A year ago, he reviewed in Foreign Affairs the Mearsheimer and Walt book on The Israel Lobby. There he wrote:
They claim the clarity and authority of rigorous logic, but their methods are loose and rhetorical. This singularly unhappy marriage -- between the pretensions of serious political analysis and the standards of the casual op-ed -- both undercuts the case they wish to make and gives much of the book a disagreeably disingenuous tone. Rarely in professional literature does one encounter such a gap between aspiration and performance as there is in The Israel Lobby.
...The authors do what anti-Semites have always done: they overstate the power of Jews. Although Mearsheimer and Walt make an effort to distinguish their work from anti-Semitic tracts, the picture they paint calls up some of the ugliest stereotypes in anti-Semitic discourse. The Zionist octopus they conjure -- stirring up the Iraq war, manipulating both U.S. political parties, shaping the media, punishing the courageous minority of professors and politicians who dare to tell the truth -- is depressingly familiar. Some readers will be so overpowered by this familiar bugbear that they will conclude that the authors are deliberately invoking it. In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt have come honestly to a mistaken understanding of the relationship between pro-Israel political activity and U.S. policy and strategic interests...
...The authors also end up adopting a widely used tactic that has a special history in anti-Semitic literature. When anti-Semitic writers and politicians make vicious attacks, Jews are in a double bind: refrain from responding with outrage and the charge becomes accepted as a fact, express utter loathing at the charge and give anti-Semites the opportunity to pose as the victims of a slander campaign by venomous Jews...The greatest living practitioner of this passive-aggressive form of provocation (and not just against Jews) is former President Jimmy Carter, whose recently published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid set off a firestorm by implying a parallel between the Israel of today and apartheid South Africa. Mearsheimer and Walt wag their fingers at those awful Jews who "smeared" the meek and innocent Lamb of Georgia. How dare the lobby be provoked by Carter's provocation!
To a certain audience, that chain of events signals a powerful and determined anti-Semitism at work. This is wrong, in both the case of Carter and the case of Mearsheimer and Walt. But paying a little more attention to the ways in which modern history has shaped the emotions and responses of participants in Israel policy debates would have helped Mearsheimer and Walt make their case.
And he made this incisive observation two years ago, in discussing evangelical influence on American foreign policy:
American Protestant Zionism is significantly older than the modern Jewish version
So, what does he himself write about Israel in this lates essay?
Some excerpts and my comments in square brackets [].
...the Israeli-Palestinian dispute will not be easily settled. Many people have tried to end it; all have failed. Direct negotiations between Arabs and Jews after World War I foundered. The British tried to square the circle of competing Palestinian and Jewish aspirations from the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration until the ignominious collapse of their mandate in 1948. Since then, the United Nations, the United States, and the international community have struggled with the problem without managing to solve it. No issue in international affairs has taxed the ingenuity of so many leaders or captured so much attention from around the world. Winston Churchill failed to solve it; the "wise men" who built NATO and the Marshall Plan handed it down, still festering, to future generations. Henry Kissinger had to content himself with incremental progress. The Soviet Union crumbled on Ronald Reagan's watch, but the Israeli-Palestinian dispute survived him. Bill Clinton devoted much of his tenure to picking at this Gordian knot. He failed. George W. Bush failed at everything he tried. This is a dispute that deserves respect; old, inflamed, and complex, it does not suffer quick fixes.
[Exactly. It is sui generis. It is, I will admit, even irrational. And therefore, one must make an assumption: not every "conflict" can be resolved. Sometimes, and especially in this case, there are not solutions, only containment and palliatives.]
...many people on both sides feel profoundly that a compromise would be morally wrong. A significant minority of Israelis not only retain a fervent attachment to the land that makes up the Eretz Yisrael of the Bible but also believe that to settle and possess it is to fulfill a divine decree. For these Jews, it is a sin to surrender land that God has given them. Although most Israelis do not share this belief with dogmatic rigor, they would be reluctant to obstruct the path of those seeking to redeem the Promised Land.
