Thomas Friedman Pulls His Asbestos Undershorts Out of Storage

In simple terms, following the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, three positions emerged on what should happen in the Palestinian lands Israel captured during the war:

1. "Get Out Now" - the position taken by then-M.K. Uri Avnery, that Israel should resist the temptation to try to significantly adjust its borders and settle the territories, and end its occupation as quickly as possible, lest it be drawn into a long-term occupation from which it would become increasingly difficult to extract itself.

2. "We All Know What Will Happen" - the position taken by much of the world, that the length of the occupation was a distraction and that eventually the two sides would reach an agreement creating a Palestinian state on most or all of the occupied territories, with some amount of border adjustment and land swapping.

3. "Dig In" - the position taken by certain Israeli politicians and generals, that they should set up a context for annexation of great swaths of the occupied territories, and to make it politically difficult for future leaders to agree to any borders approximating the Green Line, or perhaps to any concession of land at all.

During the years leading up to the second Intifada with its associated rash of Palestinian suicide bombings, Thomas Friedman fell into camp #2. He had a tendency to lecture both sides about the outcome that he viewed as inevitable, while hewing to a form of centrism that both sides in the conflict seemed to view as insufficiently sensitive to their concerns. It was a big picture view, one that avoided the need to address the complexity of actually getting to a final resolution. Following the collapse of peace talks, and more so 9/11, it's not so much that Friedman fell into a different camp, so much as he backed off his prior tendency to lecture Israel.

Prior to his retreat from the issue, Friedman's suggestion that Israel was not offering enough, that trying to change facts on the ground was a fool's errand, that the two sides should put aside feelings and history and accept the invevitable, earned him the enmity of people who disagreed with him. Needless to say, as you move toward people who hold more extremist views the reaction to Friedman became correspondingly shrill and hostile. Over the interim, open hostility toward Friedman seemed to diminish, but his critics have long memories. With this reengagement of the conflict, it's time once again for the asbestos undershorts.

I was thus a bit surprised to see Friedman be this direct:

Israeli friends have been asking me whether a re-elected President Obama will take revenge on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the way he and Sheldon Adelson, his foolhardy financier, openly backed Mitt Romney. My answer to Israelis is this: You should be so lucky.

Ever since Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, there has been a sense that presidents have an obligation to try to mitigate or end what was once deemed the Middle East crisis, to help Israel maintain its democracy, borders and Jewish character while ending years, turning into decades, of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands. Friedman correctly states that the American public is demanding that the President focus on domestic concerns, as well as international conflicts that directly involve or threaten the U.S., and correctly states that in this context (as in pretty much any other) negotiations work best when the participants in a negotiation invite a mediator to help them polish off an agreement as opposed to when the mediator is asked to start negotiations by dragging the two sides to the table.

But I think Friedman misses some important components relating to why the issue has diminished in the minds of the U.S. public, and why pressing for negotiations is not a priority for the president. First and foremost, U.S. domestic concern about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was driven in large part by intensive news coverage. During the 1980's, it was not at all atypical for the evening news to sound like this: "Now news from the Middle East. A riot broke out in Ramallah when..." ar "a bomb exploded in a Jerusalem café...." Between Israel's security measures, changes in Palestinian leadership, and the significant number of other Middle East crises, conflicts and wars, that's no longer what Americans hear. Israel-Palestine has dropped considerably from the top spot of Middle East crises that the Americans want to resolve.¹

On the other side of the equation, a persistent effort to depict Muslims as irrational actors with whom you cannot negotiate, and who can't be trusted to follow a deal to which they agree, has eroded support for negotiations among factions that might otherwise press the President to become more involved. If, as certain Israeli leaders have argued, there's no one to talk to and no way to reach a meaningful agreement, why go there? Some raise similar arguments about Israel and leaders like Netanyahu - if there's no reason to believe that Netanyahu has the will or that he could get the authority to carry out an agreement involving the evacuation of Israeli settlements, why pretend that there can be a real negotiation - the gulf between what he can offer and what a Palestinian leader might accept may be too broad to bridge. Also, while Clinton might have been persuaded to provide funds to help Israel compensate Israeli settlers who had to leave their homes as part of a final deal, the present economic situation makes it highly unlikely that Congress would presently provide such a subsidy.

The conflict has reached a point at which there's little upside for a President in seriously engaging settlement. George W. Bush created a model of non-serious engagement, window dressing, and President Obama was not helped by his early effort to restart negotiations. If I were Obama and Netanyahu proposed that I attempt to mediate the conflict, and invitation I doubt Netanyahu is at all inclined to offer, and Abbas was willing to participate, my response would be simple. "No problem. Send me your maps of your proposed final borders and we'll start from there." Negotiations with no maps? What do they say about trying the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result?
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1. David Ignatius wrote a recent column outlining what he sees as the President's foreign policy priorities - China, Iran, Afghanistan, then "the Middle East" which he subdivides into "the metastasizing Syrian civil war, solidifying democracy in Egypt and rehabilitating a broken Israeli-Palestinian peace process". I'll grant that Afghanistan is in South Asia, albeit bordering the Middle East, but last I checked Iran was part of the Middle East. By Ignatius's measure, that would make Israel... a distant number four on the list of Middle East priorities, and number six on his global list?

Ignatius suggests that in the Israel-Palestinian conflict Obama should engage in "a round of secret contacts to build up the local players who can be America’s partners for peace". Putting aside for the moment that if Ignatius knew about them, they wouldn't be secret, is he serious? These secret contacts would presumably be on the Palestinian side, so... is he talking about Hamas? Is Ignatius offering a plan or a fantasy?

Romney on the Middle East

Mitt Romney penned an editorial for he Wall Street Journal, criticizing the President's Middle East policy and pretending to offer an alternative.

OK, so what do we have here? America needs to support our partners. We need to restore our credibility with Iran, by making them believe that we really, really don't want them to have nuclear weapons. We need to place no daylight between ourselves and Israel. And we need to encourage liberty and opportunity. That line about "the dignity of work" is a little odd—maybe the problem they have in the Middle East is too many 47 percenters? So where's the new policy again?

But in the next paragraph, he says he's going to give us "a very different set of policies." So here it comes, right? The answer is ... "American strength in all its dimensions." Ah yes. Strength. Resolve. If you ask "How, precisely, will you achieve these goals?" then you're obviously a weakling who can't grasp the full majesty of Mitt Romney's chin, which when jutted in the direction of our adversaries will make them quake before us and submit to our demands.

Ed Kilgore provides a more detailed analysis.

Put aside for a moment the arguments about Iran’s ultimate intentions and its alleged historically unique indifference to nuclear deterrence, or about the actual balance of military power in the Middle East. Forget if you can the calamitous consequences, not only to regional peace and stability, but to the U.S. and global economies, of war with Iran.

Think about this: Mitt Romney is running for president on a platform of indistinguishable and conjoined exceptionalism for the U.S. and Israel. And because Israel faces a vastly greater military threat, this means America would abandon its own independence of action and consign its fate to Bibi Netanyahu, a man whose views on peace and security are highly controversial in Israel itself.

The problem is not so much that Romney wants to eliminate daylight between the U.S. and Israel - it's that he cannot actually articulate a policy reason to do so, and if he knows anything of the region (and I suspect he knows very little) he has to understand that a U.S. embrace of Netanyahu's policies and of its stance on Iran is not going to help us work with the region's nascent democracies or endear us to the man on the street.

Good gravy, does Romney believe this in relation to the Middle East?

The first step is to understand how we got here. Since World War II, America has been the leader of the Free World. We're unique in having earned that role not through conquest but through promoting human rights, free markets and the rule of law. We ally ourselves with like-minded countries, expand prosperity through trade and keep the peace by maintaining a military second to none.

Which of our close relationships in the Middle East does Romney believe demonstrates our promotion of human rights, free markets and the rule of law? With the exception of Israel, where our lack of support for Palestinian rights has done anything but endear us to the rest of the Middle East, the best we can point to is Egypt, with the successive dictatorships of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak and a mediocre human rights record, and the monarchy in Jordan. We used to have the Shah of Iran, for what that's worth - was he one of the "like-minded" leaders Romney has in mind. We have the monarchs of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We really don't want to spend much time talking about Iran, Syria, Lebanon.... So, no, we don't have a good track record in the Middle East, we're not viewed by the Arab and Persian populations of the Middle East as champions of human rights, and our notions of governance and the rule of law remain alien to the day-to-day lives of most of the region's populations.

Given that Romney feigns umbrage (from Rush Limgaugh's mouth to Romney's ear) about the President's off-the-cuff statement that Israel is "one of our closest allies" in the region, I would be interested to hear Romney explain our alliances with key nations in the region, most specifically how our alliance with Israel compares to our treaty-based alliance with Turkey. I would also like to hear him explain how he would have avoided the mistakes of the Bush era and created a government in Iraq that he would comfortably include as "one of our best allies in the region", or how he would have kept a post-dictatorship Egypt within that category.

