As the Goldstone report on the Gaza war wends it way up the UN food chain, casting further opprobrium on Israel at each level, it is legitimate to question Israel’s handling of this challenge. Did the Israeli response lessen or aggravate the damage?

There are serious critiques that could have been levied against Goldstone’s mandate even before a single accusation was heard. UN investigations of wars, including this one, typically focus on jus in bello, on the laws of war on the battlefield, and ignore jus ad bellum, the justification for going to war in the first place. It can be argued with great cogency that it is unreasonable to judge the conduct of a war with little or no reference to its causes; echoes of this can be heard in Israeli complaints about the lack of attention to claims of self-defense.

A second critique is that international law has not kept pace with changes in warfare. Most contemporary armed conflicts involve what Rupert Smith has called “war amongst the people,” rather than classic set-piece battlefield scenarios from which laws on wartime conduct (jus in bello) were drawn. These laws seek, quite rightly, to minimize casualties among civilians, but how should they be applied when the very blurring of the military-civilian distinction is a basic strategic axiom of one party? Are insurgents entitled to more rather than less immunity if they refuse to wear uniforms (as required by conventional law)?

So Goldstone’s approach was already blinkered by the framework in which he, without audible complaint, was thrust. This was then compounded by the lack of an Israeli defense to the specific accusations that were brought. Having no “official” explanation that needed to be taken into account, as a straight-laced jurist he then not only accepted any claims of atrocities at face value but also attributed them to deliberate policy rather than the mistakes, negligence, and misconduct out of which most wartime violations are compounded.

Ruth Lapidoth, who has represented Israel in many international legal frameworks, and other leading Israeli jurists have argued that it was a mistake to leave Israel unrepresented in the presentation of evidence and argument before Goldstone. It may be that the final product would still not have been to Israel’s liking, but presenting one’s case in full force would make it more difficult to ignore the basic limitations of the framework (lack of attention to causes, unconventional warfare) and to assign to deliberate policy what could be attributed, in “the fog of war,” to deviations from the rules of engagement that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) had in fact set out.

A second effective means of damage control would be to address forthrightly the specific cases in the Goldstone report and to draw the necessary conclusions: a clear statement of the facts if the accusation is not warranted, and appropriate disciplinary action if it is. In fact, in international law, taking this step would remove the threat of prosecution abroad that now appears to hang over the head of top-level Israeli military commanders. The army that can fight a bloody conflict in an urban setting, without any cases of misconduct among its ranks, has yet to be created.

According to recent report, it was Defense Minister Ehud Barak who prevailed on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to boycott the UN inquiry. If so, it is further testimony to Barak’s inability to learn from experience, and it comes as no surprise that the latest poll predicts that, if elections were held now, his Labor Party, once the dominant force in Israel, would be reduced to an abysmal seven seats.

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The past several days have witnessed not one but two momentous, even stunning, developments in Turkish foreign policy that are reverberating through the region. Both are the work of Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former university professor who became Turkish foreign minister last year. Before that, Davutoğlu (shown on far right with his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem) served for several years as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy advisor. In a manner perhaps befitting a university professor, Davutoğlu has aspired to give Turkish foreign policy a comprehensive and consistent conceptual basis. He laid out his vision in his book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu). According to this vision, whereas in the past the Turkish Republic followed a policy of quasi-isolation and self-imposed quarantine from its neighbors, today it should instead seek to take advantage of the cultural and historical links it shares with other countries in its region. As foreign minister, Davutoğlu has been working tirelessly to put his stamp on Turkish foreign policy. The past week has offered two dramatic examples of Turkey’s new foreign policy orientation.

An opening to the East. The first of took place on October 10 in Zurich where the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed a protocol agreeing to open their border and establish diplomatic ties between their two countries. Up until recently, observers – Armenian, Turkish, and foreign alike – generally regarded the idea of a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as sheer fantasy. Precisely because their histories are intertwined, the rift between the Armenian and Turkish peoples is deep and multi-dimensional, going beyond already contentious geopolitics to extend into the very hearts of modern Armenian and Turkish identities and the founding myths of the Turkish and Armenian republics. Attitudes on both sides are so sensitive that despite even lengthy and meticulous preparation by the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministries, the signing of the protocol was almost consigned to remain the realm of fantasy right before it took place.

At the last minute both foreign ministers objected to the public statement planned by the other. The ceremony was saved only when, apparently at the suggestion of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the two foreign ministers compromised by agreeing simply to refrain from making any statements at all. Such is the fragility of the rapprochement. Moreover, to come into force, the legislatures of Armenia and Turkey must first ratify the protocols. Multiple constituencies opposed to the normalization of relations exist inside (and outside) the two countries, and they may well prove skeptics and nay-sayers correct.

Nonetheless, the mere fact that Davutoğlu was able to bring the two countries this close in itself represents a fundamental change in Turkish foreign policy. And whereas the likelihood of failure in these sorts of sensitive and politically charged undertakings typically deters most, Davutoğlu’s tack is to capitalize in these situations on the power of boldness combined with persistence to change first expectations and then reality. Simply by striving for seemingly unthinkable change, Davutoğlu reckons, one demonstrates that change is possible, and thereby one changes fundamental calculations of all parties. The fact that Davutoğlu was able to coordinate both American and Russian support for this Caucasian gambit reflects his exceptional diplomatic skills and the considerable momentum he has already generated for normalization. Turkey’s opening to Armenia will have an impact on everything from stability in the greater Caucasus and Caspian region through world energy supplies and the future of NATO.

An opening to the South. As momentous as Turkey’s opening to its east in the Caucasus might be, its opening to the south has the potential to change regional dynamics even more. For most of its existence, the Turkish Republic has enjoyed at best cool relations with Syria. During the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish-Syrian ties were outright confrontational as the two states sparred over such issues as Turkish control of the waters of the Euphrates and Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan or PKK) inside of Turkey. Relations hit a nadir in 1999 when Turkey threatened to invade Syria if it continued to provide sanctuary to the head of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. This period of heightened Turkish-Syrian tension overlapped with the establishment of a security partnership with Israel that became one of the constituent elements of the regional balance of power.

