Bush, Sharon, Arafat and the Peace Process

Trudy Rubin suggests that Bush has allowed the Israeli/Palestinian peace process to be relegated to the back burner:

He has changed little from his days as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut in the late 1970s, when journalists like me were kept waiting until the wee hours of the morning to hear his opaque pronouncements. He never made the leap from guerrilla fighter to statesman, and he missed the chance to finalize the deal with Ehud Barak and mediator Bill Clinton in the waning days of the Clinton presidency.
But Arafat's flaws became the Bush administration's excuse for consigning the peace process to the deep freeze. U.S. officials contended there was no Palestinian negotiating partner to deal with. That wasn't true.
When the moderate Mahmoud Abbas became Palestinian prime minister and told his people in no uncertain terms that terror must cease, the Bush administration failed to support him or press the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to do so. With such support, Abbas might have challenged Arafat; without it, he had to resign.
Bush's benign neglect was based on the mistaken assumption that victory in the Iraq war would force the Palestinians to capitulate. Instead, violence has continued, as has Israeli retaliation in the West Bank and Gaza. Arab TV shots of this carnage, combined with footage of the chaos in Iraq, provide a propaganda bonanza for al-Qaeda recruiters.

First off, Abbas is no moderate. Second Bush did not fail to support him, Arafat undermined him from the beginning. To blame Bush is more than disingenuous, it's revisionist. Rubin has come out against the security fence that has been installed and has been silent on the UN jihad against Israel. Note the distinct similarities between todays column and this column from February of this year. She continually pushes for Israeli capitulation and hammers Bush in every column she writes. How about this line:

Would a second-term President Bush revise his current policy? No sign this is likely. Might a President Kerry galvanize the peace process by backing Palestinian elections and appointing Clinton as special peace negotiator? If he cares about Israel and Mideast reform and the fight against jihadi terrorists, he certainly would.

The Clinton plan would have been a disaster for Israel and Ehud Barak rightly suffered a quick political death because Clinton pressured him into buying off on that plan. Sorry Trudy, Clinton isn't coming back.