If Romney truly believes that the path to good relations with the nations of the Middle East lies in more than bellicosity toward Iran, involves supporting "governments and individuals who share our values" and requires asserting influence through "our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values", I would be interested to hear him explain in concrete terms how his proposed actions won't constitute a setback for our Middle East efforts, what governments other than Israel's he believes to share our values, and the concrete steps he plans to take to improve our standing and increase our influence with the people and governments of the region.

Obviously I won't be holding my breath.

Come On, Mr. Ignatius, You're Not Puzzled

David Ignatius claims to be puzzled by the demands Binyamin Netanyahu is making of the Obama Administration:

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his almost daily demands that the United States announce its “red line” for going to war with Iran, the question puzzling the White House is what he wants beyond what President Obama has already stated.

Ignatius points out that President Obama has made clear statements about Iran, and has described "a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." He describes a potential response, previously articulated by others, that Israel itself has not articulated a clear "red line" beyond which it will attack Iran. He questions the logic behind Netanyahu's proposed "red line", a point at which Iran would have the capacity to "produce enough highly enriched fuel for a bomb". He points out that the measure of capacity is subjective and that the U.S. could continue to act even after that capacity was arguably reached.

Is he deliberately missing the point?

Netanyahu does not define for his own nation the "red line" he asks of the United States, and has deliberately chosen a measure that turns on estimates and assumptions, because he is attempting to corner the U.S. - to get the U.S. government to tie itself to a threshold measure that he can declare Iran to have crossed, and then call upon the U.S. to live up to its commitment by engaging in what would be a large-scale, costly adventure in Iran, and also commit itself to cleaning up the mess that is likely to result.

Right now it appears that pretty much every military and intelligence leader in Israel believes that an attack on Iran would be a terrible idea, likely to cause Iran to redouble its nuclear efforts while consolidating the current regime's power, and potentially opening up a proxy war through Lebanon and putting Israelis at risk of attack throughout the world. Netanyahu's response is described as condescending to them that they're worried about international reactions and the reports of human rights commissions, and are choosing to put Israel at risk instead of getting behind an attack.

The only person who is routinely described as firmly in Netanyahu's corner is Ehud Barak, and that firmness may be wavering. Meanwhile Netanyahu's actions are raising concerns about the extent to which a nation as dependent on the U.S. as Israel should be attempting to meddle in and influence the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.

Ignatius states what should be obvious:

Netanyahu should understand that no country can allow another to impose the conditions under which it will go to war. The Israeli leader wants a tripwire that would trigger military action. But presidents don’t turn over that power of war and peace, even to their best friends. Indeed, it’s precisely because Obama means what he says about going to war that he wants maximum flexibility in how and when he takes action.

But there are two balls in play - President Obama and Mitt Romney. Ignatius is looking at President Obama and asking, "How could Netanyahu expect his stunts to persuade the President of anything." But what if Netanyahu is doubling down on the notion that Mitt Romney will win the election? If you follow Romney's dangerously incompetent foreign policy rhetoric, you'll find lots of support for the idea that he'll engage in military adventurism. And given Romney's desire to bash Obama on foreign policy issues, no matter what the facts or circumstances, Netanyahu can reasonably be assumed to be inviting Romney to declare the "red line" that, as Ignatius has said, no responsible President would accept? Mitt Romney, as usual, is trying to have it every possible way, but it's reasonable to infer that Netanyahu's hope is that the campaign now sticks with Dan Senor's position, or edges even closer to the line proposed by Netanyahu.

Frankly, Netanyahu seems to accept that his stunts, demands, refusal to cooperate with peace initiatives and interference in the election have destroyed any chance he has of having a constructive working relationship with President Obama - a type of relationship that, to Netanyahu, would appear to involve having the President doing everything he wants, when he wants it. So what's another cup of poison or two between friends?

If Obama is reelected, the present situation will continue - a cool relationship, but with the U.S. refraining from punishing Israel for the intransigence of its Prime Minister. If not, he may have a pre-election commitment from Romney that he can use, along with his latest "intelligence estimates", to call upon the U.S. to "keep its word" and attack Iran. It's not a winning strategy if Obama is reelected, but either way he can't lose.

Ignatius suggests, "Obama should help the Israeli leader to climb down from his unwise rhetoric." The problem is, from Netanyahu's perspective the rhetoric represents sound strategy. He's already been warned by many of his fellow countrymen, political, military and intelligence, that his strategy is unsound, and that it's unwise to antagonize the President. He's rejected all of that advice, so what possesses Ignatius to believe he'll be receptive to correction by Obama?

What a Brilliant Idea, Tom

Once again, Thomas Friedman has advice for the Palestinians on how to achieve peace with Israel. Surprisingly it does not involve finding a Palestinian Gandhi (although perhaps he thinks of Marwan Barghouti as a Palestinian Mandela).¹

I can certainly see the efficacy of nonviolent resistance by Palestinians to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank — on one condition: They accompany any boycotts, sit-ins or hunger strikes with a detailed map of the final two-state settlement they are seeking. Just calling for “an end to occupation” won’t cut it.

Actually, were he an honest man, Friedman would admit that he cannot see the efficacy in boycotts, sit-ins or hunger strikes. The media neither cares about nor covers them, freeing people like Friedman to ignore the long history of Palestinian peaceful protest and its failure to bring about results. I believe it was Moshe Dayan, many years ago, who commented on the phenomenon that, as of about twenty years ago, Israel's history was of refusing to make concessions during periods of calm then making concessions during periods of uprising, and expressing that it was no surprise that the Palestinian take-away was that only uprising would bring about concessions. The Israeli government under the likes of Ariel Sharon and Netanayahu internalized that message, and responded by refusing to make concessions under any circumstances. So here we are.

Friedman is talking about more than peaceful protest. He describes, "Unabated, disruptive Palestinian civil disobedience in the West Bank". What he fails to explain is how "unabated, disruptive Palestinian civil disobedience in the West Bank" would do anything but make the lives of ordinary Palestinians more difficult, let alone how it would inspire any action by Israel or the rest of the world. Guess what? It would not.

But that map thing, an interesting idea. Which isn't to say that Friedman is strong on the details:

Palestinians need to accompany every boycott, hunger strike or rock they throw at Israel with a map delineating how, for peace, they would accept getting back 95 percent of the West Bank and all Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and would swap the other 5 percent for land inside pre-1967 Israel.

The five percent figure is not arbitrary. It's about the minimum amount of Land that Israel would have to cede back to the Palestinians in order to minimize the disruption to the massive population of Israeli "settlers" it has moved onto Palestinian lands. The five percent issue is more complicated than Friedman lets on, given that settlements were placed for strategic purposes and quickly transform a proposed map from having a neat, sensible border to an absurdity, with fingers of land crisscrossing the proposed Palestinian state in order to keep settlements deep within the occupied territories and a network of access roads.

If a Palestinian map simply showed a long line (for a road) with a big circle around Tel Aviv, Friedman would no doubt take strong issue with the notion that the Palestinians were offering a fair trade. But although quick to suggest that the Palestinians should give up the 5% of their own land most desirable to settlers "in exchange for" land inside Israel's present borders, there will be difficulty establishing the terms of a land swap that is equivalent. Also, even offering such a map legitimizes the presence of Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land, the notion that Israel should not have to do anything to remove or reduce those settlements, and that whatever concessions the Palestinians make should be a starting point for the amount of land expropriated from the occupied territories for the continued enjoyment of settlers.

Friedman links to a proposal from the Washington Institute that includes a proposed map. The map highlights both how, even in a conservative land swap plan, settlements will carve up the proposed Palestinian state. Is Friedman claiming that all of the historic claims about Israel's need for defensible borders is propagandistic hogwash? Because how in the world would you protect those borders from, say, rocket attack? And yes, every time peace comes close to breaking out, anti-peace groups on both sides engage in provocations to try to scuttle the peace process, so something like that will happen. Does Friedman imagine that the final map will include huge "no go" areas for Palestinians in their own state, with similarly huge areas that will be under continued Israeli military occupation? The "Geneva Initiative" maps present similar issues.

The map proposals highlight the lack of bargaining power by Palestinians. The Palestinian side is asked to make enormous concessions as part of the settlement because it has no choice. The difficulty in presenting a map capitulating to the perpetual presence of settlements is that it destroys at the outset the credibility of the Palestinian negotiating team with the Palestinian people. They're giving up 5% of the occupied territories before negotiations even begin, while as Friedman knows the Palestinian people view themselves as having already surrendered 78% of their land in exchange for what they believed would be their own state on the remaining 22%. Even if the Palestinian people understand how negotiations will end they have to start with the Green Line.

