Soccer Dad

A president's legacy quick fix playground - the middle east

Whenever a President needs to consider his legacy, he turns his attention to the Middle East, seeking the Holy grail of Middle East peace. Given the number of burning wreckages of Middle East Peace processes it's amazing that anyone still thinks that he can convene a conference or negotiations and produce a significant result. The problem isn't that such an approach hasn't been tried before; it has many times. The problem is that there's an element that's still something missing from one of the parties. So what prompted President Bush's speech last night?

Regardless, the media cheer leaders for "doing something" are ecstatic. The New York Times reports Bush to Bolster Abbas and Seek Peace Talks

President Bush announced an initiative on Monday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining months to make a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Bush called for a regional peace conference this fall to be led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that would include high-level Arab envoys and their counterparts from Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. He exhorted Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and to show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist” and “stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media.”

He also urged them to send cabinet-level visitors to Israel, a request directed implicitly at America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which has refused to do so.

“With all these steps, today’s Arab leaders can show themselves to be the equals of peacemakers like Anwar Sadat and King Hussein of Jordan,” Mr. Bush said.

He even took a rare jab at Israel, using the word “occupation” to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

It's good that the President apparently wishes Saudi Arabia to acknowledge Israel. However that should have been stated explicitly. The "jab" at Israel, is, of course, every peace processor's obsession: the occupation. But then the article goes on to explain the reasoning behind the President's initiative.

For several years, the Bush administration has eschewed direct engagement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and has refused to press Israel to dismantle settlements or to sit down at the table with Palestinian counterparts to discuss a future Palestinian state.

But now the United States is mired in Iraq and looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies that have pushed for America to re-engage in Middle East peace talks. Administration officials also are hoping to capitalize on growing anti-Hamas sentiment among leaders in Egypt and Jordan. Both of those countries have diplomatic relations with Israel; the big question remains whether Saudi Arabia, which does not, will embrace the administration’s approach.

The point of the proposed conference is not to achieve peace but "... to build good will among Arab allies." This is what's been wrong with most peace efforts to date. Good will among Arab allies involves putting diplomatic pressure on Israel, the only party to these conferences or efforts subject to diplomatic pressure. (Since the Israeli public wants peace, an Israeli leader defies American pressure at his own risk. Netanyahu believed that agreements meant something and that Arafat not be given a free pass when he violated past and present agreements. Clinton believed that the peace process must go forward regardless and that Netanyahu - and his insistence on compliance - was an obstacle to peace, so Netanyahu suffered an ignominious defeat at the polls in 1999. Ironically, it could be argued that in the post Oslo era, "the peace process" was most effective during Netanyahu's term as Prime Minister. There was less terror and the Palestinians benefited from the strongest economic ties with Israel during those years. A Palestinian keeps his "credibility" with his constituency by refusing to compromise. This sets up an impossible imbalance in the process. Palestinians are rewarded for refusing to compromise; Israelis are punished.)

The Washington Post gives some background in Bush renews Mideast Peace Efforts

The idea has come together only in recent days, and administration officials were scrambling to figure out details yesterday, such as where and when the conference would be held. More important, they acknowledged that they have no guarantees that any of the key players will attend. After his speech yesterday afternoon, Bush hit the telephone to call the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Given the complexity of the issues involved, it's not at all encouraging that the plan for this conference was hatched in a few days. A lawyer, it is said, should never ask a question of a witness that he doesn't know the answer to; a peace negotiator, similarly, should never start a negotiation unless he's reasonably assured of success. (See President Clinton, Camp David 2000, for a counter-example) The background maneuvering to make such an event successful is extensive. Clearly there's been not much background work done yet.

A paragraph earlier the Post expresses concern that

Unlike his father, the president invited only those that "recognize Israel's right to exist," seemingly excluding potent actors in the region such as Iran and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.

While we can debate how much the Palestinians, for example, really accept Israel's right to exist (this debate would also extend to the Egyptian or Jordanian "streets" and quite a bit of their elites too), keeping those who are explicitly against Israel's right to exist away, is a good idea.

