Sometimes, When Everybody Thinks Your Analysis is Bad....

...It's because your work actually is bad.

I haven't paid any particular attention to The Independent's analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this self-serving headline caught my eye: When both Palestinians and Israelis think we are biased, we must be doing something right. While it is true that partisans will rarely be satisfied with objective coverage of an issue that is close to their hearts, being attacked from both sides sometimes truly means that your coverage is inadequate or incompetent. If you want to convince the partisans that your position is balanced, it makes little sense to predicate your argument with a claim that is untrue on its face.

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?
---------------
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?

In Other Words, Obama's Advisors Weren't Roger Cohen?

Roger Cohen usually writes better stuff than this. After acknowledging that President Obama has accomplished quite a lot, despite Republican obstruction, Cohen rattles off a list of issues in which he had hoped the Obama Administration would have taken different action, or in which he disapproves of its initial approach, and complains:

There is only one star in the galaxy at this White House and his name is Barack Obama. Everyone in the Sun King’s court has drunk the Kool-Aid.

The failure of hope, the absence of profound change, has much to do with the Republican obstructionism that has helped keep unemployment above 8 percent. But it is also related to Obama’s refusal to entertain a real team of rivals, to place around him big characters with big ideas who would challenge his instinct for cautious politics and foreign policy. And so a transformative election failed to produce a transformative president.

Cohen complains that he cannot think of an individual on Obama's team that compares to Nixon/Kissinger, Carter/Brzezinski, Reagan/Schultz, or George H. W. Bush/Baker. I think that Cohen only mentions Secretaries of State, along with Cohen's list of complaints, betrays the real issue - Cohen wishes that the Obama administration had taken a different or more forceful tack on certain foreign policy issues. Worse, Cohen argues that Obama did pick somebody who could have replicated that dynamic, but that although "a superb secretary of state" she chose to acquiesce to the White House "for various reasons (her future is very much ahead of her)" - the "various reasons" apparently being Cohen's belief that acquiescence better serves Clinton's future plans.

In short, Cohen's big complaint is that Obama picked a "superb" candidate who, for all he knows, confronts and challenges the President behind-the-scenes, but that he did not fire her for having a lower public profile than, say, Kissinger or Baker, or for taking their disagreements public? More than that, what does Cohen believe would have been accomplished by more public debate, discord or disagreement between Obama and Clinton?

Further, although Cohen gives no credit to Bush, most of the foreign policy issues of which he complains have existed during each of the administrations he mentions. When he complains in relation to Iran of "tired old carrots and sticks", he should stop to consider how the approach got "tired" - we have been at odds with Iran, after all, for decades. If Cohen recalls his history, our relationship with Iran was considerably more rocky under Carter/Brzezinski, when the Shah was toppled and the occupants of the U.S. embassy were taken hostage. Is Cohen joining the advocates for war on Iran, because if not rather than complaining he should be telling us what the Obama Administration could have done that would have fixed a problem that none of the aforementioned dynamic President/Secretary of State duos were able to resolve. Is he advocating a return to the "Nixon/Kissinger" approach of imposing and propping up leaders like the Shah?

Similarly, Cohen complains "half-steps on Israel and Palestine", as if the issue can be resolved in a vacuum. Were things better under "Nixon/Kissinger" when the occupation was permitted to continue indefinitely and the annexation of Palestinian lands began in earnest, or with Egypt's 1973 invasion of the Sinai? Even if that invasion led to the Camp David Accords and a cold peace between Egypt and Israel, did any of the policies of Carter/Brzezinski slow settlements or result in the creation of two states? How about Reagan/Schultz? Did the more aggressive polices of Bush/Baker result in the cessation of Israeli settlement of Palestinian lands? What about the efforts of President Clinton, who is not credited with a "dynamic duo" relationship? Good, bad or indifferent? And if you look at the real world and see Prime Minister Netanyahu in control of the Knesset, a man who has absolutely no interest in negotiating for peace, what is it that Cohen imagines that Obama could do - even if we ignore the fact that Cohen's "dynamic duo" presidencies often accomplished little to nothing, or moved the cause backward, under more favorable circumstances?