But let's say the Palestinians come up with a map that they believe they can sell to the Palestinian people, and approach the Israeli government with the proposal that they agree on final borders for both a Palestinian and Israeli state. The first thing they might do is say, "Let's compare our map to yours." Surely, after all, if it's reasonable to expect the Palestinians to produce a map "to reassure" the Israelis, turnabout is fair play. Why are there no official Israeli maps proposing the settlement of land issues with the Palestinians? Why isn't Friedman calling on the Israeli government to produce a map? As Friedman knows, while Netanyahu has indicated that he will negotiate over borders if and when negotiations ever resume, he has long taken the position that discussion of borders be pushed to the end of negotiations. There are no official Israeli "starting point" maps, and those that have been offered by Israel in association with past negotiations have not been made public.

There's something else to consider here, which is that the problem of the settlements - the issue that Friedman sees as so central to the present conflict that it must be addressed up front with an extraordinary concession by the Palestinians - is entirely of Israel's creation. Why does Friedman overlook that history, four decades of explicit warnings about how the settlements were complicating the peace process, and the fact that the strongest proponents of settlement understood that and forged ahead with the intent of complicating or preventing the eventual creation of a Palestinian state?

This is not by any stretch of the imagination a one-sided conflict, but it is and always has been an asymmetric conflict. Fairness is something of a sideshow. It's reasonable to propose that the Palestinians will have to make disproportionate concessions in order to achieve a final resolution of the conflict, as they have next to no bargaining power and nobody to champion their cause. The eventual settlement will include a ridiculous border that keeps the bulk of the settlements inside of Israel. But I find it hard to believe that anybody, save perhaps Friedman himself, would view Friedman's proposal as serious: "Concede, up front 95% of what the other side demands, then give up the rest (or more) in negotiations."

Here's an idea - Israel and the Palestinians could agree to enter into a binding arbitration under which each side would submit a proposed map of the final borders of an Israeli and Palestinian state. A panel of arbitrators would then accept one or the other as a binding, final resolution of the border issue. We could even include the two maps Friedman mentions in his column as possible alternative choices, to try to diminish any chance of the panel's having to pick the lesser of two evils. Does Friedman believe that Netanyahu would agree to participate?
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1. Friedman quotes a Ha'aretz article,

Barghouti, as Haaretz noted, “is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced, and he can lead his people to an agreement. ... If Israel had wanted an agreement with the Palestinians it would have released him from prison by now.”

If Friedman disagrees, why did he present that quote? But if he agrees, what's the purpose of arguing that the Palestinians should capitulate in order to try to get a peace deal from a government that does not want peace?

Supporting Democracy Everywhere (Else) in the Middle East

Back in the 1980's, before he developed his "suck on this" attitude toward the Muslim world (an attitude I hope he now recognizes as misguided), I recall conversations in which Thomas Friedman's tepid endorsements of Palestinian rights caused people on the opposite side of the debate to speak his name with contempt, even to the point of labeling him a self-hating Jew. That reaction seemed, and seems, pretty much insane. Friedman is an ardent and consistent supporter of Israel, and his occasional criticism is about strengthening that state, not weakening it. A more fair criticism would be that, when confronted by those who will never agree to peace, he offers what amounts to a, "Just kidding" rather than standing behind his prior sentiments.

Friedman's most recent two columns remind me of why his writings on the Middle East are so frustrating. When Friedman writes,

I am awed by the bravery of the Syrian and Egyptian youths trying to throw off the tyranny of the Assad family and the Egyptian military. The fact that they go into the streets — knowing they face security forces who will not hesitate to gun them down — speaks of the deep longing of young Arabs to be free of the regimes that have so long choked their voices and prevented them from realizing their full potential.

is it not fair to note that he never voiced similar "awe" at the bravery of Palestinian teenagers who took to the streets to protest occupation, even at the risk of being injured or killed? It's not difficult to find even strong Israeli partisans who question the tactics of Israel during the first Intifada, and question whether the harsh treatment of teenagers during that period caused serious blowback, contributing to increased militancy and the much more violent tactics of the second Intifada. Like most in the media, Friedman can't seem to find space in his columns to cover non-violent protest in the occupied territories, unless it's against Palestinian authorities.

My position has long been that the best thing for the Palestinian people and the region would have been for Israel to change its tactics, supporting the development of real democracy during the period when the Palestinians had secular, western-focused leaders. That is, after all, what Israel did with great success within its borders - about 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab. There is no reason to believe that such an effort would not have succeeded in the occupied territories and, given Friedman's long-stated desire for the creation of a model democracy within the Middle East, it would seem to have been a natural argument for him to make. Yet even as he presently writes,

Outsiders often underestimate just how much these Arab youths are determined to limit the powers of their militaries as a necessary step for achieving true democracy. What you see in Egypt today are young people from across the political spectrum and classes who are willing to join forces, break ranks with their own parties and return to Tahrir Square to press for real freedom. This is a generational rupture. It is the old versus the young. It is the insiders (the adults) versus the outsiders (the youth). It is the privileged old guard versus the disadvantaged young guard.

He can't bring himself to include Palestinians youth in his editorial or to speak of (or distinguish) what they want. His only point of consistency is his resort to the need of a "magic man" to solve the problems of any given group, nation, or industry:

Can they each make it without one? Only if they develop their own Nelson Mandelas — unique civic leaders or coalitions who can honor the past, and contain its volcanic urges, but not let it bury the future.

Mandela spent a quarter-century in prison for refusing to renounce violent resistance to the Apartheid regime. Had he been released from prison before Apartheid was on the wane, he likely would have continued to support violent resistance as opposed to engaging in the political process associated with the end of Apartheid and the enfranchisement of all South Africans. But Friedman has never been one to bog himself down with mundane details - as I've previously pointed out, the Mandela he is talking about is the one played by Morgan Friedman in Invictus. His Gandhi is likely the one played by Ben Kingsley.

In his latest column, Friedman hints at a commonality:

Israel’s fear of Islamists taking power all around it cannot be dismissed. But it is such a live possibility precisely because of the last 50 years of Arab dictatorship, in which only Islamists were allowed to organize in mosques while no independent, secular, democratic parties were allowed to develop in the political arena. This has given Muslim parties an early leg up. Arab dictators were convenient for Israel and the Islamists — but deadly for Arab development and education. Now that the lid has come off, the transition will be rocky. But, it was inevitable, and the new politics is just beginning: Islamists will now have to compete with legitimate secular parties.

Both Egypt and Israel made a similar mistake when they saw the growth of secular opposition to their tactics. Egypt fostered the fundamentalist groups that turned into the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel exiled the PLO while funding and supporting Hamas. In a sense these tactics worked - they did weaken secular movements and move the affected regions away from democracy. But by the time it was apparent that the fundamentalist movements were a far greater danger than their secular predecessors, it was too late to turn back the tide. Even in bringing back the PLO as an armed governing body, between Hamas's foothold, the PLO's corruption and the continued occupation, it was too late to turn back the clock on Hamas. As much as Friedman hopes for secular democracy to prevail, without mentioning elections he notes "The two weakest states on its border — Gaza and Lebanon — are controlled by Hamas and Hezbollah."

Friedman offers a great deal of seemingly willful self-deception and half-truth in relation to Benjamin Netanyahu, noting that Netanyahu favors stonewalling on the peace process in the wake of the "Arab Spring", but failing to note that Netanyahu has been a staunch opponent of the peace process throughout his political career, and is in fact far better known for his efforts to impede the peace process or roll back progress.

Friedman expresses, "I understand Israel not ceding territory in this uncertain period", but fails to acknowledge that there has never been a period in which Netanyahu has been willing to strike a deal that would return occupied lands to the Palestinian people, and as always he is presently expanding the size, scope and population of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Friedman also fails to clarify that when he speaks of "ceding territory" he in fact is speaking of annexing territory - the 1967 Green Line border is well documented. The present dispute is not over whether Israel would cede so much as an inch of its own land - nobody has argued that it would do so except in the context of a voluntary land swap - but is instead how much Palestinian land Israel will demand be ceded to it as part of any peace deal.

Friedman pretends he doesn't understand what is happening,

What I can’t understand is doing nothing. Israel has an Arab awakening in its own backyard in the person of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the Palestinian Authority. He’s been the most radical Arab leader of all. He is the first Palestinian leader to say: judge me on my performance in improving my peoples’ lives, not on my rhetoric. His focus has been on building institutions — including what Israelis admit is a security force that has helped to keep Israel peaceful — so Palestinians will be ready for a two-state solution. Instead of rewarding him, Israel has been withholding $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues that Fayyad needs — in punishment for the Palestinians pressing for a state at the U.N. — to pay the security forces that help to protect Israel. That is crazy.

Friedman knows very well what is going on. Netanyahu, and those in government who are further to his right, are hoping that Fayyad fails in his efforts and that they can use the failure as their next excuse for why it's not possible to work toward a final resolution that they do not want. They want peace, if we define that as a Palestinian population that is kept out of sight and out of mind, controlled such that it can inflict a minimum of damage outside of its confines. But a final agreement that formalizes a boarder and creates a Palestinian state? There has never been a whit of evidence that Netanyahu wants such an outcome, and surely Friedman is aware of the far more radical views of Avigdor Lieberman and his followers.

