Many downplay the significance of the US Congressional elections. It is the six-year slump, they say. But the truth is nonetheless glaring. By all accounts, Tuesday the George W. Bush era came to a close.

The consequences of this turn of events on Israel will be dramatic. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that anyone has explained them to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of his scheduled visit to the White House next week.

Across the political spectrum in Washington today there is a sense that after years of wavering, in the wake of the Democratic victory in Tuesday's Congressional elections, President Bush transferred control over American foreign policy to his father's anti-war advisors.

The President's announcement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's "resignation" Wednesday signaled the transfer of control over the war against radical Islam from Bush's team to Bush pere's team. Robert Gates, Bush's nominee to replace Rumsfeld, served as his father's deputy national security adviser and CIA director. Gates, who will arrive at the Pentagon from his present position as President of Texas A&M University where Bush I's presidential library is located, is closely associated with former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state James Baker. He is a member in good standing of the Arabist wing of the Republican Party which dominated the President's father's administration.

In recent years, Gates made one notable foray into the world of international affairs. In 2004 he collaborated with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor in the Carter administration. Like former president Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski is one of Israel's greatest adversaries in US policymaking circles. It is hard to recall a problem, conflict, crisis or war in the Middle East over the past thirty years that Brzezinski has not managed to blame on Israel.

Gates and Brzezinski co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Task Force charged with recommending a US policy for dealing with Iran. In July 2004 they published their recommendations. The Task Force called for the Bush administration to directly engage the mullahs and to use "fewer sticks and more carrots" to convince the regime in Teheran to stop enriching uranium, and to stop supporting al Qaida and the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an effort to convince the Iranians to cooperate, the two recommended that the US discard regime overthrow as a policy option and move more forcefully to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible. They also recommended that the US pressure Israel not to take any military action against the Iranian nuclear facilities arguing that such Israeli actions would undermine US national interests.

In recent months, Gates has been serving as a member of the Iraq Study Group chaired by Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. The Congressionally mandated committee is scheduled to recommend new strategies for managing the war in Iraq to Bush later in the month.

In a series of recent press interviews, Baker and Hamilton have indicated that they will recommend that Bush enter into negotiations with Iran and Syria. The proposed talks they say, will serve to motivate Iran and Syria to stabilize the situation in Iraq in a manner that will pave the way for a retreat of US forces from the country.

Since it is Iranian and Syrian sponsorship of the insurgency that is causing the war to continue, it is fairly clear that Baker is egging for a temporary ceasefire that will last long enough to enable a pullout of US forces. The fact that the price of the temporary ceasefire will be a US defeat in Iraq and the surrender of Iraq to the tender mercies of Iran and Syria is apparently okay by Baker.

SOME OF Bush's critics on the Right claim that Bush's nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld won't change anything. Since in point of fact Bush has been conducting talks in various venues with Teheran for the past five years, and given that since 2002 the establishment of a Palestinian state has been a central plank of US Middle East policy, these conservative critics argue that the Gates-Brzezinski recommendations are already official policy.

Moreover, many claim that when Bush made the decision in April 2003 not to widen the campaign in Iraq to the sources of the then-nascent insurgency in Syria and Iran, the President effectively decided not to win the war in Iraq. This is the case because Iraq is merely one front in a regional war. As Michael Ledeen from the American Enterprise Institute, who served with Gates in the Reagan administration argues, the US cannot win the regional war while limiting its operations to playing defense on one front.

When seen from this perspective, far from signaling a strategic shift in US policy, Gates' nomination merely serves to restate an existing policy.

Yet Bush's policies to date have been far from consistent. Indeed, for the past several years Bush has been simultaneously advancing two contradictory policies. On the one hand, as his critics on the Right have repeatedly stated, through his engagement of Teheran and support for Palestinian statehood, he has been carrying out a policy of appeasement towards the Iranians and the Arabs. At the same time however, Bush supported Israel in the war this summer. He isolated the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took power, and throughout his first term in office, he refused to meet with Yassir Arafat in spite of the significant domestic and international pressure exerted on him to do so.

Practically speaking, Bush supported Israel's right to take action to defend itself. (What Israel did with his support is a completely separate issue.) As to Iran, Bush distinguished himself from his predecessors by announcing his support for the overthrow of the regime in Teheran. In recent months, Bush and at least some of the members of his administration pointed fingers at Damascus and Teheran for their sponsorship of the insurgents in Iraq, for Hizbullah in Lebanon and for Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

So when the full breadth of Bush's policies is taken into consideration, his decision to appoint Gates does signal a strategic shift in direction. Rumsfeld was completely identified with Bush's pro-Israel policies and with his hawkish stances towards Islamic radicalism. Rumsfeld's ouster and replacement by a follower of Baker, Bush pere and Scowcroft signals a clean break with the policies Rumsfeld embodied. Furthermore, by sacking Rumsfeld the day after the elections, Bush sent a signal to the Democrats that he is willing to forego victory in exchange for political breathing space. Continued...