Cruel to be Kind

[muse]

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May 16, 2009

Do Like Jimmy Carter

By MARTIN VAN CREVELD

JERUSALEM — The U.S. president who did most for Israel was not Harry Truman, who recognized the Jewish state almost immediately after it was founded. Nor was it John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. Or Gerald Ford, or Ronald Reagan, or the two George Bushes, or Bill Clinton, though all of these provided America’s ally with economic assistance, supplied it with arms and stood at its side at critical moments, from the 1967 Six-Day War to the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The president who did most for Israel was Jimmy Carter — the same Carter who has sometimes been described as an Israel-hater. In numerous appearances around the world, he has never shrunk from criticizing Israel for its faults, real and imaginary; the dislike is mutual.

Back in 1977-78, the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks, which had been started a year earlier by Prime Minister Menahem Begin and President Anwar Sadat, got stuck. At issue were such questions as how much land Israel was to return, the fate of the settlements in the Sinai, etc.

Meeting now here, now there, in what increasingly looked like a traveling circus, the leaders and their advisers vainly circled each other in an attempt to reach an agreement.

Enter Moshe Dayan, the crafty one-eyed former general and minister of defense who was serving as Begin’s foreign minister. When holding the first meetings with Egyptian representatives in the summer of 1977, he had acted in great secrecy, even putting on a disguise and using an alias. Now that shipwreck was staring him in the face, he called on Begin to bring in the Americans.

Though he could never say so, the reason why Dayan wanted the Americans was to put pressure on Begin. The prime minister had come to power promising to preserve Israeli rule over the occupied territories. Changing his mind could very well cause the members of his own party, Likud, to leave the coalition; the outcome, Dayan knew, would be the fall of the government and the end of any hope for peace.

In the end, Dayan prevailed. With President Carter personally committed to the peace process, Begin found himself in a position in which he had to turn to his followers and ask them, quite literally: “Do you really want to quarrel with the United States?” The majority saw his point, and when the time to make a decision came they voted in the right direction.

Another reason why Begin was able to carry the vote through the Knesset was because he could rely on Labor, which was then in the opposition, to support him. Thus the decision to ratify the agreement was a truly bipartisan one, supported by a strong majority and representing all that was best, most rational and most peace-loving in Israeli society.
As President Barack Obama prepares to receive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their first meeting, the situation is very similar to what it was in 1978.

Now as then, Israel is ruled by a right- wing coalition. Now as then, some of its elements, specifically the party led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, are more hawkish than the prime minister or his Likud Party.

Now as then, talks with the other side — this time it’s the Palestinians — are going on but leading nowhere. Now as then, while some members of Israel’s ruling coalition are strongly opposed to any concessions to the Palestinians, the Knesset also contains a strong opposition party. Its name is Kadima, its platform is peace with the Palestinians, and, like Labor in its time, it will provide the necessary votes if called upon to do so.

The most important difference is in personalities. Begin was an honest demagogue who passionately believed in Israel’s right to retain the territories; Netanyahu is a petty rascal who believes in very little except, perhaps, his own advancement. Unlike Begin, a man of exceptional integrity, he can be bought.

Preparing to meet him, President Obama should keep the precedent presented by the Israeli-Egyptian agreement in mind. Whatever they may say in public, for many years now both sides in the Middle East have been secretly waiting for a second Carter.

His task is to bang their heads together and force them to do what they themselves are unable to do: namely, give up their more extreme claims and reach some kind of agreement.

The outcome may not be, almost certainly will not be, quite to the liking of either of the parties. Surely, though, it will extinguish many sparks that could set up another conflagration; with some luck, it may even yield a lasting peace for the Middle East and, for the United States, one headache less.

Martin van Creveld is professor of military history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the author of many works on military history and strategy.

I invite Pakistani readers to familiarize themselves with Mr. van Crevelds' thought, it's entirely possible that much of it may have meaning for Pakistani readers

 

[S-2]

Creveld is one of the pre-eminent military historians of our time. His observations always merit consideration. Thanks for the excellent read.

 

[muse]

Sure, - I really do hope that most Pakistani readers will make the effort to discover van Creveld - he is more influential than our readership may realize, but primarily because it will gives a intellectually richer membership --

And poor Rashid Khalidi, that's injustice, it's, well you already know, I think it will be preaching to the choir to suggest it's a political hatchet job

What ought we make of this signal:


May 17, 2009
World Watches for Washington Shift on Mideast
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — Five weeks ago, President Obama stood before the Turkish legislature in Ankara and said many Americans had Muslims in their families or had lived in a Muslim-majority country. “I know,” he said, “because I am one of them.”

But will that exposure lead Mr. Obama to take a different tack from his predecessors in his dealings with Israel?

That question, which has captivated a wide spectrum of people, from America’s Israel lobby to Palestinian-Americans to the Muslim world, will take center stage on Monday, when Israel’s hawkish prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has his first face-to-face meeting with Mr. Obama since he became president.

In an interview broadcast Saturday on Israeli television, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said he believed that in the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu would signal a significant policy shift for his new government and endorse the creation of a Palestinian state — perhaps reflecting uncertainty about whether Mr. Obama would accept an Israeli hard line.

“This is a piece of the cloud that’s hovering over this meeting: is this man different?” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator at the State Department and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” “The fact that he’s African-American. The fact that his middle name is Hussein. The fact that the world for him is not black or white, that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not black and white, there is gray, and in that gray lies the ability of this president to understand the needs and requirements of Palestinians. Is that on Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind? There’s no question that that’s there.”

