The mother of all photo ops

In the weeks and months leading up to Tuesday’s conference in Annapolis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all parties, Israelis, Palestinians and the US, went to great efforts to lower expectations. The discussions were initially talked about as a conference, then a meeting and finally a gathering. The original goal was to arrive at a strategic vision of what a solution should look like. The goal then changed to a statement of principals that would be embodied in the final agreement and finally an agreement to meet again with the hope of finding a solution. This effort to lower expectations certainly succeeded as polls and interviews of Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, leaders and people on the street, indicate. (Click here, here and here) Eighty-five per cent of Americans surveyed by the Wall Street Journal thought nothing would come of it. The State Dept. declared that even organizing the meeting was a success. The meeting was praised as the most serious peace effort in 7 years. A pretty low standard since there have been no peace efforts in the past 7 years. The final agreement (A complete text is here) was no more than another agreement on process, a strategy that has failed many times before. As that great philosopher Yogi Berra once said “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”. The parties could not even bring themselves to mention the core issues of the conflict: borders, Jerusalem and the status of refugees. The best that they could do was mention that core issues exist. The Israelis could not allow the dreaded “J” word (Jerusalem) to be mentioned as the conservative members of Ehud Olmert’s governing coalition had threatened to bring down the coalition and cause new elections if Jerusalem was even mentioned. The Arab peace plan and relevant UN resolutions also were not mentioned because UN Resolution 194 calls for the repatriation or compensation of refugees. This particular resolution is a big problem for the Israelis as they agreed to it as a condition of their entry into the UN. What happens from here depends greatly on what role the US chooses to play. The US has been declared the sole judge of progress towards a settlement. In the past the US has not exactly been a model of the balanced and unbiased mediator. A lot depends on which faction in the US government controls US policy. On one side we have National Security Advisor Steve Hadley telling a group of American Orthodox Jews and Christian Zionists that “Jerusalem is not on the table” and telling a group of Johns Hopkins University students “there is no place for Syria in the peace process”. On the other side we have Condi Rice shaking hands with the Syrian representative at the end of the conference and thanking him for his attendance. She was also praised by Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat for her “knowledge of all the little issues”. Unless George Bush, the self proclaimed “decider in chief” reverses his position of supporting all the Israeli negotiating positions, it is likely that the Hadley/Cheney faction will carry the day and the negotiations will fail. The one point that all sides agreed on was that time is running out. They agreed to try to reach an agreement by the end of 2008. I would argue that the time frame is even shorter. Unless substantial progress is made by Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration on May 8, 2008 all the Palestinian frustration and loss of hope may well boil over into violence. As Saeb Erekat has said: “If we fail, God help us.”

Experience or Stupidity?

As I have watched the US government try to balance its conflicting strategic interests and policies in the Middle East in the run up to the Annapolis conference or meeting (I noted today that it is now being downgraded to a “gathering”.), I was reminded of the efforts of the Eisenhower administration to do the same thing in the 1950’s. Eisenhower publicly promulgated a policy that the US would protect any Middle East country that was threatened by a country “dominated by international communism”. Middle Eastern leaders and scholars were puzzled at the time about exactly what that meant since neither the Soviet Union, nor China nor any eastern European state were threats to invade the Middle East. It wasn’t until the records of the Eisenhower administration were opened to the public that scholars realized that the policy had nothing to do with international communism but was about countering and containing the influence of the Arab nationalism of Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nassar. The vehicle to accomplish this was to provide economic and military aid to countries (mostly undemocratic and conservative like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq) that would ally themselves with the US in the region. Most countries who agreed to this bargain were unwilling to do so publicly as it flew in the face of the views of the average man on the street. Even though the governments were undemocratic, they had to pay attention to public opinion or risk being overthrown. The result of this policy was that anytime a sitting government was overthrown, whether peacefully as in Lebanon or violently as in Iraq and the people’s voice was heard, the resulting government quickly allied itself with Nassar and Egypt/Syria. The Eisenhower Doctrine was short lived as the US administration soon realized that Nassar was too politically powerful and they attempted to implement a policy of engagement with Nassar. (This didn’t work either, but that’s another story) If one substitutes Iran for Egypt and “Islamofascism” (whatever that is) or Al Quada for international communism one can see the same scenario playing out again. Egyptian President Gamal Nassar is quoted as saying to an American friend, “The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them that we are missing”. In today’s American political battles there is a lot of argument over who has the most experience. The dictionary definition of experience is “knowledge acquired by living through an event”. Acquiring knowledge requires learning something. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is not experience it is stupidity.

