OBAMA REVISITS THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST
By Avi Davis

Whenever a President of the United States begins to talk effusively about cutting through the Gordian knot of the Middle East conflict it is time to start worrying about a new outbreak of hostilities.

For years successive administrations have had their plans for Middle East peace come to grief  on the reef of hard reality.   That reef today is littered with the rusting hulks of successive plans and missions – from the Rogers Plan of 1969 to Kissinger’s haunted shuttle diplomacy of the mid 70s  to the Oslo Accords of 1993  to the Zinni Mission of 2003  to the ill fated Road Map of 2004.  These hapless initiatives and plans have shared one commonality – a staunch belief that Palestinians and their Arab sponsors  only wish for the dignity of  self determination . Given the dignity of self rule, Palestinians would cease their relentless assault upon the Jewish state.   

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.   Palestinian nationalism, from its very beginnings, has never had as its focus the creation of an independent state which would bring a measure of dignity to its people.  On the contrary, Palestinian nationalism is erected, not on the notion of lending self-respect to a forgotten people  but  on the concept of the elimination of another people.   In fact, anti-Zionism  was and is the one overarching principle which unites the notoriously fractious Palestinian groups and their Arab state sponsors.  It remains to this day a central creed of both the Fatah and Hamas charters.  Without it, the various Palestinian chieftans would be tearing each other apart, much as their great-grandfathers did in the not so distant Palestinian tribal past. Nation building, at least as it is understood in the West, has never been an essential element in their struggle.   

Revisiting the mistakes of the past is given full evidence by the selection of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy and Dennis Ross as a key adviser.   Mitchell, although perhaps well meaning, has consistently used moral equivalence as  his prevailing tool of analysis in determining a path to peace in  the conflict.  Dennis Ross, on the other hand, is a diplomat with such a staggering record of failure and misunderstanding of key personalities and events in the Middle East, that his selection as a central figure in the Middle East policy circle almost has a ring of mockery to it.  

Mitchell’s failure to appreciate that Palestinian hatred of Israel transcends issues of borders and territory and goes to the very heart of Israel’s existence and Ross’ penchant for believing that propping up dictators and tyrants is the surest way to bring stability to the region, makes this a duo as likely to steer Middle East to peace as Batman and Robin

We have yet to hear the full details of an Obama plan for Middle East peace, but  a certain misty outline is already forming.   The first element, articulated in Obama’s interview on al Arrabiya is the overarching principle that the West and the East need to converse under an umbrella of mutual respect and understanding.   This is a subtle recalibration of Clintonian “ I feel your pain”  politics, a way of bespeaking the ragged old axiom that the West has somehow been negligent in its awareness of  Arab sensitivities.  

The ludicrousness of such a posture cannot be understated.  When Palestinians stop burning American flags in the streets of their cities; when democratic elections bring true democrats rather than murderers and human rights abusers to power; when the Palestinian educational system is gutted of incitement and both anti-semitism and anti-Americanism,   then perhaps we can talk about basis for peace.  The Obama Administration needs to understand, as the Bush Administration did to a certain degree, that there is no George Washington-styled nation builder among the corrupt and brutish leaders of would-be Palestine.  Thugs and kleptocrats are the central figures of the Palestinian national movement and they are no more capable nor willing to urge moderation on their people than any other tyrant or dictator in the region.

The second element that is becoming clear is that the Obama Administration is willful in its determination to see a Palestinian state come into being.  While George Bush became the first U.S. president to offer that state, for Obama and his team the Palestinian statehood is likely to become an unassailable creed.   But what kind of guarantee of peace does this offer?  If , in the likely eventuality the West Bank becomes as radicalized as Gaza and all Israeli cities come under threat of direct daily rocket attacks, how does  Israel respond?  As everyone knows, there is significant difference between raiding a territory and invading a sovereign nation.   Intelligence and surveillance, key elements in the current maintenance of Israeli security, would be drastically compromised and the minimal diplomatic leverage the Jewish state presently maintains as a sovereign nation  exercising its basic defensive rights would be lost.

So lets get real.   A major thrust by the Obama Administration into the Middle East quagmire requires  a truly fresh approach, not warmed over Clinton groveling or Carter gullibility.   It needs to reflect the fact that there are powerful interests in the Middle East for whom keeping the fire burning in the Middle East conflict is an all consuming mission.  It needs to come to grips with the absence of an effective leadership, capable of leading the Palestinians to peaceful coexistence.

But even more important policy needs to shift from an insistence that the conflict can be definitively resolved to an acceptance that in fact it can only really be managed.   Americans are typically gung-ho problem solvers who assume that all conflicts can  ultimately be settled between well meaning people.  But when one side is emphatically and irreversibly committed to the others’ destruction there is no room for discussion.  Until the Palestinians edit their childrens’text books to reflect a Jewish state’s right to exist;  until kindergarten children are read stories that do not involve the murder of Jews and until  Palestinian television stops glorying in the deeds of suicide bombers,  there is really not too much to talk about.

In  the end, perhaps that’s kind of mutual respect and understanding the Obama Administration should be thinking about as it wades into the murk of the Middle East conflict.

Why is it so hard to accept that the Palestinian renunbciation of state hood

In order for there to be any progress in talks Rapproachment between Hamas and Fatah  - and what is their great commonality – hatred of I srael

Successful Middle East policy must be oriented not to resolution of the problem, but of it containment and management. 

It is also attended

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   1-30-2009