Relations between Syria and Turkey began to improve slowly after 1999, while ties to Israel became noticeably more strained in the wake of Israel’s 2006 military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But this week, what remained of the old architecture of regional relations came crashing down. First, in a pointed gesture, Turkey retracted its invitation to Israel to participate in the aerial war games known as “Anatolian Eagle.” Turkey has hosted the war games annually since 2001, and it has routinely involved Israel in them. This year, however, Turkey refused to allow the Israeli air force to take part as form of protest over Israel’s policies toward Gaza and in particular Operation Cast Lead.

The United States and Italy subsequently pulled out of Anatolian Eagle in protest. If this gesture was intended to cow Turkey, it failed. Lest there be any misunderstanding about Turkey’s motives for excluding Israel, Davutoğlu clarified matters on October 13 when, in what Turkish newspapers described as a “warning” to Israel, he demanded that the “human tragedy in Gaza” end and that “respect be shown to the al-Aqsa mosque, the Noble Sanctuary, and East Jerusalem, which are sacred to Muslims.” The day before, the Turkish foreign ministry on its website described the public interpretations and commentary of Israeli officials regarding Anatolian Eagle as “unacceptable” and chided those officials to use “common sense” in their future statements and actions.

No less significant than the content of Davutoğlu’s “warning” was the place where he chose to issue it, in the Syrian city of Aleppo at the first ministers’ meeting of the newly formed Turkish-Syrian High Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Whereas a decade ago common opposition to Syria served as a glue binding Turkey to Israel, today Turkey’s foreign minister issues appeals from inside Syria to Israel to heed the sensitivities of Muslims toward their holy sites in Jerusalem.

During his visit to Syria, Davutoğlu underscored that the opening up to Syria is neither a matter of tactics nor temporary, but is constituent part of the new Turkish foreign policy. Thus, for example, when he announcing the introduction of visa-free travel for Syrian and Turkish citizens, he described the occasion as a third common holiday for Turkish and Syrian citizens alongside the two major Islamic feasts Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha. Davutoğlu brought to Syria nine cabinet members and revealed a raft of projects ranging from educating Syrian students in Turkey through the removal of mines from the Turkish-Syrian border to the transformation of Aleppo into a major logistical hub for expanded Turkish trade with the Arab Middle East. The Turks hope to use Aleppo to meet Arab demand for Turkish foodstuffs.

There is a certain poetic irony to the Turkish dream of exporting food throughout the Middle East via Syria. Damascus’ Ottoman-era fame for its sweets gave rise to a Turkish saying that aptly summarized official Turkish attitudes from the 1920s through the end of the century toward all things Arab: Ne Şam’ın şekeri, ne Arabın yüzü, literally “Neither sweets from Damascus nor an Arab’s face,” which can be roughly translated as, I don’t want to have anything to do with the Arabs, even if they do have tasty sweets.

Instead, while in Aleppo Davutoğlu uttered an entirely different phrase to describe Turkish-Syrian relations: “A common fate, a common history, a common future.”

Israeli Anxieties. Needless to say, the developments of the past several days have thrown Israeli politicians and policymakers into confusion and no small bit of anxiety, with some urging caution and others hinting at forms of retaliation against Turkey ranging from ending Israeli arms sales to withdrawing support for Turkish lobbyists in America. At this point, however, it would seem that there is little to be gained from responding quickly in the hopes of either assuaging Ankara or deterring it from similar demarches. The Turkish-Israeli strategic partnership is no longer in crisis, but has essentially ended. Indeed, unconfirmed reports in the Syrian and Turkish media promise the conclusion of a formal Turkish-Syrian strategic partnership in the near future.

Not surprisingly, Davutoğlu’s criticisms of Israel and expressions of solidarity have met with great enthusiasm inside Syria. Without a doubt, the sound of cheering crowds in a country long known to the Turks as an obstinate and troublesome neighbor must deeply gratify Davutoğlu. That gratification will certainly only increase as others in the Arab world and beyond join in to hail the change in Turkey’s regional orientation away from Israel to the Arabs. Turkey’s expanded engagement with the Arab world may well turn out to be a boon for all involved, as Davutoğlu surely hopes. Turkey has a great deal to offer by way of its relative political openness and economic dynamism to the Arab world. If done correctly, Turkey’s engagement could help point the way for the Arabs to transform their societies into more open, competitive, and democratic ones.

But that will be no easy task, nor will it be a short one. Initiatives such as student exchanges and increased business contacts can help change societies, but they require decades to yield fruit and provide little gratification after their inception.

Turkey’s engagement also carries real risks if the course of influence runs in the opposite direction, i.e. from the Arab countries to Turkey. This was the reasoning behind the traditional Kemalist desire to keep all things Middle Eastern at arms length and under control. Turkish officials saw the Middle East as a cultural swamp from which Turkey must escape, not a realm of common culture in which it could thrive.

As Davutoğlu must recognize, the problems of the Arab world, and the sources of its misery, are greater and deeper than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab countries are politically dysfunctional and most are economically moribund. There is little that they can offer the Turks aside from perhaps oil and gas and markets for Turkish consumer goods. In earlier eras, others such as Nasser and Saddam Hussein sought to expand their influence throughout the region by appealing to Arab sympathies against Israel, but their efforts did nothing but bring their own societies to ruin and leave the Arabs as whole worse off. Today, Ahmadinejad is attempting something similar with his backing for Hezbollah and routine denunciations of Israel. Yet, one need only look at Iran’s recent elections to answer the question of whether Ahmadinejad’s version of statecraft is serving anyone but himself and those close to him.

Israel’s policies are not above criticism, but if Davutoğlu truly aspires to have Turkey play the role of an effective regional leader, he will have to direct some of his criticism toward those entities, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, that celebrate violent confrontation with Israel over the development of their own societies. And he will have to do so soon. With Iran in determined pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, an enigmatic Obama administration sending mixed signals to the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah mantaining their romantic commitments to violence, the sight and sound of Turkey closing ranks with Syria will not spur Israelis to step back and announce a “kindler, gentler” Israel to soothe its neighbors. Instead, it will only magnify existing fears among Israelis that their country does indeed face an unprecedented existential threat that only desperate action can solve. Better than most people, Davutoğlu should understand that precisely what Israel lacks is the sort of strategic depth Turkey possesses, and this has consequences for Israeli policymaking.