Cohen complains, that on "Egypt, [Obama] toyed with preserving Mubarak ad interim before the tide became irreversible." Mubarek became President of Egypt following the assassination of Anwar Sadat back in 1981. Thirty years in power, mostly under Cohen's "dyanmic duo" Presidents. Which of them "toyed" with the idea of removing Mubarek from power?

Cohen's lament continues, "On Syria, he has in essence dithered." As opposed to what? Invading? Seriously, for the complaint to be credible Cohen needs to identify both what a better approach should have been and why it should be better. It's easy to say that Obama has "dithered", but there are very good policy reasons for not increasing the U.S. role in the Syrian conflict. Using a loaded word like "dither" sheds no light on whether or not the Obama Administration is pursuing sound or unsound policy.

Finally, "On Afghanistan, domestic politics dictated the agenda, at a cost in American lives." That's a loaded, conclusory statement, not an argument. When you go to war, whatever your policy, there will be "a cost in American lives". The closest thing Cohen offers to a substantive point is the quote of a former State Department official who complains that the war in Afghanistan should be a "marathon" and not a "sprint" - which implies that Cohen would continue that war indefinitely. Does Cohen believe that an indefinite "marathon" of a war in Afghanistan would carry no "cost in American lives"? Frankly, the line is nothing but a cheap shot.

The most substantive argument Cohen offers is that "Marines will gather at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to receive the [Presidential Unit Citation (PUC)] award ... he should indeed present the award himself". A third of his column is in support of that argument, yet he can find no space to substantiate any of his foreign policy complaints.

There's apparently a possibility that hasn't occurred to Cohen - that the reason Obama and Hillary Clinton don't butt heads on the issues he lists is because, having carefully considered the facts and options, they agree that the present approach is best. No need for secret wars in Cambodia, no benefit in threatening Netanyahu with a loss of loan guarantees, no gain in invading Iran to deal with our disagreement with that nation's government, no need to fantasize that the indefinite occupation of Afghanistan comes at no cost in lives or treasure or will suddenly bring about an enlightened transformation of that nation....

That is, you don't need "Sun Kings" or "Kool-Aid" to recognize that Cohen doesn't necessarily have the better argument on these issues, nor should you overlook the fact that when given the opportunity to write a substantive criticism of the Obama Administration's policies he chose to forgo that approach in favor of a personal attack.

An Israeli Settler's Facepalm Column

For reasons I'm not sure that I want them to explain, the New York Times editorial board thought it would be a good idea to publish a whinge from an Israeli settler, Dani Dayan, who, after sharing with us a self-serving history of the conflict and complaining how unfair it would be to make settlers leave the occupied Palestinian territories, sputters about a "two state solution". That he, an immigrant from Argentina, has a greater legal and moral claim to the land upon which he lives than those whose families have been on that same land, without interruption, for thousands of years.

Moreover, the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to implement a negotiated two-state solution. The American government and its European allies should abandon this failed formula once and for all and accept that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are not going anywhere.

It's entirely the fault of the Palestinians, you see, that they have not implemented a settlement that does not exist and has never existed. One wonders, was Dayan chuckling when he wrote that line? He has to know that the primary purpose of constructing settlements throughout the occupied West Bank was to frustrate the peace process and to prevent a two-state solution. Dayan admits, "In the areas targeted for evacuation most of us are ideologically motivated and do not live here for economic reasons." Yet now he purports that a one-state outcome he has actively pursued for decades is somehow the "fault" of the Palestinians and gloat that the settlement enterprise he helps lead is now so entrenched and enormous that it's functionally impossible to remove? Yes, he does, and the New York Times blithely publishes his calumny.

Worse, the author feigns ignorance about why pretty much everybody other than his community of settlers prefers a two-state solution. While he has fevered dreams of "The influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere [that] would convert the new state into a hotbed of extremism", with the dismally poor and underdeveloped West Bank imagined to be a huge magnet for immigration, paranoia is not a good substitute for common sense.

