Nicholas D. Kristof

George W. Bush and John Kerry disagree on almost every issue, with one crucial exception: They compete to support a myopic policy that is unjust, that damages our credibility around the world and that severely undermines our efforts in Iraq.

It's our Israel-Palestinian policy, which has become so unbalanced that it's now little more than an embrace of the right-wing jingoist whom Bush unforgettably labeled a "man of peace": Ariel Sharon.

American presidents have always tried to be honest brokers in the Middle East. Truman, Johnson and Reagan were a bit more pro-Israel, while Eisenhower, Carter and the elder Bush were a bit cooler, but all aimed for balance.

President Bush tossed all that out the window as he snuggled up to Sharon. Bush gazes admiringly as Sharon responds to terrorist attacks by sending troops to bulldoze Palestinian homes and shoot protesters, and he dropped President Bill Clinton's intensive efforts to reach a peace deal. Professor Michael Hudson of Georgetown University describes present Middle East policy as "a bumbling incompetence, running here or there but doing nothing consistently."

Our embrace of Sharon hobbles us in Iraq even more than those photos from Abu Ghraib. Iraqis (in contrast with, say, Kuwaitis) genuinely sympathize with the Palestinians, and everywhere I've been in Iraq ordinary people have asked me why Americans provide the weapons Sharon uses to kill Palestinians.

One lofty aim of the Iraq war was to achieve a Middle East peace. But as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Center for Defense Information this month: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move -- that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of other things will work out."

As for Kerry, he has generally been sensible on the Middle East. But in recent months he has zigged and zagged away from his record (he used to oppose the Middle East fence, for example) to plant his own wet kisses on Sharon. It's too bad he doesn't have the leadership to acknowledge what 50 former U.S. diplomats wrote in an open letter to Bush last month:

"You have proved that the United States is not an evenhanded peace partner. ... Your unqualified support of Sharon's extrajudicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends. This endorsement is not even in the best interests of Israel."

Indeed, my guess is that Sharon has done more to undermine Israel's long-term security than Yasser Arafat ever did. Sharon's actions have knocked the legs out from under Palestinian moderates and have bolstered Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Sharon means well -- he wants to stop terrorism -- but his policies have led Palestinians to turn to Islamic extremists rather than secular nationalists. Now even the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group, has found God and quotes from the Quran.

Particularly in a new age when terrorist attacks could use WMD to kill perhaps thousands at a time, Israel can achieve safety only through a peace agreement with the Palestinians. A model is the unofficial Geneva accord of last October, reached between courageous Israelis and Palestinians -- the very people we should be supporting.

In contrast, Sharon and Arafat both display a bloodstained obduracy, suggesting that they might as well have been twins separated at birth. They should be exiled together to some modern St. Helena. Both are hurting their own people by undercutting moderates on the other side.

So let's hope that Kerry zags again, giving us a meaningful choice on Middle East policy. Bush's break from the usual U.S. role of honest broker is one of his most serious foreign policy errors, and we owe it to Israel as well as to ourselves to fix it.

"Israelis are far more critical of Israeli policy than Americans are," noted Edward Walker Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. "If your good friends won't tell you that something's wrong, they're not very good friends."

Copyright 2004 New York Times, all rights reserved.