Sean Wilentz’s cover story in the New Republic reviews seven recent books on Abraham Lincoln and reflects on the “almost cultish enthusiasm” for comparing Barack Obama (who has been president for little more than five months) to the greatest president in American history.

The intellectuals’ rapture over Obama, their eagerness to align him with their beatified Lincoln, has grown out of a deep hunger for a liberal savior . . . . Although Obama’s supporters at times likened him to the two Kennedys, and at times to FDR, the comparisons always came back to Lincoln — with the tall, skinny, well-spoken Great Emancipator from Illinois serving as the spiritual forebear of the tall, skinny, well-spoken great liberal hope from Illinois.

Wilentz writes it is natural that electing an African-American president brings Lincoln to mind, but that “the hunger pangs of some liberals have caused them to hallucinate.”

Obama’s legendary announcement in Springfield was the purest political stagecraft, but it was happily regarded as a kind of message from history. . . . One hears that the rhetoric that carried Obama to the White House is Lincolnesque, which it most certainly is not, either in its imagery or its prosody. One hears even that Obama is not just an extremely talented and promising new president but, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes, that he is “destined” — destined! — “to be thought of as Lincoln’s direct heir.”

Wilentz further notes the irony of Obama obtaining the Democratic nomination by manipulation of caucus rules in early states and later obtaining the backing of the “super delegates,” and then winning the presidency in part through a massive funding advantage over the Republican candidate.  There is “something, well, rich about the candidate beloved by the good-government reformers relying on the party insiders to get nominated and rejecting public financing in order to get elected.”

Five months into his presidency, it is increasingly apparent that Obama is the heir not of Lincoln, but of another president who initially inspired high hopes with his intelligence (he graduated from Annapolis and worked on nuclear physics with Admiral Rickover) and literary skills (he was the author of a well-received autobiography with the audacious title “Why Not the Best?”), but who lacked experience (serving only one term as a governor before becoming president), and who fundamentally misread the country’s Communist and Islamic adversaries.

As Obama heads off to Russia without his secretary of state, and Iran’s fists remain clenched despite videos and speeches, even liberal historians are starting to hedge their bets.

Yesterday morning, John R. Thomson wrote at National Review Online that Roberto Micheletti — the president of the Honduran Congress, a member of ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s party, and the person unanimously chosen to complete Zelaya’s term after the Supreme Court ordered the army to remove him from office—described the ouster as “a democratic act,” and that it will not affect the elections scheduled for November 29 to choose a successor to the term-limited Zelaya.

As retired career diplomat George Landau—the former U.S. ambassador to Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela—observes, “This was not a military coup. The military blocked an attempted civilian coup by Manuel Zelaya, as he defied Honduras’s Supreme Court, its Congress, and his own political party. Instead of calling for his reinstatement in office, we should congratulate the Honduran government on removing the president peacefully.

According to Thomson, “not one informed Honduran—including members of the media—has opposed Manuel Zelaya’s removal from office.”

While many regretted the need to do so, all said the move was both legal and necessary, a position supported by Honduran attorney general Luis Alberto Rubí, who had threatened to prosecute Zelaya if he actually held some form of referendum.

Late yesterday afternoon, two unidentified “senior [Obama] Administration officials” held a background briefing for reporters.  They responded as follows to a question about the characterization of Zelaya’s removal as a “coup:”

QUESTION: . . . earlier this week, Secretary Clinton gave us to understand that you were holding off on a determination on whether it was indeed a military coup. . . . Is that still your stance, even though I know that . . . the Legal Adviser’s Office has begun the process of determining whether it was a military coup and, therefore, whether the aid cutoff is triggered? . . .

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE:  . . . [B]oth the President and the Secretary have described events in Honduras as a coup, which they certainly were once the current claimant to the presidency swore - was sworn in before the congress after the forcible removal of the legal and constitutional president, Mel Zelaya. . . .

In regard to the illegal detention and expulsion of President Zelaya, this was an act which was unconstitutional and illegal and cannot be tolerated. . . .

Unconstitutional, illegal and cannot be tolerated:  a harsh position, harshly expressed, delivered in as harsh a manner as possible—by press conference.  The New York Times reports this morning that American officials were “giving Honduras a cold shoulder” and that they “said that they had not had any official or unofficial contact with the interim government.”

It’s almost as if Honduras were an adversary of the United States rather than an ally—although if it were an adversary the “no-meddling” principle might kick in.

If it could make contact, Honduras might protest that it interprets its own constitution differently from the Obama administration, and that there is no difference of opinion on the issue between its Congress, Supreme Court, civilian attorney general and military lawyers.

But Honduras would undoubtedly find that its interpretation is, as Secretary Clinton might explain, unenforceable.

Earlier this month, George Mitchell held a press briefing about his efforts to achieve a “comprehensive peace” in the Middle East, noting he had made four trips to meet with Israel and over a dozen Arab countries, and saying he intended “to bring these discussions to a very early conclusion.”

Asked if EU diplomat Javier Solana was correct about the U.S. “announc[ing] its vision for peace in the Middle East before the end of July,” Mitchell responded as follows:

As I said earlier, we’re going to move as promptly as possible. And in my opening remarks, I said that we hope to conclude the discussions in which we’re now engaged very soon. To me, it’s a matter of weeks, not many months, so he may well be right. But we’re going to see how well we can proceed. . . . [S]o I’ll call him when we’re ready and he can announce that, and then you can have the results then. (Laughter.)

The noteworthy part of the response is Mitchell did not deny that an American peace plan is coming — soon.

Obama appears to be following the five-year old advice of Rob Malley (his erstwhile foreign policy adviser), who in 2004 dismissed reliance on a step-by-step process and argued for a plan defining upfront “the shape of a permanent peace” to be pushed on the parties. Malley proposed that:

[T]he process ought to be turned on its head, with the U.S. seeking to describe the endgame at the outset and with the parties agreeing on the means of getting there afterward. . . .

[The U.S. should] spell out the components of an acceptable deal, rather than press for incremental steps.

A lot has happened in the last five years, and Malley himself no longer thinks this is the right way to proceed. In the June 11, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books, Malley and co-author Hussein Agha concluded it is not time for the U.S. to “unfurl a grand diplomatic initiative,” and they proposed instead “another way”:

[It] would not be to polish up answers to questions of borders, security, Jerusalem, or how to compensate refugees. That approach increasingly is becoming a sideshow, chiefly of interest to official negotiators. . . . When Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, calls for dropping timeworn slogans — land for peace, two-state solution — he has a political purpose. He also has a point.

. . . The US should reach out to skeptical constituencies that would make a difference but are left indifferent by current talk of a two-state agreement. One example is the settlers, an active and dynamic Israeli group yet one that the outside world typically treats as modern-day lepers. A more inclusive political process could recognize their views and concerns, consider their interests, and invite them to take part in discussions.

