President George W. Bush has belatedly sent Secretary of State Colin Powell riding to the rescue in the Middle East.

Who knows? Maybe Powell will have the magic word. Maybe a cease-fire -- although certainly not peace itself -- will break out.

But I believe that if the president had taken a stronger stand sooner to urge a halt to the mayhem, lives might have been saved on both sides.

The U.S. veto last December of a U.N. resolution assigning peacekeepers to the Middle East certainly did not help. But Bush killed the measure because Israel was against it.

Now he is seeing the awful consequences of maintaining his hands-off policy during months of mounting bloodshed until April 4 when he suddenly decided that "enough is enough" of the violence and suffering and he jumped into the fray.

With his aloofness, he had alienated friends and appalled much of the world.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on a rampage against the Palestinians because of the suicide bombings, has been throwing back at Bush the president's words after the Sept. 11 nightmare about rooting out terrorists wherever they are.

Any past president, especially his father, could have told George W. that to be head of the world's superpower means you cannot watch from the sidelines.

In Arab circles, the younger Bush is seen as pro-Israel, and apparently that's the way he wants it.

Certainly, George H.W. Bush is known to think that being seen as pro-Arab hurt his own chances for re-election in 1992.

And whether it's true or not, there is a widespread perception in the Arab world that the current president gave Sharon the signal to attack the occupied Palestinian towns and refugee camps. Sharon seems to have convinced Bush that with heavy armor the Israelis could easily wipe out terrorist attacks and end the Palestinian suicide bombings that have caused so much pain and anguish. But Bush has now learned otherwise.

Sharon has visited the White House four times since Bush took office, and they are in close touch on the phone. When Bush visited the Middle East in 1998 before he started running for the U.S. presidency, he went only to Israel, and Sharon gave him a guided tour.

Bush does not seem to realize that 35 years of Israel's military occupation has helped radicalize the Palestinians and has made them lose hope. Would any American tolerate that kind of misery without fighting back?

I once asked former President Ronald Reagan whether he would rebel if he lived under military occupation. He paused and said, "I don't know." But he looked down at his shoes when he said it.

George W. Bush's refusal to meet with Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat and shake his hand was a profound insult. Palestinians interpreted it as extending to all of them.

It's ludicrous for Bush to keep saying that Arafat could or should have done more over the years to call off militant Palestinians. They are fighting for their freedom. What does Bush think caused the uprising in the first place?

In our own history, we idolize generals who said "nuts" to demands for surrender and naval officers who similarly replied, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

Over the years American presidents have called the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank an "obstacle to peace." More recently, Bush finally called the expansion of settlements "not helpful."

In his turnabout a week ago, the president also made many demands of both sides, starting with immediate moves toward a cease-fire.

He told the Palestinian Authority and all governments in the region to do everything they can "to halt terrorist activities, to disrupt terrorist financing and to stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned media or telling suicide bombers they are martyrs."

He also told Israel to halt expansion of settlements and stop its recent "incursions into Palestinian-controlled land and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied." The Israelis also must prepare to withdraw to "secure and recognized boundaries" from the territory they seized in 1967, he said.

Remarkably, Bush said that "Israel should also show a respect ... for and concern about the dignity of the Palestinian people," that it should distinguish between suspected terrorists and ordinary citizens in security crackdowns and that it "should be compassionate at checkpoints and border crossings, sparing innocent Palestinians daily humiliation."

That's a big order for both sides.

But there is hope now that Powell, the designated peacemaker, is saying he intends to meet with Arafat as well as Sharon despite the surge in violence.

Bush has said he favors a Palestinian state, but he has to give it more than lip service.

Two states, side by side. That is the obvious solution.