U.S. presidents come and go but the Mideast conflict remains

WASHINGTON - The next president of the United States will operate in the narrow space, barely a crack, between the pole of "practical idealism," a term coined by incumbent U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that of "realistic idealism," which is how former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright described her recommended foreign policy. The new policy will not overturn U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to try to change the face of the Middle East, but it will seek to be more flexible in adapting to a day-to-day reality that makes it difficult to realize such subversive visions.

In any case, insofar as the Bush administration and Israel are concerned, it is already possible to begin summing up. In the year and a half remaining to him, while he is busy blocking attempts to torpedo his moves in Iraq and his supporters are preoccupied with attempting to find a successor who will keep the White House under Republican control, Bush will allow Rice to amuse herself with vain attempts to find a way out of the Israeli-Arab conflict, but not much more than that. What he has done to date is his legacy. To those who complain, he will say that he achieved more than his ambitious predecessors. He will also present proof: He is the only president during whose term Israel evacuated settlements, he is the one who implanted the vision of the Palestinian state as a goal agreed upon by everyone. Many presidents wanted a great deal and achieved little. In the test of results - return relative to investment - he has certainly surpassed them.

Criticism of Bush's accomplishments in the Israeli context has two main thrusts. One is that he did not do enough to promote peace and enabled the sides to clash without interference. The second is that his revolutionary vision limited his ability to adapt to the reality on the ground. These are the fronts on which the next administration will make sure not to fail. The appointment of a "special envoy" will prevent charges of indifference, while ideological flexibility will enable rapprochement even with less pleasant Arabs, like Syrian President Bashar Assad and perhaps even some Hamas leaders.

But Bush's administration is not the first, and will not be the last, to prove that the expectations that others frequently have of American mediation are always exaggerated. Last Friday, for example, the king of Jordan once again repeated the routine, familiar formula: "The next couple of weeks and months are going to be critical to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to launch the process forward and it cannot be done alone."

But what can you do? Bill Clinton wanted to help and failed, as did George Bush Sr. and his energetic secretary of state, James Baker. This is a tradition that began already in the days of president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who started out as an activist and ended up adapting, and continued with president John F. Kennedy, who explained to Israeli prime minister Golda Meir that "a settlement might seem impossible to achieve, but it is equally impossible to let this dispute run on and blow up."

Bush is the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of Kennedy, and the conflict still continues. The U.S. president's influence consists mainly of checking a crisis, not of finding a solution.

Therefore, idealism aside, a degree of practicality or realism is required even of those who are formulating Israel's expectations of the next U.S. administration. Most of the energy, on Israel's part as well, will be channeled to the eastern front - the Iranian horizon that lies beyond Iraq, and the consequences of a partial American withdrawal from the area. Therefore, rhetoric aside, the arena of Israeli-Arab peace will remain of secondary importance, and will be solved only in the unlikely case of a local decision to break the ice at one fell swoop, as Egyptian president Anwar Sadat did, or, in a vastly different way, Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile, an envoy will arrive, but not a Messiah.