The current dispute over settlements is a prime example of a “sideshow.” It is a manufactured crisis, designed to impress the Arab world with Obama’s toughness on Israel, or force upfront Israeli concessions on a previously agreed issue. The Gaza experience demonstrated that dismantlement of entire settlements had no positive effect on the peace process — quite the contrary.

In his brief period in office, Obama has refused to answer whether the U.S. is bound by the April 14, 2004 letter given to induce Israel to turn over Gaza to the Palestinians, and has reneged on five years of understandings about “natural growth” of existing settlements. His response to Israeli objections has effectively been “sue me” — the understandings are not “enforceable.” It is not an approach inspiring confidence in him as a reliable or principled ally.

Netanyahu has announced five fundamental principles for any plan: (1) explicit Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish national state; (2) demilitarization of any Palestinian state to reflect Israel’s security needs; (3) explicit international guarantees of those security arrangements; (4) resettling refugees outside Israel; and (5) no further Palestinian claims after a peace agreement. These principles reflect not simply Netanyahu’s position but an Israeli national consensus; they would seem the minimum conditions of peace.

A serious U.S. plan would adopt those principles and — to use a State Department peace process standard — recognize prior U.S. agreements with Israel, particularly the one in the 2004 letter. Permitting a militarized Judenrein state unwilling to recognize a Jewish one, and insisting on indefensible borders for the latter, is a prescription for war, not peace. The U.S. should have no interest in such a state, much less proposing a plan to affect the creation of one.

In today’s New York Times Book Review, Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Richard N. Haass’s “War of Necessity, War of Choice.” As usual when a book about George W. Bush is involved, the review is actually more of an op-ed.

Wheatcroft’s effort is marred by his shaky grasp of the American Constitution. Here is his description of some “valuable insider’s insights” he found in the book:

[Haass] details the sheer contempt the Bushies showed toward the State Department (and Colin Powell), the great expansion of vice presidential power, and the way Donald Rumsfeld effectively silenced the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Leaving aside Iraq itself, this series of events really added up to an extraordinary episode in American history, a kind of internal Washington putsch against the Constitution.

Under the Constitution, civilian authority controls the military, which is why the Secretary of Defense can decide (as Rumsfeld did) to deal directly with his field commanders rather than give the Joint Chiefs an independent voice. Assigning the Vice President important duties (such as inventing the Internet) was once considered admirable, not grounds for constitutional concern. And presidents as diverse as Harry Truman and Richard Nixon found that reverence for the views of the State Department was not always wise, much less constitutionally required.

Haass himself does not allege a kind of coup in his book.  He writes instead that, because of Powell’s inadequate advocacy skills, his failure to develop a better relationship with Bush, and the relative weakness of many of the senior State Department officials, the result was that “at the end of the day it was more often than not still the positions of those at the Defense Department, the Vice President’s office, and the NSC that mostly shaped U.S. policy” during Bush’s first term.  Some putsch.

Even a high school journalism teacher might have questioned Wheatcroft’s concept of a “putsch,” but not the editors of the New York Times Book Review, not for this kind of “review.”

Seth Lipsky re-read George W. Bush’s Address to the Knesset a year ago on the 60^th anniversary of the re-creation of Israel — and found a much different view of Israel than the one in Barack Obama’s Cairo speech:

[Bush] began by quoting Ben Gurion’s proclamation, declaring that Israel possessed a “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate.” The president of the United States called it “the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David-a homeland for the chosen people: Eretz Yisrael.” He recalled how America recognized the Jewish state 11 minutes after the declaration. He characterized the “alliance between our governments” as “unbreakable” but he asserted that the “source of our friendship runs deeper than any treaty.” He spoke of the “bonds of the Book” and the “ties of the soul.”

The president recalled that when William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower, he quoted the words of Jeremiah: “Come let us declare in Zion the word of God.” He spoke of how the founders of America “saw a new promised land” and gave their towns names like Bethlehem and New Canaan. His words were those of a man who has read and thought about how the idea of Israel was intertwined with the idea of America going back to James Madison, say, or Samuel Adams and of why, as he put it to the Knesset, “many Americans became passionate advocates for a Jewish state.”

Bush also spoke of the “suffering and sacrifice [that] would pass before the dream was fulfilled.” He spoke of the “soulless men” who perpetrated the Holocaust, and he quoted Elie Wiesel. He described the joyous tears of a “fearless woman raised in Wisconsin,” Golda Meir, when the dream of a state was fulfilled. He spoke of touching the Western Wall, seeing the sun reflected in the Sea of Galilee, of praying at Yad Vashem and visiting Masada and he swore the oath that Israeli soldiers swear: “Masada shall never fall again.”

Lipsky’s beautiful appreciation of a speech by Bush that he believes “will stand as a measure for those who follow him as America’s tribune” is worth reading in its entirety.  It also caused me to re-read this post about it, and Amos Oz’s remarkable evocation of a moment beyond human words.

At her June 17 press conference, Hillary Clinton was asked whether there were understandings or agreements between Israel and the Bush administration about settlement growth and whether she felt bound by them. Clinton responded as follows:

[I]n looking at the history of the Bush Administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the Administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility. Our former ambassador Dan Kurtzer has written an op-ed that appeared in the last few days that lays out our position on that.

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Elliott Abrams — who was in a position of direct responsibility at the time — noted the strange qualifier Clinton used:

Mrs. Clinton also said there were no “enforceable” agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?

In the op-ed to which Clinton referred, Daniel Kurtzer employed a similar linguistic evasion. Kurtzer argued there was no “formal” understanding.

Was there an informal understanding? Was there an oral agreement? Was there a tacit understanding or a tacit agreement? Were there notes, memoranda, and other documents reflecting what was communicated and understood? Was there a course of action indicating agreement? Was there detrimental reliance? As Jennifer noted, even a first-year law student knows the definition of a deal.

But this is not simply a question about the past, because it raises questions about the ability of other nations to rely on future commitments that may be made by the U.S. government — or at least this one.  How are other nations to determine whether the Obama administration’s commitments will be “enforceable?” How formal will be formal enough for the administration to enforce them against itself, much less a successor administration?

And when the U.S. government later reneges on its commitments, understandings, and agreements, where should the other governments go to get their concessions back?

The New York Times reports that House Democratic leaders released late Monday night a revamped 1,201-page Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” energy bill and plan to move it to the floor on Friday.  The bill has grown from the 946-page version adopted in the Energy and Commerce Committee — and “Sponsors expect to draft a manager’s amendment later this week that reflects additional deals reached among lawmakers.”

Democrats are still not done wheeling and dealing as they gear up for a floor debate, with critical issues still unresolved on everything from biofuels to which federal agency — U.S. EPA or the Agriculture Department — will have lead oversight of the offset program that would pay for environmentally friendly land management practices.