Why look to how Palestinians live in Jordan, next door to the West Bank, when out from under the thumb of occupation, when you can instead paint a video game fantasy. And as always, a fair retort to "We would have to reoccupy", rather unlikely given the terms and placement of peacekeepers in association with any settlement, is "If that were to actually become true, no one will be able to question the legitimacy of Israel's action." A Palestinian land would be no more dangerous to Israel than is Lebanon, which isn't to say that such a situation would be ideal but it would be manageable.

There are two good reasons to support a two-state solution, and they're interrelated. The first is that we are talking about two people with two different cultures, different religions and very different interpretations of the same modern history. The logistics of integrating those two populations into a single nation state are complicated. Sorry Robert Frost, good fences don't always make good neighbors. It's reasonable to infer that Dayan has no interest in having Palestinian neighbors, at least living any closer than the ones he might see through the scope on a sniper's rifle.

Second, the complexity of a one-state solution that preserves a good outcome for both peoples cannot be underestimated. Israel would combine itself with the occupied territories into a state that has a significant demographic problem - an inevitable Palestinian Muslim majority. If peace brings the immediate right of return to Palestinian refugees - a right that advocates of the two-state solution would limit to the new Palestinian state, the demographic shift from Jewish majority to Palestinian majority could be almost immediate.

Demographics were the impetus for Ariel Sharon's withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip - he hoped to be able to argue that Gaza was no longer under Israeli occupation such that he could subtract its population from the number of Palestinians living under occupation. But once you declare a single state, you can no longer resort to the conceit that "They're on their own lands." You're stuck with either making the Palestinian people citizens, somehow forcing them to leave or formally adopting a system of Apartheid.

The strongest arguments against a one state solution come from people who are concerned for the future of Israel - who don't want it to cease being a Jewish State, but who see that as inevitable under a one state solution that does not actively embrace Apartheid, either refusing citizenship to Palestinians or giving them a second class status that amounts to the same thing.

Opponents of a peaceful settlement and two state solution, including those behind the settlement of the occupied territories, have a point. They have created facts on the ground that will make it extremely difficult to implement a two state solution. It's not unreasonable for Dayan to declare victory. But rather than pointing fingers at the Palestinians and trying to make it their fault that he moved onto their land, as part of an admitted effort to keep them from having a state of their own, it's time for him to acknowledge the price of that victory.

Once you accept Dayan's declaration of victory, the road by which we reached this point becomes a distraction. If we are to drop all pretense that the two lands and peoples can be separated, we must create a plan for their integration. What type of single state does Dayan want Israel to become? The three choices for Dayan are ethnic cleansing, Apartheid and democracy.

The question to Dayan becomes, "Now that you've declared victory, what's your plan for physically integrating Israel and the occupied territories, and for creating a democratic system which protects the religious rights and freedoms of both peoples once they have all been granted the right to vote and be represented in the Knesset? If he doesn't have an answer, it surely cannot be because the issue has never occurred to him. It's a front and center concern for those who advocate and oppose the one-state solution. If he's unwilling to explain how he would integrate the state, the reasonable inference is that he opposes a democratic solution.

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?
----------------
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.

All We Have to Do Is Change Their Minds....

I was listening to the radio yesterday and discovered, of all things, that the Israeli defense establishment employs taxi drivers:

Well, Neal, I by accident was in Israel on September 11. I was there covering the latest Israeli-Palestinian fighting. And I actually learned the most important lesson on the morning of September 12, that has really guided my thinking ever since.

That morning, I called friends of mine in the Israeli defense establishment and said you guys have dealt with suicide bombing a lot. I really want to know everything you've learned from that experience.

And they brought a group together, and we had a conversation very early on the morning of September 12, and what they said was - this is not verbatim, but the basic message was this. They said: Tom, we're really good. Our intel is really good. We can get Khalid(ph) before he blows up a pizza parlor. We can get, you know, Marwan(ph) before he blows up a disco. But you know what? Mohammed will get through.

Mohammed will get through unless the village says no. It takes a village. And that has guided my thinking ever since. Until and unless the Arab Muslim community fundamentally delegitimizes these kinds of attacks, they're not going to go away.

