George W Bush is set to travel to West Asia on Tuesday on a seven day, seven country journey which will take him to Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Egypt. He will be treated to traditional hospitality by Arab rulers but will be welcome only in Israel, where he is seen as the most friendly US president ever to occupy the Oval Office.

This will be Bush’s first tour of the region. He has previously visited Egypt and Jordan for specific events. His arrival is likely to spark angry demonstrations in some Arab countries, whose rulers risk a popular backlash if they fail to maintain a certain distance from Bush. Both political leaders and citizens blame Bush for the continuing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and cannot forgive him for conquering and occupying Iraq, thereby weakening and destabilising the entire eastern Arab world.

Bush had a golden opportunity to resolve the century-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict when he took office. All he had to do was to build upon the progress made by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and well-meaning delegations from the sides between August and early January 2001.  During last ditch negotiations at the Egyptian Red Sea resort at Taba, the negotiating teams reached accord on core issues.  They needed a bit more time and the momentum from the US to conclude a final deal.

But, upon taking office on January 20, 2001, Bush abruptly disengaged. Since then he has refused to play a direct role in peacemaking, backed Israeli military action against the Palestinians and Lebanese, failed to curb Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and provided Israel with the funding to carry on with its expansionist policies.

Last November, he belatedly convened an international meeting at Annapolis in Maryland, where he called for the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008, using the moribund “road map”. However, during the seven years, when Bush did nothing to advance negotiations, Israel has planted new settlements in the West Bank, built a 720 km wall and a road network dividing the area into separate compartments for Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli analysts argue that their leaders are no longer ready to go back to Taba’s near-done-deal, the Palestinian price of an end to the conflict.

Worried Palestinian and Arab leaders will be partly mollified only if Bush gives them concrete proofs that the US will ensure that Israel will carry out its commitments under the “road map” by lifting Israeli barriers to Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank, removing illegal settler outposts, halting settlement construction, and easing the siege of the Gaza Strip. But Bush has no intention of confronting Israel. He has characterised settlement expansion an “impediment” to peace instead of an “obstacle”, the tougher term used by former administrations.

Palestinian negotiators are demanding that ongoing talks should focus on core issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the evacuation of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, and the fixing of borders between Israel and the Palestinian state-to-be. But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been trying to engage Israel in negotiations on the Golan Heights, also occupied by Israel in 1967, is not optimistic.

He warned, “It is perhaps too late to talk about peace in the last year of this US administration. It will be preoccupied with elections”. Assad is right. As the leading Republican, Bush does not dare alienate the powerful pro-Israel lobby ahead of the November presidential and congressional polls. The lobby could retaliate by throwing its considerable political weight and large financial resources behind Democrat party candidates.

Arab leaders and pundits will also want to see what Bush says about Iraq. While the administration has been claiming military successes which have reduced violence by 60 per cent, Arab rulers want assurances that sectarian attacks and civil war will not erupt once the US troops begin pulling out and that Arab Sunnis will be drawn into the circle of governance now dominated by Shia fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The Arabs demand a solid commitment from Washington that Iraq will not be divided into three zones — Kurdish, Sunni and Shia — once US troops depart. The Arabs also seek assurances that Bush will not order attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, risking further unrest in a restive region.

But Bush, a lame duck president with little clout on the international scene, can give very little comfort on these issues. This being the case, there is a suspicion in West Asia that Bush is simply travelling the region to escape problems at home since he can no longer wage new wars to distract voters from the disastrous consequences of his foreign misadventures and domestic policies.