Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I’ve hesitated in writing about this story reported yesterday in Haaretz since allowing potentially good news to go to your head is a fatal mistake regarding Middle East politics. Optimism always seems to be repaid with a harsh slap in the face. But the NY Times is also reporting the story today so I figured what the hell–if war breaks out tomorrow then we’ll all have egg on our faces.

Syria and Israel are making all the right noises about being prepared to make peace with each other. The Turkish prime minister carried a message from Ehud Olmert to Bashir Assad that the former was prepared to return all of the Golan in return for peace. A Syrian newspaper reported the story yesterday and today a Syrian minister repeated it. When Olmert’s office refused to deny (or confirm) it, it became big news.

It is ironic Olmert now feels comfortable acknowledging (tacitly) his willingness to compromise with Syria in return for peace. In this blog, I castigated him roundly last year for his tortuous attempts to deny the validity of negotiations conducted by Alon Liel with a Syrian interlocutor, in which they attempted to map out the contours of an agreement. Things now have gotten more serious and Olmert has stopped playing the fool.

There is of course one problem: the two countries are negotiating by press release or third parties instead of face to face. Politicians can say pretty much whatever they want as long as they don’t have to commit to anything. But when you sit down to negotiate in earnest, that’s when you have to get serious.

So what’s stopping them? A weakened Israeli governing coalition, for one. Olmert has a lot of things on his plate including a right-wing Opposition leader breathing down his neck and looking for weakness and opportunities to exploit them. But it is a good sign that Olmert is at least refusing to deny the reports.

And the most significant impediment to negotiations is the ideological rigidity of the Bush Administration. They would rather punish Syria and its ally Iran than do either of them any favors. To Bush-Cheney, peace between Syria and Israel seems too much like a reward that Syria doesn’t deserve. Of course, they neglect how critical peace would be for Israel, our supposed ally. The neocons would rather have a war that bled an ally than a peace that rewarded their foes. It’s called cutting off your friend’s nose to spite his face.

Syria wisely is insisting the the U.S. play a role in expediting whatever talks happen. If the former is to give up it protective alliance with Iran, it expects that it will gain something from the U.S. in return. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt the Bush Administration is willing or able to play such a role. This could doom a peace agreement to being stillborn; at least until a new president takes office. Let’s hope Syria and Israel haven’t gone to war before then…

Finally, there are indications from Hamas that it may be close to accepting Egyptian proposals negotiated with Israel for a temporary Gaza ceasefire. This does not, however, appear to be the longer-term ceasefire many people have long awaited that might lead also to freeing Gilad Shalit and 400 Palestinian prisoners.

I have two new Comment is Free essays published over the past two days. The first, Carter’s Principled Mission, on Jimmy Carter’s mission to Hamas and the second, Massive Attack, on Hillary’s threat to “obliterate” Iran if it attacks Israel.

This news just in. Barack Obama’s prepared remarks for the Chicago AIPAC meeting which were delivered earlier today. I want to be as nuanced as I can be in my critique because, while parts of this speech disappointed me, there were some quite hopeful portions which rose above the standard pro-Israel boilerplate that one hears, for example, from a candidate like Hillary Clinton (see her remarks to AIPAC). I still believe that Obama can be a more independent presidential candidate regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the usual suspects.

The Good: Obama, contrary to AIPAC’s standard line, hewed closely to his 60 Minutes theme–that negotiations with Iran and diplomatic engagement are his highest priority. While it is true that he pointedly acknowledged the military option as a viable one (contrary to my own conviction), it was clearly not at the top of his own agenda. As with much of the rhetoric of this speech, it is clear to me it was inserted in order to establish his bona fides with the relatively hardline pro-Israel crowd he faced.

UPDATE: It took my fellow Israel peace activist, M.J. Rosenberg to point out the hopefulness of what he calls the “money quote,” which I missed on my first reading:

Yitzhak Rabin had the vision to reach out to longtime enemies. Ariel Sharon had the determination to lead Israel out of Gaza. These were difficult, painful decisions that went to the heart of Israel’s identity as a nation.

Many Israelis I talked to during my visit last year told me that they were prepared to make sacrifices to give their children a chance to know peace. These were people of courage who wanted a better life. And I know these are difficult times and it can be easy to lose hope. But we owe it to our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, and to all those who have fallen, to keep searching for peace and security — even though it can seem distant. This search is in the best interests of Israel. It is in the best interests of the United States. It is in the best interests of all of us.

