Yossi we hardly knew ye

In a too generous retrospective of Yossi Beilin’s career, Ethan Bronner writes:

For the last two decades, the easiest way to invoke dovishness in Israel has been to utter the words “Yossi Beilin.” The politician who navigated mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1990s and has never stopped believing, Mr. Beilin has a unique place in the Israeli political galaxy, admired and reviled for his relentlessness.

He was not reviled for his relentlessness. He was reviled for his failure to play by the rules.

Still, Mr. Beilin’s decision to leave public life and set up a private company offers a lens through which to view Israeli politics. The arc of his career describes the fortunes of peacemaking. He said last week that he was leaving in triumph, since his support for an end to occupation of Palestinian territories and the creation of a Palestinian state, once radical positions, are today mainstream. There is no denying that shift in public opinion and official policy. But it is impossible not to see the move also as a defeat — of Mr. Beilin’s understated style in an overheated environment, and of his goals, with no Palestinian state on the horizon.

The first part of this is correct. Israel has changed quite a bit in the past twenty years and Beilin’s extreme views are now pretty much mainstream. But the defeat wasn’t one of Beilin’s “understated” style. it was one of his misreading the Palestinians. If there was a movement towards Beilin’s positions in Israel, there has been no reciprocal moderation on the Palestinian side. Maybe some of the rhetoric is milder than it was 1992, but even Abbas still denies the right of there to be a Jewish state.

The next three paragraphs are bewildering. I’ve highlighted the essentials.

Most successful Israeli politicians resemble Ariel Sharon — open-shirted men with strong military backgrounds, thick fingers and quick tempers. But the soft-voiced Mr. Beilin, with his Cross gold pens and carefully knotted ties, was a different species, one that left Israelis bemused. At his political height, that mattered little since he was less a leader of the people than a leader of the leaders, a behind-the-scenes actor who persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 that Yasir Arafat wanted peace. That feat was all the more remarkable because, as Mr. Beilin noted in a two-hour conversation in his office last week, he and Mr. Rabin never liked each other.

It is a tribute to Mr. Beilin — to his powerful intellect and keen interpersonal skills — that despite his demure style and lack of good-old-boy credentials, his political fortunes rose remarkably in the 1990s as the Oslo peace process that he set in motion took over Israeli politics. In the Labor primaries at one point, he won the No. 2 spot. Twice he was appointed a minister. For a while, if you wanted to know what was next on Israel’s geopolitical agenda, you consulted Mr. Beilin.

But when peacemaking reached a dead end and the second intifada broke out in late 2000, sending Israel into a fury of suicide bombings and fierce military counterattacks that killed thousands, Mr. Beilin lost his sheen. He was accused of being a snake-oil salesman, responsible for luring Israelis into the false belief that they had a peace partner. The exotic fellow with the Ph.D. and attaché case was anathema.

First Bronner credits Beilin with convincing Rabin to trust Araft, but then, two paragraphs later, shocker: Mr. Beilin lost his sheen. Here’s a guy who got the leader of his country to trust an unrepentant terrorist who proceeded to launch a terror war against his country.

“He was accused of being a snake-oil salesman, responsible for luring Israelis into the false belief that they had a peace partner.” He wasn’t accused of being a “snake oil salesman” that’s what he was shown to be. Trusting Arafat was a huge mistake. I can’t feel the sympathy for Beilin that Bronner seems to want me to feel. Worse, Beilin’s never admitted his fundamental mistake. The failure to achieve peace he blames on others, not on his own faulty judgment.

He sees two clocks ticking. One is demographic, with the Jewish-Palestinian ratio in Israel and the Palestinian areas nearing 50-50. The other is geopolitical, what he calls the growing threats and hatred toward Israel in the region. “Our behavior,” he said, “ is costing us a huge price because we are giving the fanatics the best pretext.” Mr. Beilin, now 60, is starting an Israeli version of Kissinger Associates and says he plans to stay involved as a private citizen in peace efforts, even as he promotes businesses across the Israeli-Arab divide.

The demographic “clock” has stopped ticking. Whatever will be in the future for the Palestinians, the vast majority of them are no longer under Israel’s jurisdiction. The demographic threat is simply a device to force Israel to make the concessions the Palestinians demand of them. To Beilin, the idea that peace negotiations should, in any way, meet Israeli requirements is inconceivable. And it’s astonishing that now 15 years after Oslo, that he could still make the argument that Israel’s failure to meet Palestinians demands is the “best pretext” for “the fanatics.” If his peace making premise was correct, the fanatics would have little or no standing now. In fact, the Arab world has not been transformed as he so blithely assumes.

Near the end Beilin expresses his hopes and fears:

He says he fervently hopes for a victory by Barack Obama — but also that the economic and other crises don’t overwhelm the new administration. “God forbid if this conflict is marginalized,” he said. “If we are marginalized, it will be to kill each other.”

As long as the Arab Israeli conflict is front and center, it raise the price of peace for Israel and it gives Beilin a platform to sell his badly concocted prescription. Beilin’s hyperbole isn’t about the fear of violence, but the fear that his own importance will be diminished.

Yossi Beilin, as a member of the Knesset subverted Israeli law in order to get Oslo passed. Since Oslo was predicated on the honorable intentions of Yasser Arafat it failed miserably. Yossi Beilin’s retirement from politics is a much overdue slide into irrelevance earned by his arrogant inability to take responsibility for his historic failure.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.