In Don’t try this at home, Thomas Friedman unnecessarily complicates the Middle East. For one thing he makes a fundamental mistake.
In recent days, some have questioned whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was making a big mistake in appointing so many “special envoys,” such as George Mitchell, to handle key trouble spots, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think they are right to question Mrs. Clinton about this plethora of envoys. But I don’t think the problem is that she has too many; it’s that she doesn’t have enough.
While I don’t think that Oslo was a good deal, people – even experts like Friedman – forget that it was first negotiated in secret. The United States was not involved at all until the end of the process. Similarly too, the United States only got involved with the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty at the end, after both countries had done preliminary negotiations without outside interference. There’s no reason now to assume that American involvement is essential. It probably hinders the likelihood that any sort of agreement will be reached.
The idea that American involvement hinders peacemaking may seem paradoxical, but it isn’t. By declaring its interest in a peace treaty and getting involved the United States shows the Palestinians how highly it values peace. It also freezes diplomatic thinking into believing that the only choices are the ones available. The Palestinians know that they can then raise the cost of peace for Israel by making more demands. We saw this throughout the 90’s where American desire for a settlement meant that it ignored Arafat’s constant violations of Oslo because it valued a treaty more than actual peace. Arafat was deemed essential to making peace, so his violations were overlooked as understandable responses to Israeli failures rather than deeming him an obstacle to peace and looking for a new interlocutor.
Where to begin? Palestinians are now divided between the West Bank and Gaza, with a secular Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank and a fundamentalist Hamas government based in Gaza. But Hamas is further divided between a military and political wing, and the political wing is further divided between a Gaza-based leadership and a Damascus-based leadership, with the latter taking orders from both Syria and Iran.
There is, of course, no real division between the political and terrorist wings of Hamas. It’s a convenient fiction created by those who pretend that there’s a chance of Hamas moderating its positions.
Best I can tell, the Palestinians from Gaza are simultaneously negotiating a cease-fire with Israel in Cairo, pursuing war-crimes charges against Israel in Europe, digging new tunnels in the Sinai to smuggle more rockets into Gaza to hit Tel Aviv and trying to raise money for reconstruction from Iran. Meanwhile, the West Bank Palestinian leaders are busy publicly collecting food and blankets to help all those Palestinian civilians brutalized by the Israeli incursion into Gaza, while privately demanding to know from senior Israeli officials why they wimped out and didn’t wipe Hamas in Gaza off the face of earth — casualties be damned.
“Brutalized by the Israel incursion?” How about “brutalized by being used as human shields by Hamas?” Still what’s difficult to understand. Fatah wants more power.
Israel, meanwhile, has a government in which the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister each has a different peace plan, war strategy and cease-fire conditions for Gaza, and the foreign minister and defense minster are running against each other in Israel’s election on Tuesday. Speaking of that election, a whole new party, Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, which has been accused of having “fascist,” viciously anti-Arab leanings, appears headed to make the biggest gains and possibly become the kingmaker of Israel’s next government. The other day, the Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, was quoted in the newspaper Haaretz as criticizing Lieberman as a lamb in hawk’s clothing, asking: “When has he ever shot anyone?”
So after Friedman tells us that there’s really a cuddly part of Hamas, he takes a cheap shot at Avigdor Lieberman and suggests that it will be Israeli extremism that will prevent a deal.
How did this conflict get so fragmented? For starters, it’s gone on way too long. The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel’s crazy settlements from Palestinian villages that a Palestinian could fly from Jerusalem to Paris quicker than he or she could drive from Jenin, here in the northern West Bank, to Hebron in the south.
Oh please. It’s gone on so long because the fundamental requirement for peace has been lacking. Palestinian nationalism is based on the destruction of Israel. It is something that even Fatah has never officially renounced. As mentioned above, no outrage was serious enough to disqualify Arafat once he was named a “peacemaker.” Given that the Palestinians want a state in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, it’s hard to be sympathetic to complaints that non-contiguity will be a problem. Israeli communities don’t prevent a future Palestinian state from having connecting routes, but continued Israeli growth in Judea and Sarmaria and resultant loss of territory is a reasonable cost for failing to act in good faith for fifteen years.
Friedman simply refuses to acknowledge that the assumptions he clings to, against all evidence, are wrong. The fundamental obstacle to peace in the Middle East is the Arab and Palestinian refusal to accept Israel. All else is obfuscation.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
