Gershom Gorenberg in Haaretz: The war as warm-up act for Obama

[laststeamtrain]

The war as warm-up act for Obama
By Gershom Gorenberg

The diplomatic timing for the war looked lovely. The U.S. president who loved military action was still in power, though fading into the shadows. The new president, dynamic and popular, hadn't yet entered office. There was no one to interfere, to pressure us to stop.

We don't know if the Olmert-Livni-Barak triumvirate deliberately picked that window of opportunity. If so, it already looks like another of the war's mistakes - perhaps the only welcome miscalculation. For instead of preventing American involvement, their decision to go to war on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration may well force him to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian arena and push for a diplomatic solution.

In recent months, foreign-policy experts from Obama's camp have debated whether there's any point in a new peace initiative. Robert Malley, known as the most dovish veteran of Bill Clinton's peace team, has written - surprisingly - that such an effort is hopeless. In an article in the New York Review of Books (written with Hussein Agha), Malley argues that the weakness of Israel's leadership and the Palestinian political rift will prevent a two-state solution at present. Arguing the opposite, former ambassador Martin Indyk - who is likely to join the Obama administration - writes in Foreign Affairs of the "urgent need for a diplomatic effort." The Middle East can't be ignored, say Indyk and co-author Richard Haass. It will "force itself onto the U.S. president's agenda."

The Gaza War proves Indyk's thesis. After the years of neglect under Bush, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has blown up again, on Obama's doorstep. Grim photos appear in the media. Relations between Israel and Turkey, both American allies, are crumbling. While careful not to conduct foreign relations before the inauguration, Obama promised last week that his team would become "immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process." At her confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton spoke of the "tragic humanitarian costs" borne by Gazans and of the incoming administration's "determination to seek a peace agreement."

<snip>

While public support for Israel continues, blind support for hawkish Israeli policies can no longer be assumed, even among Jews. J Street, the new, dovish pro-Israel lobby, exceeded expectations in raising funds for congressional candidates. Jews are among the pundits calling for a more balanced American approach. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has written recently of feeling despondent and shamed by the war in Gaza. Matthew Yglesias, an influential young blogger, has called for public American pressure on Israel to freeze settlement. The disqualification of the Arab political parties is likely to increase the discomfort of liberal Jews. So are the prime minister's boasts of his ability to change the American vote in the Security Council, which seemingly confirm claims that Israel controls U.S. policy.

In such circumstances, Obama can reasonably hope to build political support for an assertive diplomatic initiative. Since outside pressure is necessary to disentangle Israel from the territories, this is a positive development - even if the triumvirate didn't think for a moment that it would be a consequence of the war's wonderful timing.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056270.html

[bemildred]

1. Kick.

I find a lot of this unconvincing, but the mention of Mr Indyk seems interesting in view of this recent post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=247211

[IndianaGreen]

2. Quoting Robert Malley and Hussein Agha

How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East

by: Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, The New York Review of Books
Thursday 15 January 2009 Issue


Almost from the outset, the administration clumsily intervened in Palestinian politics, helped rewrite the Palestinian Basic Law, proclaimed Arafat a pariah, anointed its own favorite substitute leaders, insisted on Palestinian internal reform as a precondition for peace, took positions on a final agreement in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that tilted the playing field, encouraged confrontation between the nationalist Fatah and Islamist Hamas, imposed sanctions on Syria, and discouraged the resumption of Israeli-Syrian talks. Throughout, the Bush administration misread local dynamics, ignored the toxicity of its embrace, overestimated the influence of money and military assistance, and neglected the impact of conviction, loyalty, and faith.

On the dubious premise that talking to an enemy is a reward, the administration cut itself off from, and left itself with little leverage over, the region's more dynamic actors, whether Islamist organizations, Syria, or Iran. It propped up local Palestinian and Lebanese allies, who mimic the West's language, depend upon the US for resources and support, yet lack an effective domestic base. In short, it helped them in ways that hurt. How much more the US could have achieved by doing much less.

Bush's sin was not disengagement, assuming disengagement is a sin at all. Judiciously deployed, actual disengagement - that is, taking a step back, forcing local parties to deal with one another, and demonstrating that the United States is neither excessively eager nor overly available - can be an effective, and often is an underused, tactic. Certainly, it is superior to a surprisingly common form of US engagement: the impulse to take a trip, roll out an initiative, or call a summit regardless of timing or consequence.

The past twelve months provide ample proof of the limitations of such practices. Bush's empty promise of a final agreement by the end of 2008 - like Condoleezza Rice's peripatetic schedule, hollow feel-good pronouncements, and repeated unproductive meetings with Palestinian and Israeli leaders at a time when, with politically frail leaderships on both sides, even the most admirable peace accord would have lacked all credibility - lent engagement a bad name. The flaw was not that Bush failed to engage. It was how he chose to do so.

<snip>

For all its positive qualities, the books argue, the Clinton approach was excessively undisciplined; it privileged process to the detriment of substance, and too often failed to hold parties accountable. Indyk argues that as Clinton's presidency came to a close, he projected his timetable on Israelis and Palestinians who lacked his sense of urgency. He assumed they were driven by the sort of American pragmatism for which they had little appetite. Kurtzer and Miller complain that the US kept potential Arab and European allies at arm's length and sought to resolve the conflict step by step rather than aim for a final resolution. They also regret the insularity of an American peace team whose insufficient balance and diversity led it to see things, according to Miller, "mainly from an Israeli perspective." Mostly, they fault the Clinton administration for lacking a coherent strategy that would have enabled it to promote its own ideas rather than be subject to the parties' will and whims.

http://www.truthout.org/010109B