A Peace Opportunity?

Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel, thinks there may be an opportunity in the fallout of the flotilla raid in today's Time:

To test this proposition, Obama should adopt a three-pronged strategy. He should encourage the negotiation, by an Arab or European mediator, of a package deal between Hamas and Israel. The key ingredients are commitments by Hamas to prevent all violent attacks on Israel and stop smuggling weapons into Gaza. In return, Israel should lift its siege, allowing goods to flow in and out of Gaza with appropriate inspections. If Hamas breaks its commitments, which Israel has the ability to monitor, then the borders can be closed again — with Hamas rather than Israel bearing the blame. And in this context, a prisoner swap should be concluded so that Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israeli soldier, can be freed.

At the same time, Obama should try to shift attention to the West Bank, making sure that the "proximity talks" proceed. There is a quick fix available that would do much to improve Israel's image while strengthening the Palestinian leadership there. It involves the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the West Bank territories they reoccupied during the intifadeh. The Palestinian security forces have demonstrated that they can prevent terrorism and maintain order in these areas, including during this crisis. Extending that control to all the areas ceded to Palestinian rule in the Oslo agreements would enable the Palestinian Authority to claim it had "liberated" Palestinian territory, not through violence but through peace negotiations with Israel.

Finally, Obama should try to patch things up between Turkey and Israel by refocusing them on the effort to promote an Israeli-Syrian peace. With the previous Israeli government, Turkey had played a key role as mediator with Syria. This gave Erdogan, with his intense interest in promoting Turkey's regional role, a stake in maintaining a relationship of trust with Israel. Although hurt feelings on both sides are bound to complicate this effort, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to find a way to rebuild Israel's strategically important relationship with Turkey, and Obama needs to bring Syria into his peacemaking effort.

It may be worth a shot once tempers calm down. Even Indyk admits success is unlikely, though.

So...What's the Gaza Blockade For?

Over at the Atlantic, Megan McArdle points out:

Many of my commenters seem to think that the point of the Gaza blockade is simply to keep war materiel from reaching insurgents in Gaza.  That is not the reason for the Gaza blockade, though it may be one goal.  But the strategy is much farther reaching than that:  it is to topple Hamas by immiserating the people who elected them.  Check out some of the war materiel being blockaded:

She shows this image:

And she concludes:

You cannot understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if you are determined to believe that every single thing one of the two sides does is the brilliant and imminently necessary exigency of an existential conflict, the brilliance undone only by the perfidy of a biased media that refuses to tell the true story. People, especially large groups of them, are more complicated than that. And both sides in this conflict are attempting to play a long game. To my mind, at this point both of them are playing extraordinarily badly. But that's a blog post for a different day.

Yes, it's more complicated than often presented, and this is one of those policies I think in the long term is counterproductive for the Israelis. On the other hand, I think she's being a bit glib on playing down the existential threat to Israel.  One only needs to look at MEMRI to see what the Imans tell their followers about Israel, and what's on Palestinian TV to see Palestinian children indoctrinated to think of Jews as less than human.  Still, Israel needs to accept political reality, or as Jeffrey Goldberg, a pro-Israeli blogger states:

The problem with Gelb's argument is not moral, but practical: We all understand the reality that Israel will be judged more harshly than other nations -- it has always been so, though only recently has this been true on the Atlantic website. Israel is not big enough -- and the world's fourteen million Jews are not strong enough -- to reshape this particular reality. So we have to learn to live within the reality created by others. This doesn't mean that Israel must go and commit suicide, as much of the world (including the Turkish humanitarians) would like it to do. But it means -- and I repeat myself here -- that Israel should approach its problems with elegance and subtlety. 

His original reference is to the actions that Israel took in stopping the flotilla, but it applies to the Gaza blockade as well.

Update: The comments over at Megan's blog are well worth reading. One noteworthy one:

I choose the side that wasn't laughing and dancing in the streets on 911 (and then tried to lie about the fact, even threatening those who provided the proof).

A Potential Way Out of the Gaza Blockade?

Bruce Ridel over at the Brookings Institution is offering up a potential solution to the Gaza blockade:

Secretary Clinton called the situation in Gaza “unsustainable” this week. She is right, but U.S. policy is also unsustainable. We need to find a way to get humanitarian aid to Gaza while ensuring Hamas can not smuggle in more rockets to attack Israeli cities and that prevents al Qaeda and other extremists from smuggling in "volunteers" who want to wage jihad.

