In a kind of “exit interview” in the Sunday, November 16, edition of The New York Times, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summarizes her take on the Israel/Palestine conflict: “… There is a robust negotiating process, and they have made a lot of progress on how to get to a two-state solution…. On the Palestinian-Israeli issue, we will leave this in a much, much better place, agreement or no.”
Perhaps. Perhaps those who believe that a two-state solution is an idea whose time has gone are in a bad mood. Perhaps those who search for evidence of progress and find only thimbles-full are looking in the wrong places.
Or perhaps Rice knows things the rest of us don’t know and her assessment, based on that knowledge, is that there has been real progress. More likely, though, is that Rice, who this year has made eight trips to Israel, feels compelled to put the best face on her own nearly empty portfolio. The balance of her interview includes a significant number of similarly self-justifying (not to say aggrandizing) assessments.
The truth is that no one knows just where things stand at the moment — not Rice, not Ehud Olmert or Tzipi Livni, not Mahmoud Abbas, not Dennis Ross or Ehud Barak. Not this correspondent, either.
What we do know is that President-elect Obama is being pressed from many quarters to move quickly on the Israel/Palestine front. In communications both public and private, Obama is told that he “should” or, more often, that he “must,” act with dispatch to bring the chronic conflict to a constructive resolution. In particular, he is being urged to appoint a special envoy to transfuse the peace process, to demonstrate the depth of America’s concern.
It won’t happen, nor should it happen. There’s an old Yiddish bon mot: Men krikht nit mit a gezunt’n kop in a krank’n bet areyn — With a healthy head, you shouldn’t crawl into a sick bed. To assign a high-profile envoy in the early days of the new administration to an arena that has by now played host to a succession of envoys — remember Bob Strauss, Sol Linowitz, George Mitchell, George Tenet, Tony Zinni, Phil Habib, among many others — is to reach for fruit so rare and as yet so unripe as to ensure failure. Nor is there anyone in Obama’s entourage close enough to him to carry the presidential aura into the fray. (Vice President-elect Joe Biden might be an exception, but he will surely have his hands full, and then some.) The last thing a new administration needs is a false start in an early foray into foreign policy.
That’s so whether Livni or Bibi Netanyahu emerges as Israel’s next prime minister after the February 10, 2009, election. If it’s Netanyahu and he moves to scuttle the ongoing talks between Israel and the Palestine Authority, as he has threatened he may, the riot act can be read to him as compellingly by telephone as by a special envoy on site, or can be conveyed to him during his first visit to the White House after taking office, a visit that will surely come in the early weeks of his tenure. And if it’s Livni, there’s a different and more pliable agenda that might take productive priority. Why not dispatch an experienced diplomat for a very low-key exploration of the possibility of an agreement between Syria and Israel? There are, after all, good reasons to believe that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is interested, and an early success in that arena would have profound consequences for the Israel/Palestine conflict.
In the meantime, the region is not idling in neutral. There are, here and there, hints of reasonableness, even of progress. The constabulary of the Palestine Authority now manages law and order in Jenin and has begun to make its presence felt in Hebron and Nablus, too. This is the product of an elaborate international effort in which the United States and Jordan have played key roles. And none too soon: With every such advance on the West Bank, the advance of Hamas there is blunted.
And Israel may, at long last, actually be moving against the more than 100 illegal outposts that have been such a bone of contention, such a blight on Israel’s credibility. The removal of these settlements is by no means an imminent certainty, and the government’s recent statements of intent in this regard may prove as empty as earlier and similar statements have been. Moreover, the affected settlers have vowed resistance, and no one in Israel discounts their increasing radicalization.
Yet that radicalization has itself stirred the Israeli public, brought it to a level of impatience and even disgust that will applaud decisive action by the government to have done with this vexation.
That will leave intact the more serious debate, the one about the larger and established settlements, those that have been actively supported by a succession of governments. That debate will be wrenching, whenever it finally is joined.
An America that has established its gravitas in international affairs, that has, one hopes, facilitated a peace between Israel and Syria, will play an important catalytic part as such a debate unfolds. In the meantime, Obama’s plate is full to overflowing, and in the Middle East, there’s lower-hanging fruit to be picked.
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Thank God it will have to wait. She needs to read her living BIBLE. This Is ISRAEL"S LAND. I'm glad she leaving the White House. I am so tired of her. God Bless Israel.