Okay, so the "group" assembled by Friedman's "friends ... in the Israeli defense establishment" probably wasn't comprised of taxi drivers but, as with Friedman's very long series of columns that relied upon statements attributed to taxi driver's as a source of common sense street wisdom, it's no surprise that the lesson Friedman claims to have gleaned from the group happens to be the exact argument Friedman was hoping to make. Although he dresses up his anecdote, it boils down to a truism: Intelligence is imperfect so the only way you can be sure that you'll stop terrorist acts is to convince all terrorists to refrain from committing such acts. Which is also to say, it's not gonna happen. With the best education, economic opportunity and individual freedom you'll still have people who are radicalized along the lines of Tim McVeigh, Baruch Goldstein and (with the complicating factor of mental illness) Ted Kaczynski. Those examples should highlight something else: It's not just that you can never completely educate or convince a population not to engage in terrorist acts, you should not pretend that terrorism is unique to a particular religion or culture.

If memory serves, Friedman absorbed that lesson and responded to the group with the suggestion, "Brilliant. So if you guys end your occupation of the West Bank and withdraw most of your settlements, end your collective punishments in Gaza, come to a fair solution on Jerusalem, and allow the Palestinian people a state and some semblance of human dignity, you will not only gain the international moral high ground but you'll take an important step toward educating the Muslim world that the west is fair, reasonable, and that there's far more to gain through peaceful economic development than through acts of terror." No, wait, my memory is a bit off. Having embraced the idea that the West needed to educate the Muslim world to delegitimize terrorist attacks, Friedman gave the following explanation of how that should be accomplished:

What they [the Muslim world] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

We are fortunate to have such wise men shaping our debate on Middle East policy.

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.
--------------
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.

Lessons from the Palestinian Papers

Negotiator Saeb Erekat explains that... No, it's easier to show you. Here's the new training film for Palestinian negotiators: Negotiation 101, How to Negotiate With Your Children.

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?

Can You Imagine Working For This Guy?

Imagine yourself as a staff member trying to keep Rep. Louie Gohmert on track.

I've been greatly concerned with the hypocrisy of this administration telling Israel, "Just let Palestinians build illegal settlements and take over areas that are not theirs. Just let 'em take over." And I thought, "How hypocritical for our U.S. administration to tell Israel, 'just let people take over areas of your country they're not authorized to takeover,' cause we would never allow that here in the U.S."

Which brings me to the only good thing about violent illegal alien drug smugglers taking over American soil: At least we're not hypocritical anymore when we tell Israel just to let people take over land that's not theirs. Because now this administration can say, "Look, Israel, we're doing it here. We're letting people take over American soil that they shouldn't. So you can do it, too."

You: [whisper, whisper, whisper]

Gohmert: (quietly) Really? The settlements are Israeli? Pushed onto Indian Reserv...what did you say? Reservations? And they weren't grateful for the reservations? But you're with me about illegal alien drug dealers, right...?

Now what? Perhaps:

You may have misheard part of what I just said.

With most politicians' gaffes, you can quip about their having to take their foot out of their mouth. But if it makes it harder for him to continue talking, maybe Gohmert is better of keeping it there.

Update: I didn't want to prematurely jump to conclusions, but with every new thing I learn about Gohmert a phrase ending "... as a sack of hammers" seems applicable:

Starting with the fact that corporations don't pay taxes on their gross revenues....

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?

A Simple Quiz For Richard Cohen

Who said the following, when, and in what context?

• Settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that.

• 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.

The first quote is Moshe Dayan, in a 1968 memo proposing massive settlement in the occupied territories. The Second is Ariel Sharon in 1998, displaying concern that a peace deal with the Palestinians might result in the loss of Gaza, before he woke up to the demographic consequences of Israel's territorial claim to that region. For people like Sharon, from the start the purpose of the settlements was to frustrate the peace process and to create "facts on the ground" that would prevent the return of most or all of the occupied territories to a Palestinian state. Richard Cohen appears to understand this, flatly asserting,

[Israel's settlements] are all, under international law, illegal.