Mr. Obama’s past suggests why, four months into his presidency, the answer to the question remains elusive. His first book, “Dreams From My Father,” delves deeply into matters of race and nationality and the need to belong somewhere, issues that permeate the Arab-Israeli conflict. But in the book Mr. Obama does not address specifically how he views Israel and the plight of the Palestinians.

As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.

During the 1990s, Mr. Obama also attended tributes to Arab-Americans, where he often seemed “empathetic” to the cause of Palestinians, said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American journalist in Chicago.

This contrasts with the more “tabula rasa” image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that many of Mr. Obama’s predecessors brought to their presidencies — a blank slate that was then shaped by the strong alliance with Israel that is a fixture of politics in the United States, many Middle East experts say.

“I think this president gets it, in terms of the suffering of the Palestinians,” said Charles W. Freeman Jr., a former United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “He gets it, which is already light years ahead of the average elected American politician.”

Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said.

“I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”

None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)

Still, many Palestinian-Americans who hoped that Mr. Obama would come into office and quickly seek to press the Israeli government on Palestinian issues have been disappointed.

“In practice, despite the hype, there is much more continuity with previous administrations,” Mr. Abunimah said. “People get carried away with the atmospheric change, but the substance of the U.S. policy towards Israel has been the same policy.”

Last year, for instance, Mr. Obama was quick to distance himself from Robert Malley, an informal adviser to his campaign, when reports arose that Mr. Malley, a special adviser to Mr. Clinton, had had direct contacts with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and that controls Gaza. Similarly, he distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was often critical of Israel, after complaints from some pro-Israel groups.

And Mr. Obama offered no public support for the appointment of Mr. Freeman to a top intelligence post in March after several congressional representatives and lobbyists complained that Mr. Freeman had an irrational hatred of Israel. Mr. Freeman angrily withdrew from consideration for the post.

But Mr. Freeman, in a telephone interview last week, said he still believed that Mr. Obama would go where his predecessors did not on Israel. Mr. Obama’s appointment of Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser — a man who has worked with Palestinians and Israelis to try to open up movement for Palestinians on the ground and who has sometimes irritated Israeli military officials — could foreshadow friction between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, several Middle East experts said.

The same is true for the appointment of George J. Mitchell as Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region; Mr. Mitchell, who helped negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, has already hinted privately that the administration may have to look for ways to include Hamas, in some fashion, in a unity Palestinian government.

Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, while crucial, may only preview the beginning of the path the president will take, Mr. Freeman said.

“You can’t really tell anything by what happened to me and the fact that he didn’t step forward to take on the skunks,” he said, referring to his own appointment controversy and Mr. Obama’s silence amid critics’ attacks. “The first nine months, Nixon was absolutely horrible on China. In retrospect, it was clear that he had every intention to charge ahead, but he was picking his moment. He didn’t want to have the fight before he had to have the fight.”

“I sense that Obama is picking his moment,” Mr. Freeman said.

 

[muse]

Such are the expectations, soon the American President will ask the so called Muslim world to cut him a check and he will of course back it up with his IOU, which the so called Muslim world can cash whenever it wants to

The editorial below meekly accepts that a "draw" is the best that can be hoped for in the Superpower/client relationship (now we have to figure out which one is the superpower and which one the client) -- and perhaps should serve as a model for others (who, though children of a lesser god) as they seek to shape relations with the U.S- readers will note that the American has already prepared a "to do" list for the so called Muslim world, to enable Israel, how different is that.

May 23, 2009
Editorial
Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu


We’d call this week’s White House meeting between President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a draw. Mr. Netanyahu grudgingly committed to negotiations with the Palestinians, but he did not utter the words “two-state solution.” Mr. Obama promised that his patience with Iran, and its nuclear ambitions, was limited, and he said that Israel must stop settlement activity and embrace a two-state solution, the only rational basis for a peace deal.

A draw was probably the best that could be hoped for — and far less than is needed. Mr. Obama and his aides now have to come up with a plan to press Mr. Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to sit down and seriously negotiate. Mr. Obama will also have to come up with a strategy for constraining Iran’s nuclear program — with compelling incentives or far more dissuasive sanctions. There isn’t a lot of time for either.

Mr. Obama has concluded that to succeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States must repair its relations with the Muslim world. Working credibly and even-handedly on a Middle East peace deal is central to that.

The Israeli leader is not likely to make that easy. His coalition government — which he chose — is not a valid excuse for inaction. If Mr. Netanyahu stonewalls, Mr. Obama will have to apply a lot more public pressure — Israeli leaders don’t like being on the outs with Washington. That will not be politically popular in either country, but it is in the interest of both.

Mr. Obama also needs to rally Arab states to make Mr. Netanyahu a better peace offer. That should include an early start to normalizing relations with Israel, bolstering Mr. Abbas and persuading Hamas to stop its rocket attacks. Palestinians must do more to prove that they are capable of self-government.

Mr. Netanyahu is, not surprisingly, uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s decision to test Tehran with an offer of negotiations. The Israelis are right that time is clearly on Iran’s side.

The current plan is for the United States to join the Europeans and Russia in talks with Iran, right after Iran’s June presidential elections. There is the possibility of bilateral talks to follow. Mr. Obama said he would assess progress by year’s end. If diplomacy is moving forward, he should resist pressure to shut it down prematurely. We hope he is using the time now to prepare Europe and Russia for the necessity of much tougher sanctions if this effort fails.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with Mr. Abbas at the White House next week and to give a major speech in Cairo on June 4. Aides are discouraging rumors that he will use that speech to lay out an American peace plan. With so many watching, he must go beyond just describing his broad vision of more harmonious ties with the Muslim world.

George W. Bush, the first American president to endorse a Palestinian state, never developed a strategy for getting there. Mr. Obama must do better.