The time has come to relaunch negotiations without preconditions to reach a final status agreement on two states: a Jewish state of Israel, and a viable, independent and contiguous Palestine that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes and unleashes the full potential of the Palestinian people.

Sen. Mitchell has worked hard with the parties over the past few weeks to find the right formula through which to begin these talks. We will continue that effort in the coming weeks, because it is our strong and unequivocal view that we must move beyond talking about talks and get to the hard work of addressing the core issues that separate Israelis and Palestinians.

We have reached the end of the peace talk era, according to Barry Rubin, and I agree with him. Hamas has no intention of giving up its attempt to destroy the state of Israel. Fatah has no intention of coming to peaceable terms with Israel, either, as has been shown by Mahmoud Abbas’ many references to “armed struggle” if peace talks fail, his insistence on the “right of return” (flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians descended from the original refugees), and his talk about the “Judaization” of Jerusalem. And the world simply will not accept these facts at face value, preferring instead to believe that Fatah is moderate, and Hamas will moderate someday, if only Israel gives up enough for that to happen. But that day is done.

Israel knows that if it yields territory and is attacked from that territory, no matter how great the provocation, it cannot depend on international support but can rather know it will face international condemnation.

What does this say about a two-state solution? Israel pulls out of the West Bank, a Palestinian state is created (either on the West Bank or that plus the Gaza Strip), that state either attacks Israel or allows (and encourages) terrorists to do so across the border.

Israel has no response to defend itself that isn’t highly costly.

Bottom line: No Israeli government will make such a deal; the Israeli people will not support such a deal.

It’s not just that. The Palestinians, having had their hopes raised by Obama introducing the insistence of a complete settlement freeze, refuse to so much as talk to Israel without having that condition met. And the media place the blame on Israel for refusing to freeze “settlements,” not for the Palestinians for refusing to meet with Israel. There is also the false meme that Israel does not want to negotiate with the Palestinians, spread most willingly by the AP:

Israel’s desire to push forward with the peace process is not clear. Several months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under U.S. pressure, joined his predecessors in endorsing Palestinian statehood, albeit grudgingly and with caveats. But the idea is not popular with rightist members dominant in his coalition, and efforts to coax Israel into halting all settlement construction in the West Bank have not succeeded, resulting in apparent stalemate.

Note the text in bold. This is now AP boilerplate about Netanyahu and a Palestinian state. The “caveats,” by the way, are the insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, have a demilitarized state, and also sign an agreement that the establishment of the state of Palestine ends all hostilities. (Those are “caveats,” but demanding that millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees flood Israel are considered a legitimate demand.)

Israel is willing to negotiate for peace. But Israel is not willing to give up land and then see herself attacked by terrorists from that land, such as happened in Gaza. Without a true peace agreement, acceptable to both sides, there will be nothing further from Israel in the near future. And for that, we can place part of the blame on the Obama administration and its utterly clueless Middle East peace team.

You can say “Now is the time” as many times as you like. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

They bring three decades of experience in one of the most politically booby-trapped parts of the world. But they have been sidelined for much of the Bush presidency, which has relegated the Middle East peace process to secondary status.

Of course they don’t acknowledge that giving the peace process primacy didn’t get it done either. Still Rick Richman argues (effectively) that President Bush didn’t exactly ignore the peace process.

Mr. Miller’s heroes are Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III, secretaries of state who he says dealt with Israel in a tough but fair manner. He argues that Mr. Clinton’s embrace of Israeli leaders, while well intentioned, undermined the ability of the United States to seal a deal with the Palestinians. Nonsense, says Mr. Indyk, who argues that Washington’s close relationship with Israel is crucial because it assures the Palestinians and other Arabs that the United States has leverage with Israel.

“The school of beating up on Israel is fundamentally wrong because it just causes Israel to dig in its heels,” said Mr. Indyk, whose book, “Innocent Abroad,” praises Mr. Clinton for his unflagging commitment to a deal but is unsparing about the flaws in his approach.

Of course Indyk’s argument that the United States needs to have “leverage” with Israel, suggests that he also believes the United States should pressure Israel, just not beat up on it. And none of them explain how it is that when Clinton favored Arafat over Netanyahu that it somehow advanced the peace process. Clearly from 1996 to 1999, when Netanyahu was Israel’s PM, it wasn’t clear the United States favored Israel.

I think that perhaps the most astute observation comes from Miller.