We can and we should help Israelis and Palestinians both fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security. Both the Israeli and Palestinian people have suffered from the failure to achieve this goal. The United States should leave no stone unturned in working to make that goal a reality.

If this was the entire speech, I would’ve been quite pleased. But unfortunately, it wasn’t.

The Bad: he did not embrace negotiations with Syria as he had in the 60 Minutes interview. Syria appeared in the speech along with Hezbollah as the looming bad guys, up to mischief and totally no-goodniks. An unfortunate gross oversimplification of current political reality.

There was a continued insistence on the bankrupt three conditions (recognition, renunciation of violence, endorsement of prior agreements) without which the west will refuse to recognize any Hamas government. The three conditions have been lambasted even by a number of Israeli political and military analysts including Yossi Alpher. Besides which, France has already expressed its willingness to resume aid to the PA and the rest of the EU seems to be exploring a political means to get beyond the three conditions.

There was standard AIPAC boilerplate galore including suspicion of the Mecca accords along with this unfortunate statement:

We should all be concerned about the agreement negotiated among Palestinians in Mecca last month. The reports of this agreement suggest that Hamas [and] Fatah…would sit in a government together, under a Hamas Prime Minister, without any recognition of Israel, without a renunciation of violence, and with only an ambiguous promise to “respect” previous agreements.

This should concern us all because it suggests that Mahmoud Abbas, who is a Palestinian leader I believe is committed to peace, felt forced to compromise with Hamas. However, if we are serious about the Quartet’s conditions, we must tell the Palestinians this is not good enough.

What this leaves out is that Hamas too, as Yossi Alpher writes, was forced to make compromises including a never heard before commitment to “respect” previous PLO negotiated agreements with Israel; and sharing power with Fatah. Obama here entirely ignores the possibility that Mecca was actually a hopeful development that might augur continued modification of Hamas positions vis a vis Israel. This is how the Europeans view it. The only parties seeing this as Obama does are Olmert’s government, AIPAC and Bush. Not the best political company in my opinion.

Obama returns to a standard Condi Sunni-alliance-against-Iran meme in this passage:

We must also persuade other nations such as Saudi Arabia to recognize common interests with Israel in dealing with Iran. We should stress to the Egyptians that they help the Iranians and do themselves no favors by failing to adequately prevent the smuggling of weapons and cash by Iran into Gaza.

What this fails to recognize is that our currency is so debased among those very Sunni nations that Saudi Arabia, for one, has clearly embarked on its own set of strategic initiatives regarding Iran and the Palestinian issue. The talks is has announced with the Iranian president and the Mecca accords are perfect examples of signals that Saudi Arabia no longer is looking to us for anything in terms of dealing with its regional issues.

The only way we can regain credibility in the eyes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Jordan is by being a truly honest broker in resolving the I-P conflict. As long as we continue to be Israel’s cheerleader or willing co-conspirator, we have very little to offer. There is little recognition of this fact in this statement from Sen. Obama.

And the Ugly:

In the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli Prime Minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.

This again is red meat thrown to the AIPACers. And it is truly an unfortunate statement. Not because the U.S. can or should dictate conditions to Israel or drag a PM to the negotiating table. But it is unfortunate because there is no recognition in it that our policy over the last six years has been precisely the opposite. It has been to tacitly encourage Israel to refuse to negotiate seriously and to maintain the oppressive military strangulation of Gaza. There is no recognition in this statement that Israel and the Palestinians have an equal responsibility to make this process work and that blame is not one-sided.

UPDATE: William Burns, in a comment at TPMCafe, correctly notes Obama’s sly critical reference to Condi Rice’s torpedo of an Israeli request to open negotiations with Syria (”No Israeli Prime Minister should ever feel…blocked from the negotiating table by the United States”). I have to give Obama points on this phrase which I’d entirely glossed over on a first reading. Essentially, he is saying that as president he would’ve given Israel a green light to negotiate with Syria. More power to him!

This passage too seemed disconnected from Mideast reality:

The Israeli people, and Prime Minister Olmert, have made clear that they are more than willing to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will result in two states living side by side in peace and security. But the Israelis must trust that they have a true Palestinian partner for peace. That is why we must strengthen the hands of Palestinian moderates who seek peace and that is why we must maintain the isolation of Hamas and other extremists who are committed to Israel’s destruction.