Israel’s best defense is to strengthen Fayyadism — including giving Palestinian security services more areas of responsibility to increase their legitimacy and make clear that they are not the permanent custodians of Israel’s occupation. This would not only help stabilize Israel’s own backyard — and prevent another uprising that would spread like wildfire to the Arab world without the old dictators to hold it back — but would lay the foundation for a two-state solution and for better relations with the Arab peoples.

I agree completely. But unlike Friedman, I won't be making excuses for Netanyahu when it doesn't happen.

Some Decent Advice from Thomas Friedman

To President Obama:

Today, I believe President Obama should put his own peace plan on the table, bridging the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and demand that the two sides negotiate on it without any preconditions. It is vital for Israel’s future — at a time when there is already a global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state — that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible. There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way.

Or perhaps better,¹ he should instruct Netanyahu to make a public proposal including a map and final borders by a specified date, or the U.S. will release its proposal. Perhaps indicating the reported Taba or Olmert maps as a possible starting point for his own plan. With the neocons embracing self-determination, a concept that most of them have never seemed to believe applies to Palestinians, let's put them to the test. And let's score one for the U.S. in the "Honest broker, concerned about freedoms around the world" column.

Update: Subtract Netanyahu's intransigence and the two sides may be a lot closer to a resolution than some would have us believe.
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1. One issue with the Obama Administration's creating a map would be that they would be staking out the maximum borders for a Palestinian state. The Palestinians lack any real bargaining power and, having been told by the "honest broker" that "this is fair," any shift they could negotiate would likely be de minimis and, more likely, they would end up having to cede ground.

If You're Going to Echo False Statements

At least have the courage to sign your name, a'la Thomas Friedman. Too much to expect from Fred Hiatt and his crew?

Another craven element of the editorial is suggesting that President Obama has engaged in an "embarrassing retreat in Middle East diplomacy". There is no evidence whatsoever that President Obama has retreated from his efforts to achieve a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The evidence, actually, suggests the opposite.

As for who came out of this looking less than impressive, that would be Binyamin "I was offered the world and I asked for a pony - and I got it, so I asked for a gazillion dollars and some new jets - and I got it, so I asked for even more, and I got it, so I walked away" Netanyahu. Had Netanyahu accepted President Obama's exceptionally generous package of incentives, he would have had to come to the bargaining table with a map in hand, so he instead said "no" and resumed construction of settlements on Palestinian land. As it stands, Obama looks like an adult, Abbas looks like an adult (which, perhaps, explains the smear campaign), and Netanyahu looks like... himself. And he's placed Israel in the position of looking like the obstructionist party that won't engage in good faith negotiations for peace. Some leadership....

Frankly, I was never impressed by assurances that Netanayahu had changed his spots. His recent actions simply confirm that he has not. Now, should President Obama desire, he is free to come up with a package acceptable to the U.S., Europe and the rest of the Middle East, present it to Netanyahu (or his successor) and again put the onus on Netanyahu to demonstrate that he's interested in resolving the conflict.

I'm Not Expecting a Retraction, But....

Thomas Friedman has been given the most gentle of rebukes in Ha'aretz for making what he really had to know was an inaccurate claim,

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, what are you thinking? Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, offered you a great two-state deal, including East Jerusalem — and you let it fritter away.

Specifically,

Contrary to the claim made by a New York Times commentator that Abbas rejected Ehud Olmert's generous proposal, the woman who was the foreign minister in his government has said on a number of occasions that the Palestinians did not reject this proposal and that it is sitting on the shelf waiting for an Israeli partner.

Also, should I be less skeptical than I am that Olmert could have pushed his plan through the Knesset, even if he weren't beset by corruption scandals and the military assault on Gaza had not occurred?

Thomas Friedman's No-Win Approach to Israel-Palestine

It's not just the Israelis and Palestinians who can't win by listening to Thomas Friedman, the response to his pontifications seems to be that advocates on both sides - those who cheer and jeer from the sidelines - are scornful. Before 9/11, Friedman was frequently criticized by anti-peace zealots because he was pretty consistent in suggesting that both sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict played a role in its perpetuation. It was never enough that his sympathies were unambiguously with Israel, or that his principal motive in arguing for the two state solution that "everybody knows" is the inevitable outcome of the conflict was that it would be in Israel's best interest. If I recall correctly, he even made the villains list on the reproachable "Masada 2000" website.

Following 9/11 Friedman appeared happy to take a break from advocating for a negotiated end to the conflict, perhaps as a part of an embrace of "suck on this", "impose democracy at gunpoint" approach to Middle Eastern politics. But after a decade of seeing how well that has turned out, Friedman has increasingly returned his focus to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Within that context, Friedman frequently makes observations that are astonishingly naive, divorced from reality. It is difficult to imagine how somebody with even a passing knowledge of the region and conflict would make a statement like,

The trust deficit is exacerbated by the fact that after Israel quit the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinians, instead of building Singapore there, built Somalia and focused not on how to make microchips, but on how to make rockets to hit Israel.

The statement is foolish on a number of levels. First, Israel did not "quit" Gaza, but continued to impose a full blockade on its borders and ports, control its airspace, control travel in and out, block trade, and limit its access to its own tax revenues, as well as much of its power and already-inadequate water supply. Beyond that, even in the best of times it would be absurdly difficult to turn one of the most densely populated, poor, uneducated territories in the world into a "Singapore". It's not even remotely possible in a territory that has had its infrastructure repeatedly bombed into oblivion and is blocked from even obtaining the materials necessary to effect repairs, even if we pretend that outside investors would pour billions into a territory that could again be militarily razed at any time. There's the practical reality that even if it were possible to create a Singapore out of abject poverty in the space of a few years, the world seems to have all of the Singapores it needs - for example, why isn't New Dehli a "Singapore"? Why isn't Detroit? Why isn't Tel Aviv? (And how's Dubai doing these days?) I suspect, though, that in making this type of statement Friedman has no intention of addressing the realities, but simply wants to send his readers the message that "Any misery suffered by the Palestinians is their own fault." (But it earns him no love from those who most strongly endorse that sentiment.)

In his most recent effort to present a (not-so-balanced) "balanced take", Friedman opens by invoking one of my pet peeves - treating Israel as a child. His attitude is far from new - he's long argued the U.S. must intervene and do... something to make the parties reach a peace deal. But he's much more explicit this time around:

And here’s another stubborn fact: Israel today really is behaving like a spoiled child.

Needless to say, that comment has raised the hackles of any number of pro-Israel partisans. But if you believe as I do, that Israel is not a child and is fully capable of taking ownership of its own interests and future, it moves the conflict away from that reality and back into Friedman's narrative of "only the United States can fix this". Worse, at a time when the Obama Administration is working very hard to convince the Palestinians that it is approaching peace negotiations in good faith, Friedman is implicitly depicting the U.S. as Israel's doting parent, unable to ever say "no". Even if you believe that to be true, there are less inflammatory ways to raise the question of partisanship. Moreover, as appears to be the case with Thomas Friedman, if you want the United States to continue to favor Israel it's a poor way to characterize the relationship.

First — I know this is a crazy, radical idea — when America asks Israel to do something that in no way touches on its vital security but would actually enhance it, there is only one right answer: “Yes.” It is a measure of how spoiled Israel has become that after billions and billions of dollars in U.S. aid and 300,000 settlers already ensconced in the West Bank, Israel feels no compunction about spurning an American request for a longer settlement freeze — the only purpose of which is to help the United States help Israel reach a secure peace with the Palestinians.

Sure, a parent who supported a child generously through high school, paid his tuition, room and board for college, bought him a car, and gives him a generous allowance should be able to say, "You're a grown-up now, please move out of our basement." But if that's how Friedman perceives the existing dynamic, he should already know that telling a "spoiled child" in that position how much he "owes" his parents will do nothing to resolve the situation. Perhaps Friedman should have found a bit of space in his column to lecture Congress for its refusal to even consider limiting "Junior's" allowance.

But again, I think Friedman is missing the boat. The periodic peace negotiations that occur between the sides suggest that a peace deal could be reached, and that its foundation could be reached quickly. It appears that Netanyahu agreed to a settlement freeze with the goal not of working toward peace, but of getting to engage in unrestricted expansion in every single Israeli settlement. You don't have to spend much time struggling over the details of Netanyahu's biography to recognize that he has no appreciable interest in achieving a peace deal. The biggest difference between the leaders who have been willing to work for peace and those who have not has been their party affiliation.

Friedman offers an unhelpful comment about Mahmoud Abbas, a man generally credited with making incredible strides toward establishing a peace-oriented, functional government for the West Bank,

Second, I have no idea whether the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has the will and the guts to make peace with Israel.

Dare I ask, who cares what Friedman thinks? If Abbas signs onto a peace deal and is unable to deliver, the region will deal with that unfortunate outcome. But really, how many international conflicts are resolved due to the deep, abiding trust between the leaders who broker the peace deal?

