Spock (to Stonn): “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
From the Star Trek episode “Amok Time“
A number of President Obama’s fans in the media used to compare him to Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan on Star Trek. But maybe they’ve picked the wrong Vulcan to compare him to. Maybe he’s more like Stonn, the Vulcan preferred by Spock’s intended, T’Ping. Spock admonished Stonn, warning him that getting what he wants – T’Ping – may not be as pleasing to him as he now imagines.
If those of us who suspect that President Obama is seeking to bring down the government of Binyamin Netanyahu are correct and he is successful, the President still may not find the region any closer to peace when he leaves office than when he entered.
Hard to believe, but we’ve been here before.
In order to pass the Hebron Accords in January, 1997, then-Prime Minister Netanyahu got an assurance from the Clinton administration that further redeployments (Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria) would be determined unilaterally by Israel. Netanyahu, though, demanded that the Palestinians observe the obligation they signed onto. A year later, the American government was frustrated with Netanyahu for not planning on withdrawals of sufficient size to satisfy Arafat and for not moving ahead. Netanyahu for his part insisted that the Palestinians keep their part of the bargain.
In January 1998, Charles Krauthammer wrote a column, “He negotiates by the rules” about the developing impasse and concluded:
The Hebron agreement was to be the hallmark of reciprocity: Netanyahu got Likud, for the first time in its history, to agree to a withdrawal from part of the Land of Israel, a very significant part — in return for several Palestinian commitments, every one of which has since been violated.
It is now up to President Clinton. The United States brokered the Hebron deal, enshrining these Palestinian obligations in the “Note for the Record.” If Clinton treats his own Hebron agreement as a dead letter — an Israeli withdrawal to be pocketed, Palestinian commitments to be ignored — what possible confidence can Israel have that the next withdrawal will not be yet another sham, another betrayal?
Four months later, Krauthammer wrote:
But even more significant than the absurd arbitrariness of this number is its very existence. Under the Oslo Accords, these interim “further redeployments” are left to Israel’s discretion (unlike the “final status” talks, at which Israel and the Palestinians will together negotiate their final borders).
Indeed, just 16 months ago the Clinton administration reaffirmed this principle. At 11 p.m. on the night of Jan. 15, 1997, as Netanyahu’s cabinet was agonizing over the proposed withdrawal from Hebron, it received an urgent memo from then-ambassador Martin Indyk stating the official US position that “further redeployment phases are issues for implementation by Israel rather than issues for negotiation with the Palestinians. The letters of assurance which secretary Christopher intends to provide to both parties also refer to the process of further redeployments as an Israeli responsibility.”
Sixteen months later in London, Albright tells Israel that its 9 percent is no good. The withdrawal must be 13.1 percent – or else she walks away. She gives Netanyahu three days to give his answer. He tells her: “I don’t need three days. The answer is no.”
So now we have a crisis. And though it was manufactured by State to put pressure on Netanyahu, it reveals instead a crisis of credibility for this administration: How can Israel make ever more dangerous concessions to the Palestinians when the American assurances it receives to offset those concessions are so perishable?
LAST week at the National Press Club, Albright gave a hastily arranged speech to explain her position. Its essential, tendentious theme was that all of the problems in the peace process are traceable to Netanyahu. Everything has gone to pieces, she averred, “in just two years.” You don’t need to be a CIA codebreaker to understand what that means: Netanyahu was elected prime minister two years ago this month.
The historic Hebron withdrawal, in which Netanyahu single-handedly brought Likud and the Israeli Right into the land-for-peace Oslo process, received nary a word. That’s because the only praise offered in her speech was reserved for Arafat.
Albright credits him for making “substantial changes in {his} negotiating position.” He had wanted a 30 percent Israeli withdrawal but was willing to accept 13.1.
How generous.
Eventually, this led to the Wye agreements after which Netanyahu lost his right wing support and the election of Ehud Barak as Prime Minister in May 1999. During the next year and a half, PM Barak worked very well with President Clinton. In 2000 he withdrew Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. And in July, 2000 Barak met with Arafat at the Camp David summit and offered him more than any other Israeli leader ever did. Arafat rejected the offer and two months later started the “Aqsa intidfada.”
Clinton’s term in office that started off with such high hopes for peace ended with a terror war launched against Israel, despite having an Israeli Prime Minister ready to make unheard of concessions.
The problem of course, was that Clinton – as well as much of the conventional wisdom at the time – concerned himself only with (non-existent) Israeli instransigence and ignored the very real intransigence of Yasser Arafat.
I could point to other things – such as the Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza, both of which strengthened terrorist groups and led to war – but the basic lessonn of recent history is that no matter far Israel is willing to go, the Palestinians and their Arab supporters have always claimed it wasn’t enough and used concessions, not to build for peace but to prepare for war.
President Obama may indeed want a new Prime Minister in Israel. And if his hardball tactics with Netanyahu are successful, he might. But he’ll also discover that having a compliant Israeli leader in place won’t bring peace unless there’s an equally committed Palestinian leader. We haven’t seen such a leader yet.
The question is how many people will have to die if President Obama gets his wish.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
