Ariel Sharon is already reaping political dividends from last week\’s historic exchange of letters with President Bush, but the U.S. president\’s payoff depends a great deal on what Israel does next.
One historic concession deserves another. Just four months after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — the father of the settlement movement — stunned Israelis by pledging to evacuate some settlements, he got his payback from President Bush, who reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Israel\’s claim to parts of the West Bank.
It was compensation, with interest: Sharon had scored perhaps the most stunning diplomatic triumph in the U.S.-Israeli alliance in a generation.
The death of Sheik Ahmad Yassin will pave the way to Palestinian moderation, Israel and its friends in Washington say.
But others, including Bush administration officials, are worried that the road just got a lot bumpier.
Mohammed Abu Abbas, the terrorist whose botched ocean-liner hijacking in 1985 ended in the murder of an elderly American Jew and set back the Palestinian cause, has died in American custody.
Until now, Kerry\’s campaign says, the candidate has had little breathing room for such explanatory encounters because of the grueling primary schedule and because his energies were devoted to his come-from-behind triumphs.
\”Anything that moves a few hundred or a few thousand voters one way or another in any state can cause a seismic shift,\” said John Zogby, a pollster who says the closeness of this election is leading opinion-gatherers to focus more than ever on small groups like Jews.
Now that he\’s running for president, Sen. John Kerry\’s openness to a broad range of Jewish opinion is making some in the pro-Israel community nervous — and others hopeful.
Worried by signs of President Bush\’s soaring popularity among Jews, Democrats launched a coordinated campaign 18 months ago to win back Jewish votes.
A grass-roots petition for Israeli-Palestinian peace, chugging along slowly for months, took off last week when a powerful and surprising name was attached to it.
Israel is plotting each meter of its security fence with great care and consideration, Israeli officials say — not just to keep terrorists out, but to keep the United States on Israel\’s side.
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