Friedman then turns to something pretty close to fiction:

In fact, when you go back and look at what Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu’s predecessor, offered Abbas — a real two-state compromise, including a deal on Jerusalem — and you think that Abbas spurned that offer, and you think that Netanyahu already gave Abbas a 10-month settlement freeze and Abbas only entered serious talks in the ninth month, you have to wonder how committed he is.

As Friedman should know, the settlement freeze offered by Netanyahu was pretty much in name only, as construction projects that had already been approved were permitted to continue, and there was a mad rush to approve new projects before the "freeze" took effect. Second, the largest impediment to the commencement of negotiations was Netanyahu's refusal to agree to some of the terms previously offered by Olmert. It doesn't seem particularly bizarre to me that a Palestinian leader would opt not to restart talks from scratch each time negotiations end, and it seems to me to be a reasonable test of Netanyahu's sincerity to ask that he agree to terms that are essential to any negotiated outcome.

But stepping back a bit further, it probably came as a surprise to Friedman's readers that Olmert offered Abbas a wonderful deal, guaranteed to pass in the Knesset, and couldn't even get a return phone call. Particularly if you read Ha'aretz, in which you'll find a different story. The initial offer was rejected - no ambiguity there. Further negotiations occurred and showed promise, with Abbas stating, "I negotiated with [Olmert] and felt we could have reached an agreement", but "the start of Israel's offensive in Gaza effectively ended negotiations".

It may be true that Abbas didn't pick up the phone, call Olmert and say, "I recognize that you're engaging in war on Gaza, that your government is likely to fall due to corruption scandals, and there's no way under these circumstances you can get a peace deal through the Knesset, but do you want to try to reach a final agreement anyway?" By the same token, Olmert didn't phone Abbas and ask, "You haven't talked to me about the peace deal since I started military actions against Gaza, what's up with that?" To some degree both men benefited from failing to pick up the phone - they can put onus for the failure of talks on the other, on circumstances, or both. But it's not unreasonable to believe that the unspoken assumptions that led both sides to end negotiations would have prevented the negotiations from amounting to anything.

But this brings us back to a fundamental requirement for effective negotiations: A final deal, or something approaching a final deal, on settlements and borders. I believe that is what President Obama wants to achieve in the next round of talks, and it's in no way unreasonable to believe that an agreement could be reached. Once reached, the issue of a settlement freeze would become moot - Israel would have agreed to phase out settlements on the Palestinian side of the agreed border, but would be free to expand those settlements that both sides agreed would remain part of the Israeli state.

Seriously, although official maps aren't available, we have a history of unofficial maps we can look at - and those maps have been around for a long time without serious challenge. We have the offer made by Ehud Barak toward the end of the Clinton Administration, and the much better offer he reportedly made during subsequent negotiations at Taba, aborted due to Ariel Sharon's election to office. Compare the Taba map to the offer reportedly made by Olmert a couple of years ago. The differences are pretty modest. The tendril-like intrusions of Israeli territory into the West Bank, and the odd pockets to be transferred to Gaza as part of a land swap, cast a significant shadow over the claim that Olmert had serious security concerns; but then the notion of a Palestinian state as an existential threat to Israel is absurd on its face.

If we are to assume that the weak Ehud Olmert could have convinced the Knesset to approve his plan, why can't we similarly assume that Binyamin Netanyahu could agree to a similar plan and obtain Knesset approval? If he cannot, there's not much point to engaging in peace talks until there's a change of government. If he can, his refusal to agree to a short-term settlement freeze would appear to be out of fear of that outcome. It must have occurred to Thomas Friedman that Ariel Sharon could have picked up negotiations where they ended in Taba. It must have occurred to him that, with a minimum of intrusion from Washington, Olmert was doing pretty well negotiating a solution and, like Sharon, Netanyahu could easily have resumed negotiations after taking office. But he has yet to ask, "Why didn't they resume peace talks?" Doesn't he believe that the answer to that question is important, and might shed some light on the perpetuation of this conflict?

Update: Roger Cohen shares some observations about the peace process that largely ring true. He's cynical about its chances but, given that Netanyahu won't agree to a settlement freeze despite overwhelming concessions from the U.S., perhaps he's right to be cynical. I think he overstates the case against success, and the amount of courage involved in agreeing to a peace deal - that is, if we're going to define "courage" as something more than "running a chance of losing the next election". I don't think Abbas would be in danger if the essence of the Olmert proposal were preserved, and I suspect that Netanyahu's security detail is significantly more diligent and much more attuned to domestic dangers than that of Yitzhak Rabin.

President Obama's Effort to Broker an Israel-Palestine Peace Agreement

There are many valid questions being raised about how many concessions President Obama is willing to make, up front, in order to entice Binyamin Netanyahu back to peace talks, not the least of which is the promise not to seek additional freezes of settlement construction beyond the requested sixty days. Given that it is unlikely that peace talks will occur, let alone succeed, without an ongoing construction freeze, the two most likely explanations for the offer appear to be:

• President Obama is going to declare to the parties that they've been dickering over the details for forty years, and that thanks to his concessions to Israel's security concerns the only real issues are borders and Palestinian refugee rights, the latter of which isn't really an issue because any Palestinian "right of return" will be limited to the new Palestinian state, and that he expects the parties to come up with a working plan for borders within the sixty day time frame; or

• He's going to wash his hands of the issue, but doesn't want to do so until after the election.

Can you think of any other possibilities? Are you putting your money on Door #1 or Door #2?

Scheming Over Settlements

If this report is true, one can only wonder if Binyamin Netanyahu is sane.

The details of the letter were revealed by researcher David Makovsky on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

According to the report, the letter included incentives crucial to Israel's security that Netanyahu has been demanding for years. For example, the United States pledged to support Israel's position on stationing Israeli troops in the Jordan valley after the establishment of a Palestinian state, in order to prevent weapons smuggling.

The United States also would not ask Israel to further extend the building moratorium and would pledge that the issue of settlements would be dealt with only as part of final-status talks with the Palestinians, the letter reportedly said.

The United States also reportedly would veto any UN Security Council resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year, would upgrade Israel's defense capabilities after the peace agreement, and would increase security assistance.

This reportedly would include providing Israel with advanced fighter jets and early warning systems, including satellites. The U.S. also would start talks with Arab countries toward a regional agreement vis-a-vis Iran.

Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who is the moving force behind the letter, is believed to have encouraged Obama to change his policy toward Netanyahu in order to come off as friendlier. Ross reportedly worked with Barak and Molho on the letter during the UN General Assembly in New York.

The White House denied that Obama sent a letter to Netanyahu, but did not deny that the United States and Israel had worked on a letter.

It's like a five-year-old being told that he can have everything on his extensive Christmas wish list, then having him stomp his feet and demand that Christmas be moved up by two months.

Another Ha'aretz article shows the behind-the-scenes thinking that led to the initial settlement freeze. According to Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin,

"We made an attempt to show goodwill, build relations, but I warned Netanyahu after the decision was made that it would end badly. He sat in my office and I said to him: Bibi, no one in the world, no one, will accept us stopping construction to draw the Palestinians into negotiations, and then starting again during negotiations. It is completely illogical. Who would accept this? I also said this to [army Chief of Staff Gabi] Ashkenazi, and to minister [without portfolio] Benny Begin, who supported the decision."

What did Begin say?

"His logic was that the moratorium decision was useful because it did not differentiate between settlement blocs and isolated settlements, as Olmert's government did, and when building was renewed, it would be renewed everywhere."

What did Netanyahu say?

"He said to me: Don't repeat this outside so you won't give people ideas."

That is, it appears that Netanyaho chose to offer a freeze that applied to all settlements, knowing that during its ten months the freeze would amount to nothing, and anticipating that at the end of that time he could accelerate construction in all Israeli settlements. Had he negotiated a more limited freeze he would likely have been pressured to give up the blanket concession that allowed continued construction of existing building projects and would have a much weaker argument against extension.

At the end of 2009, the number of housing units that were actively being built on all the settlements together amounted to 2,955. Three months later, at the end of March 2010, the number stood at 2,517. We are therefore talking about a drop of a little more than 400 housing units - some 16 percent of Israeli construction in the West Bank over that period....

For their part, the Palestinians did not really ask for a total freeze on construction. They demanded, and justifiably so, to once and for all get recognition of the principle that negotiations on the future of the settlements not take place while they are continuing to be built up. Accordingly, the Palestinians agreed to turn a blind eye to the construction so long as the official freeze policy of the Israeli government continued.

That ongoing construction is consistent with the history of settlement freezes. The most remarkable example of the expansion of settlements in the face of peace talks came during the post-Oslo period, a period of relative calm and protracted negotiations during which Israel doubled its population of West Bank settlers.

In 1991, when the first Bush administration was coaxing Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, 90,300 Israelis lived in settlements across the West Bank. Today there are 300,000 — and their population is growing by 5 percent a year, more than 2 1/2 times the growth rate inside Israel.

A settler puts it like this:

"The Americans said, 'you're torpedoing our efforts,'" said Goldis, 73. "We say, 'we're coming to live in Israel, why can't we live wherever we want?'"