Worrying about peace

Several events have occurred during the past week that indicate that progress might be made at the “meeting” convened by the US to discuss how to achieve a negotiated settlement of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Although the “meeting”, tentatively scheduled for November 26th , still has no firm date, no agenda and no guest list, Secretary of State Rice has been meeting with everybody in sight to encourage progress towards a “vision of a political horizon”. Since the political horizon still seems as far away as ever, the efforts toward progress have returned to working on process as envisioned by the Oslo Accords and the Quartet Road Map. Israel has turned much of the responsibility for security in Nablus over to the Palestinian Authority. The PA has responded by disarming a number of the gangs and factions who have been responsible for much of the violence in this isolated city. This disarmament has included the factions affiliated with the Prime Minister Abbas’s Fatah party. The improvement in security has been praised by Nablus residents as well as the US. Indeed the US has criticized Israel for interfering in the efforts of the PA. (For this story, click here.) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has floated a couple of trial balloons indicating that Israel might be willing to relinquish a portion of East Jerusalem to the PA as part of a peace settlement. Exactly what this means remains to be seen. The US, having indicated that the PA is beginning to meet its security obligations under the Quartet Road Map, has started to pressure Israel to meet its obligations under the road map to halt the building of new settlements and to freeze current settlements in occupied territories. Precisely what this means is not clear. How does it affect outpost settlements that are illegal under Israeli law? How does it affect major settlement blocs such as Maale Adumin and Gilo that are illegal under international law but recognized by George Bush and Israel? All of this activity has some people worried and they are trying to throw boulders on the road to peace. Worried right wing Likud party members in the Israeli Knesset have introduced legislation to require an unachievable super majority before Jerusalem could be divided. (For this story, click here.) Prime Minister Olmert’s weak government is worried that the US will define the settlement issue in such a way that Israel will be unwilling or unable to meet its obligations and will be accused of being an obstacle to peace. PM Olmert is dispatching a delegation to Washington to address this problem. (For this story, click here.) All this ignores the fact that no one is dealing with the Israeli settlers and Hamas, both of whom have the ability to derail the whole process with violence. Everybody seems to think that if you ignore a problem it will go away. We have been down this peace process road before and have always ended up in the ditch. In my view until all the parties, including the US, can agree on a vision, however sketchy, of what a peace settlement might look like, we a doomed to end up in the same ditch.

Is something positive happening?

There seem to be some events happening in the Middle East that give even a pessimist like me some hope that sanity might prevail in the midst of all the past irrationality. The US has said that it will release nine of the Iranian terrorists, spies, diplomats or whatever that we captured, kidnapped, detained or whatever in Iraq over recent months. The holding of these Iranians has been a bone of contention between the US and Iran since it began several months ago. The Iraqi government has supported the Iranian position. In addition, US military spokespersons have indicated that there is evidence of Iran reducing its support for Shia militias within Iraq. Perhaps both countries are beginning to realize that the aggressive confrontation is counter productive. From both the US and Iranian standpoints the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan with the increasing power of the Taliban is dangerous and undesirable. Pakistan and George Bush’s friend, Pervez Mushareff, are becoming less reliable US allies and Pakistan is increasingly in danger of coming under the sway of radical Islamist groups friendly to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. To have both countries bordering Afghanistan be adversaries would be disastrous for the US and NATO. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have let his celebrity go to his head and overreached. He may have forgotten that the real power in Iran rests with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei. Trying to understand the opaque and factional politics of Iran is hopeless, but criticism of the forced resignation of respected nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani by the Supreme Leader and the critical letter signed by 183 members of the Majlis or Parliament may indicate that Ahmadinejad’s confrontive style may be wearing thin. The conservative pragmatists, such as Hassani Rafsanjani, may be exerting some influence. Hopefully the US will not ignore any overtures from them as we have in the past. In Israel/Palestine the Palestinian Authority is beginning to disarm fighters on the West Bank as Hamas has done in Gaza. If the PA disarms everybody and not just Hamas supporters, it could significantly reduce the violence. The US has condemned (Condemned might be a little strong, but given the usual non reaction towards Israeli behavior it may be descriptive.) Israel’s continued raids into Nablus (a city where security has been turned over to the PA) and the IDF’s confiscation of PA security force equipment. (For this story, click here) If the PA takes more responsibility for its own security and the US takes a more balanced approach, something might come out of the Annapolis meeting. Call me a Pollyanna, but perhaps something positive might be happening. Then again, perhaps not.