It may be difficult for outsiders to understand the Palestinians' yearning for the villages and landscapes lost during the birth of Israel in 1948. The sentiment is much more than nostalgia. The Palestinians' national identity took shape in the course of their struggle with Zionism...
[exactly. If not for the Jews and their Zionism, there would be no "Palestinianism". Arabs and Arab national sentiment, yes but not the specific version that is presented as if it is older and longer and better than the Jewish attachement. Up until the early 1920s, the sense of being Southern Syrians was very strong even as the perception of being "Palestinians" crept into their consciousness.]
For the Israelis, determining the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and citizenship is a perpetually difficult question. Is the return of the Jews to their ancestral home a basically secular objective with religious overtones, like the goals of other independence movements among minorities in the Ottoman Empire, including the Greeks and the Armenians? Or is it a fundamentally religious project? Other countries face similar questions, but the issue is particularly acute for Israel given its position as the world's only Jewish state.
[not a secular objective but yes, basically, since 1860s, a secular enterprise - until 1967 even though the 1st Aliyah was still very religiously driven and the efforts of pre-Zionist periods, i.e., the Hassidic immigrations, the pupils of the Gr"a, Eliyhau of Vilna and earlier the Kabbalists to Safad - when Gush Emunim took over]
...From its inception, Palestinian nationalism has shifted uneasily between the religious and the secular. Are the Palestinians a distinct national society of Muslims and Christians? Are they part of the worldwide umma (Muslim community)? Part of a broader Arab nation?...
[it was the Grand Mufti who involved outside Islamic forces, notably Muhammed Ali of India, brother of Shawkat Ali, leader of the Khalifat movement, who he had buried within the Temple Mount in in January 1931, the burying there of Husain ibn Ali in June 1931 as well as the convening of the General Muslim Congress of December 1931 in Jerusalem attended by 145 Muslim representatives*. I think this book has the relevant material if, of course, from a very pro-Pal. perspective: "Arabism, Islamism and the Palestine Question 1908-1941, A Political History, by Basheer M. Nafi, 1998, Ithaca Press bit see this book.
...WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
The incoming U.S. administration of Barack Obama faces a daunting task. It needs to develop a Middle East peace strategy that makes a clear break with the past, that is politically sustainable at home and abroad, that offers real hope for a final resolution...The outlines of a settlement -- regarding borders, security, refugees, and water rights -- are reasonably well understood by all parties, and Obama cannot do much to change them. He cannot expand the Holy Land to give each people the territory it wants; he cannot create another Temple Mount, or Noble Sanctuary, to give each side its own holy site; he cannot move the al Aqsa Mosque away from the Western Wall.
[actually, he can expand the geography: Transjordan could be brought back into the matrix. After all, it was part of the original "Palestine" intended to be reconstituted as the Jewish national home. It's like dividing numbers that are difficult for kids first learning math. You enlarge the number to allow an easier division.]
...The Obama administration needs to accomplish a kind of Copernican shift in perception: it must reconceptualize the relations among them. In the past, U.S. peacemakers have had an Israel-centric approach to the negotiating process; the Obama administration needs to put Palestinian politics and Palestinian public opinion at the center of its peacemaking efforts.
This will fall well short of a revolution...A peace agreement that does not address central Palestinian concerns will lack the legitimacy in Palestinian public opinion that is necessary to make peace real -- that can give the Palestinian state the authority and support it needs to enforce the peace and protect Israel's security. Unless the Palestinians get enough of what they want from the settlement, the Israelis will not get enough of the security they seek.
...To address the Palestinians' concerns about a two-state solution does not mean favoring the Palestinians over the Israelis; it means addressing the justifiable concerns of both thoughtful Palestinians and thoughtful Israelis about the future of their countries. No agreement can offer Israel perfect security -- and neither could permanent occupation of the West Bank -- but an agreement that does not command sustained support among the Palestinians cannot offer Israel much improvement over its current situation.
[of course, giving Pals. too much of what they want will simply increase the danger Israelis will face - and they surely will]
...This means that any deal must address the issues of greatest concern to the dispossessed refugees, who best embody Palestinian nationalism and remain the ultimate source of political legitimacy in Palestinian politics...
