March 06, 2013
Understandably,
Middle East circles in the United States these days increasingly speculate
about whether President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will
explore opportunities for re-launching peace negotiations between Israelis and
Palestinians. Less understandable is why a leading American publication --
the New York Times’ Sunday Review section -- should turn for advice
on this issue from former diplomat Dennis Ross, who wrote a full page article
in the paper last Sunday offering his 14 points on how Palestinians and
Israelis could move ahead towards a successful negotiation.
I say
this is less understandable because Ross has almost nothing but failure to show
for his 11 years of leadership on Arab-Israeli and other Middle Eastern issues
in the White House and State Department, between 1993 and 2011. Only in
Washington, D.C. could a serial failure in Arab-Israeli diplomacy like Ross be
consulted on how to move ahead in Arab-Israeli diplomacy.
Never
mind that when he left government he returned to a senior position at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an intellectual cutting edge of the
pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States. Never mind also that his many years
in pivotal positions in government service, at a decisive historical era when
all the stars were aligned for a breakthrough in Arab-Israeli peace-making,
resulted in no practical achievement that I can see or that is visible to the
public.
It is
enough to read his Sunday New York Times article to be
reminded of why the United States government failed miserably and repeatedly in
Middle East mediation. He sees the most fundamental problem between most
Israelis and Palestinians as disbelief that peace is possible. He recommends
that simultaneous trust-building measures by Israelis and Palestinians could
prod them to “chip away at the sources of each side’s disbelief about the
other’s commitment to a genuine two-state solution.”
This is
quite nonsensical and totally unrealistic, as evidenced partly by the fact that
this approach has been tried a hundred times in recent decades, always without
success. The reasons why Ross and the United States have been such chronic
diplomatic under-achievers are evident in the thrust of his 14 proposals.
He
seems to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solely as a consequence of the
1967 war, with resolution coming through agreeing on how to apportion the
Palestinian lands that Israel now occupies and colonizes. He recommends that
Israel declare that it will only build new houses in land within the “security
barrier,” meaning “only in about 8% of the West Bank.” He assumes that Israel
can now keep the land within what he and Israelis call the “security barrier”
(Palestinians call it the “Apartheid Wall,” the rest of the world mostly calls
it the “separation wall,” so his using the Israeli vocabulary might be telling,
or perhaps it’s just the randomness of the English language in the unique world
of pro-Israeli Washington, D.C. think tanks).
His
suggestions for Israelis and Palestinians focus heavily on the Israeli need to
live in peace with secure and recognized borders. He asks Palestinians to make
several gestures in this respect, yet simultaneously omits any mention of the
two central issues for the Palestinians, which are the status of Jerusalem and
resolving the Palestinian refugees issue from 1947-48. His recommendations for
Israeli gestures are all within the context of Israel’s continued colonial
control of the West Bank. He waves Israeli needs like a victory banner, but
buries Palestinian needs like an irrelevant rag.
He
wants the Palestinians to commit to the reality of two states for Israelis and
Palestinians, but ignores that the Palestinian government and all other Arab
states have long offered Israel a permanent peace agreement in the Arab peace
plan of 2002 -- which the United States and Israel have refused to engage with.
Dennis
Ross himself, of course, is not the problem or the issue; he is merely a very
visible symptom of the problem, which is the total inability of the United
States to act as a truly impartial mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian and
wider Arab-Israeli conflicts.
I can
think of three possible reasons why the United States and Ross have been such
inept diplomatic interlocutors. Perhaps they are ignorant of the real issues,
which is not the case. Perhaps they do not really want a comprehensive peace,
which is also unlikely. Perhaps they simply do not have the leeway to address
the core needs and rights of both sides, given Washington’s powerful tilt
towards the Israeli position on almost all issues. Ross’ latest article
clarifies that he and his government are failed mediators probably because they
see the main issues mainly through the Israeli lens, rather than impartially
seeking the core rights of both sides.
The
U.S. government did mediate successfully when it patiently and resolutely
helped to broker the Northern Ireland peace agreement. If you want to
understand better why it is unable to do the same thing in the Middle East,
read page 12 of the March 3, 2013 New York Times Sunday
Review.
Rami
G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright
© 2013 Rami G. Khouri -- distributed by Agence Global