Mr. Miller speaks the most freely of the former advisers because he is the one with virtually no chance of another government job. Mr. Clinton, he said, was so stung by his public criticism that he refused to talk to him for his book, “The Much Too Promised Land.” Anyway, he said, Middle East peacemakers ought to have term limits.

Well yes, if they don’t have any record of success, they shouldn’t be asked back.

Still what’s missing from this short profile is any admission that they made a mistake counting on Arafat or that they failed to ensure that Hezbollah would be disarmed. These guys think that if they just did something a little differently they would have been successful. They never acknowledge that maybe they got some of their premises wrong. None of them possess the requisite humility to admit mistakes. And that’s probably the main reason they should not be allowed anywhere near Middle East diplomacy every again, though, they are now being sought again as experts.

Pity.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

David Brooks writes in The confidence war:

By trial and error, Israel is learning to keep an even keel. For while Hamas and the extremists are dogmatic about ends, they are pragmatic about timing and means. On several occasions, Israelis have managed to temporarily suppress violence. The assassinations of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin in 2004 temporarily suppressed Hamas suicide bombings. The destruction of Hezbollah’s command and control structure in Beirut’s Dahiya district in 2006 seems to have shocked the leadership and reduced terror activity in the north.

In this game, violence doesn’t necessarily beget violence. It sometimes prevents it. The difference between successful Israeli actions and unsuccessful ones is not in the amount of destruction they achieve, but in the psychological messages they send. The attacks on Hamas terror leaders in 2004 demonstrated Israeli prowess. They demonstrated superior intelligence capability and suggested that Israel is always one step ahead. These sorts of accomplishments sapped Hamas’s confidence and created a cycle of recrimination, leading to uncertainty and more risk-averse behavior.

Brooks, misses a point here. The killings of *Yassin* (thanks Snoopy) and Rantisi reduced Hamas’s ability to commit terror by removing two of its more effective leaders. But still these sentiments seem about right. Brooks writes that Israel must keep its aims limited, declare victory and get out. I think that killing (or capturing) Haniyeh and other well known leaders of Hamas is probably a necessity too.

Anne Applebaum writes in Fighting to the end:

For the trouble with all of these peace efforts, peace conferences, peace initiatives and peace proposals is that none of them recognizes the most obvious fact about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It’s not a peace process; it’s a war. At the moment, at least, both parties are still convinced that their central aims will be better obtained through weapons and military tactics than through negotiations of any kind. To be more explicit, Hamas and its followers believe that the continuing firing of rockets into southern Israel will, sooner or later, result in the dissolution of the Jewish state. The Israelis — both on the “peacenik” left and the more bellicose right — believe that the only way to prevent Hamas from firing rockets is to fight back. Intervention — whether by well-meaning Europeans, U.N. delegations, Russian envoys (or even Condoleezza Rice, who has wisely stayed home, so far) — can postpone the conflict but cannot halt the violence, at least not until one side or the other surrenders.

I’d quibble with some of her implications here. Israel believes that fighting back is necessary, not out of choice but experience. And if there is to be peace, it is Hamas (and Fatah) who must finally surrender. The fundamental problem with the peace process is trying to satisfy one side (Palestinians specifically, Arabs generally) who don’t accept the right of the other to exist.

Both Brooks and Applebaum seem more or less consistent with Barry Rubin’s The Gaza War: Is it All So Hard to Understand?*

Peace will come when the Arabs accept Israel’s right to exist. Engaging in a “peace process” may make others feel useful, but it probably causes more harm than it helps.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The notion that trying and failing is better than not trying at all might be an appropriate rallying cry for a college football coach; it isn’t a suitable foreign policy principle for the world’s greatest power. The well-intentioned old college try, which was President Bill Clinton’s mantra at Camp David in July 2000, reinforced by his advisers, myself included, proved costly. And we had much better conditions in 2000 (if still not the right ones) than the new administration faces.

Yes, the conditions were much better in 2000. Miller and company had been working furiously for seven years to build on the Oslo Accords (that were agreed upon without any American involvement). Of course if the push for peace in 2000 didn’t work given those circumstances, it ought to make Miller wonder if his premises were wrong.

But Miller writes, don’t ignore the Middle East!

