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Bush's plan follows harsh history Many U.S. peace proposals since '60s haven't worked

By Barbara Slavin
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- Three decades of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East have left a landscape littered with peace plans, some leading to genuine breakthroughs and others relegated to the dustbin of history.

It is too soon to say where President Bush's ideas, outlined in a much-anticipated address on Monday, will land. His call for massive changes in Palestinian leadership and institutions as a precondition for provisional statehood was unprecedented.

But many other U.S. proposals have either had little effect or introduced ideas that took years to take hold.

William Quandt, a National Security Council member during the Carter administration, says the United States' ''single most important contribution'' to Middle East peace was its first big idea: the shaping of United Nations Security Council resolution 242.

Passed on Nov. 22, 1967, after a Middle East war that left Israel in control of the Sinai Desert, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza, the resolution laid down the concept of trading land for peace.

The resolution calls for ''withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories of recent conflict'' -- an ambiguous phrase that Arabs say requires full withdrawal. But many Israelis believe it means they need not give back all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians.

Other U.S. plans:

* The Rogers plan. Put forward by President Nixon's first secretary of State, William Rogers, in 1969, the plan called for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Desert in return for peace with Egypt. Israel rejected it, as did Egypt. It became the basis for a later Egyptian peace initiative.

* The Carter plan. In 1977, President Carter introduced several concepts that have gradually won acceptance. Among them: Palestinians deserve a ''homeland,'' and peace has to include normalization of relations between the former adversaries.

* The Reagan plan. In a 1982 speech, President Reagan called for a five-year transition period leading to Palestinian self-government. But he ruled out an independent Palestinian state. He opted instead for Palestinian autonomy ''in association with Jordan.'' The plan was rejected by the Palestinians and Jordanians.

* The Bush I plan. After the1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration sponsored a Middle East peace conference in Madrid that launched separate U.S.-brokered talks with Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians. Slow progress led the Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate their own secret deal, the 1993 Oslo accords. The agreement faltered after the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a fellow Israeli and an upsurge of Palestinian terrorism.

* The Clinton plan. In December 2000, President Clinton called for ''a sovereign and viable Palestinian state'' in most of the West Bank and Gaza, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the new state, but not Israel, and the establishment of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accepted these ideas this month -- 18 months after governments in both Israel and the United States had changed and the plan was no longer on the table.

* The Mitchell plan. Named for former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who headed an international panel, Bush embraced this 2001 plan. Its goal: A cease-fire in the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 against Israeli occupation. It also called for Palestinians to make a ''100% effort'' to stop terrorism and for Israel to cease expansion of settlements. Neither has complied.

Many U.S. proposals have fallen by the wayside because the leaders of the various sides in the Middle East were not in sync. When Israel was ready to compromise, the Arabs were not.

The fate of the new Bush plan will depend on many factors. The administration has not made clear how it intends to implement its proposals or what it would do if elections promised by Arafat for next January result in another victory for him.

There is also the concern that conditions on the ground could worsen, eliminating any chance for peace. ''Without an improvement in the security situation, you cannot have elections,'' says Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.

Without follow-up and new Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, ''the speech will be overtaken by events, and the president will have to give another speech,'' says Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.