The final four of the moderates

It's this time of the week again, and for the shortened version of my weekend column. You can read the whole story here, of just these couple of paragraphs.

Quartet

The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, David Welch was this week, like all Georgetown basketball fans, in "Hoya heaven," the paradise reserved for winners. Against all odds and expectations, Georgetown's Hoyas will play in the semifinals of the college basketball championship tournament this weekend, and Welch watched the game. This is no trivial thing, because it was played in the midst of this week's visit to the Middle East by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which Welch played a key role. The staff of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv even gave him a handsome gift: a blue skullcap bearing the team's familiar mascot, Jack the Bulldog. Welch took it to a meeting with an avid soccer fan, who also happened to be the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert.

It's almost Passover eve, and with the theme of four in mind,(i.e., questions, brothers, cups of wine, etc.) the U.S. Final Four basketball tournament has produced better news than what was generated by the "Arab Quartet." Rice's achievements were modest; from the outset no one pinned exaggerated hopes on the mission. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland quoted an "admirer" of Rice as saying, to memorable effect: "Condi is doing everything she can. But she is dancing with a corpse that just keeps flopping over in another direction every time she tries to move it."

That is exactly what happened to her with Olmert. In the eyes of many, he too is a type of political corpse. Rice could not but help discern the change in his approach, the enthusiasm that has now cooled. The Americans came with a plan, but when they heard Olmert they realized that they would have to modify it.

Moderates

The foundation on which American policy is now resting -unification of a front of moderates in the face of the forces of darkness that are rocking the Middle East - looked very rickety this week. It's convincing on paper, but the concrete results are dubious. The Egyptians are angry, the Saudis are conducting an independent policy, the Jordanians are distancing themselves, and the Lebanese are trembling.

If this is the forecast, it's no wonder the Iranians are guffawing. In the game of chicken that Iran is playing with the West, the first to get scared were Iran's Arab neighbors. The Saudi monarch informed the Americans that he would not be visiting Washington mid-month, as had been scheduled.

Rice's delegation tried to play up modest accomplishments in the visit. The agreement between Rice and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni relates to the decisive issue of the future of the talks (quotation by Livni): "There are two possibilities - to wait for things to work out, which isn't happening, or to keep working on it." And another remark, voiced by a senior figure in the U.S. delegation, who tried to explain why Rice intends to go on investing in the "corpse"- "Absent the effort, all the alternatives are worse."

Visit

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, will talk about Iraq Sunday with someone who looks askance at her withdrawal plans: Prime Minister Olmert.

Two weeks ago, in a controversial step, the prime minister stated in his speech to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish lobby in Washington, that Israel objects to a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. He will reiterate this to Pelosi, if she asks.

Informed Israelis say that she is cruising on a tailwind and that Olmert has sent a message that will have little effect: One way or the other, the Americans will get out of Iraq, earlier than Bush would like, unless there is a dramatic change, which is not currently foreseeable in the situation in Baghdad.

This is yet another reason for Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian anxiety. Their analysis of U.S. policy in the years ahead detects confusion: The hands will still be the hands of Bush, but the voice will be that of Pelosi.