Betting the Farm at Annapolis
The upshot of Wednesday’s open letter from six PSA Advisory Board members and two other distinguished former officials to President Bush and Secretary Rice is to urge them to think hard if they’re going to bet the farm on Middle East peace at Annapolis next month. According to the authors, if the upcoming summit fails, there will be “devastating consequences” for the US and the region. In fact, Annapolis represents a dangerously big gamble on a very long shot for lasting peace.
The pressure on the Administration to call for a new round of top-level Middle East peace talks is substantial. A few of the main drivers are: (1) that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group correctly identified Israeli-Palestinian peace as a potential linchpin of a larger Middle East settlement, which could calm Iraq while effectively containing Iran; (2) that any serious conversation with Arab or Muslim leaders about the US role in the Middle East invariably includes a diatribe against our support for the “Israeli occupation;” (3) that the longer Palestinians live without a single, sovereign, responsible government, the more their political life comes to resemble Iraq’s civil war; and (4) that the Israelis themselves have for the first time put partitioning Jerusalem on the table.
It is also significant that the Israeli and US governments have developed a closer working relationship under Bush and Olmert than under previous leaders. This fact may have persuaded the President that he can broker a diplomatic triumph at Annapolis to temporarily clear Iraq from the headlines and even salvage the foreign policy legacy of his presidency.
But consider for a moment the less auspicious circumstances of a November summit.
The letter’s authors correctly caution against sidelining Hamas or Syria from the dialog, which would increase their likelihood of playing a spoiler role and result in “escalating violence from the West Bank or from Gaza, either of which would overwhelm any political achievement.” Yet it is not clear that Hamas or Syria will participate in comprehensive final status talks with Israel under any circumstances. And even if they do, recent history suggests there will be other spoilers, who will find a way to upset any deal from which they do not extract maximum profit.
One likely spoiler is a resurgent Hezbollah, a powerful quasi-state operating outside the effective control of the Lebanese or Syrian governments. Hezbollah has the ability to rain terror on Northern Israel and possibly even drag the Israelis into another incursion into Syria or Lebanon. An even more troubling potential spoiler is Iran, which would undercut any Israeli-Arab progress it perceived as a threat to its ambitions in Iraq or its bid to unite and lead the Muslim world on an anti-Israel platform.
All of this underlines the importance of inclusion. Yet we cannot dictate terms to Syria or Hamas, and they may not come prepared to make concessions, assuming they come at all. Likewise, even if we somehow wrangle a commitment from Hezbollah and Iran not to undermine the deal, there will be other outsiders to this latest process whose status as potential spoilers by itself will magnify their power.
Success at Annapolis would yield huge dividends for the US, Israel, and the Arab states, which is doubtless why the administration seems resolved to move forward in November, whether or not it heeds the letter writers’ advice. But even under the best of circumstances, a final settlement is far from guaranteed to emerge from next month’s talks, and what happens afterward is largely out of American hands.
Sound foreign policy, like all good decision making, requires us to look not only at the benefits of success, but to consider the costs of failure and the likelihood of each outcome. A US-led Middle East summit in November 2007 is a gamble: the upside would be fantastic, but the odds are worse than even and a loss could cost us the farm.
The negotiations in Annapolis – Is there a breakthrough in sight?
In my view, the outcome of the negotiations in Annapolis as well as of the overall peace process depends largely on whether there is a definitive answer to the question whether the dire and protracted Palestine (Arab) -Israeli conflict is about a set of outstanding issues (such as settlements, refugees, holy sites or even water distribution) or a self-reproducing violence the logic of which has nothing to do with the said issues.
The answer to the said question is not as plain as it my seem and it may change as the conflict unfolds. It also depends on many factors some of which we may even not know. And even if you give the answer its finality is questionable. On one hand, the failure of the Oslo process, Camp-David talks and the Road Map seems to suggest that the conflict will continue regardless of the diplomatic efforts to resolve it – to an unknown end. However, the advocates of negotiations may reasonbly argue that the aforementioned diplomatic efforts did not properly address the set of issues that lie in the heart of the conflict.
A possible way out here which is far from new may be that the negotiations about a set of issues have a potential to succed if the parties are willing and ready to make concessions to one another. This motivation comes as the warring parties realise the compelling reality that the balance of costs and gains of the conflict continuing may be less preferable than the price of making concessions. And what is very important, the ideological costs and gains should be taken seriously into account. Thus, the readiness of the parties to make concessions may become a test in determining the nature of the particular conflict at a given moment in time and the conflict at hand is no exception.
Looking at the conflict in Palestine from this angle, the reality would be encouraging if it had not been for Hamas because the latter is the most to lose in the ideological terms in case of a peace settlement, its ideology being the unrealistic commitment to destroy or at least successfuly fight Israel. Meanwhile, Israel and Fatah are hopefully becoming to realise the need to achieve a lasting peace. One may argue here that Fatah has never fully abandoned its commitment to fight Israel and that may be true. But Fatah has already lost the leading role in the fight and is a secular enough to be more or less rational decision-makers. Moreover, having lost to Hamas in the election and later in Gaza largely because of the failure to provide good governance Fatah would probably prefer a peaceful enviroment to give it another try.
So what implications does the above have for the negotiations in Annapolis?
First of all, despite the fact that Hamas is a powerful spoiler, it should not be involved in the negotiations since it is simply unwilling and not ready to make concessions even on the ideological front (the decline to accept Israel is a good indication of this).
Secondly, the environment of negotiations should not be that there will be Israel on one side and Fatah and Arab on the other. In other words, the efforts of all the mediators should be aimed not at supporting one of the parties but at pushing them to the compromise. Therefore, the US should act as impartially as possible and Sirya and Iran should not be involved as their involvement may give Fatah an advantage and may bias the US position. The main question is how to get the moderate Arab states to act more impartially. My suggestion is that it could be better if the negotiations among the Qartet, Arab states and Palestine were anticipated by the negotiations between the former two.
All points considered, I fully understand the risks of sidelining Hamas, Iran and Syria. But if the outcome of Annapolis is a positive one this will become a question of peace enforcement which is not the subject of this essay.
Comment on October 14, 2007 @ 11:35 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today on Betting the Farm at AnnapolisHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Pingback on October 27, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Here is a very good piece on Olmert and Israeli government generally: samsonblinded.org/blog/ol..
Comment on June 1, 2008 @ 12:41 pm