So let's move to part two of the quiz. What U.S. Administrations were responsible for each of the following statements, and when were the statements made:

1. The [Government of Israel] is aware of our continuing concern that nothing be done in the occupied areas which might prejudice the search for a peace settlement. By setting up civilian or quasi-civilian outposts in the occupied areas the GOI adds serious complications to the eventual task of drawing up a peace settlement. Further, the transfer of civilians to occupied areas, whether or not in settlements which are under military control, is contrary to Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, which states "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

2. The expropriation or confiscation of land, the construction of housing on such land, the demolition or confiscation of buildings, including those having historic or religious significance, and the application of Israeli law to occupied portions of the city are detrimental to our common interests in [Jerusalem]. The United States considers that the part of Jerusalem that came under the control of Israel in the June war, like other areas occupied by Israel, is governing the rights and obligations of an occupying Power. Among the provisions of international law which bind Israel, as they would bind any occupier, are the provisions that the occupier has no right to make changes in laws or in administration other than those which are temporarily necessitated by his security interests, and that an occupier may not confiscate or destroy private property. The pattern of behavior authorized under the Geneva Convention and international law is clear: the occupier must maintain the occupied area as intact and unaltered as possible, without interfering with the customary life of the area, and any changes must be necessitated by the immediate needs of the occupation.

3. Substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under the convention and cannot be considered to have prejudged the outcome of future negotiations between the parties on the locations of the borders of states by the Middle East. Indeed, the presence of these settlements is seen by my government as an obstacle to the success of the negotiations for a just and final peace between Israel and its neighbors.

4. U.S. Policy toward the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is unequivocal and has long been a matter of public record. We consider it to be contrary to international law and an impediment to the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process.

5. The Reagan Plan states that ‘the United States will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements during the transition period (5 years after Palestinian election for a self-governing authority). Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlements freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks. Further settlement activity is in no way necessary for the security of Israel and only diminishes the confidence of the Arabs that a final outcome can be fee and fairly negotiated.

6. The United States believes that no party should take unilateral actions that seek to predetermine issues that can only be reached through negotiations. In this regard the United States has opposed, and will continue to oppose, settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 which remain an obstacle to peace.

7. [T]he settlement enterprise and building bypass roads in the heart of what they already know will one day be part of a Palestinian state is inconsistent with the Oslo commitment that both sides negotiate a compromise.

8. Our position on settlements, I think, has been very consistent, very clear. The secretary expressed it not too long ago. He said settlement activity has severely undermined Palestinian trust and hope, preempts and prejudges the outcome of negotiations, and in doing so, cripples chances for real peace and prosperity. The U.S. has long opposed settlement activity and, consistent with the report of the Mitchell Committee, settlement activity must stop.

The answers? 1. The Johnson Administration, 1968; 2. The Nixon Administration, 1969; 3. The Ford Administration, 1976; 4. The Carter Administration, 1980; 5. The Reagan Administration, 1982; 6. The George H.W. Bush Administration, 1991; 7. The Clinton Administration, 2001; 8. The George W. Bush Administration, 2002. Again, while he appears ignorant of the details, Cohen appears to grasp the gist of things, admitting,Cohen argues that, from a Palestinian perspective,

As for the average Palestinian, settlements are a poke in the eye. The construction of each one means yet another piece of his land has gone over to the enemy and cannot be a part of a Palestinian state. It is an in-your-face reminder of impotency, of the inability to control life or fate -- and of a baleful history that has seen nothing but defeat.

Although I doubt he has a sufficient grasp of the history of the conflict to have passed either quiz, Richard Cohen has expressly admitted that Israel's settlements are illegal and an impediment to peace, a position superficially consistent with the position taken by every U.S. Administration throughout the entire history of the occupation. The settlements have resulted in vast areas of the occupied West Bank being declared off-limits to Palestinians (the blue and red areas are exclusive to Israelis; the Green area represents an occupied portion of Hebron, with about 20,000 Palestinians under martial law for the benefit of about 400 radical settlers), with their lands criss-crossed with "settler only" roads, roadblocks and checkpoints:

But it's Richard Cohen, so you can't expect that anything logical will flow from his pen. Although he admits the settlements are illegal, an impediment to peace and a deliberate thumb in the eye of the Palestinians, Cohen argues that the religious and ideological importance of the settlements justifies dictating to the Palestinians, up front, that "some, regardless of legality, are going to stay". He makes no call for any sort of reciprocal land swap. For Netanyahu, whose government he has already described as perpetuating an illegal enterprise, Cohen complains that the settlements have "enormous symbolic value" and that for a minority of Israelis "settlements have enormous religious and ideological importance". It was thus "a major concession" for Netanyahu to (sort of, but not really) freeze the expansion of the settlements for ten months as a prerequisite for peace talks.