* * *

“There are some issues still under discussion, but we are confident we can resolve them by the time the bill goes to the floor on Friday,” [Pelosi spokesman Drew] Hammill said. “The speaker, Leader [Steny] Hoyer and Chairmen Waxman and Peterson have all agreed on this approach for moving this historic climate change and clean energy jobs bill.”

Paul Blumenthal, writing on the blog of the Sunlight Foundation, describes how the bill is suddenly 255 pages longer than the one reported out of committee — and is getting longer.  The bill was introduced on May 15, reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee with amendments on June 5, discharged by two other committees the same day, discharged by six other committees on June 19, and “now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.”

And that isn’t even the worst part. This, apparently, isn’t even the final bill. The final bill will be a manager’s amendment that will be drafted later this week! From a posting on the House Rules Committee, we know that the deadline to submit amendments is Thursday at 9:30am. And there is talk that this will be voted on Friday. Thus, the final version of this bill will likely only be available for less than 24 hours.

It seems clear that, if the public knew what is in this bill, and how much it may cost them, they would concur with this analysis:  it is a “disaster.”  But the Democrats plan to ram it through without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text.  The same legislative process that brought us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet again.

Why so fast?  Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a need to make room for the next bill to be railroaded through on a fast track by a one-party Congress.  The Times notes that:

Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) . . . wants to see the House adopt the climate bill before the start of the Fourth of July recess so that he can turn his full attention after the break to President Obama’s health care reform plans.

After meeting with three different sets of Hamas leaders — in Damascus, Ramallah, and Gaza — Jimmy Carter posted a “Trip Report” last week describing his meetings. He said he met with Khaled Meshaal and other Hamas leaders in Damascus and “left written proposals for them to consider.” Two days later he met with Hamas legislators in Ramallah: “They had a copy of the proposal I had made to Meshaal in Damascus and we discussed its wording.” Three days after that, he went to Gaza and “had extensive meetings with Prime Minister [Ismail] Haniya” that the New York Times reported lasted three hours.

Questions about Carter’s trip arose at the State Department press briefing the next day, with Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley responding that Carter “is a private citizen, and the meetings were private.” Asked if the State Department had provided security for Carter, Crowley promised to obtain an answer. There followed a colloquy on whether the administration had any prior contact with Carter (since the Bush administration was “quite outspoken about its opposition to President Carter meeting Hamas”):

MR. CROWLEY: No, I don’t know if there were any contacts with him.

QUESTION: Then is it possible to find out? And then if there was contact, which I suspect there probably was, if the Administration took a position on whether he should meet these -

MR. CROWLEY: Without commenting on the specific issue, it’s not unusual when presidents travel around the world. They can check in. I don’t know if he did in this particular case. I’ll - we’ll ask the question.

The next day, the State Department disclosed that there had indeed been prior contacts: Carter had met with Near Eastern Affairs Bureau Deputy Assistant Secretary David Hale and with National Security staff, and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security had assisted the Secret Service with security for Carter’s trip to Gaza. The Department did not answer the query about whether the administration had supported or opposed Carter’s prospective meeting with Hamas.

The following day a “senior Hamas movement’s leader” in Gaza said Carter had “presented a printed text of a proposal that overcomes the international Quartet’s requirements and leads to direct dialogue with the United States”:

Hamas sources in Gaza revealed that Carter presented a one-page proposal that calls on Hamas to accept the Arab peace initiative of 2002 and accept that final goal of the Roadmap plan, which is the two-state solution.

Carter told Hamas leaders that if they accept the two suggestions, this will lead to a direct contact with the U.S. administration and will lead to lift the political and financial embargo on Hamas, said the sources.

Blogger Elder of Zion linked to a Google translation of an Al Quds report quoting Hamas leader Yehia Moussa saying “Carter told us that the American President (Barack Obama) wants to go beyond the conditions of the Quartet, and has the desire to do so, but on [sic] Hamas to provide an acceptable scenario.”

Carter told the President [sic] of the Palestinian government (article) in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, during a meeting a few days ago that he had talked with a number of senior officials in the administration of President Obama in this regard, and that he told them that he intended to make contact with the group in this regard, the sources said.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an Israeli report quoting Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri as saying that “We know Carter is not acting alone. He is acting as part of the large American system” and that Hamas has “excellent relations with elements in the circle of the decision making in the U.S. administration.”

In his trip report, Carter asserted his “primary goals” were to “induce [Hamas] to comply with the Quartet’s ‘3 conditions’ (recognize Israel’s right to exist; forgo violence; and accept previous peace agreements), help form a unity government with elections next January, and exchange the release of Corporal Shalit for a reasonable number of prisoners held by Israel,” and his public position in Gaza was that he was there as a private citizen.

But we now know Carter met not only with the State Department before his trip, but with the administration’s national security staff; the State Department helped facilitate his visit to Gaza; he carried with him a written proposal, whose contents have not been disclosed, which the administration undoubtedly saw before it was presented; he discussed the proposal with multiple Hamas leaders in three cities; and he apparently told them he had been in contact with senior Obama officials regarding his efforts.

There is a certain imbalance in an administration that asserts the strictest possible interpretation of Israel’s Phase I Roadmap obligations, while simultaneously facilitating meetings for a former president with the terrorist group the Palestinians — as part of their own Phase I obligations — are required to dismantle. And the proposal presented at the meetings does not appear to have been merely one by a private citizen: the proposal ought to be disclosed, together with a better explanation of the administration’s role in it.

Roger Cohen, writing from Tehran, this time with his eyes and ears more open, says in “City of Whispers” that “[m]any of the people I spoke to when I arrived last week are in prison” but that “[s]till the whispering continues”:

A man holds his mobile phone up to me: footage of a man with his head blown off last Monday. A man, 28, whispers: “The government will use more violence, but some of us have to make the sacrifice.”

Another whisper: “Where are you from?” When I say the United States, he says: “Please give our regards to freedom.”

Which brings me to President Barack Obama, who said in his inaugural speech: “Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Seldom was a fist more clenched than in the ramming-through of this election result. Deceit and the attempted silencing of dissent are now Iran’s everyday currency. In this city of whispers one of the whispers now is: Where is Obama?

Apparently working to preserve Plan B:  “And know that if you will not unclench your fist, we will extend a fist-bump.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly demanded that Israel meet an obligation to stop “natural growth” in its settlements, but is unable itself to define that obligation in practical terms.  Meeting with reporters earlier this week, George Mitchell had this colloquy about the issue:

QUESTION: . . . can you give us just a definition of what the United States considers natural growth? What does that phrase mean in your mind?

MR. MITCHELL: There’s been no change in our policy. And there have been - there have been discussions on every aspect of the issue.

QUESTION: Well, what does natural growth mean? I mean, can you just use it in –

MR. MITCHELL: I’m constantly asked by editors, you know, please give a plain explanation of what natural growth is.