But does Davutoğlu understand this? Right now, the indications are that he does not, or at least does not care.

Egypt’s National Democratic Party (NDP) conference is fast approaching, but the meeting—which will formally set the stage for political succession—isn’t making headlines these days. On October 6, the Los Angeles Times reported on how the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is reacting to sales of an Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit; still other news outlets have focused on the important decision at Al-Azhar to ban the niqab (the full-body veil) in the classroom.

Less covered in the Western media, but perhaps equally consequential, is the ongoing controversy surrounding Hala Mustafa (pictured). On October 10, Dr. Mustafa will appear at hearings before the Journalist Syndicate disciplinary committee, where she faces sanctions for meeting with Israeli ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen in early September.

Dr. Mustafa is a member of the NDP’s elite policy committee, and a scholar at the government-sponsored Al-Ahram Center. Last month, she found herself the target of a Journalist Syndicate investigation for meeting with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt. By meeting with Cohen, she violated draconian union bylaws, which enforce the strict policy of no contact with Israelis underpinning the “anti-normalization” campaign.

In recent decades, the Egyptian professional boycott against Israel—led by Islamist-controlled syndicates—has been an effective tool in preventing a normalization of bilateral relations between the states. While the government of Egypt has made little effort to reverse the trend, it has not seemingly endorsed the boycott—until recently.

The Journalist Syndicate appears to be looking to make an example out of Dr. Mustafa. And she’s not getting any help from the government’s Al-Ahram Center. Indeed, not only has the Center established its own board of inquiry to investigate Dr. Mustafa, just weeks ago the Center announced it too would “boycott Israelis of all levels.”

Perhaps this turn of events shouldn’t be surprising given that the center was founded in 1968 as the Center for Zionist and Palestine studies. Nevertheless, it seems odd that Egypt’s leading research institution—a state-funded institute closely tied to the regime—would adhere to extra-legal anti-normalization prescriptions advocated by Islamist-led unions. Indeed, the 1978 Camp David (peace) Accords stipulated that after the Israelis withdrew from Sinai, the states would establish “normal relations” including “cultural relations.”

While there is little doubt that the Egyptian government is committed to the absence of war with its Israeli neighbor, there remains a staunch opposition to moving toward a peace between the peoples at both the popular and the official levels. In Egypt, this incongruity is rationalized by the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, but even when the peace process is making progress—during the heyday of the Oslo Accords (1994-98), for example—Cairo demonstrates little inclination to change the dynamic.

The resistance to normalizing relations with Israel reaches the highest levels in Cairo. To date Hosni Mubarak—who has served as Egypt’s president since 1981—has visited Israel only once, and that was to attend the funeral of former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin. Still, in 1995, following his return from Israel, he told the Government daily Al Ahram that “I don’t consider this a visit.”

It remains to be seen what will transpire with Hala Mustafa’s case. Syndicate insiders say that the group’s board of directors is inclined to freeze her membership for a year, resulting in her removal as editor and chief of Al-Demokratiya. Sadly, based on developments to date, it appears unlikely that Mubarak regime will oppose a Journalist Syndicate dictate or intervene on her behalf.

For the Obama administration—which is trying to convince states like Saudi Arabia to normalize with Israel in hopes of encouraging the Jewish state to take “risks for peace” with the Palestinians—Cairo’s disposition is problematic. After all, if even peace partners are unwilling to normalize, convincing states like Saudi Arabia to do so stands little chance of success. In the search for Arab normalization with Israel, Washington would be best advised to take a more modest approach. Egypt, at peace with Israel for nearly 30 years, would seem a reasonable place to start.

MESH Admin: There is an Arabic translation of this post.

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In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.

Palestinians have three official objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, as well as a fourth objection about which they do not speak openly, but which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The three official objections are as follows:

1. It is not the task of the Palestinians to determine the nature of the Israeli state, but that of the Israelis.
2. Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would jeopardize the position of the Israeli Arabs, who form 20 percent of the Israeli population.
3. Israel did not demand recognition as a “Jewish state” in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

The fourth Palestinian objection—which they do not assert openly lest it destroy the chances for a peace treaty with Israel—is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.

These attitudes, partially latent during the heyday of the Oslo peace process (1993-2000), were reinforced by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which transformed what had been a conflict between two peoples over the same piece of territory into a religious war between Muslims and Jews, and which greatly strengthened Hamas in the process. Indeed both Hamas and non-Hamas religious leaders stressed that the Palestinians were fighting the Jews, just as Muhammad had fought the Jews who they allied with his enemies as he sought to unite the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam.

What the Palestinians—and other Arabs—fail to understand is that Zionism arose as a national movement among Jews in Europe in the 19th century. Very much influenced by the national unification movements of Germany and Italy (as were the Arab nationalists of the time), as well as by the increasingly precarious position of the Jews in Eastern Europe who were beset by pogroms in Czarist Russia, Zionist thinkers such as Hess, Lilienblum and Herzl asserted that just as the French had France, the Germans had Germany and the Italians had Italy, the Jews deserved a state of their own where they could lead a “normal, national life,” and the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel, then occupied by the Ottoman Empire, was chosen as the site of the future Jewish state. To be sure, the land which the Zionists wanted was already populated by Arabs; however, the Arabs who lived there at the end of the 19th century had not yet developed a national identity (that was come during the British mandate of 1922-48), and at the time primary saw themselves as Muslims or Christians, or as “Southern Syrians” or as Ottoman subjects.

