[Peace-discuss] Israel & Palestine: meet the new boss...

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This NYT column and the report it describes represent the left/liberal end of 
the (quite narrow) spectrum of thought in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. 
  The report by the ten "foreign policy mandarins" is ill-written and 
cliche-ridden -- appropriate language for banal thoughts. The policy for 
Israel/Palestine is essentially that of the previous administration, although 
much effort is expended to insist it would represent a "change of course."  In 
fact, it's much the same: a dependent Palestinian statelet under Israeli 
military and economic control; a land-swap to justify Israel's keeping 
settlements in the West Bank; and Hamas subordinated to Fatah. The Palestinians 
must learn to accept the government the US has picked out for them: the report 
requires the acceptance of "President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief negotiator"! 
The "compromise" would result in "a non-militarized Palestinian state" (while 
Israel remains thoroughly "militarized") under the tutelage of "a U.S.-led 
multinational force ... under UN mandate, [which] would feature American 
leadership of a NATO force supplemented by Jordanians, Egyptians and Israelis 
sic] ... with the objective of achieving full Palestinian domination of security 
affairs on the Palestine side of the line within 15 years"! Hey, it's the 
regional solution, from Palestine to Pakistan. --CGE]

	The New York Times
	March 26, 2009
	Op-Ed Columnist
	The Fierce Urgency of Peace
	By ROGER COHEN

Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to 
Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects.

Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last 
year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the president, these 
foreign policy mandarins have concluded a “Bipartisan Statement on U.S. Middle 
East Peacemaking” that should become an essential template.

Deploring “seven years of absenteeism” under the Bush administration, they call 
for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state solution, “a more 
pragmatic approach toward Hamas,” and eventual U.S. leadership of a 
multinational force to police transitional security between Israel and Palestine.

The 10 signatories — of both the four-page letter and the report — include 
Volcker himself, former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, former Senator Chuck Hagel, former World Bank President James 
Wolfensohn, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, former Congressman Lee 
Hamilton and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering.

My understanding is their thinking coincides in significant degree with that of 
both George Mitchell, Obama’s Middle East envoy, and Gen. James Jones, Obama’s 
national security adviser who worked on security issues with Israelis and 
Palestinians in the last year of the Bush administration, an often frustrating 
experience.

This overlap gives the report particular significance.

Of Hamas, the target of Israel’s futile pounding of Gaza, the eminent Group of 
10 writes that, “Shutting out the movement and isolating Gaza has only made it 
stronger and Fatah weaker.”

They urge a fundamental change: “Shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to 
modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate 
elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with 
Hamas in ways that might clarify the movement’s view and test its behavior.”

Although this falls short of my own recommendation that the United States itself 
— rather than European allies — engage with moderate elements of Hamas, such a 
shift is critical.

Without Hamas’s involvement, there can be no Middle East peace. Mahmoud Abbas, 
the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian Authority, is a beleaguered 
figure.

The report goes further: “Cease discouraging Palestinian national reconciliation 
and make clear that a government that agrees to a cease-fire with Israel, 
accepts President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief negotiator and commits to abiding 
by the results of a national referendum on a future peace agreement would not be 
boycotted or sanctioned.”

In other words, stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel and 
watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of, and remains 
part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace deal with Israel, 
that’s workable.

Henry Siegman, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, whose chairman is 
Scowcroft and board includes all 10 signatories, told me that he met recently 
with Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas in Damascus.

Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize 
Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached 
a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel.

De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a constructive 
relationship, as Israel knows from the mutual benefits of its shah-era dealings 
with Iran.

Israeli governments have negotiated a two-state solution although they included 
religious parties that do not recognize Palestinians’ right to statehood.

“But,” Siegman said, “if moderates within Hamas are to prevail, a payoff is 
needed for their moderation. And until the U.S. provides one, there will be no 
Palestinian unity government.”

The need for that incentive is reflected in the four core proposals of what the 
authors call “a last chance for a two-state Israel-Palestine agreement.” Taken 
together, they constitute the start of an essential rebalancing of America’s 
Bush-era Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.

The first is clear U.S. endorsement of a two-state solution based on the lines 
of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, agreed land swaps where necessary. That 
means removing all West Bank settlements except in some heavily populated areas 
abutting Jerusalem — and, of course, halting the unacceptable ongoing 
construction of new ones.

The second is establishing Jerusalem as home to the Israeli and Palestinian 
capitals. Jewish neighborhoods would be under Israeli sovereignty and Arab 
neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty, with special arrangements for the 
Old City providing unimpeded access to holy sites for all communities.

The third is major financial compensation and resettlement assistance in a 
Palestinian state for refugees, coupled with some formal Israeli acknowledgment 
of responsibility for the problem, but no generalized right of return.

The fourth is the creation of an American-led, U.N.-mandated multinational force 
for a transitional period of up to 15 years leading to full Palestinian control 
of their security.

Obama has told Volcker that he would, in time, meet with the signatories of the 
letter. He should do so once an Israeli government is in place. And then he 
should incorporate their ideas in laying out the new realism of American 
commitment to Palestine and the new price of American commitment to Israel.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/26cohen.html>

<http://www.usmep.us/bipartisan_recommendations/A_Last_Chance_for_a_Two-State_Israel-Palestine_Agreement.pdf>