Iran and its client state Syria have a strategic vision for the Middle East. They wish to take over Lebanon. They wish to destroy Israel. They wish to defeat the US in Iraq. They wish to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan. They wish to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to its jihad-supporting knees. Then they wish to apply their vision to the rest of the world.

Today, Syria and Iran are ardently advancing their strategic vision for the world through a deliberate strategy of victory by a thousand cuts. Last week's Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; Sunday's reopening of the Lebanese front against Israel with the Syrian-ordered rocket attacks on Kiryat Shemona; the now five-week old Syrian ordered low-intensity warfare against Lebanon's pro-Western Siniora government; last week's attack on the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra; the recent intensification of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's move to further destabilize the country by violently deporting 100,000 Afghan refugees back to the war-torn country - all of these are moves to advance this clear Iranian-Syrian strategy.

And all these moves have taken place against the backdrop of Syria's refashioning of its military in the image of Hizbullah on steroids and Iran's relentless, unopposed progress in its nuclear weapons program.

For their part, both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy.

WASHINGTON and Jerusalem wish to solve all the problems of the region and the world by establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While Israel now faces Iranian proxies on two fronts, in their meeting at the White House today US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will gush about their support for Palestinian statehood.

Creepily echoing LSD king Timothy Leary, they will tune out this reality as they drone on about the opportunities that Gaza's transformation into a base for global jihad afford to the notion that promoting the Fatah terrorist organization's control over Judea and Samaria can make the world a better, safer, happier place.

Today Bush and Olmert will announce their full support for Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's new government. The US will intensify General Keith Dayton's training and arming of Fatah forces. Israel will give Fatah $700 million. The Europeans and the rest of the international community will give the "moderate, secular" terror group still more money and guns and love. The US will likely also demand that Olmert order the IDF to give Fatah terrorists free reign in Judea and Samaria.

Olmert and Bush claim that by backing Abbas militarily, financially and politically they will be setting up an "alternative Palestine" which will rival Hamas's jihadist Palestine. As this notion has it, envious of the good fortune of their brethren in Judea and Samaria, Gazans will overthrow Hamas and the course will be set for peace - replete with the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem of all Jewish presence.

FATAH FORCES barely raised a finger to prevent their defeat in Gaza in spite of the massive quantities of US arms they received and the military training they underwent at the hands of US General Keith Dayton. Bush, Olmert and all proponents of the notion of strengthening Fatah in Judea and Samaria refuse to answer one simple question: Why would a handover of Judea and Samaria to Abbas's Fatah produce a better outcome than Israel's 2005 handover of Gaza to Abbas's Fatah?

They refuse to answer this question because they know full well that the answer is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the outcome can be better. They know full well that since replacing Yasser Arafat as head of the PA in 2004, Abbas has refused to take any effective action against Hamas. They know that he refused to take action to prevent Hamas's rise to power in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. They know that the guns the US transferred to Fatah in Gaza were surrendered to Hamas without a fight last week.

They know that the billions of dollars of international and Israeli assistance to Fatah over the past 14 years never were used to advance the cause of peace. They know that that money was diverted into the pockets of Fatah strongmen and utilized to build terror militias in which Hamas members were invited to serve. They know that Fatah built a terror superstructure in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which enabled operational cooperation between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells.

SO WHY embrace the fantasy that things can be different now, in Judea and Samaria? Rather than provide rational arguments to defend their view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza is an opportunity for peace, proponents of peace fantasies as strategic wisdom explain vacuously that peace is the best alternative to jihad. They whine that those who point out that Israel now borders Iran in Lebanon and Gaza have nothing positive to say.

To meet the growing threat in Gaza, they argue that Europeans, or maybe Egyptians and Jordanians can be deployed at the international border with Egypt to stem the weapons and terror personnel flow into Gaza. To meet the growing threat in Lebanon, Olmert pleads for more UN troops.

Both views ignore the obvious: Gaza has been transformed into an Iranian-sponsored base for global jihad because Egypt has allowed it to be so transformed. Assisted by its Syrian-sponsored Palestinian allies, Hizbullah has rebuilt its arsenals and reasserted its control in southern Lebanon because UN forces in southern Lebanon have done nothing to prevent it from doing so.

No country on earth will volunteer to fight Hamas and its jihadist allies in Gaza. No government on earth will voluntarily deploy its forces to counter Hizbullah and Iran in south Lebanon. This is why - until they fled - European monitors at the Rafah terminal were a joke. This is why Spanish troops in UNIFIL devote their time in Lebanon to teaching villagers Spanish.

SO WHY are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly proven absurd?

