Why Jordan’s Foreign Minister is Optimistic about Middle East Peace: A Personal Report, by Gidon D. Remba

(And why President Kennedy’s principal advisor, the legendary Ted Sorenson, challenged him)

I had the opportunity to be part of a group of several dozen NGO leaders and diplomats who met for a discussion with Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, at the Century Foundation in New York on Sept. 27. The exchange, moderated by Professor Alon Ben-Meir, director of NYU’s Center for Strategic Development and hosted by Century Foundation fellow Michael Wahid Hanna, took place as Israel chose not to renew its partial settlement freeze, and as settlers celebrated a new spurt of building in the West Bank. These blows added fuel to the fire of widespread skepticism about the prospects for the new round of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks mediated by the Obama Administration. So many peace initiatives have come and gone, some leading to partial and important breakthroughs, and many others falling by the wayside. Mah mishtana? Why is this new peace effort different?

Mr. Judeh set the stage by recalling Jordanian King Abdullah’s remark that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not only a local conflict, but one with global ramifications. Peace in the Middle East means peace of mind for the rest of the world. Jordan’s aspiration is for a comprehensive permanent peace settlement between Israel and the entire Arab and Muslim worlds. The path to that goal is illuminated, he believes, by the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which calls for a two-state solution, an independent, viable, sovereign and territorially contiguous Palestinian state living in harmony next to a secure Israel, and a mutually agreeable just resolution to the refugee problem. A comprehensive peace will bring Syria and Lebanon into the circle of peace first drawn by Egypt and then Jordan, extending to the entire region. Not only have all 22 countries in the Arab League endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative, but so have all 57 Muslim countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Mr. Judeh acknowledges that the gap is vast between the two sides – yet he believes there is reason for optimism this time. All issues are on the table, reflecting the seriousness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders; and the goal is to reach an agreement within one year. He acknowledges that the pessimists have every reason for their views. Some say that the definition of a pessimist is a well-informed optimist. But Foreign Minister Judeh believes we cannot allow ourselves to think this way, bringing to mind a classic line from the great Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who wrote in a prescient essay called “Perpetual Peace:”

“Even if the realization of this goal of abolishing war were always to remain just a pious wish, we still would not be deceiving ourselves by adopting the maxim of working for it with unrelenting perseverance.” In other words, even if we can’t fully realize the goal, if we work towards its realization, undaunted by the many obstacles and setbacks along the way, we will all be better off. Judeh is perhaps the first Arab Kantian, in theory and in practice.

Why, then, is this new effort different, offering real hope?

First, the Obama Administration has engaged on the issue of Middle East peace from day one. President Obama called Middle East leaders on his first day in the Oval Office – even in the first hour of his presidency, signaling his commitment to engaging aggressively with the issue during his presidency. On the second day in office, when people might have expected him to be more preocuppied with domestic issues, he visited the State Department and appointed George Mitchell as his Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, deploying Mitchell to the region soon thereafter.

However, Mr. Judeh did not stress enough the difference in the way the Obama administration is shepherding the talks from beginning to end versus the laissez-faire approach that the Bush Administration took to negotiations during the Annapolis phase under Olmert and Abbas. This reinforces his point about the difference in the kind of commitment and engagement that the Obama administration is displaying, and it is unquestionably a reason for optimism.

Second, Foreign Minister Judeh believes that the current Palestinian and Israeli leadership have realized that this time they must see the process through to the end. When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with President Abbas in the White House a few weeks ago, he affirmed that “we seek a peace that will last for generations” and said “President Abbas, you are my partner in peace.” Abbas, for his part, promised that there will be no provocative Palestinian actions that will undermine the negotiations – there will be no violence.

How, contrary to the skeptics and the naysayers, Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas resolved the settlement freeze:  And although the partial settlement freeze expired yesterday, Mr. Judeh is encouraged by the fact that Netanyahu asked the settlers to exercise the same restraint as when the moratorium was in place. Even if there will be no official freeze in place, Netanyahu will limit construction starts in practice so that there is no practical difference between the period during and after the official freeze.   This might be Netanyahu’s way of squaring the circle. (Ynet confirms, in a report filed yesterday, that this apears to be the formula for threading the needle:  "PA says 'quiet' construction freeze to go on:  Israel will only be allowed to build in settlement blocs, talks to continue, senior PA source says."  "Other Palestinian sources believe that the compromise in respect to West Bank construction will take the form of a 'quiet freeze,' with Israel's Defense Ministry holding up construction permits.") 

In any case, Dror Etkes, Peace Now's former Settlement Watch director, reveals that the data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics show that the “settlement freeze” was largely a hoax, a PR stunt, “Israbluff.” ("Settlement Freeze? It was barely a slowdown," Ha'aretz, Sept. 28, 2010).  The reduction in the number of houses being actively built at the end of 2009 versus the end of March 2010 - from 2,955 to 2,517 - was little more than 400, or 16%.   In fact, notes Etkes, during the "freeze," “a relatively large part of the houses were built on settlements that lie east of the separation fence,” which are not in the settlement blocs. So if Netanyahu is agreeing now not to build in settlements beyond the settlement blocs when there is no official freeze, he may, without a “freeze,” actually be improving upon what he did during the official “freeze,” when he allowed housing to be built in far-flung settlements that will certainly not become part of Israel in any peace agreement.

The Palestinians, explains Etkes, “agreed to turn a blind eye to the construction so long as the official freeze policy of the Israeli government continued.” So, all the lamentations and wailing about Israel’s allowing the settlement freeze to thaw simply buys into the settlers' and Netanyahu’s fiction that there was any kind of serious settlement freeze in the first place.

Mr. Judeh says that there should be zero tolerance for any unilateral actions, by either side, which could undermine trust and confidence.   While there is, he believes, a need for an extension of the settlement freeze (in practice if not in name), Israeli and Palestinian leaders should stop negotiating across the airwaves, forcing each to posture for certain audiences. Coalition politics pose understandable difficulties, but leaders must have long-term vision of their peoples’ and countries’ needs. Actions and words must be in synch; one can’t profess peace and then act contrary to its requirements (at least if one’s claim to be a peace-seeker is to be credible).

The settlements are illegal and illegitimate; this is the US position, not only the international consensus. Once the borders are established by agreement, both sides will know where Israel ends and Palestine begins, and where it is legitimate for Israel to build settlements. Changing the demography on the ground will completely derail the current momentum and erode the chances for a contiguous Palestinian state. When Israel confiscates Palestinian land and property; when it evicts Palestinians from their homes and takes other unilateral measures in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, including excavations in areas of religious sensitivity, these steps undermine confidence and the negotiations themselves.

(Some American Jews, I would add, still don’t grasp why settlement construction undermines confidence during peace talks, and as public support for diplomacy wanes and support for violence rises, can sabotage them.  They imagine that the settlements are not part of the problem, that the only problem is Arab recognition and acceptance of Israel, as right-wing propagandists often say. But this turns reality on its head and ignores the obvious. Palestinians seek a territorially contiguous state in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israelis seek acceptance and security. For Israelis, the thing that most undermines their trust in Palestinian intentions is the resurgence of violence and terrorism, particularly when the Palestinian leadership (e.g., under Arafat) not only failed to do enough to stop it, but sometimes encouraged it. But that is a thing of the past; the consistent and effective efforts of the Palestinian Authority’s US- and Jordanian-trained security forces in countering terror under Abbas have been frequently hailed as unprecedented by Israeli security officials. And President Abbas has now re-affirmed his commitment to continued cooperation with Israel in preventing the extremists from launching attacks against Israelis.

But since the Palestinians seek a contiguous state in the West Bank, when Israel builds new homes in West Bank settlements – not only the settlement blocs near the 1967 border, but in the far-flung settlements near major Palestinian West Bank population centers like Ramallah, Nablus and Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem – it sends a message to the Palestinians that it has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing the territory in a peace agreement; that there will be no contiguous Palestinian state or viable two-state solution. When faith in diplomacy and dialogue fade, support for violence rises – and so, in the end, does violence. That’s how you destroy the chance for peace. Moreover, by unilaterally deciding where it will continue to build in settlements, Israel sends a message to the Palestinians that it intends to unilaterally determine the final borders, rather than negotiating them. It wields its greater power over the Palestinians to force the outcome. It suggests that Israel is prejudicing the contours of those borders before an agreement has been reached, in effect compelling the other side to accept a fait accompli – something the parties previously committed not to do.

Breaking that promise clearly undermines Palestinian confidence in Israeli good intentions, and has contributed to the eruption of both the first and the second intifadas, and a loss of hope among Palestinians; just as the resurgence in Palestinian violence helped undermine Israelis’ trust in Palestinian good intentions, leading to a loss of hope in the chance for peace among many Israelis, even if they long for it and still favor a two-state solution. So contrary to rightist claims, while terrorism and settlement expansion can’t be equated morally, they are functionally equivalent in the role they play in sapping confidence in peace for the other side, and thus in undermining peace talks.)

The third reason this peace effort is different, giving reason for optimism, is this: there is international unanimity that we’ve had enough of the Arab-Israel conflict, and that it must at long last be brought to an end.

