Don’tcha hate it when someone extrapolates broad, dismissive conclusions about a person’s professionalism and character because of a single area of disagreement, however profound?
Don’tcha? Don’tcha?
Umm.
That would be me a few months ago about Stephen Walt. He has an enormous, even malignant blind spot about the pro-Israel community, but my tone here was over the top, although my argument stands about his upside-down reading of Tony Blair’s Iraq War testimony.
But: I should know better. My apologies.
Which is to set up his very good question this week to Aaron David Miller, whose piece counseling President Obama to wash his hands of Arab-Israeli peacemaking is burning up the policy community here. (I linked to Miller’s piece here.):
Reading Miller’s essay, I could not help but think of Great Britain. The British did a masterful job of screwing things up in Palestine between 1919 and 1947, and then they decided the whole business was "too hard" and washed their hands of the matter. Miller is understandably unhappy with the track record of U.S. peacemaking efforts, and he is in effect throwing up his hands as well. I can understand his reaction and even sympathize with his feelings, but it’s not going to make things any better. In fact, the situation is likely to get worse, and history will judge us harshly for our contribution to it. Telling President Obama to stand aside now is irresponsible advice, because we are a central player in this conflict so long as the "special relationship" continues. Standing aside now also guarantees a worse outcome for all concerned.
So here’s the question I’d really like Miller to address: if it becomes clear that "two states for two peoples" is no longer an option, what does he think U.S. policy should be? Should we then favor the ethnic cleansing of several million Palestinian Arabs from their ancestral homes, so that Israel can remain a democratic and Jewish state? (By the way, that would be a crime against humanity by any standard.) Or should we then press Israel to grant the Palestinians full political rights, consistent with America’s own "melting-pot" traditions? (That is the end of the Zionist vision, and may be unworkable for other reasons). Or should we back (and subsidize) their confinement in a few disconnected enclaves (in Gaza, around Ramallah, and one or two other areas in the West Bank), with Israel controlling the borders, airspace, and water resources? (This is the apartheid solution, and it’s where we are headed now.) I fear that some future president will have to choose between these three options, and it would be interesting to know what an experienced Middle East negotiator like Miller would advise him or her to do then.
Bernard Avishai at Talking Points Memo also has a few sharp questions of his own. Miller’s first point, Avishai says,
is that Israeli-Palestinian peace is not really all that central to American foreign policy interests in the region. I won’t dwell on the point: you can read what he writes and make up your own mind. I will repeat here what I said when others wrote something like this a little while back, which is that the issue is not whether Israeli-Palestinian peace will be very good for America, but whether Israeli-Palestinian (and Lebanese, and Syrian) war will be very bad. The answer is, it will.
Daniel Pipes — not directly addressing Miller’s piece — suggests war may just be the ticket:
My peace plan is simple: Israel defeats its enemies.
Victory uniquely creates circumstances conducive to peace. Wars end, the historical record confirms, when one side concedes defeat and the other wins. This makes intuitive sense, for so long as both sides aspire to achieve their ambitions, fighting continues or it potentially can resume.
(snip)
Ironically, an Israeli victory would bring yet greater benefits to the Palestinians than to Israel. Israelis would benefit by being rid of an atavistic war, to be sure, but their country is a functioning, modern society. For Palestinians, in contrast, abandoning the fetid irredentist dream of eliminating their neighbor would finally offer them a chance to tend their own misbegotten garden, to develop their deeply deficient polity, economy, society, and culture.
UPDATE: And is Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, a Likud stalwart, advocating a binational state? Per Ha’aretz:
Speaking during a meeting with Greece’s ambassador to Israel Kyriakos Loukakis, Rivlin said that he did not see any point of Israel signing a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority as he did not believe PA President Mahmoud Abbas "could deliver the goods."
Referring to the possibility that such an agreement could be reached, Rivlin said: "I would rather Palestinians as citizens of this country over dividing the land up."
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