Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with top Israeli officials yesterday, and made a powerful case against a renewed push for the peace process. She didn’t mean to, of course; she was actually exhorting the Israeli leadership to do whatever they must to get Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table. But she employed two arguments in support of her recommendation that in reality work against it. Haaretz reports:
According to an Israeli official who was briefed on the content of the meetings, Clinton told the different Israeli officials that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are the best partners the Israelis ever had, adding that “it is unclear who will come after them.”
If Abbas and Fayyad–who resolutely refuse to even meet with Israeli leaders face to face–are the best Palestinian “peace partners” Israel has ever had, it is clear the peace process has gone practically nowhere since it began. But the second comment is more important.
Clinton came to Israel directly from Egypt, where she met with new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Morsi is there because the Egyptian people finally overthrew a widely hated autocrat who was viewed, in part, as too friendly to Israel and the West. Israel’s gas deal with Egypt seemed to go up in smoke–literally–and the vaunted peace agreement, in place for more than three decades now, was called into question. Egyptians first called for it to be torn up, then renegotiated, and now Morsi says he will uphold it, but he won’t return any of the Israeli government’s overtures to him.
It’s possible to see in the evolution of Cairo’s discussion of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty evidence that the deal is in no real trouble of being revoked (though it may be violated with far more regularity). But that misses a larger point. The Arab Spring, especially in the case of Egypt, taught us not to rely on seemingly stable dictators who don’t rule with popular consent. And it should be a dire warning against striking a deal with unpopular leaders who don’t represent public opinion and who are here today, but may very well be gone tomorrow.
Obviously, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are still far from a deal–possibly farther than they’ve ever been. But what if the Arab Spring rolls along into the West Bank? And even if it doesn’t, there is no reason to treat the current leadership crop as permanent. What happens if they fall? What guarantee is there that any deal would be worth the paper it was written on? The fact that Abbas and Fayyad are unpopular, ineffective, and could be replaced any day by Palestinians to whom the deal would mean nothing is an argument against making any sort of desperate push to get a deal signed. Clinton should be pressuring Abbas and Fayyad to reform their corrupt, autocratic ways if real peace and stability is the goal.
The Middle East is no safer under Obama.
Exactly. This is a point that eludes the Thomas Friedmans of the world. Friedman, in a number of columns, condemns Israel for failing to react to the Arab spring by making peace with the Palestinians. Even as Abbas becomes more and more Mubarak like (amassing a personal fortune, stifling dissent) Friedman called Netanyahu "the Mubarak of the peace process" for failing to reach out to Abbas. Friedman, of course, is too dense to appreciate the irony.
Friedman has lost the compass of objectivity long ago. He is obsessed with the idea that the Middle East quandary would be solved if they would juts listen to the wise man of the NY Times- himself,of course. He has become a laughing stock as everything he proposed has gone up in smoke.
Some of us have been trying to point this out since before Oslo. (In some cases, since before Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David agreement.) Some of us were called very nasty names for warning that signing Oslo would be naive, dangerous and ill advised. I really wish I had been wrong.
Actually, the fact that Egypt is continuing to uphold their peace treaty with Israel even with Morsi at the helm is proof that signing treaties with unpopular or popular dictators is worthwhile, even preferable. I don't think Morsi would have signed a peace treaty with Israel at all, but he is compelled to uphold the treaty anyway. n nI am not saying I support signing treaties with unpopular dictators, just that the logic of both the writer and the commentators doesn't quite work out.
Could it be that Morsi wants the money paid by Israel for the gas, and the money paid to Egypt by the United States as a direct consequence of the treaty, and agrees to uphold the treaty to preserve these, rather than doing so because of his ardent respect for treaties? Or perhaps he does so because the military leaders he inherited require him to do so? n
The only reason Morsi is nominally upholding the peace "treaty" with Israel is because he and the Moslem Brotherhood, don't have a funding alternative – to the tune of billions a year – to the US aid Egypt depends on for survival. If and when Egypt finds a new patron, they will reoccupy Sinai and launch a new round of genocidal warfare. Does that logic work out for you?
It's merely a hudna. n nRight now Egypt is barely surviving and reliant on handouts from other Muslim States such as Saudi. n nThe army has been shafted by the MB lies and is in no position to even defend itself let alone fight the Israelis. n nIn other words, war with Israel would be a complete catastrophe. Egypt would suffer the utter defeat of defeats and we all know how that plays amongst a jihad obsessed and Jew hating creed. n nDon't worry, when they think the time is right (yet again) those masses will be whipped into another forlorn hope of wiping out the 'Zionist entity'. n nIt may be five years. It may be ten but rest assured it will not go away. It is Islam. n nIt is your flawed logic at fault here and maybe if you paid attention to what Muslims are saying, have said and the history of Islam your western prism would melt away.
Israel should annex J & S and this will be the end of the story with a "fabricated people" as per Gingrich and others.
The Palestinians have been negotiating in bad faith with Israel from the beginning and will never negotiate otherwise. There are no Israeli concessions which will induce the Palestinians to settle peacefully with Israel. The Palestinians will accept only one outcome and that is the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish People.