Fourth, the US under Obama recognizes the importance of pursuing peace as a regional goal, not simply piecemeal between Israel and the Palestinians or between Israel and Syria. The Arab Peace Initiative, and the Obama administration’s recognition of the role it can play in promoting a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace for the entire region, is another reason why the new peace effort may be different.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Jordan two weeks ago and emphasized the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative. The US is seeking to bring Syria and Lebanon into the mix, testifying to its understanding of the need for a regional approach.

Jordan has played a lead role in advising the Saudis on the Arab Peace Initiative, a win-win proposition. Israel gains peace and real security and will be genuinely integrated into the region. Once a Palestinian state is created, a just solution is agreed with regard to the refugees, and Syria and Lebanon recover their occupied territory, the Arab states will consider the Arab-Israel conflict to have ended, and all Arab states will establish normal relations with Israel. Moreover, the API affirms the security of all states in the region, including Israel. Israel’s quest for security is legitimate. Treaties and agreements will make Israel’s security a collective responsibility. The opportunities for cooperation between Israel and the Arab states are many: on water, energy, transportation and in other arenas. In fact, every Middle East leader at the UN this week spoke about the desire for regional cooperation in these areas. We need to create a political environment that will make such cooperation with Israel possible.

The Arab Peace Initiative Committee will be meeting in Cairo on Oct. 4th. Foreign Minister Judeh recognizes that more needs to be done to promote the API and its benefits to Israelis. He has been planning a conference of civil society leaders on the Arab Peace Initiative – NGO leaders, academics and others, Israeli, Arab and international – as a way to strengthen awareness of its value among peoples and governments. Originally planned for this past spring, it was postponed when the Gaza flotilla incident unfolded, and has yet to occur.

But Mr. Judeh’s message is simple and direct: If we fail now, the radicals will say, “we told you so; our way is better.” We cannot allow the forces of rejection to prevail.

For the Q&A with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, and why Ted Sorenson, President Kennedy's legendary principal advisor, challened him, please click here.

Q & A with Jordan's Foreign Minister & Why Ted Sorensen, Pres. Kennedy's advisor, challenged him

This post is Part 2 of "Why Jordan's Foreign Minister is Optimistic About Middle East Peace."  Click here for Part 1.

The Q & A with Jordan's Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, raised some intriguing points about the US role in peace talks, Israeli public skepticism about Palestinian and Arab intentions, and whether the peace process can succeed without the participation of Hamas, Syria and Lebanon; whether Iran can sabotage peace efforts; the importance of promoting Arab-Israeli cooperative projects in business and civil society now as a way to build mutual confidence; and finally, Ted Sorenson’s provocative question.

1. Michael Hanna asked how the US can play a constructive role in the peace talks. Mr. Judeh responded that the President Obama has affirmed that Middle East peace is a US national interest. The idea of a US plan was discussed last year; but we’re beyond that now. The parties are negotiating directly. Let’s see what happens; Clinton and Mitchell are there with the parties. Perhaps the US will later need to present bridging proposals if the parties can’t reach common ground.

This is why Mr. Judeh is a diplomat: perhaps? As he acknowledged earlier, the gaps are vast; I believe it is inevitable that the US will have to introduce bridging proposals. But the Jordanian diplomat is right that this can only happen once the parties have made a concerted effort to reach an accommodation and it becomes clearer how best to bridge the gaps between their positions.

2. Q: Prof. Ben-Meir: The Israeli public is skeptical of Palestinian and Arab intentions due to the second intifada, the results of the withdrawal from Gaza and from Lebanon. When an ordinary Israeli heard about Prof. Ben-Meir’s work to promote, and operationalize, the Arab Peace Initiative, he remarked: the term “Arab peace” is an oxymoron, reflecting the common skepticism and cynicism in Israel. Ben-Meir wondered whether the Arab states can do something to influence Israelis and show them that they genuinely want peace with Israel.

Mr. Judeh responded that Arab publics are skeptical as well that Netanyahu wants peace. But we have to change these perceptions. Netanyahu is showing seriousness of purpose; but it can’t be selective. We should have mutual gestures to show seriousness and sincerity, by both sides avoiding provocative unilateral actions. The problem we face is that often when there is progress, something negative happens to derail it: the Goldstone Report, the Gaza flotilla, announcing that 1,600 new Israeli homes will be built in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

It’s clear that Mr. Judeh supports Arab gestures to operationalize the Arab Peace Initiative and help build confidence with the Israeli public. But he did not call on the other Arab states, or announce Jordan’s intention, to pursue such steps, preferring instead to focus on the ways in which Israel has bred skepticism among Arabs of its good intentions. By raising Goldstone and the flotilla, I understood him to be implying that the way Israel neglected to show sufficient regard for Palestinian civilian lives during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and the way it bungled the operation on the Mavi Marmara, killing 9 passengers, for a self-defeating policy of blockading Gaza, cast a pall over Arab confidence in Netanyahu’s peaceful intentions. I would have liked to hear Mr. Judeh map out a path to mutual confidence-building gestures, and was disappointed that he did not do so. (More on that in a moment, when I get to Ted Sorenson.)

3. Q: Hamas is not part of the current peace effort; can it succeed without Hamas’ participation?

Mr. Judeh responded that if Palestinian dreams of statehood become within reach, if it’s for real, and a date is attached to the realization of a Palestinian state, he believes that we will hear a different tune from Hamas. The only answer to the radicals is progress on the ground. At the Arab foreign ministers dinner after the UN meetings this week, it was noted that some three out of four Israelis support a two-state solution, with similar percentages on the Palestinian side. Palestinians want a normal life. If we guarantee them the apparatus that will give them a normal life, attitudes will change – in other words, Hamas will be hard-pressed to continue its opposition to a two-state solution, as it sees the majority of Palestinians embracing the unfolding promise of an independent viable state.

Second, unless Syria is brought into the mix, Hamas can’t be brought along. Judeh pointed out that Syrian Foreign Minister Moallem met with Secretary Clinton today. (The Wall Street Journal reports that “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intensified American efforts to woo Syria into backing the U.S.'s Middle East strategy, holding her first direct meeting with her Syrian counterpart in a bid to find common ground on Iran, Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli dispute.” (“U.S. Woos Syria in Mideast Peace Push,” WSJ, Sept. 28, 2010). Jordan believes that Syria and Lebanon must be brought in to the process.

4) Q: Can Iran derail the peace process and influence the “Arab street” in destructive ways?

Judeh tells of a European diplomat who, when he met his Iranian counterpart this week at the UN, spent the entire time discussing the Arab-Israel conflict. Now imagine if in two years the Arab-Israel conflict has been resolved, he asked the European. What will you talk about with Iran? Mr. Judeh believes that Iran has exploited the Arab-Israel conflict for its own ends. His response to this problem mirrors his strategy for keeping other radicals, including Hamas, at bay. We have to answer them with positive, peace-building actions; and we have to answer them by succeeding at reaching a comprehensive agreement.

5) Ted Sorenson is widely viewed as having been among President John F. Kennedy’s closest advisors, his chief speechwriter and part of Kennedy’s inner circle. He played a key role in advising Kennedy on dealing with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Co-author of Kennedy’s Pulitzer-prize winning book, Profiles in Courage, he is often credited with Kennedy’s celebrated Inaugural call to service: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” (though he insists that Kennedy authored the phrase himself).

Sorenson was born of a Russian Jewish mother in Nebraska, and was among the early endorsers of Barack Obama in 2008, often comparing him to John F. Kennedy. Sorenson, who was seated a few rows before me, challenged Foreign Minister Judeh: Why, he asked, call off the Arab Peace Initiative conference because of the flotilla incident? Why allow a major initiative to be derailed by such an event?

Foreign Minister Judeh explained that this wasn’t a conference of the Arab states, but a civil society initiative to influence various governments - in Israel, the Arab and Muslim states and around the world – about the benefits of the Arab Peace Initiative. After the flotilla incident, we felt that we could not escape the politics of the day. There was no way to get people to be willing to come together to talk about the fruits of peace when they are talking about the flotilla, or 1,600 new Israeli homes in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. To convene a conference of this sort, we need an atmosphere of calm. If the new Israeli-Palestinian negotiations progress, the atmospherics will be conducive, and we’ll convene the conference.

Let's drive home Ted Sorenson’s point: Mr. Judeh’s reply is well-taken, but he dodged the real question: if Israel were to make sufficient confidence-building gestures towards the Arab world, such as extending the settlement construction freeze and applying it to non-Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, what would the Arab states be willing to do to help build Israeli confidence in Arab and Palestinian intentions?

The Palestinian Authority, under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, has made great strides in cooperating with Israel on combating terror, as Israeli security officials often acknowledge. This, by itself, is a crucial confidence building measure for Israel. But if the Arab states want Israelis to be swayed by the sincerity of the Arab Peace Initiative, a series of escalating mutual confidence building steps that both Israel and the Arab countries could take during the peace talks would go a long way towards creating a positive atmosphere for the negotiations, bolstering public support for them both in Israel and in the Arab world. Why shouldn’t the Arab states propose a series of normalization measures with Israel, along with their expectations for Israeli step-by-step reciprocation? The more each side would give, the more it would get.   Worst case, they'd call Bibi's bluff; best case, something good might happen. 