For a president looking for a way to buck up America’s credibility, an Israeli-Syrian agreement offers a potential bonus. Such a deal would begin to realign the region’s architecture in a way that serves broader U.S. interests. The White House would have to be patient. Syria won’t walk away from a 30-year relationship with Iran; weaning the Syrians from Iran would have to occur gradually, requiring a major international effort to marshal economic and political support for Damascus. Still, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would confront Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran with tough choices and reduced options.

None of this will be easy. An Obama administration, and particularly the new president, would need to be in the middle of things. It would be excruciatingly hard, time-consuming and expensive to satisfy Israel and Syria’s economic and security needs, and a final agreement would most likely involve U.S. peacekeepers. More important, the United States would need to push the two sides further than they are now willing to go, on the extent of withdrawal from the Golan Heights in Israel’s case, on normalization and security in Syria’s. But with Israeli and Syrian leaders who are serious, and with a new administration ready to be tough, smart and fair in its diplomacy, a deal can be done.

So the United States ought to get an agreement as a first step of weaning Syria out Iran’s orbit. Given that Syria has shown no inclination to leave that orbit what makes Miller think this will work? The same pixie dust he was snorting making him think he’d get an agreement between Israel and Arafat in 2000?

But that doesn’t mean that the United States should ignore the Palestinians.

So, Mr. President-elect, go ahead and try to buck up the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, train Palestinian security forces, pour economic aid into Gaza and the West Bank, and quietly nurture Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But don’t go for the endgame — you won’t get there.

However, repeating bad ideas does not improve them or make them more viable.

But repeated past failures don’t get Miller down:

Instead, invest in an Israeli-Syrian peace, and, afterward, you might find, with a historic success under your belt and America again admired for its competence, you will be better positioned to achieve the success you want in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as well.

He’s been involved in crap for so long he’s sure there’s a pony in there someplace. On the other hand, I’d be a lot more encouraged if I didn’t see that Israel’s enemies – like Syria and the Palestinian Authority – were not trying to undermine Israel’s legitimacy at every opportunity. I’d think that a necessary prerequisite for peace is the Arab world coming to terms with Israel’s existence. But what do I know? I’m not an experienced peace processor like Miller. Who has absolutely no successes to his credit.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, compares it to bargaining for a Persian carpet in Tehran. “When you go inside the carpet shop, the first thing you are supposed to do is feign disinterest,” he explains. “The last thing you want to suggest is ‘We are not leaving without that carpet.’ ‘Well,’ the dealer will say, ‘if you feel so strongly about it …’ ”

The other lesson from the carpet bazaar, says Sadjadpour, “is that there is never a price tag on any carpet. The dealer is not looking for a fixed price, but the highest price he can get — and the Iran price is constantly fluctuating depending on the price of oil.” Let’s now use that to our advantage.

This is from an expert who has been writing for the past eight years that we “know” what Israel will need to concede to achieve peace with the Palestinians. He also advocates every single forum to pressure Israel to make those concessions. The advice he quotes would also makes sense regarding Israel, I doubt that he’d ever see that.

By stressing the importance of peace for Israel, peace processors of all disciplines show great interest. That, of course, raises the cost of peace. (It encourages the Palestinians and other Arabs to demand more concessions from Israel.)

If anything Eric Trager understands this much better than Friedman:

For this reason, the winner of next week’s presidential election would be well advised to renounce Annapolis as soon as possible. The incoming president should announce a freeze on U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking until both parties’ domestic political situations are resolved. Without this declaration, Israel and the Palestinians will have every reason to believe that the next U.S. administration will follow along the lines of Annapolis–and thus every reason to sideline American proposals indefinitely.

If the winner is Barack Obama, don’t count on it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Today, two decades later, there is no such state. But there could have been. The reason why there isn’t has very little to do with Israel and a lot to do with Palestinian and Arab politics. Briefly, the PNC was called on to pass a simple resolution–mere words–saying that it accepted Israel’s existence and would stop using terrorism. In exchange, it was promised U.S. and international help to receive a state.

He attributes the failure to the negotiations so far to the failure to understand the dynamic between the two sides. It’s what he aptly calls the Win/Win attitude (the Israeli/Western attitude) versus the Zero sum (the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim attitude):

When win-win (WW) and zero-sum (ZS) come together the negotiating process is something like the following:
* ZS: We demand 100 percent!
* WW: We’ll give you 50 percent!
* ZS: 100!
* WW: 75!
* ZS: Perhaps if you offer me 100 I will make a deal.
* WW: Wow, what a window of opportunity! How about 90?
* ZS: 100
* WW: 95, and that’s my last offer!
* ZS: 110!