This being the case, one can respond to the Palestinian reasons for not recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” in the following manner:

1. While the Israelis alone can and should define the nature of their state, as the existential nature of the state is a central factor in the conflict (unlike, for example, the conflicts between France and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries), then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish State becomes central to ending the conflict.
2. There are many minorities in the Middle East, and the often negative treatment of these minorities, whether religious (such as the Copts in Egypt and the Shi’a in Saudi Arabia) or national (such as the Kurds in Turkey and the Azeris) is, in fact, linked to the nature of the country in which they live. However these minorities could be protected by treaty arrangements (currently they are not, although Turkey has begun the process of trying to address its Kurds’ aspirations)—so long as they swear allegiance to the state. Indeed, should a Palestinian state which recognizes Israel as a “Jewish state” emerge, that could make it easier for Israeli Arabs to solve their own identity problems, which have become increasingly serious in recent years, as some Israeli Arab leaders have openly backed Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria in their conflicts with Israel. Thus, as part of a peace treaty between a Palestinian state and Israel, the protection of the rights, albeit not the national rights, of the Israeli Arabs could be stipulated.
3. While acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish state was not a component of Israel’s peace treaties with either Egypt or Jordan, in neither case was Israel involved in the type of existential conflict with these countries as it currently is with the Palestinians—a conflict in which it often appears that the assertion of one people’s national aspirations negates those of the other people. Thus it is necessary for both sides to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national aspirations. For the Palestinian side, this involves recognizing Israel as a Jewish State.
4. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, it is necessary for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state to replace the image of the Jew as dhimmi, or second class citizen, with the image of the Jew as a member of a national group exercising legitimate national rights, just as the Palestinians themselves do. Once this is done, the chances for a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state will be greatly enhanced.

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Mubarak is on his way back to Egypt. Well done, folks. It’s amazing how much mileage we can… all… squeeze… out… of a meeting that is notable for its general lack of newsworthiness. If I had to score this one, I hate to say it, but I would give the edge to the Egyptians. I think the Obama people got snookered by the Middle East. President Hosni Mubarak came to the White House, demonstrating he is back and bilateral relations are on track without returning the favor to his host. It is true that everything—nuclear proliferation, terrorism, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, democracy (or lack thereof), and the Arab-Israeli conflict—was on the table, but it seems President Obama did not get what he needed/wanted most: A commitment from Mubarak for an Arab gesture toward Israel.

The prevailing discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the nation’s capital suggests that some sort of positive signal from the Arab world to Israel will make a settlement freeze more tenable to average Israelis and encourage them to take the hard steps that lie ahead. Mubarak wasn’t buying it and there is little reason to believe that he would. Egyptians argue that Cairo has a peace agreement with Israel, there is security cooperation between the two countries, and the Egyptian head of Intelligence spends a great deal of time on issues important to Israel. Why is an additional gesture necessary? More broadly, the Arab world points to the Arab Peace Initiative that then-Crown Prince Abdallah tabled in 2002, which promised Israel normalization of relations once there is a settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as the most important gesture to the Israelis. If that is not incentive enough for the Israelis to negotiate in good faith, what is? So we are left with platitudes about progress and the need for all parties to do more to create an environment for peace. I sincerely hope no one left the Vineyard for this snoozer.

In all seriousness, the result of the meeting ups the ante for Obama’s planned big statement on Middle East peace. Perhaps if he throws down the gauntlet in a big forum, his international prestige will compel the parties to take the necessary steps toward peace. It is hard not believe, however, that Obama just learned a very important lesson about the limits of American power to get friendly governments to do things Washington wants.

The other items on the agenda seemed secondary, but I was not there so I don’t know for sure. If Abdel Monem Said’s Washington Post piece is any guide, the Egyptian delegation was, among other things, seeking to enlighten its American counterpart on problems in Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. That’s all well and good. Thanks for putting it on our radar screen. Yet, what are the Egyptians bringing to the table to help Washington deal with these very difficult problems? If Egypt’s response to the problem of piracy, which directly affects Egypt where it counts—in Suez Canal tolls—is any guide, Cairo does not plan on offering very much. Rather than deploy its navy to ensure safe passage in the Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Red Sea and the Canal, Egypt suggested the establishment of a regional information center on piracy, and Mubarak proposed that merchant ships arm themselves with heavy artillery to deal with the problem.

Both President Obama and the Secretary of State Clinton confirmed that they raised human rights and reform issues, which is a good thing, but I am skeptical that the United States is going to get very far with Mubarak. It seems to me that given the nature of the regime, it’s going to be awfully hard for opposition groups to dislodge Mubarak or any of his likely successors even with Washington’s help. I am channeling Gramsci here. It’s a fantasy to believe that civil society groups can disarm the Egyptian gendarme state. It’s true that Mubarak relies on coercion, the least efficient means of political control, which suggests that he is vulnerable to counter-narratives. Still, those alternative accounts of Egypt exist, whether they are liberal, Islamist, leftist, neo-Nasserist, and yet Mubarak seems secure. Yes, I know this is a generational issue. That’s why I think it was good thing that President Obama and his Secretary of State raised the issue of reform even if they are intent on treating the relationship more broadly than their predecessors.

In the end, I guess the Obama administration is more Rumsfeldian than it may like to admit. You deal with the Egypt you have, not the one you want.

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From David Makovsky

Dennis Ross and I wrote our book because we thought there is a need to base policy toward the Middle East on the complex realities that America confronts there. For too long, ideological blinders or theoretical views of the region have guided those who shaped and made U.S. policy. It is time that changed. And that is why we decided to write a book that explores the myths and the illusions that too often have driven American approaches to the region. We are not content only with exposing why certain key assumptions have been wrong and have produced mistaken policies. We want to outline and explain the key assumptions that ought to be driving what America does and how it does it in the region.

If the Middle East did not matter, we could be more cavalier in looking at wrongheaded assumptions about it. But with American interests and well-being increasingly riveted on what happens in the Middle East, we no longer have that luxury. With 9/11, we learned the hard way that the Las Vegas rule doesn’t apply to the Middle East: what happens there does not stay there. Pathologies in the Middle East will not remain isolated. They can and will affect us and our security. Whether we are dealing with an ascendant Iran determined to pursue nuclear weapons, or Islamists who seek greater leverage in the region and beyond, or trying to see whether peace between Arabs and Israelis remains in the cards, we had better understand what is possible and which choices and options provide us the best possible leverage to change the behaviors of those whose behaviors must be changed.