The Israeli people surely ARE “willing to negotiate an end to the I-P conflict.” But IS Olmert willing? By what standard can we say that he is? That he’s mouthed words to that effect? No, that won’t cut it. He’s DONE nothing to bring about a serious round of negotiation to end the conflict. Even the last meeting with Condi Rice was almost a charade as Olmert refused to negotiate anything substantive. So let’s not fool ourselves that the only problem here is that the Israelis don’t “have a true Palestinian partner for peace.” They certainly do have a partner in Mahmoud Abbas. If they choose not to dance with him that’s not his fault, but rather their own.

As I wrote above, this post is a critique by someone who cares about the Obama campaign and who continues to believe that it can chart a more independent view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would note that before joining the Obama campaign, Dan Shapiro served as Jewish outreach coordinator for Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson was one of the first U.S. senators to visit Bashar Assad in Syria and take home the message that Syria wants peace and negotiation with Israel. I don’t know what role, if any, Shapiro played on that trip. But I admired the guts it took for Nelson to buck our country’s declared policy of isolating Syria. I’m hoping that Obama can give an even better speech than this one somewhere down the line during the campaign.

Ehud Olmert’s chutzpah never ceases to amaze me. The guy bombed Lebanon back to the Stone Age, killed 1,000 of its citizens, obliterated entire Beirut neighborhoods, still occupies its southern tier, still blockades its air and sea lanes, and refuses to return Shebaa Farms. In addition, Israel by most accounts lost the war. Yet he somehow has the temerity to say the following (also covered by the NY Times) with a straight face:

“How natural it would be if the Lebanese prime minister replied to the many requests I conveyed to him, through different people, to sit down together, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility, fanaticism and hatred that part of his country feels toward us,” Mr. Olmert said at a school in Maalot-Tarshiha, in northern Israel. The town was a frequent target of Hezbollah rockets during the fighting in July and August.

“How natural, how understandable it would be for the prime minister of Lebanon to respond to the many calls I have made toward him and say, ‘Come on, let’s sit, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility and jealousy,” he said.

“I hope this day comes soon. I yearn for it. I am sure that you yearn for it. I’m sure all of Israel yearns for it. But until then, we will do everything, thoughtfully, responsibly to handle everything needed to be ready for every opportunity,” Olmert said.

Why certainly. It’s as simple as that. Let’s develop a severe case of amnesia and forget the war ever happened. We’ll forget that Israel had decades to make such an approach to previous Lebanese prime ministers and never did so. All that inconvenient stuff will just evaporate before our very eyes so we can concentrate on magnanimously giving Israel something it never earned: a full peace with Lebanon.

I also find laughable this phrase: “…End once and for all the hostility, fanaticism and hatred that part of his country feels towards us.” First, there is an assumption that some part of Lebanon does NOT feel hostility toward Israel. Which part would that be, Mr. Olmert? Who in Lebanon harbors any fond feeling for Israel? Second, there is an assumption in Olmert’s statement that the problem inhibiting peace lies solely on the Lebanese side; that no Israeli feels “hostility, fanaticism and hatred” toward Arabs, and specifically the Lebanese. Tell me, how do you do the horrific things to Lebanon which the IDF did while not feeling hateful emotions of this sort?

Olmert’s “opening” to Lebanon is, of course, entirely laughable. He doesn’t care a whit about peace with Lebanon. He knows that his overture to Siniora, if it really ever did happen, is DOA. How could a Lebanese prime minister seriously entertain such a negotiation when 40% of his population (Hezbollah and the Shiites) detests Israel and never wants to hear the words “peace” and “Israel” in the same sentence? Besides, without coming to agreement with Syria first, how does Olmert expect Lebanon can come to agreement with him? Does he expect that Siniora will make peace with Israel and essentially leave Hezbollah and Syria high and dry? What a fool he is if he thinks any such thing is even remotely possible.

Actually, Olmert cynically thinks that he’s done a cagey thing by shaking an olive branch at Lebanon. Instead of being called warmongers by the world community, he thinks Israel will look like a dove for a change. While he’s earning brownie points, he makes Lebanon look intransigent for their refusing to take the bait. In addition, Olmert plants a seed of doubt and division by trying to peel off Siniora and his crowd from Hezbollah and Syria. Divide and conquer so to speak. What a crock! This looks like the patently self-serving and meaningless gesture it is.

For Olmert, the real reason for this statement lies in where it was spoken. To start the Israeli school year, the prime minister decided to visit the kids in the north. He understands that his Achilles heel is there due to the extraordinary suffering to which it was subjected by Hezbollah rockets. In that Machiavellian mind of his, he’s thinking of his northern audience when he poses the idea of a peaceful resolution to the Lebanon conflict. He says: “Let’s go to the north and tell them we really tried for peace with Lebanon. Won’t that make us smell like a rose up there.” He knows there won’t really be peace with Lebanon. He doesn’t even care if there is. He just wants his northern constituents to think he does.