QUESTION: If it’s for your editor. (Laughter.)

MR. MITCHELL: Well, of course, one of the issues is that there is no universally used and accepted definition. The most common definition is by the number of births, but there are many variations of that. I’ve had numerous discussions with many Israeli and other officials, and there are almost as many definitions as there are people speaking. But I think the most commonly used measure is the number of births.  [Emphasis added].

It is hard to charge Israel with violating a Roadmap obligation regarding “natural growth” when everyone has a different definition, and the person handling the issue for the Obama administration cannot define it, even when constantly asked by the press to give a plain explanation.

It is clear that over the last five years Israel kept the U.S. informed of its interpretation of its “natural growth” obligation and set forth guidelines to which the U.S. did not object (permitting building as long as Israel did not build new settlements, expand the boundaries of existing ones, or provide subsidies for people to move there).  Mitchell suggests the “most common” measure of the obligation is to restrict the number of births, but he does not assert Israel ever agreed to such an unrealistic measure, nor does he explain why Israel’s own guidelines were not more reasonable.

There may not have been what Hillary Clinton calls an “enforceable” agreement regarding “natural growth,” but there appear to have been oral agreements and/or tacit understandings that the Obama administration has simply decided it does not want to observe.

The more important point, however, is that the major settlement blocs are located on strategic high ground, or in other militarily significant locations, which are undoubtedly part of the “defensible borders” promised to Israel in the 2004 Bush Letter — as part of an agreement relating to the Gaza disengagement that should be deemed “enforceable.”  There is no definition of “defensible borders” in the letter, but the one thing everyone knows it does not mean is the 1967 borders.

It is ludicrous for the U.S. to be negotiating with Israel on the number of births that can be permitted in areas already effectively promised to Israel as part of the borders necessary to defend itself — unless the Obama administration plans to break that promise as well.

Commenting on Glenn Kessler’s Washington Post story subtitled “Obama seeks way to acknowledge protesters without alienating Ayatollah,” Paul Mirengoff at Power Line says, “it’s shocking that [Obama] believes he can talk his way around the non-false choice presented by the unrest/uprising in Iran.”

If Obama is looking for a precedent, however, perhaps he could dust off Bush 41’s infamous “Chicken Kiev” speech.  In 1991, as the Soviet Union was heading toward its eventual demise and the Ukrainians were considering declaring their independence, Bush warned the Ukrainian legislature against a “suicidal nationalism” and told them “freedom is not the same as independence.”

For the U.S. to choose between the leader of the Soviet Union and the “independence-minded leaders” of its Republics was, Bush said, a “false choice.”  Instead, the U.S. would maintain “the strongest possible relationship with the Soviet Government” while striving for “improved relations” with the Republics.

He told the Ukrainian legislature that “You have to give [the people] hope” - a word he used six times in the speech.

At yesterday’s State Department press conference, Spokesman Ian Kelly — who the day before had pointedly said he was unwilling to use the word “condemn” about events in Iran — said about the protesters killed that “of course, we condemn any acts of violence that led to the deaths of these demonstrators.”

His condemnation produced this colloquy:

QUESTION: Why are you not condemning more broadly any acts of violence against the demonstrators, period, not just those that happened to have led to deaths?

MR. KELLY: Yeah. That’s a fair question. And I would say that any use of violence against unarmed, peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable.

QUESTION: And something you condemn?

MR. KELLY: As I said before, I - we find this unacceptable. I’m not going to get into the semantics.

In other words, asked to “condemn” all acts of violence against demonstrators — not just deadly ones — Kelly was comfortable only with calling such acts “unacceptable.”  Asked a second time to condemn them, he repeated his use of “unacceptable.”  Actual condemnation was a bridge he was not prepared to cross.

The term “unacceptable” is the characterization Barack Obama has given to the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons.  Assuming he is using that term in State Department parlance, it means he disagrees with Iran’s pursuit of such weapons but is not prepared to condemn them — unless, of course, someone is actually killed by them.

As he told the entire Muslim world, “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.”  That would be unacceptable.

The principles in Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Illan University were not new — they were the formal reservations in Israel’s 2003 acceptance of the Roadmap:  the goal of a Palestinian state depends on it being demilitarized, unable to sign treaties with hostile powers, with effective security measures along its borders and strategic airspace in Israeli control; Arab states need to re-settle any refugees from the 1948 war, in the same way Israel resettled Jewish refugees; and there will be no Palestinian state if it is not prepared simultaneously to recognize a Jewish one with defensible borders.

None of these conditions are problematical if a peaceful Palestinian state is the goal of the process; all are problematical if the goal is to obtain land to launch the next effort to recover “Palestine” - as happened when Gaza was transferred in 2005 to a Palestinian Authority that trumpeted its readiness to receive it.  The Gaza experiment demonstrated Israel was prepared to dismantle settlements, and the aftermath in Gaza demonstrated that settlements were not the problem.

The peace process is currently less a diplomatic effort than a bankruptcy proceeding for a failed enterprise that continues only because it is too big to fail.  Israel thought it would be a secured creditor in the proceeding, since it holds written promises from the U.S. (issued in 1997, 2004 and 2009) that the process must result in defensible borders for Israel.  But the Palestinians are the UAW of the peace process, making extraordinary demands because they believe the new U.S. government will ultimately hand them ownership of the enterprise.

They demand that Israel affirm a two-state solution while they simultaneously refuse to recognize that one of the states must be Jewish.  They demand Israel meet a Phase I obligation to stop settlement activity, without regard for the manner in which that obligation previously has been interpreted, while they are themselves totally unable to undertake their own Phase I obligation to dismantle Hamas.  They reject Phase II of the Roadmap (a state with provisional sovereignty), but their powerless president — now in the 54th month of his 48-month term of office — nevertheless says they are “fully committed to all of our obligations under the road map, from A to Z.”  They are in fact still working on “A.”

The Palestinians seek U.S. support for the creation of a Judenrein state, with every Jew sent to a state the Palestinians refuse to recognize as Jewish, to live side by side with indefensible borders.  It is, as George Will noted, unworthy of America to play an “even-handed” role in such a process.  Netanyahu has reiterated the principles that formed the basis of Israel’s acceptance of the “peace process” and has insisted that it must achieve what Israel has been formally promised on multiple occasions would result from it.

Martin Kramer has suggested that Obama’s Cairo speech can be understood as an example of “Third Worldism,” given some of the themes that pervaded the address:

Some of the influences on Obama bubble to the surface. There is the Third Worldism: Muslims are victims of our colonialism (Obama has read Fanon) and the Cold War (has he been reading Khalidi again?) The primacy of the West is over: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” There is the implicit comparison of the Palestinians to black Americans during segregation, a familiar trope (Carter and Condi went for it too). Israel comes across as an anomaly. There is no appreciation of Israel as a strategic asset - its ties to the United States are “cultural and historical,” and thus not entirely rational. (That validates Obama’s other former Chicago colleague, Mearsheimer.) All of this has the ring of conviction - and of a Third Worldist sensibility.

