April 17, 2004
RADICAL REALIST:
Kicking Over the Chessboard (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, 4/18/04, NY Times)
At first, I thought I'd write a column that just ripped President Bush for declaring that the United States — after decades of neutrality — has decided to oppose the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel as part of any final peace settlement. Why is the president dragging America into the middle of this most sensitive Israeli-Palestinian issue? You're telling me that just because Ariel Sharon has to persuade the right-wing lunatics in his cabinet to undo the lunatic settlement mess that Mr. Sharon himself created, America has to pay for it with its own standing in the Arab world?And while I was at it, I also thought I'd write that it is an abomination for Mr. Bush to say that Palestinians had to recognize "the new realities on the ground" in the West Bank — the massive Israeli settlement blocks — without even mentioning the fact that those "new realities" were built in defiance of stated U.S. policy and they have been just devastating to Palestinian civilians, who've seen their lands confiscated, olive groves uprooted and community fragmented.
But then I thought I also had to write to the Arab leaders wailing over the Bush statements and ask them a simple question: Where have you been? Saudi Arabia's crown prince comes up with one peace plan, one time, for one day. That was it. There's been no follow-up — not a single imaginative, or even pedestrian, Saudi, Arab or Palestinian initiative to sell this peace plan to the Israeli people. And what did the Palestinians think? That years of insane suicide bombing of Israelis wouldn't drive Israel to act unilaterally?
But after I got all these prospective columns off my chest, I decided what I really wanted to say was this: I'm fed up with the Middle East, or more accurately, I'm fed up with the stalemate in the Middle East. All it has produced is death, destruction and endless "he hit me first" debates on cable television. Arabs, Israelis, Americans — everyone is sick of it.
So now President Bush has stepped in and thrown the whole frozen Middle East chessboard up in the air. I don't like his style, but it's done. The status quo was no better.
It's fascinating the way Mr. Bush's radicalism so often lies in forcing people to face unwelcome realities.
MORE:
This gamble by Sharon is at least based on reality (Anne Applebaum, 18/04/2004, Daily Telegraph)
"He's rolling the dice," a diplomat said to me last week, speaking of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. "Let's just roll the dice and see what happens" is how another foreign affairs analyst I know in Washington described the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policy.Sometimes political metaphors take on a life of their own (remember the European train that was about to leave the station?) and this one has lately become almost inseparable from the policy that America and Israel have been trying to craft over the past few months in the Middle East. I have also heard people talk of "reshuffling the cards", which amounts to the same thing: these are gambling metaphors, descriptions of an extremely risky, high-stakes policy that nobody actually feels very confident about.
And a gamble is what Sharon is now engaged in, as even his supporters agree. By promising unilaterally to pull his troops and his settlers out of the Gaza strip and large chunks of the West Bank; by building a fence (or a wall, depending on your point of view) along what has become, in effect, the new, albeit still temporary, Israeli border; by dropping any attempt to negotiate either the borders or the political character of a new Palestinian state; by doing all of this, Sharon has suddenly and abruptly changed all of the rules of the Middle Eastern game. For a long time - decades, in fact - everyone has assumed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could only be resolved by mutual agreement. Instead, one of the negotiating parties which was trying to resolve it has suddenly abdicated.
Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2004 9:05 PM
Anne Applebaum is generally astute and very much to be respected.
"by dropping any attempt to negotiate either the borders or the political character of a new Palestinian state."
But here she gets it entirely backwards (and she's not alone). The idea that there have been any negotiations over the past three and a half years is essentially laughable (unless one wishes to call the farces called Abu Mazen or Abu Ala "negotiations"). And why, once again, have negotiations "stalled"?
What negotiations? And saying they've stalled is Orwellian.
"For a long time - decades, in fact - everyone has assumed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could only be resolved by mutual agreement. Instead, one of the negotiating parties which was trying to resolve it has suddenly abdicated."
"Mutual agreement"? We've seen how useful an idea that has become (we've had over three years to ponder it).
"Negotiating partners"? Right.
Israel has "sudddenly abdicated"? That's like saying Britain and France suddenly abdicated talks with Germany in September 1939 (though Hitler would have seen it that way, and was indeed most surprised that they went to war over Poland).
But this is the rhetorical tack that most commentators have taken, given the three plus years of skewed bombardment by the media. And it's a tremendous achievement for the Palestinians.
Sometimes you just gotta love the "single-digit salute" approach to diplomacy.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at April 18, 2004 7:52 AMThere's hope for Friedman yet!
Posted by: Mike Morley at April 18, 2004 8:26 AMMike:
Bu Friedman's M-O is to make his next column say the complete opposite--gotta cater to everyone...
Posted by: oj at April 18, 2004 9:11 AMBarry:
Haven't you been telling me all along that I was crazy for predicting this solution was inevitable?
Posted by: oj at April 18, 2004 9:15 AMSeems that I haven't been expressing myself very well.
I have never taken any issue with the "inevitability" of this (your) prediction/proposal/solution.
I do take issue with the view that it is a "solution."
I have from the beginning believed that because the conflict that purportedly broke out three-and-a-half years ago (and which is looking more and more irrefutably like the tactics promulgated by Arafat and his pals as far back as the late 80s---the "phased plan") is a fight to the finish, with Israel's destruction the actual "solution", that there will be---can be---no other solution to this struggle, as it is presently construed, than either the destruction of Israel or the intense suffering of Palestinians as a result of their efforts to achieve the former. And if the Palestinians are not able to achieve the goal, then at least they can make Israel bleed, and perhaps hemmorhage.
As such, the current Bush-Sharon ploy/plan, what have you, while offering perhaps a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel to those who prefer to see reflections of their own heady optimisim, will not end the conflict.
To be sure, if violence and death are reduced, it will be because of Israel's security policies; though, know that any time there is a security lapse that can be exploited by the Palestinians, it will be done.
At the risk of repeating myself, ad nauseum, the solution for the Palestinians, is to see Israel gone; while the solution for Israel is to prevent it, while not losing its purported soul (yes; I realize there are those who believe that soul has already been cast adrift, while others deny it was even there to begin with).
Hence, the cards are stacked against her. But this is the hand that has been dealt, it would appear.
Keeping in mind that Palestinians cannot accept sovereignty for many reasons; but the chief reason is that to do so would be for them to confer de jure legitimacy on Israel's existence. And this they cannot do.
(Having said all this, I do hope you realize that I pray that your "solution" is in fact a solution. That is, I desperately hope that my estimation of events is wrong. But there is, at this juncture, alas, no reason for me to believe that it is. In fact, the opposite.)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at April 18, 2004 9:48 AMHow does one not accept sovereignty?
Posted by: oj at April 18, 2004 10:01 AMStay tuned.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at April 18, 2004 10:05 AM> America has to pay for it with its own standing in the Arab world?
What standing???
Posted by: at April 18, 2004 6:22 PMHow to not accept sovereignty: a) invite thousands of Egyptians, Syrians, etc. to act as 'security' advisors; b) start a major conflict by blowing up a section of the wall; c) use chemical weapons; d) kill Sharon.
Other methods might work also. For people committed to insanity, anything is possible. But the right of return is now gone.
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 19, 2004 10:22 PM