Here is the true recipe for peace with Lebanon: end the blockade, remove all troops from Lebanese soil, express a willingness to return Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, exchange Lebanese prisoners for the two kidnapped IDF soldiers, return the Golan to Syria. And in return demand that Lebanon and Syria recognize Israel and that they demilitarize the border zones of all three countries. Clean and simple. Yet this will never happen under Olmert’s watch because he doesn’t have the political balls, smarts or vision to bring it off.

And on a related note, listen to this cloud cuckoo land stuff from the PM about his plans for the north:

Olmert also vowed to invest resources so that the Galilee and north would be a “flourishing paradise.”

…”Sometimes doubts arise when you hear laments, but when you free yourself and the fog clears, you encounter the nation of Israel, the optimism, the joy, pride and creativity - then you say that no one can defeat us.”

A flourishing paradise indeed. The region has always lagged behind the rest of the country economically. Poverty rates are higher than in other regions. So how does he propose to change 55 years of prior political neglect? He doesn’t really intend to. It’s just rhetoric along the lines of George Bush telling New Orleans that he’d do everything necessary to make the city whole again. While we thought at the time that Bush’s words might’ve been sincere. We now know that they weren’t. Olmert doesn’t even get such a break because we know the words were hollow the moment he uttered them.

As for the “fog clearing,” that might be the minds of Israelis who had the misfortune to vote for Olmert and his Kadima charlatans in the last election expecting he would bring peace with the Palestinians through territorial withdrawals and that he would address social and economic inequities in Israeli society. Instead, these same voters may now be saying: “all I got was this fucking Lebanon T-shirt.”

I don’t know where Olmert’s seeing “optimism, joy, pride and creativity.” Maybe that’s the Potemkin Israel he’s living in which has almost no resemblance to the real Israel we know–the one that is demoralized and angry. The one that hates his guts and can’t wait for a State commission of inquiry to fry his ass.

As recently as 2000, Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon after a disastrous occupation lasting 18 years. Not having learned its lesson well enough, it wishes to repeat the failure in 2006. The NY Times reports that Israel will reoccupy the same region until an international peacekeeping force takes control of the area:

Almost two weeks into its military assault on Hezbollah, Israel said Tuesday that it would occupy a strip inside southern Lebanon with ground troops until an international force could take its place.

The announcement raised the prospect of a more protracted Israeli involvement in Lebanon than the political and military leadership previously signaled or publicly sought. Officials have talked about limited raids into Lebanon, but now they seem ready to commit ground forces for at least weeks, if not months.

They said the zone would be much smaller than the strip of southern Lebanon roughly 15 miles deep that Israel occupied for nearly two decades before withdrawing in 2000…

Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said Israel’s plan for a buffer zone inside Lebanon was being worked out and did not provide details. “We will have to build a new security strip, a security strip that will be a cover for our forces until international forces arrive,” he said.

“We are shaping it, but you can’t draw a single line that will become a permanent line along the entire zone,” Mr. Peretz said on Israeli radio. “Unless there is a multinational force that will enter and take control, a multinational force with the ability to act, we will continue to fire against anyone who enters the designated strip.”

Israeli officials, mindful of the Israeli public’s reluctance to repeat its long occupation of southern Lebanon, say they do not plan a major ground invasion, and do not intend to hold large areas of territory for extended periods.

Does anyone remember how U.S. involvement in Vietnam kept increasing incrementally from a few hundred military “advisors” in 1963 to 500,000 troops and 55,000 dead by 1972-3? Does anyone remember the lies Ariel Sharon told Begin and the Israeli people in 1982 about his Lebanon adventure being a limited incursion lasting at most a few weeks and not advancing farther north than the Litani River? Does anyone remember Bush telling us the Iraq war would cost a mere fraction of what it has ended up costing us?

The point is (and I’ve been pounding away mercilessly at it here for weeks) that unless you execute a pinpoint military operation with clear and limited objectives you must perforce make the same mistakes Olmert, Peretz and the IDF are making here. Their biggest problem is that they are improvising the Lebanon war–essentially making it up as they go along. They have a “plan” in the same sense that the U.S. had a “plan” for administering Iraq after it “won” the war against Saddam. It represents mission creep, which is:

the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs.

