President Bush made two big steps in the right direction yesterday with his recognition that, as he put it yesterday with Prime Minister Sharon,”the realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly over the last several decades, and any final settlement must take into account those realities.” Mr. Bush sided with Israel on two important final status issues: borders and the so-called right of return. With respect to borders, Mr. Bush said, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”And with respect to “refugees” — who now include the grandchildren of the Arabs who chose freely to leave Israel as early Zionist leaders pleaded with them to stay — Mr. Bush said, “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, as part of any final status agreement, will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than Israel.”

Mr. Bush will take a rhetorical bashing for these decisions from the Arab tyrants and from their sympathizers on the American and European left. But they are the right decisions, both with respect to historical justice and with respect to America’s duty to stand by Israel, which shares our free and democratic values and which has been a staunch ally in both the Cold War and the war on terror. But for all the praise that supporters of Israel — and we are among them — will lavish on Mr. Bush in the coming days, there is a sense among at least some of us that the president could have done even more.

We were struck by that sentiment last night reading the Jerusalem Post’s editorial on the Bush-Sharon meeting. The editorial said, “It was as if Washington was saying to us, ‘we realize the Palestinians aren’t lifting a finger to fight terror, but you must treat Arafatland as a regime change-free zone.'”

The editorial also made mention of “the destroy-Israel corner of the global war”on terror. Indeed, Mr. Bush has yet to explain why Mr. Arafat has been immune to the fate that has befallen the terror-sponsoring regimes in Kabul and Baghdad. Mr. Bush has called on the Palestinians to choose a new leadership, but he has failed to move decisively himself to oust the terrorist leader. On another front, Mr. Bush’s justice and state departments are in court trying to defend their refusal to obey a law requiring them to identify the birthplace of citizens born abroad who ask for such designation as “Jerusalem, Israel.” Mr. Bush has similarly failed to move the American embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital in Jerusalem. Yesterday Mr. Bush recognized Israel’s right to West Bank settlements, but he said nothing to recognize the Jewish state’s right to its own capital of 56 years.

Given that Israel has sided with America in the war on terrorism and the Palestinian Arab leadership has sided with the terrorists, it’s not surprising to see America, and President Bush, emerging on Israel’s side. The point to mark after yesterday’s meeting is that, given that context, there is still plenty of distance more for America and Mr. Bush to travel in the direction of robust and unstinting support for our ally in the war on terror.