6) Joanne Mort (who writes frequently in Ha’aretz and the American Prospect about Israel and the Middle East and who travels there regularly on business) raised the fact that Al Quds University now has in place a boycott on all joint activities with Israel. While she herself supports a boycott of products made in the West Bank settlements, she believes that a blanket boycott on joint Arab-Israeli projects is deeply counter-productive. She suggests that Jordan can play a role in fostering such cooperative efforts. Echoing Sorenson’s point, she noted that we cannot let bad acts and negative events rule the day. There were numerous, and far worse incidents, during the previous peace effort (Oslo), but nonetheless Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis got together and did much collaborative work.

She reports that there are tons of joint Arab-Jewish business ventures going on right now in the Arab world – but people don’t want to talk about them (implying that this is a mistake). The settlers should not be the only ones influencing the Israeli street. We should be fostering hope among Israelis by showing that it’s being done right now. Mr. Judeh agreed whole-heartedly, but, regrettably, did not take Joanne’s idea as a basis for any specific Jordanian initiative.

7) Prince Zeid on Israel and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – Can the Middle East become a nuclear weapons-free zone?  Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein was until recently Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S. and is now its UN ambassador. I’ve had the privilege of meeting with him in past in Washington as part of a group from ALLMEP, the umbrella group for the more than 60 Arab-Jewish-Israeli people-to-people peace-building and coexistence NGO’s. Every American Jew who has an opportunity to spend any serious time talking with Prince Zeid leaves with greater hope for Arab-Israeli peace. Prince Zeid is, quite simply, a mensch. He’s the real deal.

Foreign Minister Judeh asked Ambassador Zeid to speak about Jordan’s wish to see the entire Middle East become a nuclear-free zone (meaning, a zone free of nuclear weapons). Ambassador Zeid believes that if we can make real progress towards peace, it might be possible to explore with Israel the extension of the NPT (the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) to the entire Middle East. I think he has a point: ultimately, if there’s to be any chance of gaining Iran’s agreement to a robust, intrusive inspection regime – the best way to insure that it does not develop nuclear weapons and, as many Israeli intelligence experts believe, far more effective and preferable to an Israeli military strike – we cannot expect Iran to accede to international demands on its nuclear enrichment program without bringing Israel into the NPT as well. Israel has resisted so far, but the day may come when it will have to play ball.

And yet, given the world as we know it, it’s hard to imagine Israel feeling secure enough to give up its nuclear weapons; and why should it? The US, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France all maintain their nuclear arsenals, and are signatories to the NPT. India maintains its nuclear weapons and agreed to place 14 of its 22 nuclear power plants under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The NPT itself does not truly require complete disarmament by the nuclear weapon states (NWS). The treaty speaks of the signatories’ obligation to move in the general direction of nuclear disarmament someday and to negotiate in good faith towards that end.

The goal for the Middle East should be to reach an international agreement with Israel to join the NPT inspection and safeguards regime, once there is a comprehensive and permanent Arab-Israeli peace treaty; the goal should not be for Israel to eliminate its nuclear weapons.

Once there is a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty, it is not beyond the realm of imagination that Israel would join NATO. The US positions and shares nuclear weapons with NATO countries in Europe. Extending the US nuclear umbrella to Israel, and providing it with the guarantees of mutual military defense by other NATO countries, would go a long way towards easing Israeli insecurities after a peace treaty were signed and all Arab and Muslim states established full, normal diplomatic ties with Israel.

A Middle East nuclear weapons free zone should be a distant future goal, but even under a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, I don’t foresee it happening, or advocate it as a practical objective. I believe that nuclear stability can be achieved, and nuclear war prevented, if Israel, Iran and the Arab states all agree to a safeguards and inspections system under a reformed NPT. Disarmament can come when the Messiah rides his donkey down Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and nations beat their swords into plowshares.

An Open Letter to ADL Leader Abe Foxman: A Response to Obama's Critics on Israeli-Arab Peace, by Gidon D. Remba

Dear Abe,

You've been at the forefront of American Jewish criticism of President Obama's renewed push for Israeli-Arab peace. After a recent meeting with the President along with 15 other Jewish leaders, you confessed that you continue "to feel uncomfortable with the assumptions that underlie President Obama's approach" to Israel and the Middle East.

You've charged that President Obama's outreach to the Muslim world is being conducted "at Israel's expense." For Obama, you say, "there is a need for the US to demonstrate that it can be tough with Israel to win back credibility with Muslims. We are seeing it already on the settlement issue..."

But being tough on Netanyahu about settlements is not at "Israel's expense." It is a blessing to Israel, given the grave threat which many Israeli military and political leaders have said the settlements pose to Israel's security, to the very possibility of a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians, and to Israel's ability to remain a democratic Jewish state. For the last eight years, we've had a president who recklessly squandered American prestige. He had no credibility to broker an Israeli-Arab accommodation. He made little more than token efforts to do so, when not trumpeting his outright opposition to negotiations with Syria, despite the unanimous advice of Israel's intelligence and military brass, and its political leadership. An American president who has regained the confidence of the Arab and Muslim worlds is quite simply a strategic asset to Israel. American pressure over settlements is an investment in Israel's future, a gift to the Zionist project.

Nor does pressure need to be applied simultaneously and in equal doses to satisfy some artificial notion of even-handedness. As Larry Derfner points out in the Jerusalem Post, "The Palestinian Authority has been cracking down on Hamas for a long while, it kept the West Bank miraculously quiet during Operation Cast Lead, it's enforcing the law in city after city... If the PA wasn't giving us peace and we were giving it land - we'd be right to demand that Obama put all the pressure on the Palestinians and none on us. But the fact is that Abbas and the PA are giving us about as much peace as they're capable of, while we aren't planning on giving them an inch; instead, we're thinking only about how much more conquered land Obama will let us build on."

You've said that President Obama's "notion that we have to pressure Israel to show our bona fides to the Arabs is to buy into their distorted version of history." You've accused the president of ignoring the history of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. But such criticisms stand reality on its head. Obama understands all too well why past peace efforts have failed. His new way is designed to overcome the errors and missteps of the past. By adopting a regional approach, he is more likely to gain wide Arab backing for historic Palestinian compromises on Jerusalem and refugees, issues which resonate throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. By enlisting the help of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he stands a better chance of bringing about a unified Fatah-Hamas Palestinian government that will hew to the international and Arab consensus: a government that will have both the will and the wherewithal to honor its commitments under a peace accord with Israel.

Obama recognizes that the US cannot help forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians while allowing Syria and Iran to continue to stoke Hezbollah and Hamas extremism. While Bush's policies added fuel to the fires of Arab and Muslim radicalism, Obama is cutting off their oxygen supply, sapping Hezbollah's political power and reinforcing the impetus towards pragmatism in Hamas. Obama is finally ending the practice, perfected under Bush, of saying one thing--whether about settlements or the president's commitment to help negotiate an accord--and then doing something else.

You hold up President Bush's "enunciation of the need for a Palestinian state, the road map, Israel's disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the Annapolis process in 2007" as having "provided opportunities for progress toward peace if the Palestinians were truly interested." You highlight what "Israel has done in recent years to advance peace: Israel's offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000, its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, also in 2000, and its disengagement from Gaza were all steps upon which there could have been building toward peace." Instead, you conclude, "the Palestinians responded with rejection, suicide bombs and kidnappings, extremist politics and rockets."

But this Manichean narrative of righteous Israelis and evil Palestinians - the stock-in-trade of right-wing hasbarah - is a cartoon version of what went wrong, ignoring true causes and effects. Annapolis did not fail because the Palestinians refused to accept another "generous Israeli offer," but because President Bush did nothing to help the parties bridge the gaps, failing to apply diplomatic tools to encourage their agreement to a US-proposed compromise, as President Carter successfully did with Egypt and Israel. Similarly, Bush did nothing to hold either party accountable for their commitments under the Road Map, even after promising to "ride herd" on both as he left the company of Sharon and Abbas at Aqaba.

The Road Map and Annapolis were built not only on the wobbly foundation of isolating and excluding Hamas and Gaza, but on an unrealistic, and ultimately failed, American-Israeli bid to topple Hamas by besieging Gaza and its entire population. This siege, more than anything else, coupled with the lack of real progress on the ground in the West Bank--and not Israeli "concessions"--were responsible for the attacks which Israel has endured on its southern communities. Had Sharon truly wanted to promote peace by withdrawing from Gaza, rather than to simply cut Israeli losses and bury any serious peace plan in "formaldehyde"--as his chief aide Dov Weissglas put it--he would have withdrawn Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip as part of an agreement with Abbas, rather than unilaterally. In this way, he would have enabled the PA and Fatah moderates to take credit for a diplomatic achievement, rather than allowing Hamas to gain bragging rights before the Palestinian public that Israel had been pushed from Gaza only by its "resistance"--much as Hezbollah did with its Lebanese audience when Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon.