And that, ultimately, is what we set out to do in this book. We are not just seeking to debunk mythologies. We are trying to explain the path we ought to be taking in the Middle East, while also illuminating the core set of principles and assumptions that should underpin that path. Dennis is a renowned practitioner of diplomacy and is now the head of the Obama administration’s National Security Council’s “Center Region” that includes the Middle East and Iran. I served as a journalist for American and Israeli publications. As a journalist, I tried not just to cover stories in the region, and not just interview leaders and those in and outside political circles. My goal was to observe the Middle East from the ground up and see the interplay of the different forces—social, economic, and political—that shape the dynamics of the region.

While Dennis and I may both look for larger trends, we understand that U.S. policy toward the Middle East cannot be shaped by abstractions such as neoconservatism or realism. Those who seek to impose grand theories on this part of the world—whether of the right or the left—miss the context from which policy must emerge. We offer what amounts to a centrist view of what to do in the Middle East. Unlike the Bush administration, we favor active diplomatic engagement. We understand the importance of power in an area characterized by conflict and coercion. But just as the military option should never be taken off the table, neither should diplomacy ever be dismissed. Nevertheless, unlike many of the Bush administration’s critics—those who portray themselves as realists but who seem to reflect little understanding of Middle East reality—we don’t favor indiscriminate engagement with any and all actors, including nonstate actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Is it “realistic” to engage diplomatically with groups like Hamas if it means we undercut Palestinians who believe in coexistence and a secular future for their people?

Our mantra is engagement without illusion. We must pursue peace without illusion while understanding the difficulty of achieving it, but recognizing the consequences of not making the effort. We must compete with the radical Islamists by using force where necessary, while realizing that only other Muslims will discredit the radicals and that any strategy for competition must rely on social, economic, political, and diplomatic tools. Engagement cannot be a panacea for peace or for preventing Iran from going nuclear, but it creates possibilities for success and produces a context for tougher policies should it fail. Developments in Iran are fluid. Yet, they point to a theme that we try to hammer in the book. Create a context whereby it is the regime in Iran and not the United States that is the issue. If international sanctions against the regime are required, it is because the world understands that it is Tehran’s behavior that is problematic. Whether engagement is a successful American strategy or a failed tactic will depend upon Iran’s response.

In the end, we offer a guide for a new realism—one shaped by understanding the factors that actually govern behavior in the region; one guided by always understanding the context in which our policy must proceed; and one inspired by the need to preserve hope and possibility in a region too often characterized by neither.

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Israel America Academic Exchange (IAAE) is a new organization that sponsors educational missions to Israel for American scholars in the fields of political science, international relations, international law, international economic development, modern history, and Middle East studies. By special arrangement, participants in the inaugural mission (June 22-29) have been invited to guest-post their impressions and assessments. Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He was director of policy planning at the Department of State from 2005 to 2007.

From Stephen Krasner

There are at least three paths that Israeli-Palestinian relations might follow. The most likely, but not the most attractive from an American perspective, would be a continuation of the status quo in which Israel achieves security as best it can through the iron fist. The least likely would be an agreement reached through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. More likely, albeit not very likely, would be an agreement between Israel and a third party and the Palestinian Authority and that same third party. De facto or de jure, this would be a tripartite agreement. A strategy in which a third party plays a principal and not a mediating role offers the best hope for peace in the Middle East.

Path One: The status quo supported by the iron fist. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and was rewarded with rockets and kidnapping. Israel basically accepted the Clinton parameters in 2000 and the result was the second intifada. Israel withdrew from Gaza and got 8,000 rockets. After the second intifada, Israeli adopted a much more aggressive strategy to suppress violence from the West Bank including an active military presence and the construction of the security fence. There has not been a terrorist attack in Israel for a year and a half. Israel sent its army into Lebanon in 2006; incursions and rockets stopped. Israel sent its army into Gaza in 2008; rocket attacks almost completely stopped. Many Israelis have concluded that force works and concessions fail. The empirical evidence supports this conclusion. Israelis realize that force is a tactic not a strategy. In the absence of a strategy, however, tactics are all that remain.

Path Two: A negotiated settlement between the parties. The international community, including the United States, has supported direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian authorities that would create two separate states. Given that the parameters of such a settlement have been clear for a decade or more why have efforts failed? Pick your favorite (or favorites) from the following list:

• There is a disjunction between the interests of Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian population. The PLO, despite its revolutionary nationalistic rhetoric, is most easily understood as a typical rent-seeking aid-dependent political entity. The present situation has served the leaders of Fatah well enough, probably better than they would be served in an independent Palestinian state.
• The Israeli political system is so fragmented that it will be impossible for any Israeli government to take the hard steps that would be necessary to remove settlers from the non-contiguous settlements in the West Bank.
• The division between Fatah and Hamas makes it impossible to move forward with a comprehensive settlement.
• The level of cynicism and distrust is now so high among both Palestinians and Israelis that neither party has confidence that any agreement that were reached would be honored.
• The Palestinian Authority has never prepared the population for the fact that there will not be a right of return.
• The Palestinians believe that demography will make them winners in the long run.
• The Israelis believe that they can always withdraw from parts of the West Bank if demography becomes too problematic.
• Add your own favorite impediment.

Regardless of judgments about the reasons for failure, the following stark fact remains. The parameters of a settlement are clear–modest border adjustments, the dismantlement of Jewish settlement outside these borders, no right of return, some kind of shared or international authority over Jerusalem–but there has been no settlement.

Path Three: A negotiated settlement signed separately or jointly by Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a third party. A process in which both the Israelis and the Palestinians separately signed an agreement with a third party would have the following advantages:

• A third party principal would have explicit agenda-setting status.
• A process with a third party as a principal rather than a mediator would eliminate the mutual veto that both parties have over the conclusion of a bilateral settlement.
• An agreement reached between the third party and either Israel or the Palestinian Authority would create a highly salient focal point; it would limit the options open to the non-signatory. Anxiety about being the second mover would provide an incentive for engagement and compromise rather than rejection.
• A third party process would make it easier to propose the kind of unconventional supra- or shared-sovereignty solutions that are imperative for any agreement. Such solutions will be necessary in two areas: (1) Palestinian security: A third-party security force with executive authority within the Palestinian state will be necessary if Israel is to sign an agreement; and (2) Jerusalem: Jerusalem will have to be governed through some kind of shared or supra-national arrangement.
• Direct third party involvement would reassure the Israelis, and possibly also the Palestinians, that the terms of an agreement would be implemented.

