There is something faintly nostalgic about former U.S. national security advisor Brent Scowcroft's Financial Times op-ed, published Wednesday, calling for Barack Obama to "broker a new Mideast Peace." The man, the media and the message are all, as Hillary Clinton would say, "so yesterday." It's a little like watching vintage films from the era when American leaders were first "brokering peace" in the Mideast, such as American Graffiti or The Graduate.
Brent Scowcroft was the U.S. national security advisor to President Gerald Ford, and he returned to the post under President George H.W. Bush. He is a distinguished foreign-policy and strategicpolicy specialist, but has never been considered overly original, a reputation that will not be shaken by his new suggestion.
The Financial Times is a justly respected newspaper, but its editorial line is always the urbane, gentlemanly, British impulse to speak softly, move in increments, generally advance the conventional wisdom; and don't stretch the imagination, catch a cold thinking outside the box, or get seriously riled up over anything short of a genuine outrage.
In this case, however, the conventional wisdom is nonsense. The counsel for President Obama to "broker peace" is on par with Pakistani President Musharraf 's advice to Tony Blair to "do Palestine." The Palestinians could have peace with Israel tomorrow if they wanted it.
In any event, Barack Obama is not trusted by Israel. His chief initiative in the area to date has been to deny the existence of the agreement George W. Bush made with Ariel Sharon, whereby Israel would vacate Gaza, would dismantle some West Bank settlements, and would confine extensions of other settlements in contested areas to natural population growth. (The world's obsession with settlement abandonment as the key to peace -which Obama seems to share -is foolish: If Israel dismantled every settlement, or even turned them over for occupation by returning Palestinians, a new pretext to keep the pot boiling would be devised.)
The larger, more basic, problem is rooted in history. Amid the desperate conditions of the First World War, the British sold the same real estate twice: to the Jews to promote pro-Allied opinion in the United States and the international Jewish community, and to the Arabs to incite rebellion against the occupying Ottoman Turks. The predictable happened when both buyers tried to take possession, and there has never been any answer except to divide the diminutive space in two. This has been the subject of three wars, all of them sparked by the Arabs, and none successfully (although the intervention of Richard Nixon in the 1973 war -after he had supplied the Israelis with a virtually new air force -enabled the Egyptians to claim a partial success).
Always, it is claimed that a return to the 1967 borders is the basis of peace, although those borders would leave Israel nine miles wide on its Mediterranean shore, and the West Bank and Gaza sections of Palestine separated by 50 miles. The Arabs effectively had those borders, under the control of Jordan and Egypt, in 1967. Yet they went to war and and lost -events that would not normally be expected to generate reverence for the status quo ante.
The facts, which must be perfectly well-known to Brent Scowcroft, are that it is impossible to deal with the Palestinians while Hamas controls Gaza and the PLO the West Bank; that it is impossible to broker anything while the surrounding Arab powers are in turmoil; that this U.S. administration is not taken seriously by anybody in the area after the denial of the Bush-era settlements arrangement and the failure of its Iran policy; and the solution, when the Palestinians are ready, has, as Scowcroft himself notes, largely been identified already.
There will have to be some exchanges of territory, to make Israel wider between the Mediterranean and the West Bank. Scowcroft envisions a united Jerusalem serving as the capital of both countries. I don't think so; I think sideby-side Jerusalems, with the Arabs controlling their area beyond Orient House and a special arrangement and assured access to designated holy sites for all faiths throughout both countries. The Palestinian right of return would be to Palestine, and this fairy tale of one big happy Holy Land where all would be brothers, but in fact the Muslims would outnumber the Jews and expel or massacre them yet again, should finally have a silver stake driven through its heart.
A clairvoyant is not required to see that this is where it will end up. Nor is one required to see that, as Arab populations have begun to stop being distracted by the red herring of Israel and have focused on the misgovernment from which they have suffered, no Israeli flags have been burned nor Palestinian flags waved about by non-Palestinians.
Israel is absolutely legitimate as a Jewish state, and was so constituted by the unanimous permanent members of the United Nations Security Counsel, on the motion of Stalin's ambassador, seconded by Truman's. The borders have been open to legitimate debate. But when the Palestinians determine that they will no longer be used as cannonfodder, a cause célèbre that enables the leaders of the Muslim powers to misgovern, oppress and pillage their countries, and deflect discontent by waving the bloody shirt of Palestine, the borders could be quickly established along the lines mentioned. If the Palestinians could draw the lesson of the spectacular economic growth of the West Bank, which Israel has assisted, and where Prime Minister Salam Fayyad favours peace and is the first Palestinian leader whose CV does not contain a long stint as an extremist or terrorist; and of the contrast with the collapsed economy in Gaza, which has happily served as a launch-site for rockets aimed at Israeli civilians since Sharon vacated it; then peace would be imminent.
For a sensible and experienced man such as Brent Scowcroft to suggest that President Obama is in any position to broker anything in a Middle East where the Arab governments are fighting for their lives with their own people and Hamas is still trying to kill all the Jews, is disconcerting. Even Richard Goldstone, the token anti-Israel Jew recruited by the United Nations to write a smear job on Israel's hugely provoked reprisals against Gaza, has recanted his fraudulent report.
Israel has its faults, but it is a legitimate Jewish state, a successful society of laws and enterprise. The Palestinians have grievances, but a remedy is at hand. Israel will take half a loaf. If Palestine would also, there would be peace. But it won't happen until it is clear what Egypt, Syria and Lebanon will look like, and whether anything will be done to curb the baleful influence in the area of Iran. If he was minded to, President Obama could do something about that, but it isn't a matter of brokerage and there is no sign of it coming.
cbletters@gmail.com