By the same token, Barak's move was largely motivated by Israel's need to cut its ongoing losses from guerrilla attacks while Israeli troops remained entrenched in Lebanese territory. It was a gift to Hezbollah, not a step towards peace, after Barak had walked away from a potential peace treaty with Syria, an act of political cowardice for which President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, have criticized him harshly. Barak balked on a Syrian-Israeli deal after Assad had committed to the US that under a land-for-peace bargain, Syria would insure that Hezbollah, its client, would be reined in, according to Ross.

You claim that the Arab world wasn't ready to reach an agreement with Israel when Carter and Brzezinski were in the White House, and that the same is true now--as if nothing has changed in thirty years and there were no Arab peace initiative offering Israel recognition, normal ties and peace with the entire Arab world today; as if the rise of Iran were not providing powerful new incentives for the Sunni Arab states to end the conflict and form a close alliance with Israel and the US.

Nothing's changed? Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal has recently said that his group would not stand in the way of a peace deal between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel. Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the Israeli government that "Hamas rhetoric has changed in recent weeks. ‘Public statements by leaders attest to efforts by Hamas to appear interested in ending the conflict with Israel, based on the model of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in exchange for a long-term hudnah'" or truce--until Netanyahu silenced him. Netanyahu's spokespeople claim that these changes in rhetoric are purely "cosmetic" and that Hamas "remains rooted in an extremist ideology which fundamentally opposes peace and reconciliation."

But the great Jewish historian Walter Lacqueur was closer to the mark when he observed in the 1970's that "even in the war aims of religious or quasi-religious movements a discrepancy often exists between the desirable and the possible. . . All such movements have come at one stage or another to the realization that with an enemy who cannot be defeated, temporary compromises have to be made. The old enmity, the odium theologicum, is itself subject to gradual erosion as such compromises become permanent; the formulas of hatred may linger on but they no longer carry the same conviction."

The latest poll of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between May 21-June 3, 2009, showed that “59% of the Israelis support and 36% oppose a two-state solution. Among Palestinians, 61% support the two-state solution while 23% support a one-state solution and 9% support other solutions.” Are you imposing an idealistic, romantic definition of what constitutes acceptance of Israel by Palestinians, rather than a practical and realistic view of what it takes for there to be peace between two countries—whether Israel and Egypt, Palestine or Syria?

It is a categorical mistake to suggest that the Arabs aren't ready to make peace with Israel because some, notably the Saudis, are unwilling to start the normalization process in exchange for the partial settlement freeze Netanyahu will finally offer. His government has been unwilling to come to a full stop on settlement construction, as requested by the US and the international community, and as required by the Road Map. Instead, Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue building Jewish housing in Palestinian Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, regarded by the Arab world as the future capital of a Palestinian state. Does this strike you as a wise way to inspire confidence in Israel's good intentions about a future peace?

As any schoolchild knows, but so many Jewish leaders pretend not to, there can be no two-state solution without sharing Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis. What's more, Netanyahu remains adamant about continuing to build in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including those in heavily populated Palestinian areas which have no chance of becoming part of Israel under a future peace accord. To genuinely promote peace, Israel needs to start offering economic incentives to settlers deep in the West Bank to begin returning to Israel, rather than erecting yet more housing for continued settler growth in areas that Israel will most certainly have to leave in any peace deal.

The Saudis want to begin a normalization process only once there is an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Even if Netanyahu adopts a partial freeze on settlement building, they are rightly skeptical that he will countenance the establishment of a Palestinian state on fair terms. Netanyahu's long-standing opposition to a viable two-state solution, with a territorially contiguous Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, justifies their skepticism. Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Netanyahu has failed to engender the kind of trust and good faith that would enable Arab leaders to begin an incremental process of normalization with Israel now. Still, some Arab states--including Qatar, Tunisia, Bahrain and others--will probably agree to further normalization steps in exchange for a settlements moratorium.

Now let's turn to what may be your biggest concern: that President Obama is pursuing Israeli-Arab peace with a genuine sense of urgency. I'll address this issue, within the context of the dangers Israel faces with Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and the Palestinians, in the second part of this open letter, which is available here.

B'virkat shalom,

(Gidon) Doni Remba

Obama's Grand Plan for the Middle East, by Gidon D. Remba, The Jerusalem Report

As published in the Jerusalem Report, June 8, 2009 and online in Jewcy, May 18, 2009

With the maiden visit of newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington set for May 18, signs of an immanent clash between U.S. President Barack Obama and the hardline Israeli leader abound.

While both leaders will look to find common ground, papering over differences with diplomatic formulas, the rift may be unavoidable. The impending tension recalls previous encounters between Likud leaders and U.S. presidents from both parties. This time the tremors will center not only on the Palestinian fault line, but also on Iran.

Netanyahu views the development of an Iranian uranium enrichment capacity as an existential threat to Israel that must be squelched. He is certain that Obama’s “dialogue” with Iran is bound to fail, rendering inevitable an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear sites. An Israeli attack will be preceded by more punishing economic penalties on Iran of the kind mooted lately on Capitol Hill, and backed by AIPAC, the hawkish pro-Israel lobby. But sanctions-on-steroids are unlikely to blunt Iran’s quest to join the nuclear club, serving only to clear away the final hurdles blocking a final push for preemptive Israeli military action.

Obama’s way represents nothing less than a revolution in the Middle East: not the stillborn new Middle East the Bush Administration imagined could be midwifed by the force of American and Israeli arms, but a new order that will arise from the centripetal forces unleashed by a political earthquake. How does Obama hope to set in motion this tectonic realignment? Reading the tea leaves, one can divine an unfolding pattern whose contours will only be more fully revealed when Obama delivers a major speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Egypt on June 4, following meetings with Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

With the backing of the Pentagon’s top brass and his Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s administration is convinced that a military strike against Iran will engulf the region in a raging firestorm. It believes that an Israeli air attack on Iranian nuclear sites will fall far short, accelerating the Iranian nuclear weapons program, part of which will remain intact underground. Netanyahu hopes to persuade Obama that, if all else fails, the U.S. must turn its gunsights on Iran. But Obama will be immovable: he will not launch the next catastrophic Mideast war.

On the contrary, Obama believes a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue may be in the cards if the U.S. treads an untried path with Iran. He may offer to create a multinational consortium to produce enriched uranium inside Iran under international management and supervision, with an enhanced verification system to ensure that weaponization does not take place. Israel too may be pressed to declare its nuclear capabilities, subjecting them, along with those of India and Pakistan, to international oversight and inspection. In return for a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear impasse, Iran may be willing to scale back its military aid to the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas militant organizations and accept a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace accord, which could include Lebanon. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now offered, on American television, to support whatever peace plan is accepted by the Palestinian people and the international community.

Should U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations fail, Obama hopes to transform the regional landscape in which Iran would emerge with a nuclear arms capacity in such a way that deterrence would be most likely to succeed. Even without a “grand bargain,” the U.S. will seek to foster cooperation with Iran in as many areas as possible, replacing confrontation with détente, from a position of greater regional leverage. Those in the regime who seek to project Iran’s influence in the Arab and Muslim worlds by backing Hizballah and Hamas “resistance” against Israel will have the rug pulled out from under their feet.

Obama hopes to woo Syria out of Iran’s orbit with economic and political incentives and a determination to broker a peace treaty between Israel and Syria as part of a grand rapprochement between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds. The U.S. will loosen Iranian bonds with Syria and Hamas – which has now offered a long-term truce with Israel – while depriving Hizballah and its Iranian backers of the tinder for their incendiary tactics. Contrary to pundits who cry that Israel will be sacrificed on the altar of American reconciliation with the Islamic world, Obama’s aim is the creation of a new regional political architecture in which Israel’s vital needs, and American national security, will be more firmly anchored than ever before.

For Obama, the Israel-Arab conflict, including the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum, can and must be moved towards resolution under American stewardship. Press reports suggest that the U.S. and Arab allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working on revising the Arab League Peace Initiative, making explicit key compromises on Jerusalem and the refugee problem. They would make Israel an offer it will be hard pressed to refuse: Palestinian refugees would return only to the new state of Palestine or be rehabilitated within the Arab states or other countries. This would insure that refugee repatriation could not undermine Israel’s Jewish majority or the principle of “two states for two peoples” affirmed in the original 1947 U.N. partition resolution calling for an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine. Gaining Arab unanimity on this radioactive issue may prove impossible. But even engineering the sponsorship of a group of leading Arab states for so far-reaching a change to the historic Arab position would represent a coup for Obama.

Jerusalem’s Old City, with its holy sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, objects of both Israeli and Palestinian national identification, would come under international supervision, as proposed in the partition resolution. Arab and Muslim states would begin normalizing relations with Israel, in exchange for concrete Israeli steps like a comprehensive settlement building freeze, and a time-table for removing most West Bank settlers, designed to send the message to Palestinians and the Arab world that Israel is committed not only in word but in deed to realizing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab League, together with the Palestinians, and the U.S.-led Quartet, together with Israel, will become the primary interlocutors in the new negotiations. By adopting a novel holistic, regional framework, and clarifying the parameters of the Arab peace initiative and the way forward to its realization, Obama raises the odds higher than ever before that the players will at last overcome four great obstacles which have thus far stood in the way of a Palestinian-Israeli accord:

1. With the Arab League as the primary Arab interlocutor, Obama’s way helps bypass one consequence of Palestinian weakness and division, creating an environment in which the Palestinians are brought to the table hand in hand with the entire Arab world. By providing broad Arab and international public legitimacy for just compromises on Jerusalem and the refugees, as well as on borders and security, the regional approach eases the way towards Palestinian popular acceptance of the deal. Contrary to those skeptics who see only guile in Hamas’ offers of a long-term truce with Israel, ignoring the larger political context in which the movement operates, Hamas will feel enormous Palestinian public pressure to end terrorism against Israel, and to play its part in a Palestinian government that will sign on.

