Israel Matzav

Blaming Mitchell

Asaf Romirowsky places a fair amount of the blame for the failure of the 'peace process' on departing Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

Mitchell symbolized the Obama Administration’s determination to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict against all odds. The tenacity he used in Northern Ireland proved futile in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Apparently, Mitchell was inept in his attempt to convince the White House that Obama’s speech next week must include a detailed plan for peace in the Middle East.

Even Obama understands that the timing is bad for announcing such plan when there is hardly a peace process in place. Furthermore, Obama would be seen as weak on the heels of the Palestinian threat of a unilateral declaration of statehood and the fake Fatah- Hamas marriage. As such, Obama will be joining Netanyahu in next week’s AIPAC policy conference - the largest gathering of the pro-Israeli community in North America to reaffirm the bond between the US and Israel.

If anything, the latest “Arab Spring” has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the core of the problems in the Middle East does not reside within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More specifically, it is not about settlements or Jerusalem. However, Mitchell’s naïveté was too entrenched in his success of Northern Ireland, which prevented him from seeing the limitations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Again, this is the reason why he kept advocating for 100% construction freeze in Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank as a prerequisite for peace talks. Such freeze is impossible for any Israeli government and had never previously been viewed by Palestinian leaders as a prerequisite. Abbas himself acknowledged it in a recent interview, where he slammed President Obama for pushing him to follow this course and now makes him look foolish.

While the Irish certainly have an identity connection to the land, it is not talismanic. The Irish people do not see Dublin as a divinely chosen conduit to God. Jerusalem, however, is the single most important place for all Jews, and, though unnamed in the Koran, has become the third most holy place for Muslims. Understanding the Jewish and Irish perceptions of their own ethnicities is critical to understanding the outcomes in these two arenas: Ethnic perceptions allowed success in Northern Ireland and virtually ensured failure in the Middle East.

I agree that Mitchell drew too close a comparison between the Israeli Arab conflict and Northern Ireland. But I also predicted that would happen on the day that Mitchell was appointed. In fact, it was already in the cards by then. Others were drawing the same comparisons.

But I don't believe that it was Mitchell who decided to press for the 'full settlement freeze including Jerusalem.' Mitchell has been around - and been around this region - for too long to believe that would ever have a chance of working, especially with a Right wing government in power in Israel. Moreover, I don't believe that Mitchell who kept clinging to the freeze idea nor that he resigned because Obama refused to present a Middle East 'peace plan' in Thursday's address (Mitchell's resignation letter is dated April 6).

Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his desk in the White House. That sign said, 'the buck stops here.'
Truman knew who takes credit when things go right and who gets the blame when things go wrong.

In December, responding to a piece that Elliott Abrams wrote calling for Mitchell to be fired, I wrote:

I disagree. It's not that I'm enamored of Mitchell - I'm not. But I don't believe that Mitchell is the problem.

The problem is the Obami's approach - an approach that has assumed that Israel has only to give and the 'Palestinians' only to receive. The problem is that when the President was on shaky ground with Israeli Jews before he ever took office, he compounded the problem by starting his administration with a splashy appeal to the Muslim world - an appeal that has gone unanswered.

I don't believe peace is possible here right now - except for the relative quiet maintained by the status quo. The 'Palestinians' have yet to signal that there is a single concession they are willing to make.

I believe that the Obami should fold up shop, give the parties the White House's phone number and tell them to call when they're ready to talk. Just like Bush I, except this time with the onus on the 'Palestinians' - who were offered everything and gave nothing in return - and not on Israel. I don't expect Obama to do that. After all, there's a 'fierce moral urgency' to establishing a 'Palestinian state' during his first (and hopefully last) term. So I guess we'll have two more years of ups and downs in which nothing is accomplished, whether Mitchell keeps his position or whether it goes to Dennis Ross or someone else.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who pushed for the 'settlement freeze.' If the President doesn't like the policy, he's the man in charge, and it's his job to change it. As much as George Mitchell was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, I'm not sure anyone else would have been any more successful, particularly with an impatient ideologue at the top leading the charge.

Labels: Barack Obama, George Mitchell, Northern Ireland

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:29 PM