To be effective, the third party would have to be:

• internationally legitimate so that neither of the two principals could appeal to outside actors if an agreement were concluded between one of the principals and the third party;
• sufficiently credible so that neither party could refuse to participate in the process; and
• in a position to credibly threaten to conclude an agreement first with either Israel or the PA; such a threat would end the mutual veto power that the two principal parties now exercise.

The ideal participants in the third party would be the United States, the European Union, the UN, Egypt and Jordan. Russia would only be an impediment. Saudi participation would preclude an initial agreement with the Israelis because this would mean formal recognition before a final peace agreement.

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American presidents have been trying to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict since the days of Truman. Sooner or later, every one of them has learned a harsh lesson about the limits of American influence. There is no reason to believe that President Obama’s experience will be any different. In fact, his opening gambit in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking suggests that his own lesson may already be upon him.

In his Cairo speech, the President said that “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable,” and he called for a halt to Israeli settlements, which he deemed illegitimate. His advisers have repeatedly explained that this policy includes an end to so-called “natural growth,” meaning construction and population expansion within the boundaries of existing settlements. Obama’s ban on natural growth nullified an understanding that President Bush had reached with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Israelis agreed not to appropriate any new Palestinian territory; in return, the Bush administration gave the nod to natural growth within existing settlement blocs.

Out of a mix of motives, Obama reversed this policy. On a personal level, he finds settlements morally offensive. He likely considers them to be a long-term, demographic impediment to a two-state solution. Their continuous growth underscores the impotence of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, sapping him of legitimacy, and validating the hard-line arguments of Hamas. Previous presidents and secretaries of state have held similar views, but they expressed their concerns in a less dramatic manner. Obama chose to take an early, categorical, and public stance in order to launch a shot across the bow of Binyamin Netanyahu. In the 1990s, Netanyahu’s recalcitrance had been a thorn in the side of the Clinton administration. The former Clintonites advising Obama no doubt relished the idea of immediately knocking Netanyahu back on his heels so as to begin negotiations from a position of strength.

In addition, Obama also sought to make an impression on the Arab world. Taking an unyielding, principled stand would, he reasoned, restore the credibility of the United States. According to mainstream Democratic analysis, George W. Bush had abandoned the role of “honest broker” in the conflict. Moving too close to Israel, he lost the trust of the Arabs. Armed with copious polling data, Obama’s advisers argued that the Palestinian issue was the sine qua non for redressing the balance. Strike a powerful note on the settlement issue, they told the President, and the Arabs will gravitate toward you in response.

Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs, however, have reacted according to this script. Netanyahu fought back with unexpected subtlety. When he visited Washington in mid-May, the White House greeted him with a remarkable display of influence on Capitol Hill. It lined up key supporters of Israel to deliver a consistent and stern warning to the new prime minister: “Do you really want to fight over settlements with one of the most popular American presidents in living memory?” Netanyahu was certainly shaken by this power play, but hardly coerced. In a step that the White House did not foresee, he quickly ran to capture the moral high ground in Israeli politics.

Shortly after Obama’s address from Cairo, Netanyahu delivered a speech of his own. In it, he tacked to the political center, presenting himself to the Israeli public as the representative of a mainstream consensus on national security. Approximately two-thirds of all Israelis support the position that their prime minister staked out. On the specific issue of settlements, Netanyahu reaffirmed the basic lines of the Bush-Sharon agreement: natural growth, yes; settlement expansion, no. “We have no intention to build new settlements or set aside land for new settlements,” he said. “But there is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world.” The warm reaction to the speech in Israel gave Netanyahu renewed political capital. He now turned to his critics in Washington with a warning of his own: “Do you really want to fight with three quarters of the Israeli public over the building of kindergartens?”

Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. If he backs down on natural growth, he lays himself open to Arab claims that he is a hypocrite. On the other hand, if he sticks to his guns, he will become Israel’s senior city planner, rejecting building permits for a school one day, and a new home addition the next. The president can certainly win the fight over building permits, but he must already be asking himself whether it is really worth the prize. Victory will eat up at least a year of precious time, and it will not have a strategic impact.

If Obama found Netanyahu difficult to coerce, he failed to charm the Israeli Left. Israeli pundits have noted the conspicuous absence of a pro-Obama coalition on the Israeli political scene—this, despite the fact that the Israeli Left detests the settlements as much as or more than Obama himself. Many Israelis simply do not understand how the country’s security dilemmas fit into Obama’s larger scheme. With respect to the issue of gravest concern, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama’s strategy remains worryingly opaque. And with respect to the Palestinian question, many Israelis are skeptical about the power of any American president to overcome the Hamas-Fatah split, and to create conditions on the Palestinian side that will achieve a two-state solution capable of guaranteeing Israeli security. In a context fraught with uncertainty, Obama is inviting the Israeli Left to join with him in a fight against Netanyahu in order to achieve… well, what precisely?

In addition to the vagueness of his goals, Obama’s body language has dealt the Israeli Left a weak hand. The Cairo speech cast Israel as a bit player in a U.S.-Muslim drama. The President, stressing his Muslim ancestry, did not take the time to fly to Jerusalem, where he might have reasoned with the Israeli public about the value to it of abandoning the Bush-Sharon agreement. Instead, his advisers denied flatly (and falsely) that such an agreement had ever existed. As a consequence of this disingenuousness, many Israelis fear that the administration aims to buy goodwill from the Muslim world by distancing itself from Israel, and they wonder whether settlements are not simply the first of many concessions that will be demanded. With such doubts swirling in the air, it is difficult for the Israeli Left to trumpet the Obama agenda.

The White House has sacrificed some credibility on the Israeli side, but it surely must have recouped its losses by garnering Arab goodwill. Think again. Today, the peace process is on hold until the settlement question is resolved. Mahmoud Abbas has refused to sit down with Netanyahu in direct negotiations, insisting instead that the Israelis must first implement the total settlement freeze that Obama himself has demanded. This is a wise tactic. Were Abbas to negotiate with the Israelis today, they would simply demand reciprocal concessions. The Americans, however, have already made a public commitment on settlements, so why not pocket it, and hold Washington to its word?

