By Ira Sharkansky

It is almost enough to make me anti-American. A Reuters article quotes a "senior State Department official" who said that a "political bargaining period" in Israel could make it harder for the United States to push a peace agenda. "What we don't want here is to be kept in a holding pattern (because of domestic politics). [http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051113/wl_nm/mideast_dc]

At issue was a turnover in the leadership of the Labor Party. Shimon Peres lost a primary to Amir Peretz, and Peretz wants to pull Labor out of the coalition government and go to early national elections. Apparently, the American official fears for his or her road map to peace. It is a concept that is deeply flawed in any event, but obsession is obsession.

What about democracy in the only democracy in the Middle East? Moreover, the benighted Palestinians are stumbling toward elections in what is no less democratic a regime than any other Arab entity. Palestine is far from European, North American or Israeli in the quality of its democracy, but it is no worse than Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and numerous others, and significantly better than Syria, Saudi Arabia and some others.

The domestic political commotions in both Israel and Palestine are going to delay progress on the road map, and the American official will have to wait. And when the elections and formations of governments are over, the road map may still be a path to nowhere. There is no sign that any Palestinian government or combination of moderate Arab governments will support the concessions likely to be on offer from Israel.

Power is power and democracy is democracy. The world is stuck with the economic and military power of the United States, and whatever government makes it through the maze of American politics. If it is a government that has gotten itself into a crusade for democracy in Iraq, and cannot dissociate itself at home from intelligent design, so much the worse for the rest of us.

In this trip I have encountered the unattractive combination of arrogance and ignorance. It is an image of America that is common in Europe, and heard even in America-dependent Israel. Those with a long memory may conclude that an American-centered world is better than the Roman Empire. We have come a long way through regimes usually worse than either Rome or the United States. Hopefully there is Paradise at the end, but none of us is likely to live long enough to get there.