Much criticized for a delay in addressing Mideast peace, President Bush now has made a timely and effective beginning. Moreover, if things go wrong, he’s not likely to deserve the blame.

Instead of rushing into Mideast diplomacy, Bush spent more than a year building trust in Israel and insisting that the Palestinians needed new leadership before serious negotiations were possible. He backed Israeli insistence that no peace was possible without an end to Palestinian terrorism, and he sided with a Palestinian reform movement disturbed by the corruption of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.