...The right of return is one of the tough zero-sum questions that will need to be settled in final-status negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Like the sensitive matter of the holy sites in Jerusalem, this issue is one of the most contentious;...The key is to assure the Palestinians that the refugees and their heirs will be given several viable options. Palestinians who choose not to exercise their right of return or whose right is in some way restricted in the final Israeli-Palestinian agreement should be substantially compensated by the international community (including Israel) to acknowledge that the right to return is indeed a right and that its loss or restriction entitles the holder to just compensation...
[that, Mr. Mead, is a big no-no]
...Most Palestinians who left their homes and villages to protect themselves and their families were never allowed to return, and much of their property was confiscated by the new Israeli government. It is not a crime for civilians to flee combat, and international law recognizes the right of such people to return to their homes. Enforcing that right has been a centerpiece of U.S. policy in Bosnia, so why, the Palestinians ask, should they be treated any differently?...
[so, Mr. Mead, Jews can go back to their homes in Judea and Samaria, no? You just wrote that. Jews who lived in Hebron, Gaza, Neveh Yaakov, Atarot and Gush Etzion]
...The responsibility for the nakba cannot simply be laid at Israel's door...
[whew]
...The Obama administration will also need to address the structural imbalance of the peace process. Negotiations are front-loaded in favor of the Israelis; by recognizing Israel from the outset, the Palestinians concede Israel's core demand and receive only the right to start talking. The Palestinians have to put the most valuable card in their hand on the table, while the Israelis can keep all their best cards to themselves. At the back end, however, the imbalance is reversed. Here, it is Israel that has to make key concessions: withdrawing from territory, dismantling settlements and military posts, recognizing the Palestinian state. Now, it is Israel who must lay down the cards -- and trust and hope that the Palestinians will reciprocate by providing Israel with the security it craves.
[that is a recipe for disaster]
The Obama administration should engage with Israel seriously and candidly to determine what else the United States and its allies can do to help Israel take the risks and make the sacrifices required to give peace a chance. Support for Israel runs very deep among Americans, and it is likely to increase as Israel moves closer to a settlement with the Palestinians. The Obama administration needs to harness that support to help the Israeli government take steps on the sensitive questions of the status of Jerusalem and the status of the territories, steps that an increasing number of Israeli politicians acknowledge must be taken.
[sorry, but Mead makes a mess. Pals. have to reform their society, their democracy, their justice system, their transparency of receiving US, EU & UN funds, its educational system and content of textbooks, its media output and then after a period of time to testing progress can be mae. Not now under these circumstances]
===============
*
To meet Jewish challenge and to provide a common platform for Muslims of the world, Mufti-e-Azam, Amin AlHusseini, gave a call for World Muslim Congress at Jerusalem from 7-16th December 1931 (27th Rajab).
The Congress was held in Roozatul Muarif Hall, Jerusalem...Qadianis and Jews lobbied to attend the Congress. Sir Wauchope, the British H.C. of Palestine persuaded some Muslim representative to secure an entry for Qadianis but neither Jews nor Qadianis were allowed to attend any of its sessions. Journalists were admitted, except the first day, but no Jew or Qadiani could enter the hall in the garb of a journalist. A Christian magazine sent a Jew as its reporter, who was not admitted. The editor was asked to send any Christian or Muslim in his place.(The Moslem World, October-December, 1931)
...The World Muslim Congress was very successful. It was attended by leading political and religious personalities of the Muslim world. Abdul Aziz (Tunisia), Musa Jarulla (China), Raza Towfiq (Turkey), Saeed Al-Jezairi (Algier), Rashid Raza (Egypt), Ziauddin Taba Tabai (Former Premier of Iran), Sheikh Saeed Shamil (grandson of Imam Shamil of Russia) and representatives from Balkan, Yugoslavia, Africa, Java, Ceylone etc. were present at the opening meeting which took place at Aqsa Mosque. Besides 133 delegates a large number of freedom fighters from Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine participated in the Congress.(Syara Digest Lahore, November 1974)
See Chapter 11 of this book.
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