Meanwhile, Washington has simultaneously been attempting to mobilize the Arab states—particularly the Saudis. President Obama and Secretary Clinton have exhorted King Abdullah to take public steps toward normalizing relations with Israel. So far, this effort has registered no successes. The president’s interest in involving the Saudis arises from his realization that the Hamas-Fatah split means that Abbas does not have the power to deliver on an agreement that would guarantee the legitimate security concerns of the Israelis. Hamas controls Gaza, and it will not submit to Abbas’ authority, especially with respect to the key issue of abandoning terrorism.

Hamas is the elephant in the room of the peace process. Washington seeks Saudi Arabia’s help in weakening it. Riyadh could become the linchpin in an Arab support network around Abbas, in order to help shift the balance of power against Hamas. In addition, Obama hopes to offset Israeli skepticism by energizing a normalization process with the Arab states—one that will run parallel to the Palestinian-Israeli track. The Israelis complain to Washington that it has singled them out for censure while making no corresponding demands on the Arab side. “If we are to freeze settlements,” they ask, “what will the other side provide in return?” Washington looks to Riyadh to help formulate a response.

The Saudis, however, have only limited incentive to help Obama with this problem. They and their public do not regard an Israeli moratorium on settlement growth as a concession; it is, rather, a moral imperative and a Palestinian right. Washington is asking them to reward the Israelis dramatically for returning what is, in their view, stolen property.

But Obama’s problem with the Saudis runs deeper than the settlement question. There is a larger, strategic question at play. It’s worth asking whether Riyadh can really offset Hamas in a meaningful way, and whether, in its own view, it stands to gain from diving headlong into the midst of an intractable dispute that has persisted for more than sixty years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tar baby. No sober Arab leader could relish the idea of taking responsibility for developments in such an unpredictable and unmanageable arena—particularly now, when peace is hardly in the offing. Quite understandably, the Saudis much prefer to occupy the politically safe position of Arab umpire: they sit on the sidelines and critique the Americans. They quietly help out here and there to keep the game from falling apart, but they don’t want to be players.

The President’s advisers promised him that taking a principled stand on settlements would generate goodwill in the Arab world. There is no doubt that the Cairo speech struck a chord with many Arabs. But goodwill of that sort is not a strategic commodity. Even a popular honest broker cannot reshape the iron interests of the parties on the ground, none of whom see much benefit in taking risks to achieve a goal that they do not really believe in. Many Western diplomats tell themselves that peace is nearly at hand, but the parties on the ground—Arab and Jewish alike—are highly skeptical. And for good reason. The power of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, supported by Iran, looms in the background. It is highly unlikely that, in the next four years, a major breakthrough will take place. In order to maintain good relations with Washington, the leaders in the region will certainly play along with the Obama administration. But the name of their game is not “Peacemaking” but, rather, “Shift the Blame.” Its object is to take positions that paint one’s rivals as the real obstructionists in the eyes of Washington.

The central strategic challenge for the United States in the Middle East is diminishing the power of the Iranian-led alliance. The peace process is not as effective a tool for addressing this challenge as the administration believes, because the disarray of Fatah and the power of Hamas (not to mention the other rejectionists in the region) will not allow significant, forward movement. Everyone in the region knows this, though few will say so openly. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates are today focused on one key question: Is Washington going to go the distance with the Iranians, and thwart their nuclear program? Obama’s Cairo speech did not provide an answer. It bought a modicum of goodwill from Arab publics on the settlement question, but it did not address the crucial strategic question that is keeping Middle Eastern leaders awake at night.

The American engine is revving loudly, but the administration cannot put the car in gear, because significant obstacles block the way. President Obama will soon realize, if he hasn’t already, that the map that his advisers handed him does not match the terrain of the region. He can take some consolation in the fact that every president before him has reached a similar point in the road. Some of them, like Eisenhower, developed new maps as they went along. Others, like Carter, never did. Their place in history has, in part, been determined by their ability to chart a new course.

In some respects, Ari Shavit’s widely-noted interview of Israel’s national security adviser, Uzi Arad, contained no great surprises. Arad’s insistence on “deep” acceptance of Israel (not just de facto acknowledgement of Israel’s existence) by Palestinians; leaving the door open, just by a crack, to a Palestinian state, while dismissing the possibility of any Palestinian leader rising to the occasion; closing the door entirely to a peace treaty with Syria by insisting that Israel remain on the Golan; the preference for the Road Map rather than disengagement and Annapolis—all of this has been in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hymnal since he took office, and it is clear who is composing the libretto.

Two elements are more striking. First, Arad’s proposal of eventual Israeli membership in NATO adds an oddly chimerical note to what could otherwise be described as an essay in cold-blooded and cynical realism. Arad doubts that the Palestinians will get their act together, or that the international community will act effectively on the Iranian nuclear issue, or that Arabs will ever “internalize” their acceptance of Israel. And he may be right on all counts; pessimists are often mistaken for prophets because they get it right all too often. But to imagine that risk-averse European states, which can barely be persuaded to allow their troops in Afghanistan to go near danger, will commit to meaningful defense of Israel—even in the context of a peace settlement—is fantasy.

The second note of importance is the continued building of infrastructure to prepare the ground for action to prevent Iranian acquisition of the bomb. Arad does not believe that the non-military options will work, and that a maritime blockade might escalate in any event. At the same time, he defines preventing an Iranian bomb as an existential imperative: we cannot live with a nuclear Iran because a nuclear Middle East would not be the same as the Cold War nuclear stalemate. A nuclear Middle East would become a multi-nuclear Middle East, with all that entails.

There is an ironic contradiction here. Arad puts great weight on preventing nuclearization of the region, but at the same time declares himself an acolyte of the late Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist who rejected the idea of mutual deterrence and insisted on “thinking about the unthinkable,” that is, the actual waging of war with nuclear weapons. Arad even mentions that he once wrote a paper on possible limited nuclear war in Central Europe. If it is so critical to prevent Iran emerging as the first declared nuclear-weapons state in the region, then why is Kahn, of all people, put forward as an icon for the new era?