To which a fair response is, "If you're going to annex the West Bank to Israel, grant its occupants and refugees Israeli citizenship and equal rights, and implement the so-called 'one state solution', fine -- it's your country. But if you want a two-state solution, you can't simultaneously insist that the occupied territories are Israeli territory."

Turning back to Netanyahu, he's presently feigning incredulity,

"For 17 years the Palestinians conducted direct talks with Israeli governments while building went on in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said in response to the Palestinian statement, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. "I hope that now, as well, they will not turn their backs on peace and continue the negotiations in order to reach a framework agreement within a year."

For a possible Palestinian response... what was that saying attributed to Einstein?

Jackson Diehl Misquotes Abbas

I am cynical when I read an editorial that claims to be supported by a source that could be easily linked and discover, upon checking, that the source cited says something different. I am amazed when the author of the editorial provides a link and is contradicted by his source.

Jackson Diehl proposed something in his column on Israel-Palestinian peace talks that simply didn't ring true:

Netanyahu wants the implementation of Palestinian statehood to be phased, even if its final terms are agreed upon in advance. Initially at least, Israeli forces would patrol Palestine's eastern border with Jordan, and perhaps some settlements on Palestinian territory would remain in place.

But it's worth noting that Abbas, following his first extended private conversation with Netanyahu in Washington, spent the subsequent days giving interviews to Arab media in which he publicly rejected each of those terms. Palestinians, he said, will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state; they will not allow Israeli forces to remain in the West Bank. In fact, if he's pressured to make any concessions, he told the al-Quds newspaper, "I'll grab my briefcase and leave."

It's easy enough to click the link, right? So what does Diehl's source actually say?

[Abbas] told the daily that he would halt negotiations if construction in West Bank Jewish settlements is resumed. He also said he has no intention of discussing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Israel can call itself what it wishes," he said.¹

Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit joined in the criticism of Israel's demand for recognition as the state of the Jewish people, explaining that the issue raised concern regarding the status of Israel's Arab population, even asking whether they would remain in the country or be expelled.

So what Abbas ruled out was having Netanyahu condition a peace deal on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish State, to the potential detriment of Israel's Palestinian population. Nothing in that position retreats from the P.A.'s recognition of Israel as a state. For that matter, why is the question of how Israel defines itself vis-à-vis its ethnic and religious minorities a matter for these talks, as opposed to a matter of internal Israeli politics?

Polls do suggest that

...after reaching a permanent agreement on all issues of the conflict, [60% of Palestinians believe that] there should be recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people.

The issue here turns in no small part on semantics - a "Jewish state" versus "a state for the Jewish people". Given the presence of extremists like Avigdor Lieberman in the Netanyahu cabinet, though, I can understand getting hung up on semantics. Support for Israel as a state for the Jewish people is not inconsistent with an expectation that it will treat its minority populations as equal citizens, not try to find ways to diminish their rights, pressure them to emigrate, or carve their population centers out of the country, but even if you assume Netanyahu's intentions are good the words "Jewish State" implicate a long history of distrust and mistreatment of Israel's Palestinian population and amplify the rhetoric of people like Lieberman.

As for the presence of Israeli forces, it can hardly be a surprise that after four decades of occupation the Palestinians would want a peace deal to actually end the occupation. The Palestinians have for decades proposed that Israeli occupation forces be replaced by peacekeepers from another nation, even the United States. There's no indication that Abbas is suggesting that foreign forces cannot be present on Palestinian land to help ensure stability and to protect and preserve the peace - just that he wants those forces to be from nations other than Israel, as is the case in Lebanon. To the extent that Diehl believes that Palestinian public opinion favors the continued presence of Israeli troops on Palestinian land once a peace deal has been struck, I would very much appreciate his identifying the poll. I very much doubt it exists.

So contrary to Diehl's suggestion, Abbas has not ruled out recognizing Israel as a Jewish State - just that such a demand is not an appropriate part of the present negotiations. Opinion polls do suggest that Palestinians would support softer language, and there's little reason to expect that language along the lines of what is reflected in those polls cannot be negotiated as part of any peace deal that is reached.

Further, there is no reason to believe that Abbas would be opposed to the presence of peacekeeping forces in a future Palestinian state. There is no reason to believe that there is any appreciable support among Palestinians for the presence of Israeli troops, past, present or future. And if the demand from Netanyahu is "Peacekeeping forces must be Israeli or we cannot negotiate," it is not Abbas who is being unreasonable.

The biggest threat to peace talks, of course, is a resumption of construction in Israel's West Bank settlements, something Netanyahu has promised will soon occur. Diehl somehow forgot to even mention the issue.
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1. This choice of words reminds me of Netanyahu and his spokespersons in relation to a Palestinian rump state:

[T]he first Israeli government to talk about a Palestinian state, to even mention the words, was the ultra right-wing Netanyahu government that came in 1996. They were asked, “Could Palestinians have a state?” Peres, who had preceded them, said, “No, never.” And Netanyahu’s spokesman said, “Yeah, the fragments of territory that we leave to them, they can call it a state if they want. Or they can call it fried chicken.”

If Only Richard Cohen Would Pay Attention

Richard Cohen rarely writes anything of interest, and today's phoned-in column is not actually a departure from the norm. Cohen asks the rhetorical question, "Who is Barack Obama", and pretends that he has no way of knowing. And perhaps that's true - of him. But for goodness sake,

He went for health-care reform, not jobs. He supported the public option, then he didn't. He's been cold to Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu and then all over him like a cheap suit.

Those three "observations" tell us a lot more about Cohen than they do about President Obama. First, although he can reasonably be faulted (particularly in retrospect) for not pursuing a larger stimulus bill, it somehow zipped right above Cohen's head that the Obama Administration did pay attention to jobs - but for a variety of reasons, mostly practical, settled on a stimulus bill that was "merely" enormous instead of gargantuan. The Wall Street Journal was quick to whine,

The House bill is one of the largest single stimulus packages in history, almost equal to the entire cost of annual federal spending under Congress's discretion. A parallel Senate measure, which is expected to come to a vote next week, is now valued at nearly $900 billion.

Either bill, if enacted, would push the federal debt toward levels not seen since the second World War.

How did Cohen manage to miss that?

Second, those who were paying attention never had much cause to believe that President Obama was going to throw his weight behind a public option. Sure, in his hundreds of statements on healthcare reform, he suggested that he supported it... once or twice. But the rest of the time his support seemed at best anemic. Moreover, if Cohen believes that Obama's approval rating is where it is due to the absence of a public option in the healthcare reform bill, he's... not paying attention.

I doubt that there are many Americans who much care whether President Obama likes Netanyahu, or think's he's pond scum. As I recall, Clinton pretty much detested Netanyahu, but at times played smiley-face with him in public and remained popular.

Cohen's a personification of the Peter Principle. If he could escape his bubble long enough to read, for example, Dan Larison, he would find that the dots that elude him were long ago identified and connected by others. It may be disappointing when Obama follows conventional thinking, but there's nothing surprising about it.

Beyond that, Cohen's is the sort of column that Paul Krugman just called out.

The latest hot political topic is the “Obama paradox” — the supposedly mysterious disconnect between the president’s achievements and his numbers. The line goes like this: The administration has had multiple big victories in Congress, most notably on health reform, yet President Obama’s approval rating is weak. What follows is speculation about what’s holding his numbers down: He’s too liberal for a center-right nation. No, he’s too intellectual, too Mr. Spock, for voters who want more passion. And so on.

But the only real puzzle here is the persistence of the pundit delusion, the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting — who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback — actually matters.

This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.

What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid.

You would have to be pretty darn stupid not to recognize that, even if more people found Ronald Reagan to be likable than say the same about President Obama, his approval ratings followed the economy. Or you would have to be Richard Cohen. One or the other....

Update: It occurs to me that in past columns Cohen has inadvertently highlighted the reasons for his disdain for President Obama. "He didn't pay me sufficient homage during the campaign," and "He doesn't understand how important I am."

Back To Where You Began

One of the consistent criticisms of President Obama is that in his quest for bipartisan legislation he offers compromises up-front, and then has to negotiate from a weak starting point. The conception is that if he were to demand a lot more up front, he would be able to make concessions (giving up the portions of the proposed legislation that were added merely for this purpose) and thereby gain more concessions from the other side. That criticism presupposes two things: first, that it's appropriate for the two sides to a legislative negotiation to start from maximalist positions and work toward common ground, and second that opponents of the legislation had any actual interest in negotiation.

I have a different impression: I believe that President Obama has little patience for political theater, a pretended devotion to maximalist positions that the advocate knows will never gain majority support, that it's possible to identify a consensus position that reasonably advances the public policy goals of even major legislative initiatives in a manner that is acceptable to both sides, and that it thus saves a lot of time and bother to bypass the theater, start with the consensus position and focus on the details.

