Avi Davis is a senior editorial columnist for Jewsweek.com and the author of The Crucible of Conflict: Jews, Arabs and the West Bank Dilemma, to be published in the Fall.
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The U.S. ultimatum to Ariel Sharon's government on Tuesday must have been felt by Israel like a powerful shaft from that wind. The rebuke nettled Israeli leaders who believed that Israel's incursion into Palestinian areas was a justified act of self-defense. They had good reason to believe so. A year of relentless Palestinian terror has driven the temperature of the Middle East conflict beyond Israeli endurance. The thermometer finally shattered last week when Rechavam Ze'evi, Israel's Minister of Tourism, was assassinated in eastern Jerusalem. The encirclement of Palestinian cities by the IDF should then have been anticipated. No country can be expected to endure the continued slaughter of its citizens or the assassination of its leaders. World wars have started over less.

But these are not normal times. The U.S. is at war and the primacy of that effort seems to over-ride almost every other foreign policy concern. President Bush's message to Foreign Minister Peres was therefore categorical: your security interests are secondary to the needs of this war. Pull out of Palestinian areas or face the consequences.

Supporters of a more balanced U.S. approach to the Middle East conflict may applaud Bush's stance. Indeed, somewhere there are already editorialists celebrating Israel's comeuppance. But viewed from a historical perspective, Bush's actions are disastrous; there has not been a greater failure of U.S. strategic thinking since Johnson's 1965 decision to escalate hostilities in Vietnam.

A war waged over three continents and often fought covertly requires a strategic plan enjoining allies whose reliability and loyalty cannot be questioned. But between the Black Sea and India, the United States has only one such ally: Israel. Saudi Arabia, who may have once qualified for that role, has stymied any attempt by the FBI to place traces on the eight known hijackers who hailed from that country and there are increasingly disturbing signs of the Saudi royal family's connections with Osama Bin Laden. Pakistan, another candidate, is at best a short-term ally, its Muslim population restive and resistant to a war against co-religionists.

In the Palestinian Authority, the United States cannot expect much more. Its constituency seethes with anti-American sentiment. Both of the major terrorist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have vast operations in the United States and draw much financial support from this country. There is evidence that this domestic clout, if not checked, may even be used one day to finance terror in the United States.

Finally there is Arafat himself. The late King Hussein was fond of describing the Palestinian leader as a man who never comes to a bridge he can't double cross. The brutal truth of that assessment has been on display before the world for eight years. Arafat consistently breaks every agreement he signs and among his own people has not wasted a day promoting the idea of peaceful coexistence with Israel. For forty years he has been the central destabilizing force in the region, fomenting war, rebellion and terror in first Jordan, then Lebanon and now Israel. Placing faith in such a man to either combat terrorism or make peace is much like asking a burglar caught thieving in a jewelry shop, to now become its manager.

There can be little doubt of Israel's importance to the U.S.'s long-term strategic goals of combating international terrorism. Israel's superbly trained army, its sophisticated intelligence gathering services and its highly developed research facilities, all offer irreplaceable assets for the U.S. war effort. Yet the Bush Administration must understand that by condemning Israel's counter-terror policies, it can only encourage further terrorism. By appeasing Arab demands for even-handedness, it tacitly provides terrorism with the diplomatic cover it craves. By isolating Israel, it rents a hole in the fabric of its own coalition, handicapping efforts towards a successful prosecution of the war.

In the end, terror will be defeated only by unrelenting military and diplomatic pressure on the countries that benefit from it most. But make no mistake. In forming its coalition the U.S is attempting to harness another hot, dry wind, loaded with menace, that one-day might blow back against it.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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