In Context asks if President Bush is brain dead.

Israel has taken difficult actions, including withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Palestinians have held free elections, and chosen a president committed to peace. Arab states have put forward a plan that recognizes Israel's place in the Middle East. And all these parties, along with most of the international community, now share the goal of a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state -- a level of consensus never before seen on this crucial issue.

Only one of those statements is true. Does he truly not know this?

Israel Matzav spells out some of the problems with the "president committed to peace" assertion.

On October 3, 2006, Abu Mazen told al-Arabiya and 'Palestinian' television, "It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel." I know that you said last night that "nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties" would be invited to your conference in the fall. If that is the case, how will you invite Abu Mazen? He doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist!

On January 11, 2007, Abu Mazen was reported by the Jerusalem Post to have said, “We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation ... Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation.” And on February 5, 2007, Abu Mazen said, “We must unite the Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the beginning of the intifada. We want a political partnership with Hamas.” Is that a 'rejection of violence'?

On January 11, 2007, referring to the so-called ‘right of return’ of 'Palestinian refugees' and their millions of descendants which, if implemented would end Israel as a Jewish state, Abu Mazen said, "The issue of the refugees is non-negotiable.” Is that supporting a two-state solution?

You also said that those who want to attend your conference have to commit to all previous agreements between the parties. But those agreements require Abu Mazen to disarm all terrorists and fight terrorism. According to a statement that he made on May 26, 2006, Abu Mazen regards terrorists as heroes and in January 2005 he said that disarming them is "a line that may not be crossed."

All of these statements were made in the last two years, most of them within the last six months.

This is perhaps why, Daled Amos wonders if Abu Mazen got the message.

"Now was that confront the terrorists and protect the innocent...or protect the terrorists and confront the innocent...think, think..."

Powerline finds the speech disappointing and critiques its style.

Heavy on the subjunctive (advising various parties what they "should" do), the speech is a farrago of nonsense, wishful thinking, counterfactual assertions, and policy contradicted by previous commitments made by Bush himself ("[u]nder the roadmap, Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel").

Jewish Current Issues notes that the President's remarks violate his own stated principles from April 14, 2005.

Since then, Gaza has been turned into Hamastan (starting on Day One and well-advanced by the end of Week One), thousands of rockets have been launched into Israel, massive weaponry has been smuggled across borders un-policed by the Palestinians, not a single terrorist organization has been dismantled, the premier terrorist organization was elected to run the Palestinian government, tunnels were dug into Israel and a soldier kidnapped and held hostage and incommunicado now into the 13th month, the governing terrorist organization took over all of Gaza in a brutal armed coup, Mahmoud Abbas’s 60,000 American-trained “police” did nothing (and fled instead), Abbas himself has repeatedly rejected any provisional Phase II state, and both Abbas and Fatah have repeatedly reiterated that the “right of return” is “non-negotiable.”

In the face of all this, George W. Bush now decides the next step is to sponsor an international conference, to be chaired by Condoleezza Rice (and endorsed by the Quartet later this week), to address final status issues -- without prior fulfillment even of Phase I of the plan he promised Sharon the U. S. would enforce.

It's hard to look at what President Bush said last night and conclude anything other than that he's looking to rescue his legacy by bringing peace to the Middle East. But before he invests too much time into this new initiative he might consider that the peace between Israel and Egypt was mostly achieved before President Carter brought the parties to Camp David. Similarly the Oslo Accords were mostly negotiated before the United States got involved.

(This isn't a comment on the effectiveness of those agreements. Those events show that American involvement - or pressure - is less necessary than conventional wisdom hold. I'd argue that "doing something" is often worse than letting the parties work things out themselves.)

During Clinton's presidency furthering the peace process was done at the cost of actually achieving peace. If this conference is being convened to garner good will among Arab allies, it will only repeat the mistakes of the previous administration.

israel, peace process, palestinians, president bush.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 17, 2007 6:16 AM