Members of the Islamic Jihad march through Gaza City to protest George Bush's Middle East tour, Jan. 8.

Take a president who rarely travels overseas and certainly not for extended periods of time. Add the region of the world most associated with this administration and most in turmoil. Throw in the president’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories after seven years in office.
What do you get? Remarkably little, as it turns out.
President Bush’s eight-day tour of the Middle East registered barely an above-the-fold headline in the major American and international newspapers.
Perhaps the subject of greatest speculation was how a president, famous for maintaining a schoolboy’s bedtime curfew, would cope with the late Arabian nights.
But Bush’s Middle East trip was of some importance--as much for what didn’t happen, as for what did.
Paradoxically, an administration guided by a transformational vision of the application of American power was now displaying the limitations of its role--limitations partially created by its own failures.
The presidential visit had precious little new to offer on the three most explosive and troubling crises currently afflicting the region: the Lebanese presidential stalemate, the escalating conflict between Israel and Gaza and the political impasse in Iraq.
The president of course did not visit Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq (although secretary of state Condoleezza Rice did make a short side trip to the latter).
On Lebanon, the US is acting as just another external power placing obstacles in the way of an internal political compromise that would allow for the election of Michel Suleiman to the presidency and the appointment of a new government of national reconciliation.
The Arab League looks like a more effective broker and fixer than the US, and that in itself is quite an achievement of self-marginalisation by the Bush administration.
Accurately or not, the president’s visit to Israel was interpreted as signalling a green light to an Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip.
That is certainly what has happened in the last days with a Palestinian death toll of at least 25 and a barrage of rockets on the Israeli town of Sderot and neighbouring communities in response.
The brakes that exist on a further deterioration in Gaza, and perhaps an extensive Israeli ground operation, are being generated locally out of a concern on both sides that escalation will achieve little.
There is no visible Washington foot on that brake, and if anything it hovers closer to the accelerator.
While certain Israeli ministers and former senior officials call for a ceasefire with Hamas, President Bush still inhabits a Game Boy version of the Middle East, divided simply into black and white where you kill the bad guy to advance to the next level.
Iraq was on the president’s agenda, but missing was a concerted effort at working with the neighbours and key regional actors to advance a political platform of power-sharing and reconciliation.
Remember, the surge and partial, temporary security improvement that it has produced was not a goal in itself, but rather was designed to create an atmosphere more conducive to progress on a new political dispensation. That has not happened.
What of the items that were supposed to feature prominently on the president’s agenda: democracy, Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal?
The democracy agenda was discounted in the region long before the president’s visit and will not be taken anymore seriously as a consequence of meetings in UAE with young Arab leaders, in Saudi Arabia with entrepreneurs and in Kuwait with women activists.
The Bush administration’s push for freedom has suffered from at least four basic flaws from the get-go.
First, it has been obsessively election-centric and ill-attuned to local conditions.
Second, it had no sensible, inclusive plan for dealing with the inevitable electoral successes of political Islamists.
Third, touting freedom for everyone but denying it to the Palestinians under occupation was (somehow) perceived as hypocritical.
And fourth, the Bush team had a special talent for delivering the message in the most patronizing, demeaning and unsympathetic way possible.
Add to this list the real life experiences of post-election Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, and one understands why the neoconservative designers of the policy should be laughed out of town, rather than feted on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.
Oh, and saying nothing about the Israeli imprisonment of 43 members of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform party elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council does not make the message sound any more credible.
Daniel Levy
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

