Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: If Bush were Sharon

Thursday, April 11, 2002 | 9:13 a.m.

I AGREE with President George W. Bush. Israel needs to pull out of the West Bank towns it has entered without delay.

Just as soon as it cleans up this nasty business of suicide bombers. Clearly, that is the only thing our president could have meant when he looked the camera straight in the eye -- at least twice -- and told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to get out without delay. For sure, he could not have meant, as some of the region's Arab leaders have suggested, that Sharon pull his troops back right now. That would be foolish and a clear dereliction of Sharon's duty to his people to protect and defend them.

That's why I am certain President Bush didn't really mean what others are saying he said and what the videotape confirms that he said. And if he did say that, what he meant to say was something entirely different. Now that we are clear on that subject, what should Israel do in order to make its people safe today and prepared for peace tomorrow?

I have long been in a quandary about the answer to that question. In the past year and a half, Israel has lost the equivalent of 24,000 people if it were a country the size of the United States. Look what our country is doing -- and rightfully so -- in Afghanistan and elsewhere to the terrorists in our midst because of the heavy civilian casualties inflicted as a result of the World Trade Center attacks. The number of dead from Sept. 11 is less than 3,000 people, a horrific number of innocent lives taken to be sure, but far less than the proportionate number of Israelis who have been slaughtered by suicide bombers and others intent on some insane form of martyrdom.

Should we expect our friend and ally, and the only democracy in that volatile part of the world, to do any less to protect the safety of its people than we do for ours? Not only do I think not but I certainly hope not! That is why I am convinced President Bush was following his conscience and his gut when he pronounced a number of times that Israel had a right to defend itself as it sent its tanks, helicopters and army personnel into the bomb-making dens of the West Bank.

What caused his sudden about-face this past week in demanding Israeli withdrawal, without the now-famous delay, has more to do with bad advice and misplaced friendships in the Middle East than it does with a change of the president's heart and soul. To put it bluntly, our president may be in as much of a quandary about what to do as the rest of us.

I don't think anyone can deny the harm done by the United States' decision early last year to get out of the region and stay out until the parties could find a way of their own to make it safe for U.S. diplomacy to take hold. It has been brutally obvious that under Arafat's leadership the Palestinians have had no intention of getting back to the bargaining table to try to get back what was offered to them -- virtually 100 percent of the land they wanted, plus, plus, plus. The result has been a deterioration of trust and a heightening of bloodshed that has led to the current crisis.

So now the U.S. is back in the picture and Secretary of State Colin Powell is at the helm. Unfortunately, it appears that Arafat's apologists and our "friends" in the region are trying to call the shots for the secretary's every move. Fortunately, Mr. Powell seems to have learned a great deal from those who are prone to say one thing and do another. In this case, Secretary Powell is slow moving his way toward Mr. Sharon to allow him the maximum time to clean up the mess Arafat has allowed to be made.

So what happens when Mr. Powell gets to Israel this week and tells Mr. Sharon that it is time to get out? What happens if the Israeli Defense Forces are not quite through with their mission to clean out the hellholes of destruction that have been allowed to breed and have even been nurtured by Arafat and his friends from other Arab countries? Does Sharon acquiesce?

There are many in the United States who insist that he must because without the steadfast friendship of our country, Israel would have a very tough go of it left to its own devices and little or no support from the U.S. I don't buy that. While I am convinced that a frustrated President Bush -- like his father -- could threaten to pull the plug on critical assistance to the tiny Jewish State, I am not prepared to believe that it will come to that. He is too much like Sharon.

President Bush knows what it is like to be called on by a country looking for leadership in the face of a human disaster. That is what happened on Sept. 11 when those planes crashed into the WTC and gave our president the reason for his being in the White House. He understands the pain on the grieving faces of America following 9-11 and, for that very reason, he understands the grief-stricken looks on the faces of Israeli mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers whose loved ones have been blown to bits on buses and in pizza parlors and discotheques.

No, I still don't know what the answer is to rid Israel of these maddened killers of innocent children, but I do know that Prime Minister Sharon is, at least, trying. And that is what President Bush would be doing if he were in Sharon's position.

That's why he says "without delay" and does something else. You are already learning well, Mr. President, the lessons of the Middle East.