Arab' embrace of France discredits US as honest broker

IN THE West Bank town of Ramallah and in Gaza City, he was greeted as a saviour. Arab women named newborn babies "Jacques Chirac". Streets were renamed after him.

In Damascus, he healed the half century antagonism between France and Syria. In Jerusalem, he sang "Happy Birthday" to Benjamin Netanyahu, only to have his feet trampled in scuffles provoked by Israeli security guards the next day.

In Amman, an ailing, depressed King Hussein made common cause with the French president. Two Lebanese beauty queens greeted him with kisses and bouquets at Beirut airport, and Lebanese students asked whether France would stand by them.

During his 1995 presidential campaign, Mr Chirac used to say that "politics is not the art of the possible - it is the art of making possible what is necessary". His Middle East tour, which ended this morning, made peace in the troubled region seem just a little more possible.

The peace process has stagnated, he said often during the journey, because of a lack of trust.

"There is a perception of imbalance on the Arab side," Mr Chirac said. "The Arabs think the Americans favour the Israelis. This perception creates distrust, and distrust is a bad adviser."

So how can the "trust deficit" - Mr Chirac's phrase be made good? Call "Dr Chirac", says the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat. Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians wholeheartedly endorse his four point peace plan a return to the "land for peace" formula upon which the Madrid negotiations were based five years ago the right of all countries in the Middle East to sovereignty over all their territory the right of all countries to security including Israel; and the right of the Palestinians to a state.

But Israel accepts only one of the four points - its own right to security. The Prime Minister, Mr Netanyahu, has publicly rescinded Israel's commitment to land for peace.

He wants Israel to keep the Golan Heights and he is increasing Israeli settlement of West Bank Arab land. He is not willing to withdraw from Lebanon unless Hizbullah guerrillas are disarmed, and Hizbullah won't disarm unless the Israelis leave.

As for a Palestinian state, Mr Netanyahu says no. Instead, he is constructing a new system of apartheid in the occupied territories, where Palestinians cannot travel on settlers' roads and cannot leave their tiny enclaves without Israeli permission. Until or unless there is progress on the Palestinian track of the peace process, there can be no hope of peace between Israel and Syria or Israel and Lebanon.

Mr Chirac maintains that security alone can never guarantee peace. But Mr Netanyahu campaigned as Mr Security and still seems to think the Palestinians can be beaten into submission. France and Germany fought for centuries, Mr Chirac kept telling his interlocutors. France built the Maginot Line between the two World Wars, but it didn't prevent a German invasion. It was only when France and Germany decided to make peace that security ceased to be a problem.

The history lesson appears lost on Mr Netanyahu. The hail fellow well met camaraderie between him and Mr Chirac could not hide the ill will surrounding the French leader's two day stay in Jerusalem. It often seemed as though the Israelis were trying to humiliate him. Ostensibly for "security reasons", the French President was forced to enter and exit the King David Hotel through laundry rooms and service elevators. His private plane was not allowed to land in Yasser Arafat's Gaza one more way of showing who's boss - and Israeli immigration officials kept his delegation waiting for long periods at Ben Gurionairport.

Israel and the US both rejected Mr Chirac's proposal for European co sponsorship of the Middle East peace process. And the response from Mr Chirac's European partners was not encouraging. "Europe has grown used to the idea that it must not intervene politically in the Middle East," Mr Chirac said. "Israel has 60 per cent of its trade with the EU, compared to only 17 per cent with the US.

"With that, Europe has a legitimate right to be involved in political negotiations. Europe has an ambition - to bring heart, soul and trust to the peace process.

Only Italy seconded the French contention that the EU cannot continue to be the Middle East's chief investor and donor without commensurate political influence.

So after the tinny renditions of the Marseillaise, after the handshakes and the motorcades, what will come of Mr Chirac's venture into what his ideological forbear, General de Gaulle, called "the complicated Middle East"?

One Irish commentator recently observed that Mr Chirac "has a temperament, not a strategy". It's not clear where he will go from here. But the Arabs' clamorous embrace of France has discredited any remaining US pretention to being an honest broker. If Washington ever lost a no confidence vote, this was it.

But without European support, at a time when France is steeped in economic crisis, when Mr Chirac's popularity has reached new lows at home, he may not have the means to carry out his vision. France has raised huge hopes among Arabs. If these hopes are dashed now, the ensuing crisis could be even worse.