Fortunately there is precedent for an international regime to monitor shipping in the region. In the 1990s the United Nations created a special regime to inspect cargo going to Iraq, then under UN sanctions, through the Jordanian port of Aqaba. The U.N. hired Lloyds of London to provide inspectors who examined each cargo to ensure Iraq was not importing banned material, especially weapons or technology for weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi people got aid but Saddam could not get WMD.

A regime like that needs to be established urgently to defuse Gaza. NATO could help provide inspectors; it already has a counter terrorism naval presence in the Mediterranean called Operation Active Endeavour created immediately after 9/11. If Hamas refuses to accept such a regime, the onus for any suffering in Gaza would clearly be on it. If it does, then the world can start rebuilding Gaza. 

Israel will not likely agree to if believes the inspectors are bound to be incompetent or passive such as UN forces in Lebanon who could not stop Hezbollah from smuggling in rockets and arms.  However, if it's a force with a bit more credibility like NATO, with a military commander who will work with both Israeli and Hamas officials, it may be a way out of an increasingly untenable situation.

Don't be Surprised When US Challenges to Israel Prompt Others

Alan Dershowitz points out in the JPost that what Israel did in stopping the flotilla was in compliance with international law.  I tend to agree with him the actions weren't wise however, and the policy must be judged a failure. Israel is on the defensive on this in the propaganda war.

One wonders though, whether any of the administrations actions towards Israel encouraged this sort of situation.  Michael Goodwin has an op-ed in the NY Post this morning, alleging that the Obama administration's weakness has encouraged others to challenge Israel:

The president's appeasement policies helped to create the incident. Israel took the bait, but the trap was set in Washington.

fWeakness always begets aggression, and, like clockwork, Obama's repeated signals that he is weakening America's commitment to Israel are emboldening the Jewish state's enemies. From Syria to Iran to Lebanon, from Hezbollah to Hamas and the PLO, the wolves smell blood and are trying to gauge whether they can get close enough for the kill [emphasis added].

And whether the United States will stop them. That they even dare hope we won't reflects the danger of Obama's demented decisions.

While there's some hyperbole in Goodwin's thesis, there's also a grain of truth in it.  The Obama administration had a right to be angry with Netanyahu about the settlement announcement during VP Biden's visit, but the manner in which they handled it, with public recriminations and the frosty meeting between Obama and Netanyahu, was incredibly short-sited, reactionary, and detrimental to the peace process.

This is not to say that we must agree with all of Israel's actions, or we cannot constructively criticize how some of their actions in the long run, make it more difficult for them to live in peace.  But instead of leap-frogging the settlement issue and negotiating on final borders, the WH fixated on it, and used it to send a message through its shoddy treatment of Netanyahu during an official state visit. The message was received: it gave the Palestinians an excuse to refuse to come to the table, and led the Israelis to wonder whether the US really cared about Israeli security.  In the past, Israeli prime ministers have given concessions when they were confident they had the backing of the world's preeminent power.  But now that the world senses that US support and commitment to Israel is waning, can we really be surprised that other ambitious powers are throwing down the gauntlet in challenging Israel, and in the process, fanning the flames of conflict in a volatile region? Now another aid ship is dispatched to run the Gaza blockade. The WH should be using its often invoked diplomacy to restrain both sides, and this includes pressuring Turkey and other countries not to further provoke an already dangerous situation.

Another fallout from this is the Israelis are sensing the US is drifting from its commitment to Israel. Tellingly, the Mossad Chief Dagan stated yesterday in front of the Knesset that "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden." He also said that, "Bit by bit, Israel is becoming less of a strategic asset for America." This may embolden the hard-liners to argue that Israel must act unilaterally in its own interests, US preferences notwithstanding.

There are many in the foreign policy establishment that would much rather see the US throw Israel under the bus and forge some grand bargains with other regional powers, like Iran and Turkey, so the US can withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.  To this, I would caution whether it's really in US interests for the Israelis to feel under siege without any US support.  Not only may it encourage others to challenge Israel with violence and inflame passions further setting back the peace process, it would give ammunition to the hardliners in Netanyahu's cabinet that Israel must act alone in all matters regarding national security. That logic may extend itself to bombing Iranian nuclear sites, setting the whole region afire.

With Israel, the administration would have been better off pressuring or criticizing Israel in private.  Instead, it used the public criticism in the short term to curry favor with the Arab Muslim world. And we see what the results of that policy are--it's open season on the Jewish state while the US passively stands by.  It's not too late for the Obama administration to try and turn the temperature down in the region.  It seems to have learned that its past actions were counterproductive as it was quietly trying to mend relations with Israel.  The question is will it act quickly to prevent more dangerous confrontations, or will it leave Israel to fend for itself, which may result in, I fear, more violence in the region. This will only set back US foreign policy even further.