This is the history of Israel-Palestinian negotiations, of talks about Iran’s nuclear drive, attempts to deal with Hamas or Hizballah, and diplomatic exchanges with Syria. All fail for very real reasons. But refusing to understand the fundamental problem, these failures are interpreted differently: not enough was offered, cultural sensitivities were disregarded, the table was shaped wrong, the democratic side did not prove its good intentions sufficiently.

In his introduction Rubin focused on Arafat’s “acceptance” of Israel in Geneva in 1988. That led to American recognition of the PLO until mid-1990 when a faction of the PLO atttempted a terrorist attack on Israel and Arafat refused to condemn it. In the aftermath of the American rejection of the PLO, the New York Times reported, “P.L.O. Sees Deeper Arab Hostility After U.S. Move”

A senior adviser to Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said tonight that Washington’s suspension of talks with the P.L.O. would produce ”a loathing of the Americans” and prompt the organization to seek a greater Arab show of military strength in the conflict with Israel.

At the same time, the adviser, Nabil Shaath, who lives in Cairo, said in an interview that the P.L.O. is ”not considering at all going into any military operations or any terrorist actions against civilians” targeted at Americans living in the Middle East. He said the P.L.O. would maintain its avowed commitment to peace.

So remember the PLO had just failed to uphold its obligation to fight terror and the United States was at fault for responding to that failure. The Chutzpah is incredible. But that follows from the assumption that the zero sum side believed that the West (and Israel) needed it more than they needed the z.s. to abide by its agreements.

And the New York Times faithfully reports this news from the perspective of a wronged PLO leadership, encouraging the zero sum side (the Palestinians in this case) to stick to its guns and avoid responsibility for its breach.

Gen. Moshe Ya’alon takes a different approach to the same problem. He argues that the failure to create a Palestinian state results from a refusal of the Palestinian leadership (and population in general) to accept Israel’s right to exist. That being the case, negotiations are rather fruitless. What’s needed to be done is to seek changes in Palestinian education so that they teach their children to accept Israel and maintain military pressure on Hamas.

The former is out of Israel’s hands. The latter is still possible, though the current Israeli leadership is averse to such an approach. This might be an attempt by Gen. Yaalon to make a case for a future Likud government as he is expected to possibly receive the defense portfolio should Binyamin Netanyahu return to power in an upcoming election.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“What we know is American presidents all support Israel,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. “It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don’t expect change.”

Across the border, in Israel, Moshe Cohen could not have agreed more. “Jews there have influence,” Mr. Cohen said, as he sold lottery tickets along Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. “He’ll have to be good to Israel. If not, he won’t be re-elected to a second term.”

And of course to the NYT, that’s a bad thing.

Mr. Obama, who will be here on Tuesday, has promised change. He has offered to begin dialogue where the current president has refused, in places like Syria and Iran. But when he stepped into the Middle East, he walked into a region where public expectations were long ago set. The Bush years have supercharged those sentiments, especially in the Arab world, where there is little faith that the United States can ever again serve as a fair broker between the sides.

How about a different reason for supporting Israel: it actually has more in common with the United States than any Arab state or nation.

For example there’s an effort to pardon Ahmad Dakamseh in Jordan.

In the wake of Israel’s release of despicable murderers of Jewish children, prominent Jordanians are asking King Abdullah to do the same.

And we know that even the reformist March 14th coaltion in Lebanon welcomed back Samir Kuntar – with honors.

The “March 14″ movement is a political vehicle for Lebanon’s liberals, democrats, free-market capitalists, human rights activists, and those who want an exit from the seemingly endless war with the “Zionist entity.” Unfortunately, that is not all it is. It’s also a political vehicle for hard-line Sunni Arab Nationalists and other political retrogrades who only oppose Hezbollah and the Syrian Baath regime because they hate Shias and Alawites as much as they hate Jews.

And of course the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas also sent a congratulations to Kuntar’s family and condolences to Hezbollah. And his government. And his “moderate” Fatah faction named a summer camp after a terrorist whose body was returned last week.

In the meantime an Israeli soldier who didn’t kill an Arab but violated the army’s procedure for dealing with suspects is being investigated by Israeli authorities.

