Soccer Dad

Cohen's grasp of reality

Roger Cohen of the IHT and NYT interviews Israeli's FM Tzippi Livni, in Her Jewish State. Cohen can't resist getting some gratuitous digs of Minister Livni.

But Livni can be relentless— a “nudnik,” or nagger, in the words of Igal Galai, a friend of Sharon’s. When Livni called me back after our first meeting, something else was eating at her: “I was minister of immigrant absorption in 2004, and I convinced Sharon that it was important that I go see Condoleezza Rice in Washington. So I went, and I saw how she was interested in the depth of the conflict, in finding a real process and doing what was right and just. I had the opportunity to convince Rice, then national security adviser, and so make a contribution to the statement President Bush made soon after.”

In that groundbreaking statement of April 14, 2004, George W. Bush declared: “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 in Israel.” No American leader had ever so explicitly trashed the “right of return” of the Palestinians. “That was my contribution,” Livni revealed to me. “I did the right thing — and so did Bush.”

Livni seems to share many things with Rice, who calls the foreign minister a “friend” and a woman of peace. They have the same intensity and work ethic, the same difficulty in thinking beyond a doctrine once it has been formed, the same disciplined intelligence that sometimes appears to lack the subtlety of wisdom and the same penchant for talking about “values” and what is “right.”

But I found myself thinking, What good was the “right thing” or plans for Palestinian refugees festering in camps or Bush’s two-state road map or Rice’s principles or Livni’s good intentions, when the whole area — spiraling downward with a devilish energy, developing ever-more-divergent Israeli and Palestinian narratives, splintering and radicalizing in the image of Iraq, threatened by a resurgent Iran, permeated by jihadists without borders — was going up in recrimination-clogged smoke? I believed in Livni’s good faith, her energy, her honesty, her determination. What I was not sure about after our first meeting was her grasp on reality. The fact is, Israelis and Palestinians have parted company. I could see little evidence that Livni, for all her lucidity, was any exception to this.

Livni's support of a Palestinian state makes her accommodating of Palestinian nationalism. There is no parallel on the other side. And yet Cohen sees this as lacking a "grasp on reality?"

Since 1993 all Israeli efforts to accommodate Palestinian aspirations have been subverted. Oslo didn't work because all the territory and aid that Israel (and the rest of the world) gave the Palesitnians was used to launch a second intifada.

Presumably a grasp of reality means would mean not supporting an ideology (in this case the "right of return" for Palestinians) that means the destruction of one's own country. Given that there's no way to square the Palestinian right of return with the existence of Israel, why is that ideology, in any way, realistic?

UPDATE: Israel Matzav critiqued Minister Livni's views in Feigele's Reality. He wrote that he didn't understand my point. Simply put: Cohen was taking FM Livni and arguing that her view denying the Palestinian "right of return" (for example) made her very much a Likudnik. (A condemnation in Cohen's lexicon.) He argued that her views made reconciliation between the Palestinians and the Israelis less likely. I find it hard to believe that after 13 years (almost 14 years) of broken Palestinian commitments that anyone can believe that Israeli hardliners are responsible for the failure to achieve peace. Hardliners were correct about not trusting Yasser Arafat, the dangers of withdrawing from southern Lebanon and Gaza. The effort to make Livni part of the problem is simple dishonesty on Cohen's part.

UPDATE II: Powerline makes the case I had hoped to make. (via memeorandum)

Israel.