2. By the same token, the U.S. role in the new constellation helps compensate for the endemic weakness in the Israeli political system which has prevented shaky Israeli coalition governments from credibly offering a viable Palestinian-Israeli bargain. Former prime minister Ehud Barak’s government was already a minority coalition by the time he went to Camp David in 2000, and when he dispatched negotiators to Taba in early 2001. Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and their Kadima party were on their way out the door when they renewed final status talks with the Palestinians this past year under the Annapolis umbrella, in the shadow of a Pyrrhic victory in Lebanon and corruption allegations against the prime minister.

3. Instead, the U.S., the Quartet, and the Arab League may ask Israeli and Palestinian leaders to present to their publics a complete outline for peace incorporating already ongoing Arab concessions and concrete steps to build Israeli confidence, paired with unfolding Israeli concessions and concrete steps to build Palestinian trust. Israeli and Palestinian plebiscites will take place with a full understanding on both sides that pushback from either Israeli or Palestinian governments will be met with the firm hand of their American and Arab patrons, who will be loath to see their monumental efforts fail. Israelis and Palestinians are bound to demand that their governments seize the opportunity for a breakthrough.

The Arab League, the U.S. and NATO will oversee the implementation of all aspects of the regional peace treaty: U.S.-led and Arab multinational peacekeeping forces will guarantee Palestinian and Israeli security in the West Bank and Gaza as Israel removes most settlers and phases out military control. An international trusteeship will guide the economic and institutional baby steps of the newly de-occupied demilitarized Palestinian state.

4. The U.S. will help broker Israel’s peace talks with Syria – and possibly Lebanon, if Iran and Hizballah can be co-opted. Should Iran and Hizballah prove unwilling, they will find themselves isolated in a new Middle East order, facing a far more united Israeli-American-Sunni Arab and international front.

Obama will no longer tolerate the slogans of American or Israeli obstructionists who claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not “ripe” for resolution – it never is by their lights – or that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. Nor will he countenance an Israeli strike on Iran, as he will make clear to Netanyahu. But Obama refuses to accept the status quo, which has proven far too dangerous for the U.S., Israel and our Arab allies. The risks of rejectionism now dramatically outweigh the risks of peace.


Gidon D. Remba is executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Change (http://www.jews4change.com/), a nonprofit organization which supported Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy and advocates for a progressive domestic and foreign policy agenda. A veteran Middle East analyst and pro-Israel peace advocate, he served as senior foreign press editor and translator in Israel's Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

Bibi and Barack: A Chance for Peace?, by Doni Remba

Is the new hardline Netanyahu government in Israel on a collision course with the Obama administration – and the rest of the world? What can President Obama do to advance Israeli-Arab peace even if the Israeli government is led by a man who refuses to endorse the two-state Palestinian-Israeli solution backed by the U.S., previous Israeli governments, the Palestinian Authority, the Arab states and the international community?
Read more here.

Arrange for Gidon D. Remba to speak on Israeli-Arab Peace

Gidon D. Remba is available to speak on "President Obama, Israel & Middle East Peace" at synagogues, churches, universities and other communal institutions.

Mr. Remba, who served as Executive Director of the Jewish Alliance for Change, Ameinu (the US affiliate of the World Labor Zionist Movement), and Americans for Peace Now Chicago, is a veteran Middle East political analyst and pro-Israel peace advocate. He was Senior Foreign Press Editor and Translator in the Israel Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

His commentaries on Israel and the Middle East have appeared widely in the Jewish and general press, including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Chicago Sun Times, the Nation, Ha’aretz, the Forward, the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Jerusalem Report, Tikkun, and many other publications. He blogs at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ and at http://mideastmythsfacts.blogspot.com/

To arrange for Mr. Remba to speak at your event, contact him at dremba@comcast.net

Recent reviews:

Temple Har Zion, a reform synagogue in a Toronto suburb:

"You deliver a fast, hard punch of facts and history." Members felt that "we needed to have you longer, during the day, instead of Friday night. People wanted to learn more and discuss more with you. I will look at things differently now, trying always to determine what is really in Israel's interest." - Natalie Cremer, Adult Education Chair, Temple Har Zion

"Members are still talking about your visit, and the debate it stirred. We were impressed by your insider knowledge of Israeli and American political workings."- Rabbi Cory Weiss, Temple Har Zion

Selected Recent and Upcoming Appearances:

Upcoming: Fall, 2009 (date to be announced): Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana

May 20, 2009, 7:30 PM: Special guest at political comedian Scott Blakeman's political humor talk show "The End Of The Week As We Know It," at the 45th St. Theater, 354 W. 45 St., New York City.

April 26, 2009: Institute for Living Judaism, Brooklyn, NY, "The Settlements," in a dialogue with Stuart Ain, columnist for the Jewish Week

February 2009: Panelist, The Joey Reynolds Show, WOR News Talk Radio

January 2009: Erev Shabbat talk, "President Obama, Israel & the Mideast," Temple Har Zion, a reform synagogue in a Toronto suburb

October 2008: Speaker on Obama’s Chicago career as a progressive pragmatist, in "Broadway for Obama," State Theater, in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania electoral battleground before an audience of 1,000 people.

September 2008, Speaker on Obama's Chicago career and Chicago Jewish community support, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, N.J. (NJ Jews rally for Obama-Biden ticket: Speakers defend Democrats’ record on Israel, int’l issues, New Jersey Jewish News, Sept. 11, 2009)

Recent Publications:
Obama's Grand Plan for the Middle East (PDF version), Jerusalem Report, May 18, 2009, reprinted online in Jewcy

An Open Letter to Abe Foxman: A Response to Obama's Critics on Arab-Israeli Peace, Jewcy, August 1, 2009

Removing West Bank Israeli settlements is ethnic cleansing? Nonsense. http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, August, 2009

Obama’s policy on Jerusalem and the US Consulate is anti-Jewish and anti-Israel? That’s outrageous, http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, September 2009

Obama Planned "Ambush" of Israel at U.N.? Fat Chance. http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, September 2009

For Selected Publication List visit here.

Click here for Mr. Remba's full bio

Barack Obama, a True Friend of Israel, Gidon D. Remba -- The Jerusalem Report, Viewpoint, 6/4/08

What should we say of an American president who tells the Knesset that negotiating with “terrorists and radicals” is like appeasing Nazis, but who bargains with states like Libya and North Korea over nuclear disarmament and with Iran over stabilizing Iraq? And suppose a Republican presidential candidate endorses the implied appeasement charge against his opponent, suggesting that while the Democrat is surely Hamas’ best friend, he himself will never truck with terrorists. Next imagine that just before the election spotlight shines upon him, this same Republican announces that sooner or later we’re going to have to talk to Hamas.

George Orwell, author of the dystopian novel 1984, called all this Newspeak. In Newspeak, explained Orwell, one displays “a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this…The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.” In Oldspeak, diplomacy meant bargaining, directly or indirectly when needed, with one’s foes, as well as with friends. In Newspeak, we never talk of such things, even when our leaders do them because they must. In Oldspeak, we do as we say and say as we do. In Newspeak, we say what we want the people to think, and then do as we wish.

Barack Obama represents a revival of Oldspeak to a people grown weary of the gaping chasm between rhetoric and results, happy-talk and truth, from an administration that promised Americans security and global triumph, and its Jewish citizens undying friendship to Israel. While a stubborn minority clings to fantasies of “moral clarity” on absolute good and evil and vanquishing Israel’s enemies, many now see that the swashbuckling moralists have boosted the “evil-doers” while whispering sweet hosannas to Israel in Jewish ears.

These dragon-slayers have broken the Arab state which was Iran’s chief rival, installing Shiite-led Iran-friendly rule in Iraq. In the name of “freedom” and “democracy,” they foisted new elections on the Palestinians, against both Israel’s and Fatah’s better judgment, letting Hamas win power. Then they armed Fatah against Hamas in Gaza hoping to depose the Hamas-led authority, until Hamas preempted, wresting control of Gaza from Fatah.

They fiddled with toothless sanctions while Persian centrifuges spun. They neglected the most potent U.S. economic and political inducements, while Iran leapt forward towards nuclear weapons' breakthrough. They refused to lure Syria away from Iran in a pax Americana, as we once did Egypt from the Soviet orbit, allowing the Syrians to keep funneling more lethal arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, magnifying the threats to Israel.

