viable Jordanian- Palestinian state to the east. Such a plan?s implementation would require a transformed Arab world, one willing to truly live in peace with Israel.



It is, of course, unrealistic at this time. But the plan?s one great advantage over present Administration plans is that it is not likely, if implemented, to increase the danger to the Israel and thus undermine what is truly an American interest, the continued survival of a democratic Israel.