It can be said that there is no shortage of explanations being offered for France’s remarkable decision to establish a naval base in the UAE in a deal signed last week.
Those who see the project as a threat to stability in the Persian Gulf also think that the French presence will be an extension of American power, because ever since Tony Blair’s departure, President Nicolas Sarkozy has become George W Bush’s new best friend.
Others, by contrast, welcome the fact that there is going to be an alternative military presence in the Persian Gulf.
Sarkozy’s first months in power have, if nothing else, demonstrated that this is a very different French president from any of his recent predecessors.
Just as he is prepared to mend fences and end a long-standing rivalry with the Americans, so it seems Sarkozy is prepared in foreign policy terms to think in unconventional terms.
Paris’ abortive mediation in the Lebanon may have ended on a jarring colonialist note when in frustration French diplomats turned on Syria.
But it is also clear that there was a great deal of careful analysis, to say nothing of behind-the-scenes talks between the UAE and Paris, before the French went ahead.
France’s Foreign Office probably still has more Arabists than its British counterpart and certainly knows and understands far more about the Arab world than the State Department in Washington.
France’s historical and dynamic interest in the Middle East should not be forgotten.
It has also quietly built up strong commercial links in the region, which have included extensive arms sales.
Now along with the UAE naval base and a military cooperation deal, the French will also be building two nuclear reactors there. That France will maintain control of the nuclear fuel throughout and after the power generation cycle, suggests that there may be a tactical link between the naval base and the power plants.
Yet even if France is pursuing a diplomatic line in the Persian Gulf that is largely independent of the Americans, on the matter of Iran and its own nuclear program, Sarkozy has been hard-line, toeing the US policy of calling for tougher UN sanctions until Tehran reveals everything it is obliged to under international law about its nuclear program.
If the crisis still simmers when their warships first berth in the new base, the French will have placed themselves in the front line with Iran right across a narrow and heavily trafficked waterway.
Yet being closer to the problem may also encourage Sarkozy more toward negotiation.
ARABNEWS.COM

Supporters of Mikhail Saakashvili during his reelection campaign in Tbilisi, Georgia, Jan. 4.

During his second inauguration, Mikhail Saakashvili will have every right to celebrate his victory.
There will be no second round--both the West and Russia have recognized the elections as legitimate.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is going for the inauguration ceremony, and President Vladimir Putin has sent a message of greetings.
The Georgian leader has been given another chance.
Credit for this largely goes to the new Georgian opposition, which also has the right to be proud of a small but meaningful victory.
Resisting the powerful administrative leverage (normal for all the CIS), and government intimidation (tarnishing the assumed image of a model democracy), and overcoming lack of unity, the Georgian opposition has seized a space for itself. Georgian democracy is strong enough for Saakashvili’s authoritarian power to take the opposition into account.
Maybe, Georgia has won by making its leader come to his senses. Now he is showing flexibility and learning from the crisis right on the spot.
Hopefully, he understands that he can stay in power and go for the second presidential term without disgrace only by relying on democratic institutions rather than the crackdown in the style of November 7-12, 2007.
At home, Saakashvili has to review the grievances of his rivals. He has given the opposition broader access to the media. Recently, his rivals were allowed to take part in the public television council, and his chief opponent Levan Gachechiladze was shown on live television.
The president also has to listen to his ombudsman telling him what Georgian intellectuals are thinking about his government.
Saakashvili’s retreat to democracy is reasonable--if he continues to be moderate, it will be harder for the opposition to mobilize the masses for major actions on the eve of parliamentary elections in April.
The foreign policy change deserves a special discussion.
The Georgian president has been trying to become the first democrat in the newly-emerged Baltic and Black Sea nations, particularly after a U.S.-EU reprimand.
They have given him a new credit of trust but at a very high interest rate.
Saakashvili has been trying to score points with the West during preparations for the inauguration.
This trend will last at least until the parliamentary elections.
Has the recent change of tune in relations with Russia been part of this trend? In an unexpected interview to the Vesti Nedeli program and the opposition Novoye Vremya, Saakasvili talked about his desire to develop relations with Russia and admitted that their aggravation was a mistake.
But is this a real turn? It looks like more rhetoric. For him, Russia is a background for his populist policy of Georgia’s reintegration.
Saakashvili may be shrewd enough to change his attitude towards Russia but how can he hope to succeed after all the scandals and provocations with Moscow? Most probably, the Kremlin has given up on him as a political partner.
However, he may go for warmer relations if he feels support for his rapprochement with Russia both from the opposition and the West.
The Kremlin may also have a reason for reciprocity. Vladimir Putin would like to leave his post with as few unresolved CIS issues as possible.
Belarus, for one, has received a $1.5 billion credit, a record for the CIS. Other similar steps may be taken as regards Georgia as a contribution to a better future.
There is a chance to start from scratch. But the Georgian political elite are stuck with the policy of unitary national development. Indicatively, Georgia is not even ready to go as far as Serbia has gone with Kosovo, albeit under pressure, when it has offered the rebel territory the broadest possible autonomy.
It would seem Saakashvili could use it as a plan and precedent for the next four years and revise the political traditions of Georgian national development stemming from the patriarchs of the Ioseliani-Gamsakhurdia idea.
He could recognize the priority of civil peace with the national enclaves, or at least their right to legal autonomy as a first step.
But he may not be up to the task. Right now he is celebrating his victory and promoting his image of a democrat.
EN.RIAN.RU