Bush's peace offering

Should George W. Bush leave office later this year without furthering the prospects for peace in the Middle East, he will not be the first United States president to have failed in this regard.

Whether or not his recent trip to Israel and Egypt enhanced or lessened the chances is open to debate.

When the full range of his rhetoric is considered, including remarks directed at Democratic presidential front-runner Senator Barack Obama, there is probably less cause for optimism than more.

Solving the age-old conflicts and divisions of the Middle East will take the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon.

It is not apparent President Bush is particularly blessed with either.

His thinly-veiled attack on Barack Obama, whose willingness to engage with the "enemies"of the United States - in particular Iran - he characterised as akin to the appeasement of Nazi Germany, was met with outrage from the US Democratic Party, and quite possibly a few sharp intakes of breath from Cabinet officials in his own administration.

Only a day or so prior, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them."

In Israel there was no such equivocation over Mr Bush's glad tidings.

His address last Thursday to the Knesset - the Israeli Parliament - on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish State, was greeted with rapture and ovation.

He told Israelis that they were the "chosen people" who could forever count on American support against foes like Hamas and Iran.

He spoke of the "promise of God" for a homeland for the people of Israel and predicted defeat for its Islamist enemies - Hamas, Hizbollah, al Qaeda in a "battle of good and evil".

If there had ever been any doubt, the United States president confirmed for Israelis that his country is a partisan and unyielding supporter of its primary and long-time ally in the region.

For Arab observers, however, President Bush's remarks met with a more mixed response.

Radical elements of Hamas, for example, which have long characterised the United States as the "evil empire" and scorned any suggestion of even-handedness on the Superpower's part in attempts to broker peace, gratefully accepted them as manna from heaven: they delivered a "slap in the face" to those (more moderate) Palestinians who placed their hopes in him.

And it cannot but have done anything other than create a significant credibility gap for the President as he arrived at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh to address a mostly Arab audience at a World Economic Forum.

"We must stand with the Palestinian people, who have suffered for decades and earned the right to a homeland of their own," he said.

The political convention of tailoring a message to its audience notwithstanding, President Bush's "two-speech trip" - as it was characterised afterwards by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - was either naive or cynical.

Had he laced his rhetoric in the Knesset with at least a thread of steel, some hard talking on the need for Israel to desist from its settlement policies, encroaching ever further into disputed territory, and from its policies of cutting off fuel supplies - thus electricity and water - to Gaza, then it might have been easier for his Arab audience to swallow some of their own medicine: namely the need for all Arab states to "move past their old resentments against Israel".

As it stands, the post-1948 pattern of violence and war between Israel and displaced Palestinians, and with its neighbours, seems caught in yet another chicken-and-egg impasse.

While Israel applies a stranglehold on Gaza under its democratically elected, but unrecognised Hamas administration, Hamas retaliates with arbitrary and deadly rocket attacks from the territory.

Or vice versa.

Detente in these situations is not unheard of.

The parallels may be limited, but a belligerant and bloody decades-long conflict has finally been resolved in Northern Ireland in favour of a shared democratic future.

Sworn enemies now sit side by side in the Northern Ireland Assembly to map out a common destiny.

But for that to happen there has to be perpetrated a shared vision of a future in which people can co-exist and prosper in a peaceful and just society, and that vision must be strong enough - on both sides - to subsume and finally bury the feuds, the bloodshed and the injustices of the past.