Obama has blasted the Bush crew for pressuring Israel to duck peace parley with Syria, despite the conviction of both its prime minister and defense minister, and much of its security establishment, that engaging Damascus would be to Israel’s advantage. Only two governments on earth are in shock over the newly revealed Israeli-Syrian dialogue: the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Bush administration, which reportedly called Israel’s overture towards Syria “a slap in the face.” Such language is not unlike that doubtlessly heard in government halls in Tehran and Hezbollah’s Beirut these days about their Syrian ally.

But don’t expect Syria’s President Bashar Asad to publicly surrender his chief asset and strongest bargaining chip—his marriage of convenience with Iran—in the opening act. Engineering this break will take a bountiful dowry from the wealthy American and Western families of the Israeli would-be bride. The prospects for success will depend, in part, on whether a new U.S. president seizes the opening, persuading Syria of the benefits we will offer in exchange for spurning Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Barack Obama and John McCain bring to this pregnant Mideast moment two sharply divergent conceptions of America’s place in the world. Reflecting his grasp of the supporting role the United States must play as a true friend of Israel, Obama responded that he has “consistently said that the United States must stand ready to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors, and should not block Israel from the negotiating table, nor force it to negotiate.” McCain’s spokesperson offered the laissez-faire bromide “that the sovereign government of Israel should be free to make its own decisions on how best to defend Israel and whether to engage in negotiations.” (Read: Knock yourself out, Israel. But don’t come to us for help.)

Facing down Iran, Obama will marshal all elements of American power on behalf of security and peace in the region, wielding both carrots and sticks. McCain’s long-time cheerleading for the hawkish "talk and walk" of the Bush league leaves little doubt that a McCain administration will be hostage to the same martial doublethink: an over-reliance on arms and isolation as magic potions for all that ails America and Israel, Orwell’s perpetual war clothed in earnest devotion to Newspeak “diplomacy.”

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” remarked Orwell’s character Syme, reveling in the way the cleansing of language constricts thought, stamping out the very idea of imagining alternative courses of action. But then he was fictional, of course.


Gidon D. Remba, a veteran American Jewish Israel activist, is President of KAHAL America (http://www.kahalamerica.com/), a new Jewish nonprofit issues advocacy organization and sponsor of "Jews for Obama" (http://www.jewsforobama.com/).

How to Talk to a Hawk—Or, Abandon These Myths Before You Vote, Gidon D. Remba

To Read the New Abridged Version to Appear Soon in a National Publication Click Here

Unabridged Version

A friend who recently spent the last year living in Israel recently wrote to explain why he won’t vote for Senator Barack Obama for President. He believes with all his heart and soul that “most American Jews just don’t get what is happening. We are in a fight for our lives, period. Ahmadinejad means to do us in if he can. He is a Hitler, pure and simple. I am supporting McCain because I feel he is the one president most likely to militarily go after Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not believe anything short of that or regime change will stop Iran from getting and using a nuclear bomb against our people.”

In fact, I am convinced that it is my friend who grossly, and dangerously, misunderstands the Middle East—and a whole lot else. And because Israel is in a fight for its life and American security remains in a parlous state both at home and abroad, I believe it’s absolutely vital that we get it right, that we grasp what will and won’t help Israelis and Americans best protect ourselves from the threats we face.

What Not to Learn from the Holocaust

“Who is the first American president to condemn the indefensible omission of conscience of not bombing the train tracks?” asks my friend. He answers: “None other than cowboy Bush when he recently visited Yad Vashem, at whom American Jews look down their semitic noses for being so stupid and folksy and corrupt and all that. They dismiss what he said as politicking. Not so, he meant it, for he is morally non-nuanced enough to understand that there is good and evil in the world and that not everything is relative. And this is why I voted for Bush in 2004 and why I support McCain now.”

By my friend’s logic, the leader who knows who and what is truly evil is he (or she) who will use the most force to defeat our enemies and to thwart their demonic plans: the right leader would have bombed the train tracks at Auschwitz. By the same token, the best president will now fight on in Iraq until we win, staying as long as it takes, as McCain has promised (not for 100 years, but until we achieve our goals, as he has indeed vowed). And that strong leader will “take out” Iran’s nuclear facilities with air strikes and commando raids, or whatever kinds of military attacks are needed, as McCain has promised, before it can commit a new holocaust against the Jewish people.

There is just one small problem with my friend’s logic: most of the best American military minds find these bellicose “solutions” to be foolhardy, utterly ineffective and strategically disastrous.

Take the case of bombing the train tracks—or the crematoria—at Auschwitz. President Bush shamelessly panders and manipulates Jewish emotions by condemning the US failure to “take the tracks out” to the death camps during the Shoah. Jews who think and vote with their kishkes instead of with their kopfs (their guts instead of their brains) hail W, and McCain, or even Hillary Clinton, as the kind of tough seasoned pro-Israel patriots that Israel and America need to be safe. In fact, those who favored the most use of force against what from a Jewish viewpoint seems the greatest embodiment of evil were dead wrong during the Holocaust, and demonstrably so; they are even more recklessly wrong now.

Jewish historian William D. Rubinstein devoted an entire chapter to “The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz” in his book The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazis. He notes that “Recent military historians have looked at … claims about the possibility of bombing Auschwitz with critical eyes, and concluded that the options put forward were highly impractical and most unlikely to have succeeded.” He concludes: “Because of the inaccuracy of bombing raids in 1944, if a raid had somehow been launched against Auschwitz in 1944 it is probable—even likely—that such a mission would have been seen, then and now, as a complete fiasco, an ill-considered and dubious exercise, carried out for political rather than for military reasons, in which many hundreds of Jews and other captives were killed but which utterly failed to halt the Nazi death machine.”

Shoot or Talk with Iran? Obama vs. McCain

John McCain pays lip service to the need to use “all elements of our national power” in the war on terror, including diplomacy and economic development. But when it comes to the chief purveyor of Middle East terrorism he would have the United States confront Iran with very few arrows in our quiver. Moreover, economic sanctions and threats of force have completely failed to halt Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities, which continue to advance.

The vast majority of generals in the Pentagon view a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities—promised by McCain if Iran does not halt its march towards nuclear weapons—as both highly ineffective and extremely likely to involve us in another protracted war like Iraq that we cannot win and may well lose. Most senior American military officials believe that an attack on Iran “could set off Iranian retaliation without halting Tehran's nuclear program for long,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Many in the Pentagon’s leadership, “including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, have concluded that a strike against suspected Iranian nuclear sites could be counterproductive,” according to senior U.S. Defense Department officials. That of course is diplo-speak for yet another clusterf***. “War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag...The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would most likely accelerate than be destroyed,” warns Iran expert Trita Parsi.

Writing from Abu Dhabi, David Ignatius intimated in the Washington Post recently that “the United States doesn't have good military choices now -- and the Iranians know it. That's one reason they are being so provocative; they believe that a U.S. military strike would hurt America more than Iran.” Iran could “lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.” A war with Iran, many top US military officials have come to recognize, would be a trap. And that is the trap our bellicose Jewish friends, and their favored presidential candidates, tout as the panacea to the security ills that ail us and our closest Mideastern ally Israel.

Even the conservative Chicago Sun-Times has, in a moment of extraordinary clarity, implored Americans thus: “We should take a lesson from our failures in Iraq and try to handle our conflict in Iran with more level-headed diplomacy. The Iraq war already has cost the United States its global credibility. Even Ahmadinejad has played up our tarnished image, denouncing the sanctions as ‘bullying powers.’ If the United States takes on Iran by itself, it will only inspire more terrorists and create more enemies, both of whom will be working toward our demise.”

With these lessons in mind, I urge you take Remba’s Rule Number 1 with you into the voting booth: The candidate who talks toughest, or who has the most military experience, may be the worst for both America's and Israel’s security.

The faith in Bar Kochba-like politicians as our saviors is the mother of all fallacies in politics, and the one we Jews are most in need of throwing overboard. Politicians shamelessly pander to our emotional biases and play on our heartstrings. The wisest words I have heard yet from a Jewish source on the issue of Iran come to us from an editorial in New York’s Jewish Week, cautioning that “the Iran threat is too important and too complex for the chest thumping, sloganeering and jockeying for partisan gain that define the Iran debate on the 2008 presidential campaign trail … Negotiating with terror-supporting regimes clearly raises difficult questions, but it is irresponsible to suggest that negotiations are, by definition, the equivalent of appeasement, just as it is irresponsible to take the military option off the table entirely… But stopping [Iran's] nuclear program will take creative thinking, sober policymaking and a willingness to make tough choices in a universe of imperfect options.”

The less a politician has a cogent rationale for his or her policies the more he or she is apt to manipulate us by cozying up to our cherished symbols and mouthing comforting slogans about “the eternal unity of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” or bombing "Ahmadinejad's nuclear sites" to save the Jewish state from a future holocaust. If your bubbe didn’t teach you this lesson, she should have, and it behooves us all to learn it now: these are the most dangerous politicians for the Jewish people and for the United States.