Kramer’s reference to Rashid Khalidi is a useful clue to one of the more extraordinary incidents in the four-month old Obama administration:  the refusal, 21 times and counting, to answer whether the administration is bound by the 2004 Bush letter to Israel.

What would make a new president think he could simply ignore a written commitment to a U.S. ally - reflecting an agreement on existential issues and on which the ally acted in reliance?  Why would he treat the letter as if it were merely a prior politician’s pledge?  The answer can perhaps be found in Khalidi’s 2006 pseudo-scholarly book - “The Iron Cage: The Palestinian Struggle for Statehood” - which Obama likely read when it came out.  The book contains a discussion of the Bush letter, as well as Khalidi’s recommendation about how a subsequent president should handle it.

Khalidi acknowledged the letter is unambiguous.  It “recognized the permanence of major Israeli settlements” and “endorsed the Israeli contention that Palestinian refugees cannot return to Israel proper.”  But Khalidi followed that description with a non-sequitur, asserting that the letter “helped lay low, perhaps definitively, the increasingly dim prospects of an independent, sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state ever coming into being.”

Why would rejection of a Palestinian right of return to Israel have any effect on an “independent, sovereign, contiguous” Palestinian state - particularly since the Bush letter endorsed a Palestinian right of return to the new Palestinian state?  Why would rejection of a right of return to Israel not be simply one of the minimum requirements for a two-state solution, assuming the goal was two states for two peoples?

Similarly, why would the permanence of major Israeli settlements have any effect on an “independent, sovereign, contiguous” Palestinian state - since those settlements occupy about eight percent of the West Bank, could be compensated with land swaps from pre-1967 Israel (even assuming 92 percent of the West Bank was not itself sufficient for a Palestinian state), and are essential to the defensible borders necessary to make any two-state solution work?

Khalidi did not acknowledge, much less answer, those questions.  He simply asserted - using the language of a Third Worldist - that the Bush letter represented “effective support of settlement, colonization, theft, and occupation” that would make the U.S. look like “a superpower bully, conniving with its powerful local ally to impose its will on the weak and powerless.”  Then he gave his suggestion, which reflects precisely what the Obama administration appears to be doing:  just “undo” the Bush letter.  In Khalidi’s words, “what one politician - American or Israeli - has done, another can undo.”  Treat the letter as merely a politician’s pledge, and break it.

The strategic significance of what Obama is doing (and undoing) with respect to the Bush letter is serious.  The considerations are analyzed with remarkable clarity by J.E. Dyer in the first and second installments of her series on “The Next Phase of World War IV.”  The title reflects the forgotten fact that we are in the middle of a new cold/hot war, in which this issue is not simply a peripheral one.  On the contrary, the persistent refusal of the State Department to address the U.S. commitment reflected in the Bush letter is, as she notes, “[p]erhaps one of the most important developments.”

If the issue were not so serious, this would be comedy gold. As it is, it sets some sort of record in the annals of U.S. diplomatic history.

No one knows the prior record for seriatim refusals to answer a straightforward “yes” or “no” question, but the trophy was retired yesterday by State Department Spokesman Robert Wood at his press conference – which followed the May 27 refusal of Department Spokesman Ian Kelly to answer whether the Obama administration stands behind the U.S. commitments in the April 14, 2004 letter to Israel, and Wood’s own refusal to answer the question seven times on June 1.

Yesterday there was this colloquy, as the issue was raised again for the third time:

QUESTION: I would like to go back to Middle East. Yesterday, you spoke about the Israeli settlements.

MR. WOOD: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: And I didn’t understand very well what is the Obama position on — the Obama Administration’s position on the letter from the previous administration, from the previous President Bush to Israel on the settlements. Do you consider this Administration is bound by this letter?

MR. WOOD: What I tried to say yesterday, and I’ll try and say it again today, is that we are working with the two parties to implement their Roadmap obligations. And I think we’ve been very clear in terms of what our position is with regard to settlements. We’ve been extremely clear about that.

QUESTION: So it means you are not bound by this letter?

MR. WOOD: What I said, Sylvie, was we are working with the two sides to help them implement their Roadmap obligations.

QUESTION: Why don’t you want to say if you are bound are not? I don’t understand.

MR. WOOD: I’m saying what I’m saying.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly a week ago, the State Department spokesman declined to answer whether the Obama Administration regarded itself bound by the letter Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received from President Bush in 2004, but promised a written response.  No response has been posted by the Department, and the same reporter raised the question again at yesterday’s press conference, leading to the following remarkable colloquy, courtesy of Department spokesman Robert Wood:

QUESTION: The United States, in the form of a letter that President Bush sent to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, made certain commitments to the Israeli state. I have tried to ask whether or not the Obama Administration feels bound by the commitments that President Bush expressed in that letter, which the Israelis would certainly feel comprise obligations on the part of the United States that we have made. Does the United States regard itself as - right now, as being bound by those commitments that President Bush made?

MR. WOOD: Look, what we are trying to do, James, is to get both parties to implement their obligations, written obligations in the Roadmap. We’re trying to get those implemented. Our vision for a two-state solution cannot happen if these obligations are not, you know, held to. And so what Senator Mitchell has been trying to do is to work with the two sides. Both sides have an interest in meeting these obligations. They both want peace. We have said we will be a partner in trying to help them implement them - implement their obligations.

QUESTION: What about the letter?

MR. WOOD: Well, I - look, I speak for this Administration. I’ve told you exactly what we are doing with regard to trying to get both parties to live up to their written obligations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Abe’s post (”Accepting the Unacceptable“) about Secretary Gates’s speech yesterday is a reminder that - as George Orwell warned us long ago - the debasement of language has both intellectual and political consequences.

When George W. Bush called Iranian nuclear weapons “unacceptable,” John Bolton said he was often asked what Bush meant by that, and always answered it meant they were unacceptable.  By the end of Bush’s second term, Bolton said he no longer knew what Bush meant.  Bush left office having denied Israel’s request for weapons to unaccept Iran’s program - although placing them in the hands of Iran’s intended first victim would have sent a credible signal to Iran to stop its program.  Bush also called Russia’s invasion of Georgia “unacceptable,” but left office with Russian troops ensconced in Georgia and its territorial integrity gone. 

Whatever “unacceptable” meant, it did not mean concrete consequences for Russia or Iran.  If Iran had previously been worried about the meaning of “unacceptable,” it had little cause for concern after seeing its practical application in Georgia, and still less after it watched the new administration deliver a reset button to Russia, with a video to the mullahs and serial apologies to the rest of the world.