Well, why should they? As far as Bush is concerned, no American politician has ever paid a price for advancing the cause of peace processes that strengthen terrorists and hostile Arab states at Israel's expense. Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton had Arafat over to visit the White House more often than any other foreign leader and ignored global jihad even when its forces bombed US embassies and warships. And today Clinton receives plaudits for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

By denying that the war against Israel is related to the war in Iraq; by ignoring the strategic links between all the Iranian and Syrian sponsored theaters of war, Bush views gambling with Israel's security as a win-win situation. He will be applauded as a champion of peace and if the chips go down on Israel, well, it won't be Americans being bombed.

OLMERT LOOKS to his left and sees president-elect Shimon Peres. Peres, the architect of the Oslo process which placed Israel's national security in the hands of the PLO, has been rewarded for his role in imperiling his country by his similarly morally challenged political colleagues who just bestowed him with Israel's highest office.

Olmert looks to his left and his sees incoming defense minister Ehud Barak. In 2000, then prime minister Barak withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon, and enabled Iran's assertion of control over southern Lebanon through its Hizbullah proxy. In so doing, Barak set the conditions for last summer's war, and quite likely, for this summer's war.

By offering Arafat Gaza, 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem at Camp David, Barak showed such enormous weakness that he all but invited the Palestinian terror war which Arafat began planning the day he rejected Barak's offer.

For his failure, Barak has been rewarded by his Labor Party, which elected him its new chairman on the basis of his vast "experience," and by the media which has embraced him as a "professional" defense minister.

Olmert looks to his right and he sees how the media portrays Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon as alarmists for claiming that Israel cannot abide by an Iranian-proxy Hamas state on its border. He sees that Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu supported Peres's candidacy as president and have joined their fortunes to Olmert's in a bid to block elections which will bring the Right to power.

ISRAEL HAS arguably never faced a more dangerous strategic environment than it faces today. Yet it is not without good options. It can retake control over the Gaza-Sinai border. It can renew its previously successful tactic of killing Hamas terrorists. It can continue its successful campaign of keeping terrorists down in Judea and Samaria, and it can continue preparing for war in the north. All of these options can be sold to the Left.

But today both Bush and Olmert will reject these options in favor of mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality as they uphold Abbas as a credible leader and shower him with praise, money and arms. Their political fortunes will be utmost in their minds as they do this. And they will be guaranteeing war that will claim the lives of an unknown number of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Bush and Olmert should know that when the time for reckoning comes they will not be able to claim, along with Peres and Barak that their hands did not shed this blood. Reality has warned them of their folly. But in their low, dishonest opportunism, they have chosen to ignore reality and amuse themselves with fantasies and photo-ops.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with US President George W. Bush next week is supposed to serve as a preparatory stage ahead of a planned presidential address on the Palestinian conflict with Israel. According to media reports, Bush believes that five years after his last speech on the subject on June 24, 2002, the time has come for an updated assessment of the situation.

A lot has happened in the last five years both in Israel and in Palestinian society. A good way to understand our present circumstances is to recall that last speech, where Bush laid out his "vision" to bring peace to the Middle East by establishing an independent, democratic Palestinian state next to Israel on the west bank of the Jordan River on land that the League of Nations mandated in 1922 was to be reserved for the Jewish homeland.

Indeed, the president's words speak for themselves. Addressing the Palestinians, Bush said: "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born.

"I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty."

"A Palestinian state will never be created by terror - it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempts to preserve the status quo."

"The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Addressing the Arab states and the Palestinians, Bush said: "To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel - including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations."

Addressing Israel, the president said, "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop."

Bush concluded, "This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace; a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not."

ISRAEL RESPONDED enthusiastically to the president's challenge. Successive governments froze expansion of Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. The limitations placed on Jewish building are so draconian that even in cities like Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim, people cannot receive building permits.

Not only did Israel freeze building in Judea and Samaria, Israel expelled all Israeli residents of Gaza and northern Samaria in order to render the areas Jew-free to the Palestinians. The people of Israel elected leaders who endorsed Bush's vision of denying the rights of Jews to live in the territories he has set aside for a prospective Palestinian state.

For their part, the Palestinians held open and free elections in January 2006. They chose to deny parliamentary representation to non-terrorists, and placed Hamas at the head of the Palestinian Authority. They turned newly Jew-free Gush Katif, which Israel surrendered unconditionally, into terror training camps. They turned the ruins of the communities of northern Gaza into launch pads for missile and rocket attacks against Ashkelon and Sderot. They turned the abandoned international border between Gaza and the Sinai into a global jihadist highway through which terrorists from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida, as well as massive quantities of armaments have flooded into Gaza.

For the residents of Gaza, who overwhelmingly support Hamas, the situation has become particularly dire. Since foreign correspondents have abandoned the area, no one seems to notice or care about the fact that in Gaza today, children are murdered in front of their parents, passengers are removed from cars and shot in the streets, and doctors are murdered in hospitals as patients are violently removed from life support systems and taken out of operating rooms. No one bats a lash as jihadists bomb pubs and Internet cafes. No one hears as Gazans pray for a return of the so-called "occupation."

