Soccer Dad

The long view

Yesterday I expressed my skepticism towards President Bush's proposed conference for Middle East peace (and quote a few others who were similarly skeptical.)

But since then Michael Oren has looked at President Bush's speech and seen a lot to like about it. In The Bush Doctrine Lives, Oren writes

In addition to the prerequisites stipulated for the Palestinians, Mr. Bush set unprecedented conditions for Arab participation in peace efforts. He exhorted Arab leaders to emulate "peacemakers like Anwar Sadat and King Hussein of Jordan" by ending anti-Semitic incitement in their media and dropping the fiction of Israel's non-existence. More dramatically, Mr. Bush called on those Arab governments that have yet to establish relations with Israel to recognize its right to exist and to authorize ministerial missions to the Jewish state.

Accordingly, Saudi Arabia, which has offered such recognition but only in return for a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders, will have to accept Israel prior to any territorial concessions. Mr. Bush also urged Arab states to wage an uncompromising battle against Islamic extremism and, in the case of Egypt and Jordan, to open their borders to Palestinian trade.

However later on, Oren writes

Unfortunately, many of these pioneering components in Mr. Bush's speech were either implicitly or obliquely stated, and one might have wished for a more unequivocal message, such as that conveyed in his June 2002 speech on the Middle East.

There are a few problems with Oren's optimism.

Israel Matzav

And one thing he is apparently not after is a replacement for Abu Mazen, who represents the same old-line, corrupt, cowardly, terror abetting 'Palestinian' politician that Arafat represented. Instead, Bush refers to Abu Mazen as a 'man of peace.' He is anything but a man of peace. And the 'Palestinians' still have not taken one step towards filling the prescription that Bush gave them in 2002. But instead of telling the 'Palestinians' to go back and do their homework, the President is giving them another opportunity to get to steps 2 and 3 (Israeli suspension of settlement construction homebuilding and an international conference) without them first fulfilling step 1 - fighting terrorism.

Daled Amos

If the US is not going to state clearly what it expects to happen in the area, how are we to expect the PA--or future US administrations, for that matter--to live up to commitments in the area? Or is Israel the only one who should be committed...?

JoshuaPundit

In two words, I think Oren is indulging in wishful thinking.

He's imputing :

(1) That Israeli concessions would come after `recognition', which is not how the Arabs have ever played the game...and the Saudis have explicitly said that the Israelis had better take the whole bundle, including the right of return nonsense or face war. There's nothing in the speech that would lead me to read that into it

(2) That those territorial concessions, even without the right of return would be to Israel's benefit.

A conference on Middle East peace is a showpiece. It has to produce results. What makes this an appropriate time to push for one? The President said

To realize this vision, these leaders are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy. They're working to strengthen the Palestinian security services, so they can confront the terrorists and protect the innocent. They're acting to set up competent ministries that deliver services without corruption. They're taking steps to improve the economy and unleash the natural enterprise of the Palestinian people. And they're ensuring that Palestinian society operates under the rule of law. By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future -- and establish a state of their own.

The problem is that any progress on those fronts has yet to be realized. Abbas, all along, has been part of the problem. He was Arafat's #2 ever since Arafat was allowed into Gaza in 1994. He never objected to Arafat's betrayal of Oslo. He never stood up. Except when his own dignity was at stake. But he never objected to the terror.

Any progress made before the President's conditions are fulfilled will be meaningless. And yet the President seems to be pushing for a conference unconditionally.

The lack of clarity in the President's speech is another major problem.

Take the recent news item about the Israeli release of prisoners. Originally in Oslo, the prisoner releases were meant as a good faith measure to signify that the PLO had changed and was no longer involved in terror. So anyone who was in jail only for political activity would be freed. However (at Arafat's insistence) it morphed into something else. It became a get out of jail free card for even those involved in terror after the Oslo Accords were signed. So prisoner releases went from being a symbol of the PLO's reform to a confirmation of its continued involvement in terror.

Any aspect of President Bush's speech that isn't clearly defined (and even some that are) will be defined in a way that is inimical to Israel's interests.

A more specific criticism of President Bush's speech is his continued reference to a "contiguous" Palestinian state. There's no way that it can be contiguous. And if it is contiguous, there's no way that Israel can be. That's basic geometry.

As if to answer my question about what's changed, Mark Helprin argues

Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, is weak in many ways, but he has decisively isolated the radicals.

It didn't look to me as if he isolated the radicals though. It looks as if he was forced to flee when the radicals took over. At best, they isolated themselves.

Be that as it may, Helprin argues further

The starving and oppressed Gazans who watch Hamas fire rockets, the chief effect of which is to summon Israeli tanks, may soon see a prosperous West Bank at the brink of statehood and at peace with its neighbors and the world. The quarantine of Gaza will cast a bright light upon the normalization of the West Bank. And although Hamas leaders portray Mr. Abbas as a collaborator, it is they who may be held to account for keeping more than a million of their own people hostage to a gratuitous preference for struggle over success.

That is a little more plausible and he concludes

In the heat of a failing war, historical processes have unfrozen. If Israel and the Palestinian Authority can pursue a strategy of limited aims, concentrating on bilateral agreements rather than a single work of fallible grandeur, they may accomplish something on the scale of Sadat’s extraordinary démarche of 30 years ago. The odds are perhaps the best they have been since, and responsible governments should recognize them as the spur for appropriate action and risk.

True, but that's hardly an argument for a conference that will raise (false) expectations of a "major" breakthrough and have its success judged on that basis.

Let the Palestinians show (against the weight of historical evidence to the contrary) that they can build a functioning government that's devoted to the welfare of its people and not the destruction of Israel, and then there will be reason to talk. There's little point in doing so now.

More in support of Michael Oren's view at Michael Totten.

president bush, israel.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 19, 2007 5:59 AM