The three whiners

WASHINGTON - Like many who came before him, Lt. Gen. William Fraser III will bring many good intentions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and very little ability to help. Fraser is the man appointed to an ungrateful post: arbitrator. When he sits with the Israelis and Palestinians this week, he will determine who transgressed and who upheld the rules, who dragged his feet and who needs a bit of a kick in the behind.

In fact, he will not determine anything, but only reconfirm, because after all, the decision has been made by his boss, President George W. Bush: Neither side has fulfilled its obligations under the road map. So all Fraser will have to do as arbitrator is state the obvious: Israel has not evacuated even one outpost in the Palestinian territories.

In any case, Fraser will be bringing unequal demands to the table. From Israel, the demand is concrete: An outpost or roadblock that impedes freedom of movement must go. Now you see them, now you don't. The demand from the Palestinians is more difficult to quantify: What exactly is "sufficient"?

Either way, his demands from Israel are justified: A lack of willingness to remove outposts pulls the rug out from under demands made to the other side. If coalition exigencies and concerns over a public outcry are justification for avoiding a pledged evacuation, then the Palestinians also have exigencies that must be taken into account. They also have public opinion that makes it difficult to wage an effective war against the armed militias.

But beyond the questions of how Fraser will rule in the dispute, how he will formulate his conclusions and how much public use the administration will make of them, his appointment and job reflect the problem in the current incarnation of the road-map efforts: Bureaucratization of the conflict through appointing arbitrators and monitors can create the impression of progress, but it is not real progress.

After all, it is proper and possible to insist on fulfilling every element of the road map, including the required evacuations of outposts, but this insistence is a double-edged sword. Its political outcome (for example, the collapse of Israel's governing coalition) might lead to a halt in the talks for a long time. Israel's government does not want to pay this price for reasons of political survival. The Palestinians say, and rightly so, that this is not their problem.

It is certainly not the problem of Fraser, a professional appointed to read out a plan and oversee its implementation. Such a reading will leave little room for doubt: Israel's government has failed to meet its obligations, which appear not only on the road map but are also anchored in a personal pledge to the president. Therefore, Fraser's conclusion was dictated even before he set out on the road to clarification: Israel must evacuate. Everything else is excuses.

In recent months the American mediator is swaying like a drunk between the desire to protect the Olmert government and its increasing nervousness at Israel's foot-dragging on the question of the outposts and roadblocks. Fraser, whose mission is intended to placate the Palestinians, who stopped the talks because of last week's events in Gaza, is not an arbitrator, but a whip. When the whip cracks, for example this week, Israel's government will get the blow it deserves for its failures.

But such a blow might hurt the Americans more. If it moves Olmert to action, it might also herald the end of his government, and with it, the little hope Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has of emerging from the Middle East with an achievement.

In any case, Fraser will sit down at the table with a pair of whiners whose strength is in their weakness. This one is not doing enough, that one is not doing enough. This one says he cannot, the other says he is unable. The time may have come, after so many years, to insist - with both parties. Let the Palestinians build their institutions, let them prove they can fight terror, let them dismantle the militias and find a way to neutralize Hamas. Let Israel find the strength to remove outposts, restrain its coalition partners and meet its obligations.

This will not be a pleasant process for either the Israelis or Palestinians, but contrary to what is usually thought, the two whiners are not what prevents the necessary choice of such a path. The problem is actually with the third whiner, the Americans. Because such insistence on fulfilling all obligations will include the painful recognition of a fact the American administration is not prepared for: Israel and the Palestinians will not reach a proper implementation agreement under a timetable that has been determined for a political reason - the Bush administration's reason.