Egypt serves as a principal support base for the Palestinian terror networks by enabling the flow of terrorists and arms into Gaza and by acting as a central hub of annihilationist anti-Semitic propaganda. Saudi Arabia oversaw the establishment of the Palestinian unity government, which transformed Fatah into a junior partner in the Hamas government that carries out terrorism and enjoys the financial support of the Saudis and the Iranians and Norwegians.

Iran and its client state Syria call the shots for the Palestinians today. As last summer's war demonstrated, in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, the Iranians were able to unify the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts in the global jihad. Iran manages both fronts while it proceeds unfettered in its quest for atomic bombs. Syria daily issues threats of war. And both countries oversee the insurgency in Iraq.

So of all the components of Bush's vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the only one that has been implemented is his demand that Israel freeze building activities in Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

WERE OLMERT to devote his meeting with Bush to reciting a summary of these cold, hard facts, he would be doing an important, even vital service to the country. Were the president to receive and accept a credible report on the situation on the ground from Israel's prime minister, Bush's next speech would have to look something like this:

Five years ago, I set out my vision for peace between the Arab world, and particularly the Palestinian people and Israel. I still believe in my vision of a new democratic, antiterrorist state of Palestine committed to the rule of law and human rights and living side by side in peace with the existing democratic, antiterrorist, human-rights respecting, law-abiding State of Israel.

Tragically, developments over the past five years demonstrate that today, it is impossible to realize this vision and, therefore, the time has come to set it aside.

Although the Palestinians have received more foreign aid per capita than the nations of Europe under the Marshall Plan, rather than use the international community's support to embrace liberty and build a working democracy, the Palestinians have built legions of terror.

With US support, the Palestinians held free elections in January 2006. Rather than choose leaders not compromised by terror, the Palestinians preferred to choose the Hamas and other terrorist organizations to lead them. By so choosing, the Palestinians showed the world that they reject peace and have chosen the path of terror and war.

While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has publicly condemned acts of terror and murder, in spite of the generous support he has received from the United States and Israel, to date he has opted not to effectively combat terror. Rather than educate his nation to embrace peace and tolerance, Abbas has overseen the Palestinian Authority school system, which teaches the children of Palestine to choose death over life and to seek Israel's destruction rather than the establishment of a free, democratic state that would live at peace with Israel.

This past June, Abbas decided to form a unity government with Hamas. By doing so, Abbas effectively abandoned peace as a strategy.

Five years ago I said, "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Since none of the Palestinian leaders are engaging in a sustained fight against terrorists, the United States recognizes that today Israel has no partner for peace. I am left with no choice but to withdraw American support for Palestinian statehood at this time.

Since Israel has no peace partner, it is clear that the Israelis must take the necessary steps to protect themselves. Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Gaza's international border with Egypt has turned into a thoroughfare for global terror with arms and personnel coming in from Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and beyond. I am disappointed with the fact that to date, Egypt has taken no effective action to block the terror traffic from its territory into the Palestinian Authority.

The United States looks with worry on the emerging situation in Gaza. I view the transformation of Gaza into a base for global terror not simply as a threat to Israel, but as a threat to international security. As a result, the United States will understand and support an Israeli operation aimed at restoring Israeli control over the international border.

Furthermore, Israelis have the right to live free of fear of missile and rocket attacks on their towns and villages. Today's situation, where Israeli communities bordering Gaza are exposed to daily barrages of mortars and rockets launched by terrorists in Gaza, is unacceptable and intolerable.

Over the past two years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, I have come to recognize a flaw in the two-state model. Until now, one of the guiding assumptions of the two-state model is that the Israeli settlements located beyond the 1949 armistice lines constitute an obstacle to peace. But we see that the evacuation of the settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank only caused a further radicalization of Palestinian society.

Aside from that, it is time to recognize that the Palestinian demand to establish a state on land emptied of all Jewish presence is an immoral demand. It is impossible to expect that the Palestinians will conduct internal reforms when the international community gives them the legitimacy to base their nationalism on ethnic cleansing and the rejection of the humanity and moral rights of the Jewish nation. As a result, and without prejudicing future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, today the United States recognizes the right of Israelis and Palestinians to build their communities in a manner that provides for the natural growth of their populations.

The forces in the Palestinian Authority who fight Israel, and who educate their children to seek death by terror, are supported by the same states that support Hizbullah in Lebanon and the insurgents in Iraq. Iran and Syria cannot expect that their support for terror in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq will go unnoticed. While Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issues near daily threats to wipe Israel off the map, and Syria threatens Israel with war, they both must understand that Israel is an ally and a friend of the United States. We support Israel and its right to defend itself.

