by barry rubin
Doesn’t it all sound so familiar? A president in the last year of his office decides that the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian issue can and will be put in order just in time for him to leave the White House, as if these complex, dangerous issues can be resolved like the happy ending of a 30-minute television show.
To paraphrase the nursery rhyme about circling endlessly: Bush is merely taking us around the mulberry bush once more in an exact replay of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Eight years ago, in his last 12 months in office, Clinton also decided that the conflict must be resolved right away, before his second term ended. The result? A humiliating failure and a five-year bloody Palestinian war on Israel.
Bush, through no fault of his own, is in a far worse position to pursue this course than was his predecessor.
Let’s compare these two cycles and see what should have been learned already. Perhaps the next administration will figure things out better, though I doubt it.
In 2000, a seven-year peace process was due for completion. The Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank had been turned over to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat. The authority had been given billions of dollars and military equipment, becoming a virtual U.S. client.
Despite these efforts, there was anarchy in the Palestinian-ruled territory, constant incitement to violence against Israel on the official news media, no psychological or ideological preparation of Palestinians for peace by their leadership and a massive wasting of funds.
Afterward, some analysts would explain away the failure by saying it was a mistake to force Arafat to the negotiating table for a decision. At the time, the U.S., Israeli and European governments wanted diplomatic progress for interests of their own. The Palestinian leadership opted for war.
Bush’s new policy may be a big change for him but, after all, he is merely making the same analysis and offering the same terms as his predecessor. It was an understanding of what went wrong with Clinton’s thinking and his generous bid — in part taught them to by Clinton itself — that explains the Bush administration’s lower level of effort for most of its time in office.
For Arafat’s successors, in all but a single respect, things are worse. The one potential salvation for Arafat was that he had the power to make a deal if he wanted to do so. Of course, he did not. The Palestinian leader was restrained by his own character, ideology and fear of his people, whom he had trained toward extremism for decades.
The apparent improvement regarding Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is that he is more willing to make peace. Yet this is more than counterbalanced by his extraordinary weakness. Not only has Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, but Abbas does not have control over Fatah itself. If anything, Palestinian attitudes, where it counts in terms of public politics and not merely personal opinions, is even more extreme.
One can almost hear experts saying in a few years, “Of course it was a mistake to force Abbas into a position where he had to say ‘no’ instead of always saying ‘maybe.’ And that’s why he fell from power to be replaced by Hamas.”
But aren’t the Palestinians desperate for a solution, given all their suffering? Don’t they pine for a state? Won’t the refugees rejoice at returning from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to the new state of Palestine?
The answer, as it was in Clinton’s time, is no. The ideology of extremist nationalism and Islamism, the belief that total victory is possible, the miscomprehension of Israel and the suspicion of the West are all still in place.
Even if there were a Palestinian leader able to transcend all those pressures, he would still be restrained by knowing that making a deal might not only be personally fatal but surely would destroy his reputation and career.
Palestinian leaders don’t feel a need to run such risks. A far easier, successful policy is to take billions of Western aid dollars while doing nothing and blaming everything on Israeli intransigence and U.S. mistakes.
Why is there such a shocking gap between reality and policy? In part, there is ample ignorance and foolishness, but there are also solid reasons (though partly illusory ones) for the prevailing strategy. For U.S. policymakers, goals include trying to build an anti-Iran alliance, gain domestic support, make European allies happy and soothe Arabs and Muslims in the hope that this will reduce Islamism and anti-Americanism.
Some policymakers are suitably cynical. Others are true believers who really think that solving the conflict will make all the other regional problems go away and are simply unaware of why this issue is different from all other, at least non-Middle East, issues. The ultimate rationale is that we must try — it can’t hurt to try.
Of course nothing will happen. But the real question is whether anything is learned. Some will get wise; others won’t. They will find easy excuses: if only the seating had been arranged differently or the plan were worded differently or the United States had tried 5 percent harder.
What is most important, though, is that history always has the last laugh. In the end the intellectual supposes, the policymaker proposes, but reality has its way.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California