Israel Matzav

Why 'peace' is unlikely

In the Los Angeles Times, Richard Boudreaux writes about the conditions that would be required for Israel and the 'Palestinians' to reach an agreement:

American pressure sometimes works, but not always as intended. Goaded to limit settlement growth and negotiate with the Palestinians, Sharon rebuffed the George W. Bush administration but withdrew soldiers and settlers unilaterally from Gaza. The move enabled him to win quiet U.S. acquiescence to keep enlarging West Bank settlements.

President Clinton met the limits of his influence when a push late in his presidency fell short of a deal on Palestinian statehood. It invariably takes decisive Arab and Israeli leadership to achieve a breakthrough. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's bold decision to break from the Soviet orbit, for example, led to Egypt's 1979 peace accord with Israel.

Carter sealed that agreement, showing that American diplomacy works best when adversaries are willing to take risks to end conflicts.

In the absence of such political will, "it's really hard to imagine how you get Abbas and Netanyahu into a negotiation that leads to a conflict-ending agreement," said Miller, who served Republican and Democratic administrations as a negotiator. "Why inflate expectations in such a grandiose manner when the odds of a breakthrough are so low?"

"They'd be in the same situation as always, with Israel strong enough to resist a two-state solution and the Palestinians too weak to force one," said Mouin Rabbani, an independent Palestinian analyst based in Jordan. "I don't see Obama imposing a solution on Israel."

More optimistic analysts believe the administration is in a better position than its predecessors to muster Arab support for a compromise. Obama's conciliatory address to the Muslim world will help, they say, as will Egyptian and Saudi wariness of Iran's growing power in the region.

Mitchell is trying to encourage Syria and other Arab states to start normalizing relations with Israel and is expected to play a far more active role in mediating any Israeli-Palestinian talks than U.S. officials did under President George W. Bush.

"When you realize how quickly Obama has repositioned the United States, you have to say he has a fighting chance of making peace in the Middle East," said Robert A. Pastor, professor of international relations at American University in Washington and an election observer in Lebanon.

"Everybody in the region is waiting for Obama's next move, and it's coming. . . . The United States is going to be right there, listening to all sides, drafting papers, helping to bridge differences."

There's another point here that's worth making. In 2000, Bill Clinton thought he could get Egypt and Saudi Arabia to back Yasser Arafat so that Arafat could make the few concessions necessary to accept Ehud Barak's overly generous offer. But the Egyptians and the Saudis refused to back Arafat and refused to try to persuade Arafat to accept Barak's offer.

Why does anyone believe Obama has any more influence over those countries than Clinton had? Clinton devoted the last year of his Presidency almost full time to dealing with the Middle East (it was a distraction from the Monica Lewinsky scandal), and he ended up screaming at Arafat about how Arafat had made him a failure. What has changed since then? Abu Mazen is much weaker than Arafat, which is not a positive change for the prospects of the 'Palestinians' making any concessions. And given the experiences of the last nine years, Binyamin Netanyahu is unlikely to make, and war weary Israelis are unlikely to support, anything approaching the concessions that Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat.

I just don't see this happening.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:28 PM