We hope that the day will finally come when the Palestinian people reject terror and hatred and embrace democracy and peace. On that day, the American people will be proud to look to the Palestinians to join the people of Israel and so many other nations of the world as our allies and friends.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Tomorrow Israel's parliamentarians will convene to elect the next president of Israel. After Shas's council of elders decided last week to throw the party's support behind Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres's candidacy, Peres's election seems to be a foregone conclusion.

That this is the case is a troubling demonstration of the corruption of Israeli politics. Indeed, more than anything, Peres's frontrunner status in the three-way race is a testament to his success in undermining the honor and honesty of Israeli politics.

Peres is a dishonorable man. Notwithstanding his contributions to the state in his younger years, Peres's behavior over the past quarter-century, both in and out of office, has redounded to the diminution of Israel's standing in the region and the world and to the endangerment of the lives of Israeli citizens.

In 1981 Peres, then opposition leader, nearly placed Israel in danger of nuclear annihilation by working to undercut then prime minister Menachem Begin's plan to attack the French and Italian-built Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Begin was forced to delay the air strike which denied Saddam Hussein the wherewithal to obliterate the Jewish state for a number of months after Peres, who had been leaked knowledge of the planned attack, confronted Begin and implicitly threatened to leak the ultra-secret operation to others.

One of the factors that weighed on Begin's decision to attack was the fear that were Peres to win the then approaching 1981 Knesset elections and replace him as premier, Peres would enable Iraq to acquire the means to wipe Israel off the map and assert its hegemony over the global oil market.

IN 1986, as prime minister, Peres likely became the the first leader in history to willfully incriminate and abandon an agent of his government who had endangered his own life to defend Peres's country's national security. Jonathan Pollard is today serving the 22nd year of a life sentence in US Federal prison.

Pollard has been subject to discriminatory treatment by the US justice system. No agent in the employ of a state allied with the US ever received a comparable, or even similar sentence for his offense. But then, no country has ever treated its agent as wretchedly as Israel has treated Pollard.

Two weeks ago Pollard's representatives sent a letter to all members of Knesset entreating them not to support Peres's candidacy. Pollard outlined how, when confronted on the Pollard affair by then US secretary of state George Schultz, Peres mendaciously claimed to have had no knowledge of Pollard's service. It was Peres, Pollard alleges, who spread the lie that Pollard was a soldier of fortune. At Schultz's request, Peres ordered the Defense Ministry to return to US authorities all the documents that Pollard had transferred to Israel.

In so doing, Peres actively aided the US in incriminating his agent. Peres later lied to the Eban Committee, formed in 1987 by the Knesset to investigate the Pollard affair. Peres justified his unseemly action by mendaciously claiming that he had received the US's agreement that the documents would not be used against Pollard. Those documents formed the basis of the prosecution's case against Pollard.

As Pollard wrote: "My case is the first and only case in the history of modern espionage in which a prime minister actively assisted in the indictment and prosecution of his own country's agent."

THEN THERE is Peres's stewardship of the 1993 Oslo accord with the PLO and the "peace process" with the PLO which followed. As foreign minister in Yitzhak Rabin's government, Peres knowingly subverted Rabin's policy of not negotiating with the PLO by sending his own emissaries to Oslo behind the back of the prime minister to negotiate with senior PLO terrorists. Peres then rammed the accord down Rabin's throat, dragging along an unwilling public.

It is difficult to summarize the devastating impact that Peres's notion of gaining peace by empowering Yasser Arafat, the godfather of modern terrorism, arming his terror armies and deploying them on the outskirts of Israel's major cities has had on the country. In human cost, it can be easily argued that some 1,500 Israelis who have been killed in terror attacks and battles with terror militias since 1993 would likely be alive today had it not been for Peres's decision to "take risks for peace."

Beyond the massive human cost of Oslo, Peres's decision to embrace the PLO corrupted the the political system, the legal system, the IDF General Staff, the media and Israeli culture.

Politicians were openly bribed for their support of the agreement. Politicians who did not support the agreement found themselves under criminal scrutiny on charges that rarely brought convictions.

IDF officers soon discovered that their chances of promotion were directly related to the enthusiasm with which they embraced terrorists as partners and accepted the notion that Israel should appease rather than fight its enemies. Several IDF generals began lucrative business partnerships with senior Palestinian security bosses immediately after retiring from the military.

OPPONENTS OF the Oslo process were systematically denied their civil rights as the government sought to criminalize and demonize them. Referring to those who opposed the strategy of placing the Jewish state on a par with a terrorist organization as "enemies of peace," Peres sought to link these responsible citizens to terrorists murdering Israeli civilians in suicide bombings.

The Israeli media corrupted public debate by silencing and demonizing voices of opposition. The education system of Israel was corrupted when schoolchildren were provided with new "peace friendly" textbooks which taught a revisionist history of the state that called into question the morality and legality of the establishment of Israel.

