The Abandonment

[bemildred]

How the Bush Administration Left Israelis and Palestinians to Their Fate

This is the tragedy of America's situation now in the Promised Land: Never has the Arab-Israeli issue been more critical to our national interests and to our security, yet rarely have we been so uniquely ill-positioned to manage it -- let alone resolve it. In a post-9/11 era, the cause of Palestine drives recruits to al-Qaeda and helps generate lethal levels of anti-Americanism. But for almost seven years, the Bush administration has hung a "Closed for the Season" sign on serious Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent Middle East mission has shown that the administration is now finally open for Arab-Israeli business. But the Rice initiative is almost certainly way too little, way too late.

Watching Rice these days, I have to believe that she knows this too, despite her public optimism. Having worked for her six predecessors on Arab-Israeli negotiations, I think it's pretty clear that the odds against a dramatic breakthrough are long, the time for the Bush administration is short, and the gaps between Israelis and Palestinians are galactic. So Rice's belated efforts face terribly long odds -- both because the region has changed too much and because the United States has sat on the sidelines for too long.

As one of the planners of the Camp David summit in July 2000, I'm painfully aware that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's unwillingness to negotiate, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's illusions about ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the cheap and President Bill Clinton's well-intentioned but weak summit management doomed the last, best chance for a breakthrough. But if you think diplomacy doesn't work, try abandonment. Years of off-again, on-again Israeli-Palestinian confrontation and neglect from the Bush administration have reduced the chances of ending the conflict from slim to none.

Part of the problem is that the "software" of Israeli-Palestinian relations has changed: The confidence, trust and problem-solving spirit of the 1990s Oslo peace process have been replaced by unilateralism, fear, anger and a loss of faith in the power of negotiations to alter cruel realities on the ground. But the hardware of the conflict has also changed during the Bush hiatus. Palestinian suicide terrorism, rockets and kidnappings have combined with Israeli closures, targeted killings and settlement growth to make cooperation excruciatingly difficult. The emblem of this deterioration is Hamas, which has had the upper hand in Palestinian politics since winning elections in January 2006. The radical Islamic movement's entry into Palestinian government -- without abandoning terrorism -- has produced a semblance of unity in Palestinian politics, but it has also guaranteed continued strife with Israel. Palestinians are buying peace at home at the price of conflict next door.

WaPo

Good piece, though you could pick at some of it.