Those Jews who would cast their vote for the most battle-tested politician or bellicose policy would have brought upon America, the Allies and world Jewry the embarrassment of grotesque failure against the Nazis when sober strategy was what we needed most. Then as now, we need helmsmanship with a sure compass steering our ship of state. All signs point to the wisdom of Barack Obama’s smart carrot-and-stick diplomacy on Iran and Iraq and to the folly of the new wars urged on us by John McCain. McCain's refusal to deploy the power of tough talk or hard bargaining with Iran or to use the leverage of real incentives bear all the hallmarks of Bush on steroids. So muscle-bound is his plan of attack that it cannot dodge and weave through the Mideast's serpentine alleyways, which demand agility and political ju-jitsu, not throw-weight.

Obama has said “he would ‘engage in aggressive personal diplomacy’ with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek ‘regime change’ if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.” He has made clear that “forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq…‘Changes in behavior' by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.” As Obama has stressed, “we will be in a stronger position to achieve … [tougher] international sanctions if the United States has shown itself to be willing to come to the table” with aggressive diplomacy incorporating both the offer of more potent incentives directly from the United States and the likelihood of more painful sanctions if talks fail or are dragged out in bad faith by Iran.

A New Diplomatic Solution to the Iranian Nuclear Impasse?

A new report by a group of former American diplomats and regional experts who have been meeting behind the scenes with a group of Iranian academics and policy advisers suggests that the Iranian leadership is open to direct US-Iran talks over a novel solution to the nuclear impasse: Western governments would jointly manage, operate and closely supervise all of Iran’s nuclear activities on Iranian soil. Under this proposal, “Iran would be prohibited from producing either highly enriched uranium or reprocessed plutonium,” thereby preventing it from producing the essential ingredients for constructing a nuclear weapon. Under such tight international supervision, even a secret attempt on Iran’s part to manufacture weapons-grade nuclear materials “would carry the risk of discovery by the international management team and the staff at the facility; the high probability of getting caught will likely deter Iran from trying to do so in the first place.” Iran would be permitted to produce “only uranium enriched to low levels that could be used in nuclear power plants.” And it would have to agree to fully implement the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “which requires member nations to make their nuclear facilities subject to snap inspections, environmental sampling, and more comprehensive reporting requirements,” as Iran has already offered to do.

While this option is not ideal—only a complete cessation of nuclear enrichment by Iran would be—it is the best of the realistic options which may be available to us and the one most likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Moreover, it is far better than the worst option, which is the one we are most likely to end up with if we continue down the paths advocated by Bush and McCain, and Hillary Clinton as well: “a purely national [nuclear enrichment] program on Iranian soil, one aimed at producing nuclear weapons” either without international safeguards or with insufficient monitoring. As the U.S. diplomats warn, “Outsourcing US diplomacy to others has not worked and is even less likely to work in the future … The US is the only nation that can take on [the task of direct engagement with Iran on the nuclear issue] and achieve the breakthroughs that will be necessary… The reward may be a more stable and peaceful Middle East.”

The Folly of War with Iran Revisited

Returning to the utter folly of the “bomb Iran” option, consider Exhibit B: Jerusalem Post Deputy Managing Editor Caroline Glick has written—with a straight face, I kid you not—that “even if an attack against Iran's nuclear installations inside of Iran were completely successful, there is a possibility that Iran's nuclear capabilities will not be significantly downgraded. Iran's program may be dispersed in Syria, North Korea, and in Pakistan which transferred nuclear technologies to Iran and North Korea, (as well as Libya and Egypt). In other words, there is now a distinct possibility that Iran is not the only country that will have to be attacked to prevent Iran and its allied rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

This, of course, is just what the neocons have always had in mind. War without end against all the “evil forces” threatening us and Israel; the ubiquitous devils which only moral absolutists like George W. Bush and John McCain can clearly see. Former Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark reported recently that “on the eve of the war [in Iraq] he was shown a Pentagon document that portrayed Iraq as the first in a series of operations to change regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Somalia and Lebanon.” We know how well that plan went in Iraq, and how far it got. Recent revelations indicate that while we were distracted by the monstrous mess in Iraq, the Bush Administration was gearing up to foment a military coup in Gaza last year. The administration co-opted Israel and Egypt into playing along with its scheme to arm Fatah in Gaza in preparation for an armed showdown which would have deposed Hamas from power after having won democratic Palestinian elections (balloting held at Bush’s behest, contrary to the urgings of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni). But last summer Hamas preempted the impending coup, routing Fatah and completely taking over the Gaza Strip. Israeli analysts fear that the West Bank may well be next. The deterioration in Israel’s security, the strengthening of Hamas and the rise in missile attacks on Sderot, Ashkelon and the kibbutzim in southern Israel were brought to you by none other than the “spare no use of force” trigger-happy gunslingers in the Bush administration.

And how did Hezbollah manage to rearm with even more long-range missiles, now targeting all of Israel, and with greater accuracy, than it had before the Lebanon war of 2006? Despite ongoing Israeli efforts to test the waters with Syria in behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts over the last two years, the Bush Administration has refused to offer Syria the kind of powerful economic, political and security incentives which could lure it away from its rewarding alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Only the U.S., leading its allies, has the power to counter the attractions of Iran for Syria, much as it did when moderate Republican and Democratic administrations pried Sadat’s Egypt away from the Soviet Union, helping to lay the foundations for peace with Israel. The failure of Bush to pursue robust diplomacy with Syria and Iran has permitted the military threats to Israel from both Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, to escalate year after year.

As for McCain, who with many of his senior advisors, including Senator Joe Lieberman, have long been among the most vocal champions for regime change in Iraq, Bloomberg News reports that many analysts believe, based on his own stated positions, that he is even more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, North Korea, Russia and China. Just what the doctor ordered. Dr. Kevorkian, that is.

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan has said that McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.” “He’s the true neocon,” notes Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder: “He does believe, in a way that George W. Bush never really did, in the use of power, military power above all, to change the world in America’s image. If you thought Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait till you see John McCain. He believes this. His advisors believe this.” “He would employ military force to the exclusion of other options,” adds Larry Korb, a former Reagan Administration defense official. He is among those who are convinced that the Vietnam War could have been won if the US military had been given free rein.

This sounds eerily like the Israeli super-hawks who demand of the government to just "let the IDF win" in Gaza or Lebanon, much to the chagrin of the IDF general staff which knows that a full-scale Gaza invasion would bring Israel yet another pyrrhic victory, mushrooming into an even more destructive and futile—for Israel—conflagration with Hezbollah and possibly Syria. And now John McCain feels that if we follow Obama—or Clinton—we will make the same “mistake” all over again in Iraq and in the broader “transcendent” struggle against Islamic extremism. "There's going to be other wars," promises McCain. "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars." May God save us from the havoc this aging warhorse will wreak.

Genocide, Morality and American Jews, Gidon D. Remba (Jerusalem Post Op-Ed)

Genocide, Morality and American Jews
Published as Don’t Alienate Ankara

By

Gidon D. Remba

October 29, 2007
The Jerusalem Post
(Unedited version)

Under pressure from the Bush Administration and Turkey, a key US NATO ally, Congressional leadership recently performed an about-face on a resolution condemning as genocide the mass slaughter and wholesale deportation of Armenian men, women and children nearly a century ago by Ottoman Turkey. The Jewish community has been deeply divided over the moral quandaries raised by this resolution. It has brought into play Turkey’s role in supporting U.S. military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel’s military alliance with the Turks, the relationship between Israel and American Jews, the Jewish memory of the Shoah—and our anguished moral consciences.

The moral question seems to have a clear-cut answer, one embraced by many thoughtful Jews. Jewish tradition reflects a potent strain of ethical idealism, an absolute commitment to principle, even to the point that it seems to suggest: Do the right thing—and damn the consequences! The preeminent rabbinic sage Maimonides exemplified this when he ruled that “if pagans should tell [the Jews], ‘Give us one of yours and we shall kill him, otherwise we shall kill all of you,’ they should all be killed and not a single Jewish soul should be delivered.”

But there is another major stream in Jewish tradition which emphasizes that the Torah was given so that we may live by it. It implores us to choose life, raising the demand to save lives above all the other commandments (the principle called pikuach nefesh). The Jewish commitment to the absolute inviolability of the individual and to human rights can be summed up by an ancient, non-Jewish aphorism: do justice, urged the Romans, even though the heavens may fall. But we live in a time in which the falling of the heavens is far from a remote possibility. If we gaze at the history of the last century, up to the present moment, we bear witness to a dark panorama of butchery, war, terrorism and genocide. The heavens have fallen time and time again. And justice has, all too often, not been done.

We Jews have been among the greatest victims of such barbarity. But we are hardly its only victims. Before the destruction of six million European Jews in the Holocaust—and six million non-Jews—there was another genocide, of over 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-17. The Allied governments, Britain, France and Russia, condemned the Turkish government for committing “crimes against humanity and civilization,” the first time such language had ever been invoked (the term genocide had not yet been coined). The U.S., seeking to avoid involvement, refused to join the Allied declaration. Despite our wish to be celebrated as a global beacon of human rights and liberal democracy, the United States has often failed to speak out against genocide, or even to take modest risks to stop it in concert with our allies. Nor have the Europeans done much better, for all their commitment to peace, international law and human rights.