With Peres at the helm of the Foreign Ministry, Israel's public diplomacy arm was summarily cancelled. Peres explained that Israel didn't need to engage in public diplomacy because everyone would support Israel now it had embarked on a path to peace.

Peres's move was logical. For Israel to defend itself in the realm of ideas it would be necessary to explain why we have rights to our land and why our enemies, among them the PLO, are wrong to attack those rights. Pointing out this glaring truth would call into question the entire rationale of the Oslo process. So, at Peres's direction, Israel surrendered not just territory to the PLO. It surrendered its right to historical truth.

Peres' transformation of the Foreign Ministry into a public relations organ for Fatah and other PLO terrorists, meanwhile, has seriously and perhaps permanently damaged Israel's international diplomatic position.

THROUGHOUT the years that have passed since Rabin's disastrous handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn, Peres has built his international standing by courting European and American politicians and donors who oppose Israel.

Oftentimes Peres's loyalty to his friends and benefactors came dangerously close to undercutting Israel's national security. In April 2002 for instance, Peres, as foreign minister in Ariel Sharon's government, gave a lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

In the wake of the brutal battle between Palestinian terrorists and IDF soldiers in Jenin refugee camp during the course of Operation Defensive Shield, Larsen played a key role in disseminating the libel that Israel had committed a massacre in the camp. Standing in the UN-managed terror camp, Larsen said "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."

A week later Makor Rishon revealed that in 1999 the Shimon Peres Center for Peace had given Larsen and his wife, Norwegian ambassador Mona Juul, a cash payment of $100,000. Larsen was then a board member of the Peres Center and the Norwegian government was one of the center's major donors.

Investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak at the time reported statements by Labor party members claiming that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on Peres's behalf with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 1994.

In one of Peres's many bids to block all criticism of Arafat, he strenuously refused to press the terror leader for information, or even politely inquire, about the fates of Israeli soldiers Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, who went missing in Lebanon on June 11, 1982 during the battle at Sultan Yakoub. In December 1993 Arafat had given Rabin half of Baumel's dogtag, but then refused to give any more information about the fate of Baumel and his comrades.

LAST WEEK, a representative of the Baumel, Feldman and Katz families sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert demanding that he withdraw his support for Peres's candidacy for president. The families asserted that for the past 25 years Peres has refused to raise the issue of their sons' whereabouts in his negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians. Peres's refusal to demand information on their whereabouts, they argued, renders him unworthy of the office of head of state.

It has been argued that since the office of president is largely ceremonial, a President Peres will be able to do little damage to the country.

But this assertion ignores the fact that Peres has never seen himself bound by the formalities of office. As foreign minister under Rabin he overstepped his authority when he directed illegal negotiations with the PLO in Norway. As foreign minister under Sharon, Peres used his office to undermine President George W. Bush's call for a reform and democratization of Palestinian society.

As head of the Peres Center and international conference circuit star, he worked to undermine the international credibility of the Netanyahu government. It beggars belief to say that as president, Peres would limit his actions to accrediting ambassadors and signing pardons for criminals.

Yet for all that, if current assessments of the balance of support among the candidates for president are correct, then Peres will tomorrow be elected to head the country. And if this does come to pass, all that can be said is that we reap what we sow.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Ahead of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to the White House on June 19, the Bush administration is pressuring Israel to endanger itself on at least two fronts.

First, the Americans are pressuring the Olmert government to agree to Palestinian Authority and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas's request to bring millions of bullets, thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, RPGs, antitank missiles and armored personnel carriers into Gaza from Egypt.

The government has yet to respond to the request. Those who oppose it argue that Fatah forces in Gaza are too weak and incompetent to battle Hamas, and so any weaponry transferred to Fatah militias will likely end up in Hamas's hands.

This logic is correct, but incomplete. It is true that Fatah forces are unwilling and presumably unable to defeat Hamas forces. But it is also true that Fatah forces use their arms to attack Israel. So even if there was no chance of Hamas laying its hands on the weapons, allowing Fatah to receive them would still endanger Israel.

The same limited logic informs Israel's strenuous objection to the Pentagon's intention to sell Saudi Arabia Joint Direct Attack Munition satellite-guided "smart bombs," or JDAMS. The government claims that while it has no quarrel with the Saudis, it fears for the stability of the regime. If the House of Saud falls, Osama bin Laden would get the bombs.

Yet like Fatah, the Saudis aren't simply vulnerable. They are culpable. In addition to being the creators of al-Qaida and Hamas's largest financial backers, the Saudis themselves directly threaten Israel.

In direct contravention of their commitment to the US (and the US's commitment to Israel), the Saudis have deployed F-15 fighter jets at Tabuk air base, located 150 km. from Eilat. On May 13, the Saudi Air Force held an air show at Tabuk for the benefit of King Abdullah and senior princes where the F-15s where ostentatiously displayed.