So you have a clear legal picture: Cohen sees the settlements as illegal. You have a clear consequence of continued settlement activity, with Cohen recognizing that each brick laid makes the possibility of achieving peace more remote. You have the consistent position of every U.S. Administration that the settlements are an impediment to peace and cannot be allowed to interfere with the peaceful resolution of the crisis. And you have an Israeli Prime Minister who says, "Screw you, even if the peace talks crash and burn we're going to go right back to expanding the settlements."

So, in Richard Cohen's mind, who is to blame? The party he describes as committing an offense against peace? Of course not. The party that is losing its prospect of statehood as a result of that intransigence? Not unless it results in the end of peace talks. What about the mediator who is trying to bring the two sides together to reach a peace deal? Yes, obviously the mediator is at fault, even though his position is 100% consistent with that of his predecessors and even though he has done nothing to create the problem:

Obama, too, has to husband his credibility. He foolishly demanded something Israel could not yet give. It was bad diplomacy, recalling neither Metternich nor Kissinger but the ol' professor and his question about the inept Mets ["Can't anybody here play this game?"].

Cohen apparently doesn't understand the difference between "can't" and "won't", and doesn't actually care about the consequences to peace of taking "no" for an answer. It is tragic that imbeciles like Cohen are given prominent positions where they can advance counter-factual arguments that undermine the peace process and perpetuate the crisis. But, as they say, welcome to America.

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.
----------
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.”

A Model for the Middle East

Thomas Friedman writes,

The opponents want to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq fractured, so it never coheres into a multisectarian democracy that could be an example for other states in the region.

Let me see if I understand. It would be horrible if the leading democracy and freest, best educated state in the Middle East had to transform itself from a theocratic to a multisectarian democracy. But it would be an enormous victory and model for the region if a fractious state, scarred by totalitarian rule, a decade of war and crippling sanctions became a multisectarian democracy that could serve as a model for the non-democratic states in the region? What nations are in Friedman's mind, when he contemplates Iraq as eventually becoming an inspiration for democratic, multisectarian democracy?

As a proponent of a two state solution, I understand the consequences to Israel of formally annexing the occupied territories and assimilating the Palestinian population (or creating an apartheid state). A successful multisectarian state in Iraq won't change that, nor will it convince Iran that it should stop being a Persian state and share power with its various ethnic minorities, nor Jordan that it should abandon monarchy in favor of what would very likely be a Palestinian-led democracy. The U.S. insistence that Iraq remain unified is not born of a love for multisectarian government. It results from the fact that there is no easy way to carve up the country between Shiite and Sunny and, to the extent that it might be feasible to create an independent Kurdistan, that would antagonize all of the new nation's neighbors including and perhaps especially our NATO ally, Turkey. And seriously, what lesson would be more powerful? That of ethnic separation to preserve the ethnic nature of the statue, or that of a fractious coalition that, for decades and perhaps generations, will remain at risk of fracturing into civil war?

Friedman invokes Yitzhak Rabin, to try to bring out the best of the leaders involved in the formation of Iraq's future government and the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians,

The late Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt.

But let's not forget, Yitzhak Rabin was killed by one of his own countrymen because of his desire to end the occupation and to protect Israel's Jewish identity. (Although obviously Rabin's assassin didn't see it that way, I expect Friedman does.) Anwar Sadat's assassination is frequently attributed to his participation in the Camp David Accords which created a lasting peace between Egypt and Israel and worked very much to the advantage of Egypt. I don't sense that any of the region's current leaders have even a tenth of their courage.