Israel: The Flotilla Crisis

AP:  Nine Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish aid flotilla bound for Gaza.  Bound sides are claiming the other started the violence.  A few quick thoughts:

• While I understand the Israeli logic that they couldn't allow the ships to reach Gaza because it would set a precedent for other runs and bolster Hamas, I can't help but think in the long run, they're going to lose the international PR battle on this. This can very well be a tipping point where international opinion, already against Israel, significantly hardens.  STRATFOR is pointing out this may cause a political crisis within the Israeli government, and will probably cause a break in Turkish-Israeli relations, which were already deteriorating for some time. Turkey is Israel's only ally in the region.
• This is a major assertion of a rising Turkish power in the region. They deliberately provoked Israel with the aid run. This also positions them as one of the leading voices for the Palestinians. Question: This aid flotilla was enroute to Israel since May 22nd. Were there any US concerns expressed to either Turkey or Israel on a potential confrontation? Or did the administration adopt a wait and see approach?
• The WH's initial response was designed to buy time to sort out the implications before committing themselves definitively. The WH and Israel have been quietly trying to mend relations after recent public spats over Israeli settlements in Jerusalem.  Netanyahu probably calculated this incident would not cause lasting damage to the US-Israeli relationship in the long run, although it may be rocky in the short term.  Once the WH national security staff sorts it out, the official response will be a pivotal on the direction of future US-Israeli relations under this administration, and potentially, on Israel's international standing.
• While this incident complicates the WH strategy for the region, I think this gives the administration some leverage over Netanyahu, and they may very well use it. Turkey is a major US ally in the region and NATO partner, and the administration will want Turkish cooperation on Iran. 
• Foreign Policy mag has a good round up on this:

It already has the makings of a huge international fracas that will make the Goldstone Report look like small potatoes by comparison. But to what end? Israelis on the right end of the political spectrum -- and that is most of them these days -- are convinced there is a "propaganda war" against their country, that most if not all of the criticism is unfair, and that the real issue is the radicalism of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which openly call for Israel's destruction. That's certainly the perspective of hard-line government officials like Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, who has already called the ships an "armada of hate and violence" and accused the activists of links to al Qaeda.

In other words, there's a huge unwillingness on the Israeli right to face reality -- that Israel is fast losing friends and allies in the world, and that this government in Jerusalem has only accelerated the shift. It's not hard to imagine boycott campaigns gaining momentum, damaging the Israeli economy and isolating the country diplomatically, especially in Europe.

The one thing that might extrictate Israel from this mess is a violent response from the Palestinian side -- which never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Stay tuned.

The Illusion of MidEast Peace

With the Obama administration contemplating a new peace plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a timely article by Aaron David Miller published in Foreign Policy titled, "The False Religion of MidEast Peace: Why I'm No Longer a Believer," questions the conventional wisdom on 1) the centrality of MidEast peace to solving of all America's interests in the region, and 2) America's ability to really solve the issue. Miller is an experienced State Dept hand who was a policy adviser on MidEast peace to 6 secretaries of state. He was a true believer in the vital importance of MidEast peace to American interests, and also faithfully believed in US efforts to shore up negotiations to produce a solution:

Today, I couldn't write those same memos or anything like them with a clear conscience or a straight face. Although many experts' beliefs haven't changed, the region has, and dramatically, becoming nastier and more complex. U.S. priorities and interests, too, have changed. The notion that there's a single or simple fix to protecting those interests, let alone that Arab-Israeli peace would, like some magic potion, bullet, or elixir, make it all better, is just flat wrong. In a broken, angry region with so many problems -- from stagnant, inequitable economies to extractive and authoritarian governments that abuse human rights and deny rule of law, to a popular culture mired in conspiracy and denial -- it stretches the bounds of credulity to the breaking point to argue that settling the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most critical issue, or that its resolution would somehow guarantee Middle East stability.

The unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict is still a big problem for America and its friends: It stokes a white-hot anger toward the United States, has already demonstrated the danger of confrontation and war (see Lebanon, 2006; Gaza, 2008), and confronts Israel with a demographic nightmare. But three other issues, at least, have emerged to compete for center stage, and they might prove far more telling about the fate of U.S. influence, power, and security than the ongoing story of what I've come to call the much-too-promised land.
First, there are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of Americans are in harm's way and are likely to be for some time to come. Add to the mix the dangerous situation in Pakistan, and you see volatility, threat, and consequences that go well beyond Palestine. Second, though U.S. foreign policy can't be held hostage to the war on terror (or whatever it's now called), the 9/11 attacks were a fundamental turning point for an America that had always felt secure within its borders. And finally there's Iran, whose nuclear aspirations are clearly a more urgent U.S. priority than Palestine. Should sanctions and/or diplomacy fail, the default position -- military action by Israel or even the United States -- can't be ruled out, with galactic consequences for the region and the world. In any event, it's hard to imagine Netanyahu making any big decisions on the peace process until there's much more clarity on what he and most Israelis regard as the existential threat of an Iran with a bomb.