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Israel America Academic Exchange (IAAE) is a new organization that sponsors educational missions to Israel for American scholars in the fields of political science, international relations, international law, international economic development, modern history, and Middle East studies. By special arrangement, participants in the inaugural mission (June 22-29) have been invited to guest-post their impressions and assessments. Bruce Jentleson is professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. He is also a member of MESH.

From Bruce Jentleson

Central to our discussions was the debate over force and diplomacy as Israeli strategies, so I’ll focus on that for this post.

Is it the case that the lessons of the last 10-15 years are that force has worked, both as compellence and deterrence, and diplomacy has not? This was the dominant argument we heard from Israeli speakers. While the speaker selection was short of representative, I know from other interactions and reading that this perspective has become more prevalent. It also is a view our American group debated among ourselves.

Four main parts to the argument:

1. The Gaza war was intended to impose substantial costs on Hamas and to deter further attacks on Israel. It achieved both; e.g., attacks from Gaza are down since the war.
2. The same regarding Hezbollah and the 2006 Lebanon war: Look at the northern front and how quiet Hezbollah has been, and how weakened the recent elections showed it to be in Lebanese politics.
3. Oslo didn’t work; Camp David 2000 was another instance of the Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity; unilateral withdrawals, both Barak in Lebanon and Sharon in Gaza, gave land but didn’t bring pace; plus the recent stories swirling about Olmert ostensibly offering even concessions on Jerusalem. Arafat was an essentialist; his successors may have more will but lack capacity; Hamas is ideological.
4. The status quo is not great for Israel, but it’s tolerable. Risk aversion, both security and politics, says keep relying on military power. Be sufficiently willing to negotiate to check off that box for the United States and the international community but not much more. Don’t antagonize the political coalition on which your power (read Netanyahu’s) depends.

An alternative analysis:

• Gaza: The evidence is more mixed and uncertain than claimed. On the one hand we were told of how few rockets had been launched, on the other of how there’d been a recent uptick. At minimum, six months is hardly enough of an empirical base on which to attribute durable deterrence success. The criteria for durability is not some out-there notion of the long-term, but it also can’t be so short term as to need to be “serviced” again with anything close to a comparable operation in the next year or two. Moreover, gains made need to be part of a net assessment that also takes into account costs incurred and gains made by the other side. One can see a strategic logic for Hamas by which the price it paid had value as (a) diversionary war, detracting attention from problems of its governance and re-igniting the enemy on which to increase its appeal (so lowering a negative source and increasing a positive one), and (b) playing into Israeli politics in ways that strengthen the Right, which in turn makes for strained relations w/the United States. The net assessment may still come out positive, but less dichotomously.
• 2006 Lebanon War: We do have three years of data, and it is a fact that the northern border has been quieter than in many years. That goes in the plus column, as does the demonstrated capacity to impose costs. But in the negative column: the Israeli military’s failure to prevail in this nonconventional warfare as a deterrence-weakening message; the failure to bring captured soldiers home alive; the political disarray that helped doom the Olmert government; and the further loss of international legitimacy as an instrumental and not just normative matter. Moreover, the causal link to Hezbollah’s June 2009 election performance is questionable. Hezbollah came out of the war strengthened. But it then overplayed its hand by unleashing its militias into Lebanese politics in 2007-08. Then as intervening variables in the run-up to the election, Saudi money for the coalition and, I’d at least postulate, the Obama effect made it more politically legitimate to at least not be anti-American.
• Lessons of Oslo, other diplomacy: George Kennan made the distinction between flaws of execution and flaws in the concept. The former means that the policy could have worked but was done poorly; the latter that it was inherently flawed. Oslo, et al., did have elements of the latter, but also plenty of the former, and on all sides (United States, Israel, Palestinians, others). It didn’t work—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have worked. What would have happened if Rabin was not assassinated, given his domestic credibility and that he was having at least a degree of success in dealing with Arafat? And if the 1996 election, which Netanyahu won by less than 1 percent amidst the spoilers who got going on both sides, had come out differently? If the Clinton administration had been less accommodating and firmer against both sides playing both sides of the street? In the end, Arafat was the major problem, a Gromyko-like Mr. Nyet. He was never going to be a Mandela, but the essentialist analysis is too straight-line and dismissive of decision points and interactive dynamics along the way. As to Hamas, while it’s shown plenty of essentialism, it’s not clear that even this is fixed; see, e.g., the analysis of Khaled Meshal’s recent speech by Brig. Gen. (ret) Shlomo Brom.
• Deteriorating status quo: The domestic opportunity costs to Israel from the status quo were more graphic to me than ever before. See the economic analysis by Professor Dan Ben-David, Tel Aviv University and head of the Taub Center for Social Policy Research. Walk around and see and feel the rising societal power of the ultra-Orthodox, abetted by continuation of the Palestinian conflict both directly through the political utility of the enemy and indirectly as a distraction from the nation focusing on the threats to its balance of secularism and Jewish identity.
• Shifting regional strategic dynamics? While much is too soon to tell, there are signs that the strategic dynamics in the region may be shifting. Anti-fundamentalism is pushing back on many fronts in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The U.S.-Syria relationship has some traction. Perhaps Iran will come out of the current crisis more flexible. The Saudis and Arab League may be ready to make their peace initiative more than a piece of paper. Don’t know for sure, but the alignment of forces may potentially be more favorable than in a long time.
• Palestinians as a credible peace partner and viable state: This may not be the world’s hardest case for state-building, but it’s up there. Among the many challenges their leadership faces is better synching their maximalist positions on terms of a peace and their more limited capacities as yet to function as a viable state. This is tricky politically as well as in substantive policy terms. It likely will require various roles for various third parties. Plenty of work to be done here: the PA-Hamas talks being run by Egypt, security forces, the economy, lawlessness, spoilers. Not to be underestimated.

I’m still not ready to bet the next mortgage payment (non-subprime) on peace and security in the Middle East. But nothing we saw or heard has been sufficient to counter the Churchillian sense of a peace process still being the worst strategy except for all the others.

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