Obama has called Iranian nuclear weapons “unacceptable,” but few people think he will do much beyond talk to Iran in the hope of securing another North Korea-type framework agreement.  His secretary of state warns of “crippling” sanctions, but knows they are unlikely to be imposed; or be enforced if imposed; or be effective even if enforced - they weren’t in the case of Cuba or North Korea, or with Saddam Hussein.  His secretary of defense has delivered a public warning to Israel not to consider the one action that might cause the Iranians some concern.  

The word “unacceptable” has become an Orwellian term, referring to something with which we disagree, but will in fact ultimately accept.  In his classic essay, Orwell referred to language sounding significant (such as “stand shoulder to shoulder“) but that actually “will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.”  He would have recognized the language in Gates’s speech, and its consequences.

In “The Two State Solution Illusion,” the Vancouver Sun National Post has a devastating report on a meeting earlier this week with Khaled Abu Toameh, the Arab West Bank and Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, held while Ottawa’s political leaders were meeting at the same time with Mahmoud Abbas:

[W]hile the Conservatives condemned Israel’s settlements as an obstacle to a peaceful “two-state solution”, with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Abbas also mouthing support for the same vision for Israel and the Palestinians, Toameh couldn’t help but chuckle. “I laugh when they talk about a two-state solution,” he said. “It’s unreal. It’s not going to work. But we all have to say we support it, maybe because that’s what [U.S. President Barack] Obama wants.”

. . . [Toameh] dismisses [the idea of a two-state solution] because, as those living in the territories well know, the Palestinians cannot even co-exist with themselves, let alone with Israel. Since Yassir Arafat died-”the only good thing he ever did,” Toameh says-life for the average Palestinian has gone from miserable to worse; the territories descended into low-intensity civil war, with 2,000 Palestinians killed in the last three years amidst the political and revenge-motivated attacks of Hamas on Fatah and Fatah on Hamas, as well as the marginal mayhem of terrorist groups such as the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees. For the first time, more Palestinians are killed from internecine violence than in conflicts with Israel.

Toameh thinks neither Fatah nor Hamas actually govern in their respective areas, and that both have proven themselves incapable of doing so:

Neither [Fatah or Hamas] party enjoys credibility or actually governs in any real sense the anarchic territories, where unemployment exceeds 60%-though Hamas is at least closer to legitimacy, enjoying far more popular support than Abbas does (Palestinians see Western support for Fatah as Zionist meddling, he says, driving them further into the arms of Hamas and other jihadists). “Abbas doesn’t even have power in downtown Ramallah, where he works and lives,” he says.

. . . Far from demonstrating a capability to create a functioning, responsible civil society, he says, Palestinians have only proven their willingness to tolerate chaos, mob-rule and terror. They watched as, instead of building hospitals and schools and infrastructure with the billions sent to Ramallah and Gaza, Arafat lined his own pockets, Fatah fattened its cronies, and Hamas purchased weapons. . . .

. . . Palestinians have opted to make for themselves a new Afghanistan, a savage playground of corrupt warlords and Islamist fanatics. The world already has enough states like that. And any so-called solution that proposes to create another is no solution at all.

Somehow, I don’t think freezing all settlement activity is going to solve this problem, nor will any grand new plan.

At the State Department press briefing yesterday, Department Spokesman Ian Kelly declined to answer two questions, designating them as “taken questions” to be answered later. The first question related to Cuba and was answered by the end of the day with a three-paragraph response. The second, related to Israel, remained unanswered by the end of the day. It was a straightforward question:

QUESTION: Does the Obama Administration regard itself as bound by the contents of the letter that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received from President Bush in 2004?

MR. KELLY: That’s an excellent question, James, and I’ll get you the information on that.

QUESTION: Taken question?

MR. KELLY: Yeah, taken question.

Hillary Clinton was asked the same question yesterday and evaded answering it; when pressed, she would only say it was being “looked at.”

Let me take a stab at an answer:  Yes.

The letter in question is not a document setting forth the policy of a prior administration. It is part of an exchange of letters that, taken together, set forth the terms of the Gaza disengagement deal, negotiated between two heads of state. It contains explicit U.S. commitments to Israel regarding defensible borders and the Roadmap, and formal U.S. recognition of certain “realities” regarding settlement blocks and refugees. The letter was endorsed by a concurrent resolution of Congress.

When Israel formally approved the disengagement plan, the letter was incorporated into it. Sharon informed the Knesset that the U.S. commitments would be valid only if Israel proceeded with the disengagement, which Israel did — removing not just settlement “outposts” and not just “freezing” settlement activity, but completely dismantling every settlement, removing every soldier, and turning over the land, buildings, and a functioning greenhouse economy to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel paid twice for the commitments in the letter — first, by proceeding with the disengagement at great political and social cost and at considerable strategic risk; and second, by subsequently bearing the costs of rockets on its civilians year after year, until a new war became necessary to stop the almost daily onslaught. Israel now lives with a terrorist state on its southern border and a kidnapped soldier held for almost three years.

The letter was not simply a statement of policy, nor even simply an agreement; it was an agreement upon which Israel acted in reliance, and thus has the right to insist it be honored.

So yes, the Obama administration is bound by the contents of the letter. Words must mean something.

Jeffrey Goldberg has written amusingly about his susceptibility to “solutionism” - the “American national religion, which holds that for every intractable problem there is a logical and available answer.”  The related faith-based belief system known as two-state solutionism (the conviction that a Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel in peace and security, because — well it just will) increasingly depends on “explainawayism” - which holds that for every Palestinian rejection of a second state there is a logical and available reason why it was Israel’s fault.

Goldberg’s review of Benny Morris’s “One State, Two States:  Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict” in today’s New York Times Book Review contains some unfortunate examples of explainawayism.  He criticizes the view of “the Morris camp” that the rocket fire following Israel’s Gaza withdrawal was another instance of unyielding Arab rejectionism.  In Goldberg’s view, the problem was that Ariel Sharon should have “negotiated” it with the PA, which would then “have been able to prove to its constituents that it could extract concessions from Israel.”

The disengagement may not have been “negotiated” with the PA, but it was certainly coordinated with it and gave it the opportunity to demonstrate it was ready for a state.  Six months after agreeing to the Roadmap, Mahmoud Abbas had bragged to the Palestinian legislature that he had resisted American and Israel pressure to start dismantling terrorist groups.  In response, Israel announced it would dismantle all 21 Gaza settlements (not merely “outposts”) and turn over Gaza to the PA to enable it to demonstrate its ability (or inability) to live side by side in peace security.  Haaretz reported on September 14, 2005 that:

Abbas, in honor of the completion of the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip . . . declared, “From this day forth, there will be no more security turmoil and weapons chaos and abductions, which are not characteristic of our culture.” . . . .