And of course, whatever the Times reports about perceptions in the Arab street and how disappointed they are with the United States belies the fact the the United States is pushing Israel to make more and more concessions even in the light of undiminished Arab enmity and threats:

And then there is Israel. We learn today from Haaretz
that U.S.-Israel relations are being strained by the State Department’s busy-body routine on behalf of all manner of Palestinian complaints, such as Hanan Ashrawi’s daughter’s desire to receive special treatment from the Israeli government over her residency paperwork (Ashrawi’s whining to Rice apparently caused David Welch, the assistant secretary of state, to snap to attention and harass Israeli officials).
. . .
Ah, so the American general doesn’t like the security posture that the Israeli military has determined it must assume in order to protect Israeli lives. And he doesn’t like it that the IDF doesn’t take seriously the Palestinian Authority security services, which are dangerously incompetent, but which the United States has been deeply involved in training. Question for General Jones: Would you put the PA security services in charge of protecting American lives from Hamas?

(That’s a rhetorical question, but as I recall the U.S. sent troops to Ramallah to protect the president and didn’t rely only on the PA security services.)

This leads Daled Amos to comment:

The US is so used to trampling over Israeli interests and needs, that apparently stuff like this is becoming second nature, while still maintaining that everything is normal.

Over and over again we hear from the Arabs and their cheerleaders that the United States can’t be an “honest broker” because it favors Israel even while the Arabs show an undiminished level of hostility to Israel. The United States finds some pretext to pressure Israel in the name of “confidence buliding.” Israel, unwilling to buck its main benefactor relents and allows concessions that are often inimical to its security.

Israel and the United State end up on the defensive, unwilling to justify their alliance.The Arabs get their way without paying a price or giving any credit. And the media (and assorted peace processors) act like an injustice has been righted and that peace is now closer at hand.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

You have justified every last claim and prediction of the Israeli right.

Ponder that for a moment.

Let me digress. Say that you hear tha a friend of yours, Smoky Joe, a smoker for 40 years has lung cancer. You’d of course be sad. But would your reaction be “It’s a shame he justified the prediction of the Surgeon General?”

If you were callous enough, wouldn’t it more likely be “It’s a shame he didn’t heed the Surgeon General’s warnings?”

Burston demonstrates that he is unable to admit what is obvious: the Israeli right’s assessment of the Palestinians was correct. They said don’t trust Arafat. Israel did and brought him into Gaza and then Ramallah.

They said don’t give territory to our enemies. Israel did in 1995, 2000 and 2005 and in doing so strengthened Fatah/Hamas, Hezbollah and Hamas, again, leading to increased terror from each area.

(What did work? The military solution as Moshe Arens recalled last week:

But once the Israel Defense Forces and the security services began to seriously tackle Palestinian terror, following the massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in the spring of 2002, it quickly became clear that terror could be defeated by force. As a matter of fact, it could be defeated only by the use of force. The terrorists view any hints of Israeli willingness to give in to a portion of their essentially limitless demands as a sign of weakness, which only serves to encourage further acts of terror.

Noah Pollak, who linked to Arens, observed:

The extent to which Israel’s military victory in the intifada is simply not acceptable for discussion in enlightened quarters is amazing as a matter of cultural psychology. But this refusal also has a crippling effect on Israeli politics, as the military option against Hamas is continuously framed as a foreordained failure.

Operation Defensive Shield, did roll back the terror capabilities of Hamas and Fatah. It also was very costly in terms of lives. But that doesn’t mean that it was a failure; the actions that necessitated Defensive Shield were the problem.)

Worse than acknowledging that his political opponents were correct, by dismissively referring them as “the right” Burston shows that he’s learned nothing.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who cited Burston, isn’t much better (h/t Instapundit):

I’ve been writing recently about the existential threat that Israel will face if a Palestinian state isn’t created. What I neglect to note is that the Palestinians already live in a state of national non-existence.

So Israel’s fate is dependent on the Palestinians creating their own state, a task they have refused to engage in over the past 15 years. And yet Goldberg has been arguing that Israel has a moral necessity to see that such a state gets created. Why should Israel’s legitimacy be subject to veto by its enemies?

If Gaza under Hamas were functioning, Goldberg would have to acknowledge that since Gaza was essentially a Palestinian state, the questionable demographic threat he fears, would at least be delayed. (In fact David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue that Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza anymore.) But Goldberg will have none of that. The Palestinians claim that Gaza is still occupied and he apparently accepts that.

By tying a Palestinian state to Israel’s legitimacy, Goldberg has given Fatah and Hamas and their related thugs the final say in whether or not Israel should exist.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.