Once again, Arab advice on this issue must be taken with a grain of salt. Former members of the Clinton administration, who spent eight long years shepherding the peace process, become visibly pained when they hear Arab interlocutors demand that the United States do more to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The tight bond between the Bush administration and Sharon's government sows tremendous ill will in Arab capitals, making it more difficult to secure Arab cooperation.

In the eyes of much of the Arab world, Sharon, the man they hold responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, is a war criminal. "Do you realize how calling Sharon a 'man of peace,'" as President Bush did in April 2002, "sounds to the Arab ear? It's as if Bush told the Jews that the Nazis were peaceful," declared one Western-educated Arab intellectual. While this is a ghastly comparison and Washington must work with the Israeli leader, the Bush administration's support for practically any initiative that emerges from the Israeli prime ministry leaves Arab officials cold. It has gotten so bad that one Arab diplomatic source grumbled, "We have no expectation that the present administration will actually change U.S. policy, but at least [it should] make a show of trying to rein Sharon in."

Shortly before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's visit to the Western White House in mid-April, Egyptian diplomats were frantically searching for an effective way to impress upon Bush and other administration officials the Arab fear that Jerusalem's proposed unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a prelude to an Israeli effort to strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank.

Indeed, the Mubarak visit is instructive of the administration's tone-deaf approach to its Arab allies. The shortcomings of Egypt's authoritarian regime are well known -- and Mubarak's sometimes overly cautious approach has contributed to a deadlocked peace process -- but Egypt is the largest and most powerful country in the Arab world, rendering it an important partner for the United States. Over the course of the past year Cairo has, in fact, played a constructive role in a coordinated effort with the United States, Israel and the Palestinians to bring an end to suicide bombings. Given the importance of this issue, it was stunning how the administration thoroughly humiliated the Egyptian president. After cordial and productive talks between Bush and Mubarak on April 12, the U.S. president -- standing with Sharon -- publicly repudiated standing U.S. Middle East policy regarding Israeli settlements, Israel's borders and the status of Palestinian refugees two days later.

With that encounter on April 14, Sharon achieved what no other Israeli prime minister has been capable of doing: The U.S. president publicly and explicitly aligned U.S. policy with Jerusalem's concept of a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The problem for the Egyptians was not only the change in policy but also that it came so close on the heels of the Bush-Mubarak meeting, creating the impression that the Egyptian president either approved the change or, more likely, was too weak to do much about it. Either way, the administration's actions were deeply embarrassing to the Egyptians.

It was not surprising then that shortly after these events Jordan's King Abdullah, who presides over a country in which only 6 percent of the population has a favorable opinion of the United States, canceled his late-April trip to Washington. He finally met with Abdullah yesterday, in a day filled with all sorts of damage control by the Bush administration.

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