From Turkey’s destruction of the Armenians, the Nazi Holocaust, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian reign of terror; to Saddam’s gassing and execution of the Kurds, the Bosnian Serb mass murder of Muslims, and the Hutu evisceration of the Tutsi, the United States, and often its allies, not only failed to invest real capital into stopping genocide. It sometimes even directly or indirectly aided those committing it. Samantha Power documents this sordid tale in her pathbreaking book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

More recently, the U.S. has failed to lead the UN Security Council—or given the U.N.’s impotence in the face of Chinese oil investments in Sudan—NATO, the G-8 and the African Union, to take stronger action to halt the continuing atrocities in Darfur. Such steps include targeted sanctions against Sudan for obstructing the deployment of the multinational force, provision of NATO logistical support, equipment and additional funding necessary to provide the force with the capacity to defend itself against attacks by armed groups and to protect civilians. We stopped the horrors in Serbia and Bosnia; we can stop them in Darfur.

Against the backdrop of this sorry chronicle of moral bankruptcy, it behooves the United States to at long last formally recognize the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. We bear a heavy moral obligation to do so. That, it seems clear, is the right thing to do.

And yet—must we do justice now even if the heavens will fall? The Armenian genocide is not unfolding today; it is nearly a century old. Were it happening today, there would be no harm to American interests which could justify our failure to lead or participate in effective international intervention—from potent economic sanctions and the promise of war crimes tribunals and a willingness to arrest and try the perpetrators, to the deployment of a NATO-led or other multinational armed force.

Several hundred thousand American troops are now ensconced deep in Iraq and Afghanistan, heavily dependent on our NATO ally Turkey to permit the transfer of new armored vehicles necessary to prevent even greater loss of life. A loss of Turkish cooperation, a realistic prospect, could also prolong the presence of large numbers of US troops in Iraq. Whatever we believe about the justice of these wars—the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is surely a just war, even if the Iraq war is not—if we hold dear the value of human life, we cannot remain indifferent to the jeopardy into which an untimely public recognition of the Armenian genocide would place American forces, along with Iraqi and Afghani civilians.

But it gets worse. Kurdish separatist guerrillas are attacking Turkish forces in Turkey, which is threatening to invade Iraq, a step which could draw Iran into the breach and further destabilize the Iraqi government. The guerrilla attacks, coupled with Turkish estrangement from the U.S., could strike the match that sets alight a great tinderbox, sparking a regional firestorm into which U.S. forces could be drawn. You thought the Iraq war was already going badly?

It gets worse still. Turkey is Israel’s closest military ally in the Muslim world. Turkish military cooperation, and airspace, is vital to Israel’s self-defense against Iran and Syria. A serious degradation in relations between Turkey and the U.S or Israel would represent a blow to Israeli deterrence, exposing Israel to greater security threats from Iran and Syria, increasing the risk of war with Israel.

We Jews bear a profound moral duty to recognize the genocide of the Armenians. The United States too must right its own historic wrong. But not when there is grave danger that the heavens may fall. The right thing, all things considered, is to act wisely, reducing Israel’s security threat from Syria by negotiating a peace treaty, as Israel’s intelligence services now uniformly recommend, and pursuing a swift and orderly U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. We must minimize harm to human lives here and now, and urge our leaders to take a courageous moral stand on historical truth when the cost to innocent lives, and world peace, is more bearable. This, I believe, the victims of genocide would themselves demand.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380674662&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


Gidon D. Remba is National Executive Director of Ameinu: Liberal Values, Progressive Israel. His commentary is available at http://www.ameinu.net/

War or Peace? What Bashar Really Wants, by Gidon D. Remba

This essay, published as “Now May Be the Time to Pry Syria from Terrorist Camp,” is being reprinted in a new anthology titled Should Governments Negotiate with Terrorists?, as part of the “At Issue” educational series, to appear in June 2008. The volume may now be pre-ordered on Amazon here.

War or Peace? What Bashar Really Wants
FINAL REVISED AND EXPANDED VERSION 9/28/07
Originally Published in Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, September 26, 2007

By

Gidon D. Remba

Three weeks ago Israel launched an air strike on “nuclear equipment” in Syria provided secretly by North Korea. So goes the received version of what happened over Syrian skies, suggesting that Israel’s operation was a reprise of its successful preemptive attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

North Korea and Syria may indeed have been collaborating on a clandestine nuclear weapons development program. Since Israeli government and military officials are virtually mum, everything we hear has come from the Bush Administration, or from “leaks” to the media from anonymous Israeli intelligence sources which are treated breathtakingly as revelatory scoops. The Bush Administration would never spin a story or twist intelligence information to suit its pre-conceived worldview, now would it? Newsweek reports that “current and former U.S. intelligence officials, willing to speak only if they were not named, say they've seen no credible evidence yet of nuclear ties between North Korea and Syria, whether before or since the Israeli operation.” Even former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, now at the a conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, who made a career of claiming, against all CIA assessments, that Syria was developing nuclear weapons, now admits that “whether [it was] a nuclear or missile facility [that the Israelis hit] is not clear.”

For years, the Bush Administration shunned direct talks with North Korea and reversed U.S. support for South Korea’s “sunshine” policy of using economic, security and political incentives to dissuade the North Koreans from building more nuclear weapons. It created a confrontational atmosphere that led to precisely that outcome, along with the first North Korean nuclear bomb test explosion. Syria had cooperated with the U.S. after 9/11, as did Iran, sharing intelligence information with the U.S. on Al Qaeda, prompting U.S. officials to report that Syria had helped to save American lives. By the time of the Iraq war in 2003, neo-cons in the Bush Administration insisted that Syria should be lumped with Iran, Iraq and North Korea in Bush’s “axis of evil.” They had long advocated sanctions and isolation of Syria, Iran and Iraq to be followed by U.S. and Israeli military strikes and regime change in all three countries.

On the precipice of catastrophic failure not only in Iraq but in North Korea, with the “evil axis” strategy blowing up in its face, the Bush Administration finally did a 180, listened to its moderate, pragmatic faction, once led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and now by his successor Condoleezza Rice. Under Rice’s direction, the U.S. earlier this year negotiated a deal directly with North Korea to trade aid and other guarantees for first steps in what could become a North Korean arms denuclearization program, an objective it achieved before with Libya.

Vice President Cheney and other hawks in and out of office have been apoplectic, believing that the US has “declared defeat” by “trusting” the North Koreans, hoping to scuttle the agreement. On other fronts, Cheney has personally called leaders in Arab countries and told them not to listen to Secretary of State Rice because “she doesn’t speak for the administration,” leading American Syria scholar David Lesch recently told a Century Foundation luncheon for a small group of diplomats and foreign policy editors which I attended.

Pyongyang has long supplied Damascus with missiles; but nuclear warheads or materials? Would the North Koreans really risk their nuclear bargain with the U.S., imagining that neither the U.S. nor Israel would detect their actions in Syria? Would they play into the hands of the hard-line clique in the White House who want to sabotage their deal? Perhaps they are that reckless. But we should maintain a healthy skepticism until the administration comes clean and shows the public incontrovertible evidence. And if North Korea did export nuclear material to Syria, it points not to the failure of diplomacy per se—any more than a poorly executed war proves the bankruptcy of military force in general—but rather to what many policy analysts see as the Bush Administration’s muddled and half-hearted approach to nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang.

As for Syria, Rice has struck a symbolic blow against the hawks, announcing that the U.S. will invite it, along with other Arab states who do not maintain diplomatic relations or peace treaties with Israel, to the Palestinian-Israeli peace parley planned for November. Doubtful that the conference will deliver substantive results, Syria is unlikely to attend. At the same time, A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate last month found that Damascus has been cracking down on Al Qaeda-affiliated foreign terrorists attempting to infiltrate Iraq, significantly reducing the number of incursions.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been telling visiting scholars and diplomats that Syria’s alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas is essentially tactical, and largely expendable in exchange for the right incentives from the U.S. and Israel. Syria is a weak country, economically distressed and running out of oil; it is always seeking leverage, bargaining chips, and in need of Western and Sunni Arab aid. It will trade away its strategic assets with the Islamists in exchange for dividends of greater value from the West. But it won’t surrender its booty in advance of a negotiation, as the Bush Administration has demanded, before confirming that American and Israeli benefits will truly be forthcoming.

Bashar told Lesch in May 2007: “Whoever works more for our [Syria’s] interests, I will be their friend. It is about interests, not ideology, and if the United States works for my interests, I will be their friend.” When one has few friends, Bashar intimated, one cannot be choosy, implying that “Damascus has had no choice but to draw closer to Iran.” But if “given a legitimate option in another direction, it might loosen its ties to Teheran.”

Bashar has also told Lesch that he would be a “hero” if he could bring about the return of the Golan to Syria through negotiations. If the U.S. continues down the path of isolation and confrontation with Syria, a largely Sunni state, we will push it even more into the arms of Shia Iran and Hezbollah. The U.S. and Israel must now work towards an American-backed Israeli-Syrian peace treaty and arms control pact enabling Syria to join the U.S.-allied coalition of Sunni Arab states and Israel against Shia extremists—before the next, far more devastating war.


Gidon D. Remba is National Executive Director of Ameinu: Liberal Values, Progressive Israel. His commentary is available at http://www.ameinu.net/ and http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/