U.S. President George Bush's tenure has been largely characterized by a "lack of commitment" to the Arab-Israeli peace process, and it seems unlikely that the outgoing president will be able to bring peace to the region before the end of his term, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer said on Monday.
Speaking in Herzliya at the two-day conference, "An Agreement within a Year," sponsored by the Geneva Initiative, Kurtzer said that "Bush inherited a much more challenging [situation] than Clinton, yet throughout his seven years, he failed to look for or exploit opportunities that presented themselves - and there were opportunities."
His remarks - which included performance report cards for former President George H.W. Bush, as well as former President Bill Clinton were based on extensive research conducted for his new book, "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East," which he
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o-wrote with Scott Lasensky. Due out later this year, the book is also highly critical of the Clinton administration's handling of the peace process, which Kurtzer found to have been marked by "unfocused and ad-hoc strategy."
The former U.S. ambassador said that Bush's tenure was characterized by "unsupported envoys and diplomats," but nevertheless pointed to the recent Annapolis summit as one of the administration's "positive points."
Still, he says, the White House is preoccupied with other matters.
"The first five [foreign policy] items on the agenda of Washington are Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and Iraq," he said "It consumes an enormous amount of time and financial and political resources," and so a serious investment in Israel "may be asking too much."
Kurtzer, now a professor at Princeton University, also said that future attempts to bring peace to the region should involve building bipartisan support within the U.S..
"The American Jewish community does not speak in one voice as is perceived in Washington," he said.
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