Palestinian Minister Mohammed Dahlan, who was in charge of coordinating the withdrawal, said the Palestinians were ready to deal with any scenario . . . .

In less than a week, former synagogues were burned, greenhouses were destroyed, borders were breached, munitions were imported, and rockets and tunnels into Israel followed.  Four months later, the Palestinians elected the group responsible for this to control their government.

Benny Morris’s book is an extremely valuable account, going back 90 years, of the history of one- and two-state solutions, which puts events such as the failure of the disengagement into a useful historical context.  Goldberg acknowledges the facts, but retains his faith in two-state solutionism, ending his review with this conclusion:

This is not to overlook the great dysfunction among the Palestinians, whose national liberation movement remains, 89 years since the third Palestine Arab Congress, bloody-minded and incompetent. Gaza, after all, is currently ruled by a cult that sanctifies murder-suicide. But there are many Palestinians on the West Bank, and even in Gaza, who reject the Hamas way and seek dignity and quiet within the framework of an independent state that coexists with Israel.

In other words:  Arab two-state rejectionism is now in its ninth decade, with a bloody-minded “national liberation” movement focused more on destroying its neighbor than creating a state, with a political system split between a party characterized by incompetence - a better word would probably be corruption - and a cult that was elected into office, with pervasive societal sanctification of murder-suicide, which turned Gaza into a terrorist state and would probably win a West Bank election today, but [insert explainawayism here].

John McLaughlin, CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, held a bloggers conference call this afternoon regarding the foreign policy poll Jennifer Rubin ably analyzed yesterday. The call was organized by One Jerusalem.

McLaughlin said that the poll demonstrates the public is “way out in front” of the country’s political leadership on issues relating to Iran and nuclear terrorism. A total of 91% of likely voters think Iran supplying a nuclear umbrella for terrorists is a serious threat — a finding that runs across the political spectrum (95% of Republicans, 89% of Democrats, and 89% of Independents). A total of 79% think it likely Iran would provide nuclear weapons to terrorists to attack an American city (85% Republicans, 72% Democrats, and 79% Independents).

A total of 60% would approve blockading imports of gasoline and food to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon (72% Republicans, 54% Democrats, and 52% Independents). Military action by either Israel or the U.S. commands clear majority support from both Republicans (70%) and Independents (60%), and plurality support (45%) from Democrats.

According to McLaughlin, while there are some expected divergences of opinion between the various political subgroups in the United States, what is most striking is the broad consensus in the poll about the seriousness of the situation with Iran and the necessity for strong action to resolve it, particularly after the contentious foreign policy debates of the last few years.

The poll did not ask whether respondents thought there is a link between confronting Iran and pursuing a two-state solution, but the question undoubtedly would have been superfluous: the respondents do not think a two-state solution will solve even the Israeli-Palestinian problem, much less help deal with Iran. By a margin of 60-18, respondents believe if Palestinians were given a state, they would not live peacefully with Israel but continue their efforts to destroy it.

The poll was a national survey of 600 likely voters conducted on May 8-9, with statistical accuracy of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence interval. McLaughlin said increasing the sample to 1,000 people would have improved its accuracy only to +/- 3%. He noted that, since the poll was taken, Iran launched a long-range missile and the FBI broke up a Muslim terrorist attack in the U.S. — so it seems unlikely the percentages have gone down.

Peace processors never fade away — they just ask Israel to take more risks for peace. Martin Indyk suggests that Benjamin Netanyahu used the ”not unreasonable” concerns about the security dangers presented by a Palestinian state to avoid taking the all-important risks for peace:

Whatever else happened in the private Netanyahu-Obama meeting, [Netanyahu] certainly didn’t sound like he was willing to take any risks for peace. Reflecting his fear of antagonizing his right-wing supporters, Netanyahu avoided publicly committing himself to accepting an independent Palestinian state as the outcome of peace negotiations. Instead, he spoke of “self-government” for the Palestinians and laid down what sounded like a new precondition: The Palestinians would have to “allow Israel the means to defend itself.”

According to Indyk, Netanyahu’s “new precondition” would mean “a Palestinian state minus the means to defend itself, or to control its airspace, or its international passageways” — a “well-practiced Netanyahu negotiating tactic” to “raise the bar as high as possible.”

Even the Clinton Parameters, the high-water mark of the “peace process,” envisioned a “non-militarized” Palestinian state whose airspace would be subject to “special arrangements for Israeli training and operational needs,” with borders subject to an international force for “security and deterrent purposes.” If Palestinians want a state with an army or airspace that could threaten Tel Aviv or Ben-Gurion airport, or unencumbered ability to import weapons through its borders, they seek a state that would violate not a “new precondition” but a necessary first principle: that any such state “allow Israel the means to defend itself.”

Perhaps when Mahmoud Abbas visits Washington later this month, Indyk will suggest he publicly commit himself to accepting a Jewish state as the outcome of peace negotiations. It would take one of the basic tools of peace processors — the “confidence-building gesture” — and require it for the first time from Palestinians, rather than from Israelis who have seen the risks they have taken for peace result in too many wars.

At the end of his remarks yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu signaled his possible support for a two-state solution — without using those words — by stating that he wanted to “make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians.”  But his support for such a solution was not unconditional:

If we resume negotiations, as we plan to do, then I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; will have to also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself. And if those conditions are met, Israel’s security conditions are met, and there’s recognition of Israel’s legitimacy, its permanent legitimacy, then I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in dignity, in security, and in peace.

Some may view Netanyahu’s conditions as obstacles to peace, since the Palestinians will object to them.  But President Obama can hardly dispute either condition.  With respect to security, the U.S. has repeatedly assured Israel (during both the Clinton and Bush administrations) of support for “defensible borders” for Israel — which are by definition what Israel requires, at a minimum, to “have the means to defend itself.”

Nor can Obama dispute the condition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  Such recognition is one of the conditions Obama set forth himself in his “Let me be clear” statement to AIPAC last June (”The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders”).

In any event, it borders on the absurd to ask Israel to recognize a 22nd Arab state (a state so Arab that every Jew must be removed from its territory) without reciprocal Arab recognition of the only Jewish state — as a Jewish state.  And Israel’s new borders must be secure and defensible — not simply recognized in a peace agreement.

Netanyahu’s two conditions are thus neither unreasonable nor unprecedented.  They are, in fact, the basic requirements of the process, if the goal is not simply two states, but two states “living side by side in peace and security.”

In the past, peace processors have presumed that the creation of a Palestinian state would by itself produce peace.  The presumption has no evidence to support it, and plenty of evidence (such as the results of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) that refutes it.  Netanyahu’s conditions are designed to ensure that the process will actually produce peace, and not merely reposition the parties for the next war.

As Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu approach their meeting Monday, it is worth reflecting on the lessons of the “peace process” over the last eight years.  There have been no less than six separate failures during that period, noteworthy not only in number, but also because each reflected a “new approach” that ignored the prior failure.  Here are the six failures, followed by their central lesson:

1.   Peace Through Direct Negotiations (The Oslo Process).  This project failed at Camp David when the Palestinians rejected the offer of a state in Gaza and 92% of the West Bank, with a capital in Jerusalem.  It brought on a terrorist war against Israelis, in buses, cars, restaurants, discos, schools, and homes.

2.   Peace Through a Bridging Proposal (The Clinton Parameters).  After the Camp David failure, Dennis Ross spent months in secret meetings with both sides, developing a bridging proposal to incorporate the minimum each side needed and the maximum each side could give.  The result was the Clinton Parameters – increasing the West Bank percentage to 97% and providing an international plan for refugees – accepted by Israel and then rejected by Yasser Arafat in the Oval Office on January 2, 2001.

3.   Peace Through Phases (The Roadmap).  This project never completed even Phase I, as the Palestinians refused to commence sustained efforts to dismantle their terrorist groups, and preemptively announced that Phase II (a state with provisional borders to conduct Phase III negotiations) was unacceptable.

4.   Peace Through Unilateral Action (The Disengagement).  In September 2005, Israel turned over Gaza – with every settler and soldier removed – allowing the Palestinians to live “side by side, in peace and security” and build a state.  That process failed within a week, and produced rockets, tunnels, a cross-border kidnapping, and – ultimately – a new war.

5.   Peace Through Democracy (The 2006 Elections).  The administration thought giving the Palestinians a choice between Hamas and Fatah (the “peace partner”) would give Fatah the legitimacy it needed to start dismantling other Palestinian terrorist groups.  Instead, the Palestinians chose their premier terrorist group, and a year later it expelled Fatah from Gaza in a coup.  Remarkably, this failed attempt at peace was blamed on the U.S. president who gave the Palestinians a choice, not on the choice the Palestinians made.

6.  Peace Through Internationally-Sponsored Negotiations (The Annapolis Process).  Ignoring the failure of direct negotiations, the rejection of the bridging proposal, the inability to complete any phase of the three-phase plan, the disconcerting demonstration project in Gaza, the Palestinian electoral choice and the subsequent coup, this new approach endorsed negotiations with the leaders of the rump state of Ramallah, commencing with an international conference and a deadline of one year, with continuous American involvement through the personal commitment of the Secretary of State.  The Palestinians ultimately rejected a 100% offer by Israel (93.5% of the West Bank and a 6.5% land swap).

The lesson of these six failed approaches is that the absence of peace does not result from the failure of Israel to offer a state, or to withdraw from territory, or to dismantle settlements, or to accept a bridging proposal, or to devote a year to trying again with extended American involvement.  The fundamental reason is the Palestinians have neither the leaders nor the electorate ready for a two-state solution, nor the basic economic and legal institutions necessary to make such a solution work.  If they did, any one of the prior six approaches would have succeeded.

The latest idea is a “57-State Solution,” based on a Saudi/Arab proposal under which Israel would return to indefensible borders, turn over the historic portion of its capital, and recognize a Palestinian “right of return” — in exchange for 57 pledges of “peace.” The proposal comes with a refusal to amend it and warnings of a new war if it is not accepted.  It is likely to produce not peace but a seventh failure, bigger than the ones that preceded it.

A better plan is the one Netanyahu seems likely to propose to Obama:  intensive efforts to improve Palestinian economic life on the West Bank, and continued development of Palestinian police forces to insure law and order — with political negotiations proceeding no faster than the establishment of the legal and economic institutions necessary for peace.  It is a plan that would take longer than a grand bargain (which is unlikely to be reached or to be enforceable even if it were), but the lesson of the six prior failures is that it is the only plan with a chance of success.

The current issue of The New York Review of Books includes a lengthy essay by Gershom Gorenberg, entitled “The War to Begin All Wars,” discussing the 1948 War and Benny Morris’s successive histories of it.  It is a useful summary and a thoughtful reflection on how the present affects our understanding of the past (and vice versa), and the changing perspectives of historians.  But the essay has a historical slant of its own worth examining, not least for its contemporary significance.

Gorenberg provides a 100-word summary of the 1948 War that contains within it themes that would recur in the sixty-year history that followed:

The conflagration began on November 30, 1947, the morning after the United Nations voted to partition British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. A band of Arab fighters fired the first shots at a bus east of Tel Aviv, killing five Jews. The last military operation ended on March 10, 1949. In those fifteen months, Jewish forces defeated first the Arab irregulars of Palestine, then the invading armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. The new Jewish state’s borders, and its survival, were a product of victory. Yet in those same months, somewhere around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees.

The war started, in other words, not with Israel’s May 14, 1948 declaration of independence, but with the Arab rejection of a two-state solution six months before, immediately after the international community endorsed it, and the war commenced with a terrorist attack on Jewish civilians.  It featured a victory, in a period of 15 months, over local Arab forces and four Arab armies.  It was, for the Jews, a war of survival, coming three years after the end of the Holocaust.  “Yet . . . around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees.”

It is the “Yet” that reflects the perspective that underlies Gorenberg’s essay - a moral equivalence between the consequences of the war for Jews and Arabs.  Imagine a history of World War II describing that it began after Germany reneged on the Munich agreement, lasted six years until the initially more powerful Axis powers were defeated, and resulted in the borders of modern Europe - and then concluded with “Yet millions of Germans became refugees.”

Two important facts, and an important moral perspective, are missing from Gorenberg’s essay.  The first fact is that nearly one-percent of the Jewish population was killed in the war - a figure that would translate, in comparative demographic terms today, to more than three million Americans.  The second is that the war resulted in approximately 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled from the Arab countries in which they lived, who were resettled in the new state of Israel with no compensation (much less a “right of return”).

The 700,000 Arabs who became refugees fall into three categories - some fled amidst the panic of the war; others were ordered out by Arab leaders to make way for the invading armies; and others were expelled, for various reasons, during the course of the fighting.  The numbers in each category are still a matter of dispute (and the subject of tendentious Palestinian “scholarship“), but one fact is indisputable:  there would not have been a single refugee had the Arabs accepted the two-state solution and not started a war.

That fact has particular relevance for contemporary history, as still another iteration of the “peace process” begins.  The reason for rejecting a Palestinian ”right of return” is not simply the practical one that it would demographically destroy the Jewish state; nor the legal one that there is no such right; nor the logical one that there can be no such right for Palestinian refugees where there was none for the more numerous Jewish refugees.

The even more compelling reason is the moral one that those who started a war have no claim to be relieved of its results.  In a more moral world, they would be paying reparations - not only for the “War to Begin All Wars,” but for the subsequent ones they caused as well.  But at the least, in the imperfect actual world, they have no standing to argue that those they sought to defeat must help exempt them from the consequences of history.