I do believe Obama made mistakes in his pursuit of healthcare reform, most significantly in assuming that the Republican Party would participate in the debate in good faith, and that his own party would recognize that getting squarely behind healthcare reform would be best for both their party and the country. Instead he got "the Party of No" on one side, and a mad mixture of pandering and demands for pork from his own party that left a lot of people with the impression that they had learned nothing from the Clinton years and weren't fit to govern. The Democratic Congress had the option of demonstrating leadership, if for only a few months focusing on what's good for the country and how to make the best possible healthcare reform bill, and... largely chose self-interest. Had they followed Obama's lead, the difference between the initial framework he proposed and the final bill would have been minimal, but they would have appeared effective in office.

I get the same sense from Obama's tense interactions with Binyamin Netanyahu over restarting peace talks with the Palestinians. Obama appears to accept the consensus view of what a final resolution will look like - at least if it is to be a two-state solution. That is, there will be a final border that roughly follows the Green Line, the Palestinians will have a capital in East Jerusalem, and the end-result will be a genuine Palestinian state alongside Israel. Netanyahu lacks the personal courage to commit to such an outcome, and perhaps more to the point does not desire that outcome. In Netanyahu's initial term as Prime Minister, his government's contemptuous view of what a Palestinian state - a rump state with no control over its borders, water, or airspace, might look like was reportedly, "Well, they want to call it a state? Fine, they can call it fried chicken if they want to." It's obvious that peace can never be achieved on those terms, and it appears that Obama would prefer to work with grown-ups on both sides to start negotiations from the consensus view and focus on the details.

Today, a new criticism - that Obama is offering to allow offshore drilling in areas that were previously off-limits, in order to try to entice Republican support for climate legislation - as well as feckless Democrats like Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu. Without Republican support, the bill will die. To me it appears that President Obama is starting with the belief that offshore drilling will eventually happen, with the actual debate being over when and how, in a context where the concession will achieve a great good (getting the climate bill passed) based upon a relatively minor concession - and with significant oversight of environmental concerns. If it works, he gets his climate bill. If not, the bill dies and the offshore drilling proposals don't become law.

If my inference is correct, Obama's biggest mistake is his hope that people will rise to the occasion, recognize that maximalist positions will not work, and commence good faith negotiations based upon "what everybody knows" is likely to ultimately happen. For healthcare reform, it took a year for the legislation to evolve into a form remarkably similar to President Obama's proposed starting point. For Israel-Palestine, we have forty years of history that tell us that negotiations that start from maximalist positions will accomplish nothing. For climate legislation, if his proposal works he'll get a bill while making a concession that is very likely to occur in the future, but on his own terms - as opposed to losing the opportunity to pass climate legislation until after the midterm elections.
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Update: From Obama's remarks,

Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates between right and left, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place. Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.

To me that again sounds like, "We all know the approximate destination, so let's skip the theater and work out the details."

Games Without Frontiers

Reihan Salam offers an odd attack on President Obama today, first complaining that Obama's not popular with Israelis:

Last year, many latched onto poll numbers that suggested that President Obama only had the support of 4 percent of Israelis. Yet those shockingly low numbers were misleading. Another survey, sponsored by the New America Foundation, found that 41 percent of Israelis held a favorable opinion of Obama, while 37 percent held an unfavorable opinion. Interestingly, only 42 percent of respondents believed that Obama supports Israel. If we accept that reality lies somewhere between these extremes, one gets the impression that while the White House has alienated many Israelis, the damage isn't necessarily permanent.

The first question that should come to mind is, what has President Obama done that would make Israelis so suspicious of him? Calling for a halt to illegal settlement construction in the West Bank, then backing off the minute Israel refused to comply? The horror. Beyond that... what? For that matter, for what other military conflicts does Reihan demand that U.S. foreign policy track and follow popular opinion in the nations affected by our policies?

Reihan echoes the bromide, "The oft-heard critique is that by seeking Israeli concessions on settlement-building first, the White House was asking Israelis to give up something tangible without getting anything in return." He appears to believe that to be true, betraying a fundamental ignorance of the history (even of recent history) both of the settlements and of the conflict, as well as the facts on the ground. To quote Ariel Sharon, “Everybody has to move; run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours.... Everything we don't grab will go to them.” (A bit more on Sharon).

Really, though, all he needs to do is take a look at a map reflecting the present situation and it should be self-evident why the freezing and scaling back of Israel's settlements is critical to a two-state solution. Why people who are deeply concerned about the future of Israel believe that the present approach will make a two-state solution impossible, if it has not already achieved that end. If it is toxic to Israeli public opinion for a U.S. Administration to address the realities of the conflict and the steps necessary to its resolution, the U.S. has three choices: Stay out of things (but given our relationship with Israel and the situation in the Middle East, we'll inevitably get dragged back in), tackle the tough issues (including settlements), or wuss out in the manner of G.W. Bush and his roadmap to nowhere. Perhaps Reihan would reply that wussing out boosted Bush's popularity in Israel, and was thus a good thing, even though the all of the problems that made the conflict difficult to solve became worse over his eight years of incompetent administration?

Reihan proceeds to complain that Biden criticized Israel's announcement of massive new construction in East Jerusalem, lecturing,

East Jerusalem is viewed very differently from the West Bank and Gaza. A government announcement of a ten-month freeze on settlement construction did not include Jerusalem, and there is very little appetite for surrendering an inch of the city to a future Palestinian state.

It's of course assumed that the Palestinians will surrender much of East Jerusalem - Reihan appears to believe that this should be regarded as a done deal such that asking Israel not to bulldoze Palestinian neighborhoods, or assuming that the Palestinians will have no claim to a future capital in Jerusalem, as asking the Israelis "give up something tangible without getting anything in return". Wrong on two counts: First, being asked to give up something that's not yours is not asking much, even if you really like it and don't want to give it back. Second, the Palestinian accession to a massive transfer of their historic lands to Israel should not be shrugged off with a "What else can you give up?"

It's hard to see the awkwardness of Biden's visit so far having a broader political impact. But it does contribute to the impression, fair or unfair, that President Obama is presiding over an era of diminished American influence, in which allies and rivals alike feel comfortable thumbing their noses at a White House focused above all else on its domestic priorities.

"Fair or unfair." How quaint, coming at the tail end of an editorial by which, no matter what Obama does, he loses. If we pretend that he can obtain the cooperation of Congress for the imposation of serious pressure on Israel to return to meaningful peace talks - the type of talks that could conceivable result in a two-state solution with genuine Palestinian statehood - Reihan would presumably be whining that Israelis don't like or trust Obama. If he attempts to push ahead without Congress at his back, Reihan will probably make the same complaint but blame him for the fact that his calls for good faith acts by both sides are unfair to Israel, asking them to "give something up" before they get something in return.

If the Netanyahu Administration chooses to disregard President Obama because it recognizes that his ability to pressure Israel is hamstrung by Congress, and that many pundits will help them out both by rallying to their side and caricature Obama as weak if they ignore his requests and by decrying him as "unpopular with Israelis" if he finds a way to turn up the pressure, what incentive do they have to cooperate?

Moreover, if we assume the criticism to be sincere, what does it say about the critic's grasp of international relations and foreign policy? Is the problem that President Obama hasn't found a way to be "effective"? Or is the problem that after eight years of disastrous foreign policy under Bush, bogging the U.S. down in two wars at enormous financial and diplomatic cost, any President would be facing similar problems. Those who seem to think that Obama should "get angry", perhaps pounding shoes on tables or threatening to wipe nations off the face of the earth, seem to have forgotten the distance President Bush put between the U.S. and its allies with his "with us or against us" brand of foreign policy and military intervention. You spend how many years teaching our allies that we don't actually care what they think, we will act unilaterally even when they voice strong concerns about our actions, and that life goes on pretty much as normal when they ignore our demands, and expect that to turn around on a dime the minute a new President takes office? Welcome to the real world.

Update: Some thoughts from Daniel Larison on "enabling reckless allies".

The conduct of U.S. foreign policy is really quite a comedy show. Washington insists on trying to make regimes over which it has no leverage and no influence do things that they are never going to do, and it refuses to use what leverage it has over its allies to achieve its stated goals in their part of the world.

Diplomacy as Speed Chess?

Roger Cohen's impatience is bringing out his inner (and outer) Kissinger:

I found myself seated next to Henry Kissinger at a New York dinner and asked him how he thought President Barack Obama was doing.

"He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games," Kissinger said. "But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one."

Cohen bought into Kissinger's analogy without asking the appropriate follow-up questions, "How many chess games did you finish during your first ten months, whether as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State? And how many key matches did you and Nixon win?" In one particularly memorable multi-year game, the Vietnam War, the Kissinger team pulled an "illegal war in Cambodia and Laos" gambit, attempted an end-game that revolved around the Paris Peace Accords and "peace with honor", and shortly thereafter was checkmated. Maybe Kissinger there's a reason Kissinger chose the word "finish" instead of "win".

