Forum shocked at Bush's stand

Sunday's extraordinary speech by President Bush has kept the Forum talking all day. His frightening certainty in a very uncertain world has deeply shocked many of the delegates who heard him.

His unfettered insistence that liberty and justice are the Almighty's gift to humanity, and that they should be administered through democracy, is the same simplistic message that he gave in Abu Dhabi in January. The dramatic events across the Middle East intervening six months have not changed his text at all.

"How can he say that Afghanistan and Iraq are successful examples of democracy?" asked a senior Saudi businessman, staggered that Bush could be so wrong, never mind also be responsible for the disasters in those two countries and not give any hint of how his forces are facing the problems they have to deal with.

His blunt dismissal of Hezbollah showed a profound unawareness of what is happening. As Bush said the uncompromising words "We stand against Hezbollah", Hezbollah representatives were a vital part of the meeting in Qatar with other Lebanese political parties to find a way out of the present impasse.

Rather than a short and dismissive rejection of all that Hezbollah stands for, Bush might have expressed some hopes for success in the dialogue in Qatar, while also feeling free to point out America's view (shared by some Lebanese) that Hezbollah should disarm, and become part of the mainstream Lebanese state.

Instead, what the WEF heard was a US President living out his last six months of power, offering little to improving the Middle East peace process. While he continues to embrace democracy as the only solution to all the region's problems, he refuses to offer any specific policies to make this generality happen.

Israel's focus

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak have jumped on America's simplistic anti-Iranian focus. All day, they dodged questions on how they might take the peace process forward.

They have not had to address how Israel might remove travel barriers in the West Bank, evacuate colonies, or why new colonies are still being built. Instead, they spoke in several sessions of their willingness to work with Fatah and their total rejection of Hamas. They offered nothing specific to Fatah, but are very specific about their hatred of Hamas, dismissing it as an extremist and terrorist organisation.

They are using Bush's reduction of the Middle East's many issues into one anti-Iran campaign to try to work to split the Palestinians, and to portray Israel as being part of Bush's world campaign against terror.

This Israeli position does not move anyone forward, since the Fatah leaders reject its fundamentals, but also stalls any progress and is one of the reasons that the Annapolis peace process has made no headway. The Israelis themselves are ready to benefit from that failure they have induced.