GET Gaza out of the way, and then have a row, if necessary. Those seem to be the Bush Administration’s tactics in dealing with Israel, judging by this week’s summit in Crawford, Texas.

They are not bad ones, but they only postpone a problem the US will eventually have to face: its insistence that Israel stop building houses on the West Bank, and Israel’s refusal so far to do so.

Israel announced yesterday that it will train 10,000 soldiers to help to extract its settlers from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements this summer. This is flawless public relations. It emphasises the difficulty and danger of the operation, the level of violent resistance expected, particularly on the West Bank, and the Government’s fortitude in resisting it.

But that advertisement has reality behind it, as the US knows. The operation is highly unpredictable. There have been reports of West Bank settlements attracting reinforcements from nearby. Israel has announced that it will try to disarm settlers, but it is not clear how much success it will have. Its decision to shorten the time allotted from months to just weeks is sensible, but adds to the pressure.

The political reaction within Israel will depend on how smoothly the pullout goes, and on any casualties.

Given these uncertainties, Bush had little option, meeting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his ranch on Monday, but to focus on the next few months.

However, in the press conference afterwards, he did raise US opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements several times. In particular, he called for a halt in the expansion of Maale Adumin, so that it would touch Jerusalem. This was harsher language than Israeli officials seemed to have expected.

But the summit still achieved what each side wanted, in order to claim that the peace process is still alive and to rebut critics.

Sharon could return home with the reaffirmation of US support for maintaining many West Bank settlements forever, the policy that Bush announced last year.

Bush could tell Israel’s critics that he had delivered a tough message, and also tell its supporters that he was endorsing its broad plan.

But at some point, he will have to drop this equivocation. He will be challenged to do so by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, set to meet him on April 25. Bush is also due to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas next month.

Even if he manages to stall their predictable protests by invoking the Gaza withdrawal, there are only a few months before he will have to face the ambiguity in US policy.

Part of the problem is that US policy has changed markedly in the past year, but it is not clear that the Israeli Government has fully taken the change on board.

When Bush made his controversial pledge to Israel last year, saying that any final deal between the Palestinians and Israel would have to recognise the “reality on the ground” of the major Israeli settlements, there was nothing resembling a peace process.

But since then, the death of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, and the democratic election of Abbas — together with the spectacle of a successful Iraqi election — have brought a commitment from the US to drive for peace again.

There has even been ambitious talk from US officials that the “road map” could not only be resurrected but pursued to completion by the time Bush leaves office in January 2009.

As Bush said on Monday, with Sharon at his side, “Israel has obligations under the road map. The road map clearly says no expansion of settlements.”

The question is whether Bush intends to drive home this message after the Gaza withdrawal. Perhaps that exercise will be such a resounding success — at such conspicuous effort — that it will silence critics of Israel’s expansion, at least for a bit. That is certainly what Israel hopes.

But if the Bush Administration is serious about its claim of trying to make peace in its time, then it cannot take that as sufficient answer.

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