I’d rephrase that passage as it relates to Lebanon. Israel may believe it has had successes so far in its invasion. But I believe it is reoccupying Lebanon out of fear, rather than out of the exhilaration of military success. Israel knows it has roused a hornet’s nest in taking on Hezbollah. It also realizes that it has not, and cannot, extirpate the group from the region. It knows that if it withdrew from Lebanon the northern border would be a hot zone like you wouldn’t believe (especially compared to the relative quiet of the past six years). Therefore, it must (in its view) reoccupy or it will face the renewed ferocity of Hezbollah’s attack. The only problem with this reasoning is that this new protective zone will not protect either Israel or the IDF troops patrolling it. Expect the same devastating guerrilla attacks to resume which drove Israel out by 2000.

And let us not forget that Hezbollah (with Syrian backing) drove both the U.S. and France out of Lebanon in 1983 with massive terror attacks against their respective forces. So Hezbollah is expert at fighting invaders and driving them from its land. It is patient, it can afford to lose many in pursuit of its goals. I don’t believe that the Israeli people will have the same level of patience when the body bags start coming back home. Please make no mistake, I will not feel any positive emotion from this despite the fact that I will have been proven right. I will feel only sadness for lives lost which needn’t have been.

Israel is of course mindful of the analogies that are being made between 1982 and 2006. Its representatives keep repeating the mantra: “They’re not the same, they’re not the same,” as if wishing made it so:

A senior government official said Israeli forces intended to clear out Hezbollah strongholds in border villages as the military is already doing in Bint Jbail and Marun al Ras.

The military plans to move into other villages as well, but “this will not be the re-establishment of the old security zone,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “It is not remotely similar.”

Of course it’s not. Just because he says so. And we believe him because…? But of course the invasions and occupations are so similar as to be virtually the same. And they will end virtually the same as I wrote above.

Though Israel has promised that its invasion will last only as long as it takes to constitute the new peacekeeping operation, that is now fraught with complications. The only European country which has expressed willingness to contribute troops, Germany, has wisely said it will only do so with the approval of Hezbollah. Why should Germany be so stupid as to try to do what Ronald Reagan tried and failed in 1983? Many observers feel that Hezbollah’s agreement to such a force is a dubious proposition. Why should Hezbollah agree unless it gets something in return like a return of Israel’s Lebanese prisoners and return of the Shebaa Farms? Besides, the U.S. is talking to neither Hezbollah or its patron Syria. Without such engagement I see little reason for either party to go along with the peacekeeping option.

And the Times says few other nations have stepped forward to participate in the mission:

The United States has ruled out its soldiers’ participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.

“All the politicians are saying, ‘Great, great’ to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground,” said one senior European official. “Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus.”

There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between them and the Israelis.

And this anonymous unbelievably obtuse comment from a State Department official in Condi Rice’s entourage about the supposed inevitability of the deployment of such a force:

I think you will hear about the impossibility of deploying an international force until the day it is deployed,” the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. “But there will be an international force, because all the key players want it.”

I guess since we’re not talking to Hezbollah no one’s told this joker that Hezbollah’s attitude is: “not so fast.” Does he forget what happened in 1983 when we assumed all the ‘key players’ wanted us there??

As long as the international community cannot get its act together to create a viable force that is accepted by both warring parties Israel will be in southern Lebanon. To paraphrase Walter Mondale’s witty comeback against Ronald Reagan during a presidential debate: Israel won’t tell you it’s going to be occupying Lebanon for the indefinite future. I just did.”

I have to give credit where it’s due to Aron Trauring who presciently predicted today’s events in a post going back to July 18th:

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and bombed it to smithereens. At the time there was no Hezbollah to rain down rockets on northern Israel. 18 years, thousands of dead people later, Israel left Lebanon, with its tail between its legs and Hezbollah, a well trained, well armed guerilla movement, left behind as a potent force in Lebanon.

So now, when Israel seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the past (and despite the disclaimers, it looks like Israel will invade Lebanon and recreate the failed “buffer zone”), even before the invasion there are large numbers of casualies on the Israeli side. Does any rational person truly believe Israel can defeat the Hezbollah militarily, when it failed to do so for 18 years? Jews think of themselves as being smart. But the mind-numbing display of blind stupidity displayed by the so-called “pro-Israel” camp, takes one’s breath away.

I have to admit I was skeptical at the time. I unfortunately gave the IDF and the Israeli government too much credit, believing they would recognize the quagmire they’d escaped from in 2000 and would be leery of falling into it again. Aron you were right and I was wrong. Lebanon redux IS a “mind-numbing display of blinding stupidity.”