The timing of the show was interesting. It took place the day before Abdullah hosted US Vice President Richard Cheney at Tabuk.

The Bush administration is not just asking Israel to facilitate the arming of its enemies. It is also placing restrictions on Israel's ability to arm itself. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, the Pentagon has yet to respond to Israel's request to purchase the F-22 stealth bomber. Moreover, the US seems to be torpedoing Israel's acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Pentagon recently voiced its objection to Israel's plan to install Israeli technology in the jets that are to be supplied starting in 2014. Israel's installation of its own electronic warfare systems in its F-16s and F-15s is what has allowed the IAF to maintain its qualitative edge over Arab states that have also purchased the aircraft.

THE ADMINISTRATION'S display of hostility toward Israel is unfortunately not an aberration. It is the result of a policy shift that occurred immediately after the Republican Party's defeat in the Congressional elections in November.

After the defeat, the administration embraced former secretary of state James Baker's foreign policy paradigm, which is based on the belief that it is possible and desirable to reach a stable balance of power in the Middle East.

As Baker sees it, this balance can be reached by forcing Israel to shrink to its "natural" proportions and assisting supposedly moderate and stable states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to grow into their "natural" proportions. Once the states of the region (including Syria and Iran, which Baker wishes to appease) have settled into their proper proportions, stability will be ensured.

Baker fleshed out his view in the Iraq Study Group's recommendations that were published immediately after the elections. Although President George W. Bush rejected the ISG's recommendations, the day after the elections he sacked defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and replaced him with Robert Gates, who served on the ISG. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a disciple of Baker's ally, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

The problem with the Baker paradigm is that it has never been borne out by reality. It collapsed during the Cold War, both as the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to destabilize countries allied with the US and when the states of East-Central Europe revolted against the teetering empire and gained their freedom with its collapse.

In the 1990s, Baker's stability paradigm failed to foresee the post-nationalist movements that swept through Western Europe and the Muslim world, and embraced the Soviet goal of weakening the US. Baker still denies the phenomenon and ignores its policy implications.

Today, the notion that stability is a realistic aim is even more far-fetched. Specifically, the willingness of Muslim secularists to form strategic relations with jihadists and the willingness of Shi'ites to form strategic partnerships with Sunnis was unimaginable 20 years ago. Aside from that, the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran throws a monkey wrench into any thought of regional stability. A look around the region shows just how absurd Baker's notions truly are.

In Lebanon today, Fatah al-Islam, which is apparently allied with al-Qaida, is fighting the Lebanese army in a bid to bring down the Saniora government at the behest of its sponsor - the secular Ba'athist regime in Damascus. Fatah al-Islam is also aligned with Hizbullah, which shares its goal of bringing down the Lebanese government, and with Iran, which gives the Syrians their marching orders.

This state of affairs is also the name of the game in Iraq, where Iran and Syria support both Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite Mehdi army and al-Qaida's Sunni death squads. It repeats itself in Afghanistan, where Iran is arming the Taliban, and in the Palestinian Authority.

Furthermore, the paragons of moderation and stability in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that Baker and his followers are so keen to strengthen are neither stable nor moderate. Both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah are old men of uncertain health. To "stabilize" their regimes, they wrought unholy alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis, the only forces in Egyptian and Saudi societies that have not been flattened under their jackboots.

This week, Channel 10 reported that the Bush administration recently informed Israel and the Gulf states that it has no intention of launching military strikes against Iran's nuclear installations. The Americans explained that they need Iranian assistance in stabilizing Iraq to pave the way for an American withdrawal from the country before Bush leaves office. Under Baker's regency, the administration apparently now subscribes to the belief that they will be better off out of Iraq and with a nuclear-armed Iran, than in Iraq without a nuclear-armed Iran.

For their part, the Arabs have demonstrated clearly that they do not share the administration's newfound faith that a nuclear-armed Iran will reach a stable equilibrium in a Bakeresque Middle Eastern balance of powers. Their stated aim to build nuclear reactors is a clear sign that they recognize the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. The administration's support for the Arabs' quest for nuclear reactors makes clear that it is now willing to have a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.

THIS BRINGS us back to Israel, which is situated smack in the middle of the regional chaos. How is Israel contending with this threatening state of affairs?

The IDF seems to be contending fairly well, at least with regard to Syria and Lebanon. The IDF's decision to have television crews film Israeli soldiers fighting in mock Syrian villages this week, like Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's announcement that the IDF is prepared to fight on two fronts simultaneously, are signs that the IDF recognizes that its only safe bet is to prepare for all contingencies. Were the IDF to complement these actions with warnings to Iran and operational plans to attack Iran's nuclear installations and distribute gas masks to the public, the General Staff would go a long way toward proving that it is adopting the only reasonable strategic posture available, given the cards Israel has been dealt.

