"Strategic incoherence." Thus Zbig-niew Brzezinski, who helped negotiate Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, on the current administration's Middle Eastern policy. He has reasons for criticism. Less than three weeks after America backed a UN Security Council resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from parts of the West Bank―an incursion that George Bush called "not helpful"-the president threw his support behind Ariel Sharon's far broader operation. Both the president and his secretary of state, Colin Powell, have held the trapped Palestinian leader personally responsible for the waves of suicide-bombings. Yet, at the same time, the administration continues to regard Mr Arafat as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians, and to insist that "the road to peace runs through Arafat". At a time when the region is descending into its worst violence for a decade, Mr Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, have ruled out sending American peacekeepers (something that had previously seemed possible). And the administration has merely made polite noises about the Saudi peace plan endorsed by Arab leaders at their summit last week.
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