…. In Washington, the traditional foreign-policy elite – from Republican realists such as former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage to Democratic internationalists such as former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright – have publicly criticized Bush for rejecting talks with Damascus, at the very least to probe its willingness to rein in Hezbollah, if not loosen its alliance with Iran, during the past month’s fighting.

“I can’t for the life of me understand why we don’t [talk with] Syria,” said James Dobbins, an analyst at the RAND Corporation who, as a senior State Department official, coordinated the Bush administration’s diplomacy during and immediately after the war in Afghanistan.

“I think this idea that we don’t talk to our enemies simply has to be jettisoned,” he told a forum at the New America Foundation (NAF) last week.

Dobbins’ critique echoes that raised by a number of prominent Jewish figures, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, former ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross, the main US negotiator on Israeli-Palestinian issues under presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton, and organizations in recent weeks.

The most direct challenge surfaced on Tuesday when the Zionist group Americans for Peace Now sent a letter to President Bush calling on him to clarify whether his administration opposes renewed peace negotiations between Israel and Syria.

“Unfortunately, many in Israel and the US believe that your administration is standing in the way of renewed Israel-Syria contacts,” the letter, which also called on Bush to “reject the thinking of those who view the Syrian regime as irredeemable”, stated. “We urge you to clarify, publicly and expeditiously, that this is not the case.”

While the administration is likely to dodge the question, its commitment to isolating Syria, particularly since the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, has never been in doubt.

Indeed, in the opening days of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, the White House not only reportedly rebuffed an appeal by Olmert himself for Washington to quietly approach Damascus about pressing Hezbollah to release two Israeli soldiers whose capture touched off the crisis, but also urged the Israeli prime minister, according to one account in the Jerusalem Post, to attack Syria directly.

“In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, [Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot] Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria,” a well-informed source, who received an account of the meeting from one of its participants, told Inter Press Service.

Cheney’s own Middle East advisers, John Hannah and David Wurmser, have long favored “regime change” in Damascus and, according to the New York Times, argued forcefully – and successfully, with help from Abrams and pressure from the Israel lobby’s leadership – against efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to persuade Bush to open a channel to Syria in an effort to stop the recent fighting.

But Bush’s adamant refusal to engage Damascus is precisely what has raised doubts in Israel about whether his policies are in the long-term or even in the immediate interests of the Jewish state.

Since the ceasefire, a growing number of former and current senior Israeli officials, including Olmert’s defense, interior and foreign ministers, have called for talks with Damascus. And, while Olmert himself has rejected the idea for now, he has also abandoned his previous pre-condition for such talks – that Washington remove Syria from its terrorism list.

Of the officials, the two most important are both former Likud Party members – Interior Minister Avi Dichter, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who reportedly enjoys a strong relationship with Rice and has appointed her former chief of staff, Yaakov Dayan, to explore possible ways to engage Syria.

Meanwhile, other prominent Israelis are asking even more basic questions about the regional strategy pursued by Bush and its consequences for Israel.

In a column published by the newspaper Ha’aretz, former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued that, in the aftermath of the Lebanon war, which, in his view, had proved “the limits of [Israeli] power”, a peace accord with Syria and the Palestinians had become “essential” for Israel, particularly in light of “the worrisome decline of the status of Israel’s ally in this part of the world and beyond”.

“US deterrence, and respect for the superpower, have been eroded unrecognizably,” he wrote. “An exclusive pax Americana in the Middle East is no longer possible because not only is the US not an inspiration today, it does not instill fear.”

Indeed, the widespread perception that Washington’s influence in the region has fallen sharply as a result of both the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s stubborn refusal to engage its foes diplomatically has raised new questions about whether Bush and his neo-conservative advisers have actually made Israel less rather than more secure.

“The Bush administration at first avoided and then was unable to deliver the diplomatic agility that was called for, and that is bad news for Israel,” wrote former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy in this week’s Forward. “The United States had no direct channels or leverage with key actors, and could not commit troops to any ceasefire-implementation force.

“The idea that current American policy advances Israeli security and national interests is thoroughly discredited – something that is now openly aired in the Israeli media, and raised, albeit in more discreet circles, by Israeli cabinet ministers,” wrote Levy, who currently directs the NAF’s and Century Foundation’s Middle East initiative.

(Inter Press Service)

Also, see the letters sent out byFarid Ghadry posted by Ameen Always (in Arabic) One is entitled, “Why the Alawites Should Go Back to the Mountains.” Another, “Damascus Will Remain the Umayyad Capital and Not the Capital of the Alawites.” I understand these letters to be the beginning of a new campaign designed to convince the United States and Sunnis to embrace violent regime change in Syria. He has taken a page right out of the old Muslim Brotherhood handbook, accusing the Alawites of being non-Muslim and non-Arab in order to incite sectarian violence.

In his last English language note, he writes: “The United States… should concentrate on… plans for Assad’s departure….”