Time to Blame the Broker in the Mideast Mess

Now that the Bush administration, like every other waning U.S. presidency, is making noises about bringing peace to the Middle East, it might be be worth pondering why the last such attempt, in Clinton's final year failed. I wrote the following piece in the fall of 2000. It still represents a cogent and timely analysis of US peacemaking efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


"Since the recent round of violence broke out in the Middle East, U.S. officials have attempted, imperfectly, to avoid blaming either side for the events. Increasingly, though, the question is whether U.S. efforts to play the honest broker themselves contributed to the current conflict.

"Two reasons for blaming the broker have already been articulated by other observers. First, as former President Jimmy Carter predicted over the summer, the administration’s decision to publicly blame Arafat for the failure of the talks have eroded Palestinian confidence in U.S. neutrality. Second, many media reports now suggest that the Clinton administration allowed Barak’s timetable and preferred mode of negotiating to dictate the negotiating process.

"By far the most important reason for questioning U.S. responsibility for the current crisis is the way American authorities handled the inherent tension between the roles of guaranteeing the security of one party while mediating between both. Had the United States chided Israel, for whom U.S. support is never in question, it might have been an act of statesmanship, but the Americans had little credibility to sustain a rebuke of Arafat.

"All of this is made worse by the fact that the American security guarantee is extended to the stronger party in the dispute. In this situation, the burden of proof is on the broker to reassure the weaker party it’s security concerns will also be met. Instead, the United States has been willing to justify an agreement that gives the Palestinians less than they are entitled to under international law, and that would compromise Palestinian security.

"The difference between sovereignty and control is crucial not symbolic. Without sovereignty, Arabs in East Jerusalem would have no protection against any actions the Israelis took on security grounds. “Control” is the same halfway house that the hardline Israeli government of Menachem Begin offered Palestinians in the West Bank generally and is essentially what the Palestinian authority enjoys in many West Bank towns today.

"Recent Israeli actions in these towns make clear how inadequate a compromise “control” is. Matters are made worse by the Israeli insistence that Jewish settlers be allowed to remain in the West Bank and Gaza, with Israeli protection, even though the settlers would be a constant flashpoint for confrontation and an invitation to Israeli intervention.

"Both U.S. and Israeli officials have sometimes suggested that the Palestinians should accept Barak’s offer because it is more than they have now or could hope to win by force. The argument is both specious and dangerous. It raises the question of why a U.S.-brokered negotiation is necessary to produce an outcome dictated by the balance of power and inevitably invites Palestinian efforts to use force to alter that balance. Palestinians have not forgotten, if Israelis have, that it was the high cost to Israeli society of the intifada that led to the 1993 Oslo accords.

"The contrast between the recent Camp David fiasco and the original Camp David agreement could not be more stark. Then, as now, the Arabs insisted on complete withdrawal from territories conquered in the 1967 War (except for the Gaza strip which it was understood would be part of a Palestinian settlement). Then, as now, Israel insisted on keeping some gains, for its own security and to protect settlers. Then, as now, the argument was made that Egypt would gain more from a partial withdrawal than it could hope to win by force.

"In Camp David I, however, American pressure and security assurances led Israel to withdraw from the entire Sinai. Israel was rewarded with twenty years of peace, while the U.S. won a new ally. The loser, of course, was Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who began the process and was assassinated for his troubles.

"Both the original Camp David accords and the record of the Palestinian authority show that, even in the Middle East, good fences make good neighbors. If the United States wishes to play a positive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American security guarantee has to become an instrument for peace, not a license for Israel to act with impunity."

Heel, Tony, Heel

There can be few sights more embarrassing than watching British PM Tony Blair, once again, attempt fruitlessly to live up to his promise that the US-UK "alliance" somehow gives the British Empire-turned-Emirate some influence over the use and abuse of American power. Blair's sad little dance around his desire -- and everyone else's -- to see an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and the US insistence on giving Israel its head only heightened the impression that he has turned the "special relatoinship" between London and Washington into one between a country squire and his overeager retriever. While Israel is let off the leash to go and mangle innocent neighbors, Tony is called sharply to heel.