Yet not only is the IDF not warning Iran, the Olmert government is undermining the army's correct posture toward Syria and Lebanon. Indeed, on every front, including toward Israel itself, Olmert has himself adopted Baker's failed paradigm.

Rather than publicly explain that in light of Syria's position as an Iranian client state with regards to Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, there is nothing for Israel to talk to Syria about, Olmert announced Wednesday that he wishes to open negotiations on an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights to the Syrians.

The Syrians, for their part, cornered Olmert on Thursday by agreeing to his offer. As Karl Moor and David Rivkin explained in Thursday's Post, it is not true, as Olmert and his minions claim, that Israel has nothing to lose by negotiating with Syria. Given Israel's perceived weakness in the wake of last summer's war and Syria's perceived strength, speaking to Damascus about an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights will only encourage Syrian belligerence.

And as with the Syrians, so too with the Palestinians, the Olmert government acts as Baker's water boy. Rather than waging a rational military campaign to defeat the jihadist front that has seeded itself in Gaza, Olmert issues near daily statements telling the Palestinians that Israel will cause them no harm. He defends this policy by declaiming on the importance of strengthening the "stability" of the Palestinian Authority.

Then there is the daily brown-nosing Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni engage in toward the Egyptians and Saudis. Israel praises both as "moderates" while Egypt vows publicly not to act to stop the transfer of weapons from Sinai to Gaza and the Saudis bankroll Hamas and demand that Israel implement their "peace plan" that calls for Israel's destruction.

Yet all of this incompetent bumbling pales in comparison to Israel's weakness toward Iran. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's assertion this week to the Post that he does not "think it is right today to talk about military options" toward Iran because he thinks that sanctions can still convince the mullahs to give up their nuclear ambitions comes dangerously close to an Israeli collapse in the face of an existential threat. The fact that Mofaz made this statement the same week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Teheran had crossed the nuclear threshold only exacerbates the perception of Israeli strategic disarray.

Sooner or later the US will pay a price for the Bush administration's decision to embrace the delusion of stability as its strategic goal. With jihadist forces growing stronger around the globe, if the Americans leave Iraq without victory, there is no doubt that Iraq (and Iran and Syria) will come to them.

But whatever the consequences of America's behavior for America, the price that Israel will pay for embracing Baker's myths of stability will be unspeakable.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Both critics and supporters of US President George W. Bush's post-September 11 vision of a new, freedom-loving Middle East have noted the strong similarities between the president and his predecessor Woodrow Wilson.

In 1917, the 28th president brought US forces into World War I with the promise that an allied victory against Germany and its allies would make the world "safe for democracy." Wilson's vision of a postwar world was a bit out of place in the war being fought on the killing fields of Belgium and France. Neither the Allies nor the Central Powers were fighting the war for ideological gain. Rather, the war was being fought to restore or upset the balance of power between European empires in Europe and beyond.

Yet Wilson had his vision. As he sent 1,200,000 American soldiers to war, he appointed a committee of 150 academics to prepare the peace. In 1918, he announced his 14-point plan for the postwar era. The last point, which called for the establishment of an international government with the power to guarantee each nation's sovereignty and independence, was the one that Wilson held to most strongly.

As historian Paul Johnson noted in his History of the American People, Wilson "became obsessed with turning [his vision of the League of Nations] into reality, as the formula for an eventual system of world democratic government, with America at its head." It was through the League of Nations, Wilson believed, that the war could indeed become a war to end all wars.

WILSON'S messianic view was harshly criticized by the British and French, by his domestic political opponents who controlled the Congress and by members of his own administration. The French and British, together with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee responsible for ratifying the Treaty of Versailles, all called for a scaled-back version of the plan.

They could see no advantage to an organization that would place the US and its allies on equal footing with Germany. Nor could they understand why a nation would go to war to protect the territorial integrity of countries that did not impact their national interests. Cabot Lodge specifically objected to the diminution of US national sovereignty inherent in the notion of transferring the power to commit US forces to war from the US Congress to an international body.

Cabot Lodge and French president George Clemenceau suggested that the US limit its objectives to guaranteeing the peace of Europe. They suggested the formation of an organization much like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which from its establishment in 1949 maintained the peace of Europe for the duration of the Cold War.

But Wilson refused to compromise and, as a result, his vision was defeated. The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty and so the US never joined Wilson's League of Nations. For its part, the League proved incapable of preserving either the peace or itself.

In the 1920 presidential elections, Warren Harding won handily by promising to turn America away from Wilson's grand designs and return it to "normalcy." Harding's "normalcy" was quickly translated into a policy of isolationism. The US locked its doors and shuttered its windows, blocked immigration and ignored the world as Germany descended into fascist madness and placed itself under the leadership of a tyrant bent on global domination.