I find it almost amusing to read Mr Fein's comment that the improvement in law and order in Jenin or elsewhere signals that "the advance of Hamas there is blunted". Like almost all commentators on Arabic affairs, Mr Fein doesn't have any background in Arabic, in Islam or in the social dynamics of Palestinian society. He simply assumes that things there behave just as they behave in other societies. I just couldn't imagine a commentator on French affairs not knowing how to read a French newspaper, yet it seems just fine that one could analyze trends in Islamic or Arabic societies without being able to recognize any of their symbolisms. I know that the Talmud tells us that ever since the destruction of the Temple, there is no more prophecy in Israel. Still, I'd like to make a forecast. If and when there will be new presidential elections in the Palestinian Authority, it is simply obvious that the Hamas will win. They didn't win the elections to the legislature because of Fatah's corruption; rather, they won because of the changing trends in Palestinian society. Moreover, the Palestinian public is willing to pay the price of poverty and hardship that would result from re-electing Hamas. The conflict is not going to end any time soon. So, there will not be a "one-state solution" or a "two-state solution". There is no solution at this stage of history, so there will be more of the same. Mr Fein in his weekly columns puts much (if not all) of the burden on Israel. The reason is that he understands (to a certain degree) only the Israeli reality. Moreover, Israel is a functioning society that criticizes itself and is willing to listen to world public opinion. The Arab side is really a mystery. Quite often it seems that the Arabs are "irrational" and "don't behave in accordance to their own interests". They are rational - it's just that so few understand their rationale. They are behaving in accordance to their own interests - it's just that outsiders don't understand what they are. So, it's easier to focus on Israel. I can promise Mr Fein that Israel can remove all her settlements, she can divide Jerusalem and she can allow for the return of the refugees, etc. - and the conflict will continue. All of these issues are for Mr Fein (and for most commentators) the "core of conflict". The core of the conflict is the legitimacy of Jewish national aspirations in the Land of Israel. Once again, I'm puzzled by Mr Fein's choice of weekly topics. Either he deals with Israel, or he deals with a general American issue that has no particular Jewish angle. Why don't we ever get a nice analysis of issues and problems facing the Jewish community in North America? Here, Mr Fein understands all the symbolisms, all the "in's and out's". Perhaps, I should finally stop asking him. I think that it's obvious what the problem is. He doesn't find the issues and problems of Jewish life in the Diaspora to be interesting. Too bad. I'd really like to hear some good criticism of Jewish failures in America together with some suggestions for solution. It certainly would be more impressive than yet another analysis of the Middle East conflict by yet another journalist who has never read a book in Arabic.
Netanyahu should be read the "riot act." The last person read the riot act was the President of Czechoslovakia. The readers were Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler. We all know the results then of giving in to a riot act and thereby giving up defensible borders in returns for international guarantees.
Yehuda’s response suggests that he reads Arabic and understands Arab symbolism. He obviously doesn’t read the results of the carefully constructed surveys of Israeli and Palestinian opinion which are conducted quarterly by the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University, and Dr. Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). So he doesn’t know that between Aug. 25 and Sept. 1, 611 adult Israelis and 1270 adult Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip were asked: There is a proposal that after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the settlement of all issues in dispute, including the refugees and Jerusalem issues, there will be a mutual recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people. Do you agree or disagree to this proposal? The majority (72%) of Jewish Israeli respondents agreed as did the majority (56.8%) of the Palestinian respondents. They were also asked: And what is the Israeli majority opinion on this issue? Do most Israelis support or oppose the mutual recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people? A smaller majority (52.6%) of Jewish Israeli respondents believed that the Israeli majority is supportive while only a plurality (48.8%) of the Palestinian respondents shared this belief. And, they were asked: And what is the Palestinian majority opinion on this issue? Do most Palestinians in the territories support or oppose the mutual recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people? In this case, a plurality (45.1%) of Jewish Israeli respondents believed that the Palestinian majority was opposed as did a plurality (48.7%) of the Palestinian respondents. Apparently, Yehuda shares the views of the generally ill-informed. My guess is that Yehuda reads tea leaves and interprets their symbolism through the filter of his own fears and desires. On the other hand, Noclue needs to be comforted, not that I know how to do it. If we Jews can rely only on ourselves, then we are lost. It is reported that when Menachem Begin expressed that view, Ze’ev Jabotinsky advised, “if you believe that, you should drown yourself in the Vistula.”
To Joel A. Levitt: You have surely noticed in the survey that you quote that there is a prior assumption that is left deliberately unclear: "...the settlement of all issues in dispute, including the refugees and Jerusalem issues" is simply a given. What is the nature of the solution of the refugee problem (for example)? Each side is simply left to assume that the solution is to its own liking. So, with the Israeli respondents assuming that the refugees will not be living in Israel, then 72% will happily agree to the proposed mutual recognition of the two states. At the same time, how interesting, the Palestinian side assumes that the refugees and their descendants will be returned to inside Israel, and so 56.8% agree to a two-state solution. What is the value of such a survey in ascertaining the prospects of a future peace? It would be much more informative to ask: Assuming that the refugees execute their "right of return" to their former homes, do you agree to....? Suddenly, Mr Levitt, you won't find such an enthusiastic Jewish response - certainly not 72% and certainly not even 0.72%. Or you could ask: Assuming that the refugees will receive monetary compensation (but not be allowed to return to Israel), do you agree to the two-state proposal? Suddenly, how surprising, you won't find any Palestinian agreement - not 56.8% and not even 0.8%. I don't know why you felt the need to be rude with your comment on tea-leaves. I see that rudeness is part of the internet debate, but it's beyond me why this must be so. In any case, I would like to emphasize the very misleading nature of this survey in which the two sides have so diversed cultural and political backgrounds. Both sides want peace - that's true - but it's not the same image of peace. So, the conflict continues.
Yehuda, Considering the scorn and conceit that lards your comments, I'm surprised that you don't understand my rudeness.