Kissinger could respond that these issues are hard, many will take years to wrap up, and it may take many more years before it's clear who won or lost a particular match. And that would be a fair response, but for the fact that it undermines his analogy. It's fun to drop bon mots, but it's hard to imagine that Kissinger didn't know he was pushing for an impatient response to problems that can only be resolved through care and patience - and perhaps not even then. (How well did Kissinger's policies work to unify Cyprus? Does he still want Cyprus under Turkish control?)

Cohen eagerly accepts the role of the impatient American:

I thought that wasn’t a bad image for Obama’s international gambits, and then here, at the first Halifax International Security Forum, I heard a similar observation from one participant: "We’ve had the set-up, but is there a middle game?" Or, put another way, can this probing, intelligent president close anything?

Cohen should know better, and probably does. Most likely, though, he doesn't care about the half-dozen high stakes games President Obama is working through. Most likely he cares about one, maybe two, and he's less concerned that Obama can't "close" than he is that Obama will choose to close in a manner inconsistent with his own preconceptions of how the matter should be handled.

Cohen also misses the boat with his comment on Obama's talk of a world without nuclear weapons,

It’s an idea with resonance, and may provide some moral suasion over countries contemplating pursuit of a bomb, but I can’t help recalling that the worlds of 1914 and 1939 were worlds without nukes. No thanks to that.

To bring up the subject is something of a red herring, given that even if Obama makes progress toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, I know of nobody with the slightest sense that he will eliminate nuclear weapons during his Presidency - at best it would take decades. But he should consider also that the present world is nothing like 1914 or 1939. Now granted, should Russia or China start acting in a militarily threatening manner to the United States or each other, possession of nuclear weapons by all parties does deter transforming a cold war into a hot war. But the U.S. can presently militarily crush any nation it chooses... except for those with nuclear weapons.

Does Cohen believes that détente can be achieved between any two nuclear-armed nations? Clearly not. The present danger is that an otherwise militarily weak nuclear-armed state might use its weapons in a war with a neighbor, might lose control of its nuclear arsenal in a coup, or might sell or trade its knowledge, components, or even a nuclear device in exchange for cash or weapons. That's the danger Obama is attempting to address.

On Russia, Cohen offers a conclusion that sounds like it was lifted from a corporation's annual report: "I don’t believe Obama has yet shifted the basic confrontational optic of a resurgent Russia emerging from the humiliation of imperial collapse." Cohen sees Russia as having two conflicting approaches to the world: one comes from Dmitri Medvedev, and "The other perspective is called Vladimir Putin." (Ah, memories.) Is Cohen arguing that Obama needs to take a hard line with Russia and somehow force it to act against its perceived best interest on foreign national policies, such as its relations with Iran - with the probability that Russia will respond by saying no? Is he arguing that the U.S. should give up on diplomacy with Russia, and just let Russia do what it wants? Seriously, what's his point? As Cohen knows, we have no military option against Russia.

On Afghanistan, Cohen is critical that while Obama showed "clarity" in March by sending a lot more troops, he is presently showing "uncertainty" because he didn't immediately agree to send tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan seven months later. I'm not going to dig through Cohen's past writings to try to determine if he wrote something similar about Bush during the former administration's seven years of malign neglect of the Afghan war, but it's worth noting that by way of comparison Obama is running laps around the mediocre record of his predecessor. No, the real fear isn't that Obama's indecisive - it's that he won't commit to endless war:

I worry now that Obama’s quest for perfect calibration will yield a less than resounding fudge where the tenacious message of a troop increase is undermined by talk of exit timing. That’s not how you break the will of an enemy.

How many times in its history has Afghanistan been the subject of an invasion attempt, invasion, or occupation? How many times in its history has it been successfully pacified, even when occupied by a superpower? Cohen truly believes that if Obama doesn't remind the Afghan people that we'll eventually pack up and go home, they somehow won't remember centuries of history - that the foreign occupier always packs up and goes home? Or that they have failed to notice that the same holds true in regard to any modern military engagement involving a long-term occupation in which the occupying power didn't engage in a massive population transfer into the occupied territory? Come on.

Cohen also seems to believe that every leader in the world wants to be Obama's best friend, and that they're all stinging at perceived slights:

In Europe, a more modest reset attempt has been compromised with political leaders (if not the public) by a perception of cool distance, underscored when Obama did not show at 20th-anniversary celebrations of the Berlin Wall’s fall. Feelings are particularly strong in Paris, where mutterings about Obama’s “Carterization” are heard. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who ushered France back to NATO’s integrated military command structure, and shattered political taboos dictating coolness toward America, has seen his hopes for a special relationship evaporate.

(Ah, memories.) It sounds like he's describing junior high school. "Angela threw a big party but Barack said he was too busy to come. All of Angela's friends are mad at him. Nicolas offered Barack a BFF bracelet, and Barack told him 'I don't want to be your best friend,' and now Nicolas doesn't like him any more and called him a loser." Again, come on.

Anne Applebaum has a better take on what's involved in Europe, noting that there's nothing close to a European consensus or European decision-maker with whom Obama can work on the key issues of the day, and she correctly notes that nations like China are going to pursue their own foreign policy interests, although her conclusion (while suitable for an editorial) seems overblown:

Europe might have a new phone number, but when Obama calls, the person on the other end of the line will still be unable to act. "Europe" will not be a unified entity capable of coordinating a unified policy in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, the Middle East or anywhere else anytime soon. Europe cannot, in short, become America's full partner in foreign policy....

This does mean that the Obama administration has a problem, however: Having come to office promising to work with allies, it may soon discover that there are no allies with which to work. Europe is still our best hope, because Europeans share most of our values. But organizing sanctions with a divided Europe - never mind a military operation - will continue to be a major chore. China, meanwhile, is acquiring vast foreign interests, trading in Africa and South America as well as Asia, along with a vast army to match. But China appears uninterested in joining an international campaign against terrorism, nuclear proliferation or anything else.

Global military and security thus look set to remain in the hands of the United States, whether the United States wants it or not. Halfway through his presidency, George W. Bush found he had to drop unilateralism in favor of diplomacy. Now one wonders: At some point in his presidency, will Obama find he has to drop diplomacy in favor of unilateralism, too?

Cohen seems to be operating under the conceit that U.S. foreign policy interests are everybody's interests, and thus that it's absurd that Obama can't handshake his way to consensus - that it's somehow Obama's failure. He underestimates the effect of Bush's unilateralism, which if anything caused our traditional allies to become quite accustomed to saying "no". He disregards the fact that foreign nations have their own issues to worry about, and their most pressing issues may not be the same as ours. He also overlooks the fact that there can sometimes be a political gain to a politician, even in an allied nation, for standing up to U.S. pressure.

I also like this one:

In Israel-Palestine, Obama underestimated the damage of the past decade and has been outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

No, what happened was that Obama overestimated the resiliency of the U.S. economy, and severely underestimated his own party's willingness to address serious domestic issues such as stimulating economic recovery or passing a healthcare reform bill, and has had to expend significant political capital on those issues. Netanyahu, ever an opportunist, recognized that he could say "no" to the Obama Administration without consequence, as the Obama Administration is not presently positioned to impose a consequence. Is it a great shame that a Democratically controlled Congress doesn't have the President's back on key domestic and foreign policy issues? Absolutely. But what does Cohen expect President Obama to do about that?

Cohen has a sense of how skewed perspectives are in Israel, but compare and contrast Benny Morris who describes Obama as "a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank)." Even with the retreat from his earlier demands for a mere freeze on new construction within those settlements, developed in knowing violation of international law, Morris sees Obama as having taken a hard line against Israel. (Meanwhile, Morris argues that an Israeli attack on Iran could bring chaos to the region, then turns around and suggests that it's the responsibility of the U.S. to bomb Iran so Israel doesn't have to, or at least to give it a green light and a massive infusion of high tech weaponry. Morris is definitely a person who brings to mind the phrase, "With friends like these....") It's also worth observing that Cohen sounds an awful lot like Pat Buchanan.¹

It's worth remembering that Cohen very recently argued that the time for achieving a bona fide peace, with a two state solution, started to vanish under President Clinton and was squandered under Bush.²

Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.

Peace is unattainable, Netanyahu's evasive, and all of this arose before Obama took office, yet it's somehow Obama's fault that his proposal for peace talks isn't working out. Or perhaps Cohen is now of the position that U.S. Presidents should pretend that the Israel-Palestine conflict is irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy interests, and give neither time nor effort to resolving it. Even a grandmaster will have difficulty ending a match, at least in a positive way, if Cohen is correct that he inherited a board where his only pieces are a king and a pawn while his opponent has retained most of his pieces.

The only thing Cohen offers that could approximate as a proposed solution is that Obama spend more time talking about "human rights and freedom". Does Cohen believe that in the prism of junior high school through which he views Europe, that will dissuade Nicolas Sarcozy from comparing Obama to Carter?

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1. Dan Larison offers a response to Pat Buchanan's arguments here.

2. You want to talk ineffectual? Or "dithering"? How about G.W. and his "road map" to nowhere?