Today, as then, Bush's freedom agenda for the Muslim world is under attack from all quarters as the US shifts noticeably into a comparable isolationist mode.

Conservatives concerned about preserving the America's cultural identity are pushing for an end to illegal immigration from Mexico. The Democrats, in concert with former secretary of state James Baker's considerable camp of followers in the Republican Party and the State Department, are advocating an end of US support for its allies and supporters in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon in favor of an embrace of US enemies Iran and Syria.

THERE ARE many differences between the Bush and Wilson administrations, but three stand out in particular. First, by ignoring the real interests of the US and its allies in favor of utopian peace, Wilson's vision of postwar peace was a flight of fancy predicated on a rejection of reality. In contrast, by recognizing the threat that the global jihad constitutes for the Free World, Bush sought to shake the US and its allies out of their collective flight from reality in the 1990s and force them to contend with the world as it is.

But while Wilson's vision was unrealistic, he has to be credited for his unstinting devotion to it. In contrast, Bush never completely matched his visionary rhetoric to his actual policies. And today, increasingly abandoned by his supporters and undermined by his own advisers who reject his vision and insist on returning to fantasyland, Bush has apparently abandoned his own doctrine of war and peace.

OVER THE weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that the administration stands united around her policy of appeasing the Iranian regime which is guiding the terror wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon, and beyond. In Rice's words, "The President of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course [with Iran]. That policy is supported by all members of the cabinet and by the Vice President of the United States."

Rice's statement cannot be aligned with Bush's statement at his 2002 State of the Union Address and subsequent speeches, where he announced that one of the principal aims of the US war against the global jihad is to deny rogue regimes, specifically Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

As the president put it then, "We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

But then, since the September 11 attacks, for every rhetorical step the President has taken towards reality, he has taken two policy steps back to delusion.

WHILE UPHOLDING Islam as a religion of peace, the administration courted Islamic preachers of war. So it was that at the post-September 11 memorial service at the National Cathedral, the administration invited Muzammil Siddiqi to speak for Muslims. Siddiqi, who heads one of the largest mosques in North America, was the man who converted Adam Gadahn, the American Taliban, to Islam. As head of the Wahabist Islamic Circle of North America, on October 28, 2000 Sidiqi participated along with Abdulrahman Alamoudi - now in jail on terrorism charges - in a rally outside the Israeli embassy. There he proclaimed, "America has to learn. If you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come."

Until his arrest, Alamoudi presided over the training of Muslim chaplains in the US military. In 2004 Congress initiated a probe into ISNA's suspected links to terror groups. Several members of its board of directors were arrested and convicted of involvement with terror cells.

In embracing radical Muslim religious leaders and pro-jihadist Muslim organizations in the US rather than embracing and strengthening anti-jihadist Muslim activists and leaders, the Bush administration followed a pattern that has remained consistent worldwide. Rather than embrace liberal, pro-American and pro-democracy Muslims, the administration embraces America's enemies.
In Iraq, leaders like Mithal al-Alousi and Ahmed Chalabi were spurned in favor of Ba'athists like former prime minister Iyad Allawi and Iranian puppets like current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

AS FOR THE Palestinians, Bush has opted to ignore Fatah's involvement in terrorism, its jihadist indoctrination of Palestinian society and its strategic collaboration with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, Iran and Syria. By upholding Fatah, Bush blocked all possibility that an alternative, liberal and democratic Palestinian leadership could emerge. The same pattern has held in Egypt.

Whereas Bush's commitment to advancing his stated strategic aim has been far weaker than Wilson's was, the danger of abandoning the fight today in favor of isolationism and appeasement is far greater than it was in the 1920s. While Great Britain's embrace of isolationism and appeasement under the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments was a disaster for the British, who were high on Germany's target list, it is possible to argue that isolationism was a sensible policy for America.
There was no German threat to the US in the 1920s and 1930s. Today the situation is different.

Last week FBI Assistant Director John Miller said that most of the 2,176 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act search warrants approved in 2006 were used against terror suspects inside the US. Three days later, the FBI announced the arrest of the members of an American and Caribbean terror cell that was plotting to bomb JFK International Airport. Last month the FBI arrested a terror cell planning to attack Fort Dix.

Then there is last month's Pew Survey of American Muslims under the age of 30. The survey found that 26 percent of young Muslims in America believe that suicide bombings are justified. Only 40 percent believe that Arabs carried out the September 11 attacks.

Historical hindsight has judged the feckless appeasement and irresponsible isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s responsible for the catastrophe of World War II. Bush's doctrine of war and peace was aimed at preventing just such a reenactment of history.

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaims that the countdown to the next Holocaust has begun while actively waging war against the US and its allies on all available fronts, the catastrophe that will follow an American relapse into isolationism and appeasement is undeniable.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.