As Obama surely reckoned, moving fast on Arab-Israeli peacemaking would help the United States deal with these issues. But that linkage wasn't compelling when Bush used it to suggest that victory in Iraq would make the Arab-Israeli conflict easier to resolve; it's not compelling now as an exit strategy from Iraq either, as if engaging in Arab-Israeli diplomacy will make the potential mess we could leave behind in Iraq easier for the Arabs to swallow. Nor can the Arab-Israeli issue be used effectively to mobilize Arabs against Iran, because the United States could never do enough diplomatically (or soon enough) to have it make much of a difference. Finally, linking the United States' willingness to help the Israelis with Iran to their willingness to make concessions on Jerusalem and borders isn't much of a policy either. If anything, it risks the United States losing its leverage with Israel on the Iranian issue and raising the odds that Israel would act alone. [my emphasis]

It's an excellent article that covers the complexity of MidEast peace, and America's ability to solve the equation. I remember the contempt the foreign policy establishment felt towards George W. Bush and his "cabal of neo-cons" for their belief that democracy could be imposed in Iraq. Occupation was a kinder phrase for US troops in Iraq; most called it American imperialism. While the situation to Iraq is not exactly analogous to the MidEast peace issue, I'm struck that the same elites seem to believe that somehow, the US can want peace more than the most affected parties, parties who view it through the lens of affecting their national existence, and audaciously, imposing such a "solution" on the 2 parties. Miller sums up why peace is much more elusive than ever, and if it can be achieved:

Looking ahead, that process looks much, much tougher -- and peace more and more elusive -- for three reasons.

First, Arab-Israeli peacemaking is politically risky and life-threatening. Consider the murders of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. At Camp David, I heard Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat say at least three times, "You Americans will not walk behind my coffin." Leaders take risks only when prospects of pain and gain compel them to do so. Today's Middle East leaders -- Israel's Netanyahu, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and Palestine's Mahmoud Abbas -- aren't suicidal. It was Netanyahu, after all, who once told me: "You live in Chevy Chase. Don't play with our future."

Second, big decisions require strong leaders -- think Jordan's King Hussein or Israel's Menachem Begin -- because the issues on the table cut to the core of their political and religious identity and physical survival. This requires leaders with the legitimacy, authority, and command of their politics to make a deal stick. But the current crop are more prisoners of their constituencies than masters of them: Netanyahu presides over a divided coalition and a country without consensus on what price Israel will pay for agreements with Palestinians and Syria; Abbas is part of a broken Palestinian national movement and shares control over Palestine's guns, authority, and legitimacy with Hamas. It's hard to see how either can marshal the will and authority to make big decisions.

Third, even with strong leaders, you still need a project that doesn't exceed the carrying capacity of either side. In the past, U.S. diplomacy succeeded because the post-1973-war disengagement agreements, a separate Egypt-Israel accord, and a three-day peace conference at Madrid aligned with each side's capabilities. Today, issues such as Jerusalem (as a capital of two states), borders (based on June 1967 lines), and refugees (rights, return, and compensation) present gigantic political and security challenges for Arabs and Israelis. One accord will be hard enough. The prospect of negotiating a comprehensive peace; concluding three agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Syria, and between Israel and Lebanon; dismantling settlements in the Golan Heights and West Bank; and withdrawing to borders based on June 1967 lines seems even more fantastical.

Bottom line: Negotiations can work, but both Arabs and Israelis (and American leaders) need to be willing and able to pay the price. And they are not.

Obama has stated that peace cannot be imposed by America, but the WaPo article describes the deal being linked to the Iranian question. It's hard to see how it's not designed to pressure Israel. Indeed, Abbas is reiterating his call for America to impose a solution. So what will Obama do if the proposal is scuttled by either party? He will have further reduced the little mystique of American power that is left, not to mention our leverage over negotiations as both sides will likely entrench into cynicism, further damaging the process.  Even if both sides move forward, the Iranians certainly do not want MidEast peace to succeed; they will use Hezbollah to stop any agreement like they've done in the past.  And they will hasten their track to secure a nuclear weapons capability to enable their hegemonic aspirations. That doesn't bode well in the long run.