More on Malley
- 02.19.2008 - 12:09 PMIn the ongoing debate regarding Barack Obama’s stance on Israel, Obama foreign policy adviser Robert Malley has emerged as a divisive figure.
Malley’s supporters and critics agree that he embraces a pro-Palestinian narrative in his approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As President Bill Clinton’s special adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs from 1998-2001, Malley was the only American official to blame the United States and Israel—rather than Yasser Arafat—for the failure to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace at Camp David in 2000. Since leaving government, Malley has further developed his pro-Palestinian credentials: he has gushed over Arafat; partnered with Arafat adviser Hussein Agha in promoting his revisionist account of Camp David; and blamed the Bush administration overwhelmingly for continued Israeli-Palestinian strife.
Given Malley’s unabashed bias, supporters of Israel have questioned his true motives, with Martin Peretz’s determination that Malley is a “rabid hater of Israel” representative of the debate’s deteriorating tenor. Last week, Malley’s fellow peace processors shot back, calling the attacks “an effort to undermine the credibility of a talented public servant who has worked tirelessly over the years to promote Arab-Israeli peace and US national interests.” Malley’s former colleagues further wrote that he neither harbors an anti-Israel agenda nor has sought to undermine Israeli security.
Yet the very question of whether or not Malley is a “anti-Israel” is a red herring. Rather than psychoanalyzing Malley to uncover his true motivations, we should assess Malley’s policy prescriptions as to whether they have advanced Israeli-Palestinian peace—the cause for which Malley was employed. It is within this framework that Malley’s insufficiency as a presidential foreign policy adviser is most profoundly exposed.
Consider, for example, Malley’s address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in September 2005. While debating U.S. policy towards Islamist parties, Malley argued that the U.S. should allow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to permit Hamas’ participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Malley said:
[Abbas] thinks that it’s the only way that he can restore political stability; that he can regenerate his own political party; and that he can sustain the ceasefire. . . . We should not be second-guessing that assessment.
Of course, Malley’s policy of not “second-guessing” Abbas on Hamas was an unambiguous disaster, with Hamas’ subsequent election dashing all hopes that the post-Arafat era could yield peaceful compromise.
Or, consider Malley’s analysis of last February’s Mecca Agreement, which heralded a four-month period of Hamas-Fatah “national unity” governance. In a May article, Malley welcomed the agreement as a “first step” towards clarifying Palestinian politics, and assessed that “an immediate wholesale breakdown of relations between the two groups” was unlikely. Of course, such a breakdown occurred barely a month after Malley’s piece went to print, with Hamas violently seizing Gaza.
The gist of it is that Malley has a clear record of advocating policies in the Palestinian sphere that undermine U.S. interests almost instantaneously. Indeed, it hardly matters whether Malley is motivated by anti-Israel bias. After all, we have far more damning reasons to doubt his calls for engaging Iran and Syria: namely, that his analytical framework is consistently proven wrong.
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February 19th, 2008 at 1:58 PM
Excuse me, but wasn’t it the Bush administration that that insisted Hamas should participate in the elections? I seem to remember that Malley was not part of the administration’s decision-making process.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:03 PM
Peretz might have referred to Robert Malley as an Israel hater, but that article was still a brief for Sen. Obama.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:21 PM
In a February 14, 2007 interview published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Malley said that “to try to deal with only side when you have now a significant part of the Palestinian people that recognizes itself in Hamas, is an illusion.”
He was correct that a “peace process” with a rump Ramallah entity is an illusion, but his own prescription — dealing with Hamas as if it were a legitimate government — is even worse.
In the interview, he supported “renewed engagement with Syria and with Iran [and] a whole host of things the United States needs to do to improve its image in the region.” So it is pretty clear that in this regard he reflects Obama’s thinking, or vice versa.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:20 PM
“…with Martin Peretz’s determination that Malley is a “rabid hater of Israel”
Is this the same Marty Peretz who is a Barack Obama supporter? I am very confused. This seems to be logically inconsistent. I guess that I’m not very bright. Can someone explain this to me?
February 19th, 2008 at 3:21 PM
If supporters of israel want to align themselves with mcain and against obama they do so at their own peril. that they’d support a contrived beltway guy like mcain with no passionate supporters really at all will confirm to everyone how oppurtunistic and lacking in judgement they are. that is, you will be lonely on that badnwagon
February 19th, 2008 at 3:40 PM
There’s a much better explanation for Malley’s positions than that he’s “anti-Israel” or merely foolish. Consider: he’s co-authored several articles with former Arafat advisor Hussein Agha. Furthermore, everything he writes, whether biased or impartial, wise or foolish, also happens to track Fatah’s party line precisely. (if anybody can find a millimeter’s daylight between his position and Fatah’s at any given moment in time–let alone actual criticism of Fatah–I’d like to hear about it.) The obvious conclusion is that he’s not an independent policy thinker so much as a loyal Fatah mouthpiece. And that–not his alleged foolishness or bias–is why he should not be in the position of advising a major candidate for the US presidency.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:12 PM
dan simon- i agree wholeheartedly, ANYONE who is simply a mouthpiece for a non US political movement, particularly a violent one, should not be in such a position.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:07 PM
He is Jimmy Carter with less name recognition. John Kerry was rightly vilified in the pro-Israel community for suggesting that he would name a special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace, either Jimmy Carter or James Baker, which suggestion he blamed on a low level staffer and quickly rescinded. But they will keep trying and Jews better wake up. The golden age is over. Obama knows these people’s views and he shares them. Candidates from both parties are going to keep drudging up those who do not support Israel because that is who tries to get those foreign policy positions. We must call candidates on this, like with Kerry until they realize that there are certain views that are unacceptable. Of course, some sneak up on us like Condi Rice, but now I think we know that if a future candidate were to suggest her as a special envoy, we would know how to react accordingly.
The golden age is over. Those who seek Israel’s demise are emboldened and they will not stop.
February 19th, 2008 at 8:03 PM
To say his policy prescriptions were wrong, assumes that they were implemented in a vacuum. Of course, anyone who understands foreign relations and conflict undersand this. There are various reasons why certain policy landscapes don’t play out in reality (kinda like Iraq), one major cause being that there are numerous different actors pulling strings.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:23 AM
j lichty- I agree they won’t stop