Obama Is Sobering up on Arab-Israeli Peace - By Aaron David Miller

Big decisions should never be made after a night of hard drinking or on the basis of wishful thinking.

Almost a year into his presidency, Barack Obama has begun to sober up. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the administration's policy on the Arab-Israeli issue, where a series of tactical mistakes (none fatal) have left the president and his team battered but wiser when it comes to what's possible and what's not.

Life's for learning, as the song goes, and I'm not counting Obama out by any means. His commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deep. But his greatest challenge will be how to reconcile his own risk-readiness and sense of urgency with regional leaders who simply don't appear to be that ready or that much in a hurry. This unhappy set of circumstances, in which regional leaders don't own their own peace process, has never been ideal for success in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

First, a word of caution and perspective for all you Arab-Israeli addicts out there. FDR's quip about Lincoln -- that he died a sad man because he couldn't have everything -- is a political law of gravity in Washington. Governing is about choosing, setting priorities because presidents just can't do everything.

Even in the seemingly wondrous and miraculous age of Obama, that's true.

This administration has ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which Americans are being killed and wounded, an intelligence/homeland security defense that has been proven profoundly wanting in the wake of the abortive Christmas terror attack against an American passenger airliner bound for Detroit, and a set of domestic priorities that include a still-dangerous jobless recovery and still-unfinished and controversial health- care legislation.

All of this will get worse (or better) in 2010 against the backdrop of midterm congressional elections in which the Democrats, already lacking a secure popular base of support beyond their own party stalwarts (and they're unhappy too), may well suffer significant losses. None of this precludes a major effort on Arab-Israeli peacemaking but it makes the risk or success (ensuring a tough fight with the Israelis and their supporters here) or failure (meaning the administration has stumbled badly) all the more consequential politically.

12NEXT

Save big when you subscribe to FP.

GUYVER

2:05 PM ET

January 7, 2010

This is a national security issue

We need to get the peace process going to prevent crazy people from blowing themselves up:

Report: Al-Qaida CIA bomber was furious over Gaza war
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1140996.html

ARADI

11:46 AM ET

January 8, 2010

Can you imagine a world in

Can you imagine a world in which Al Qaeda operatives do *not* have something to be furious about? Their utopia consists of much more than "peace in the Middle East".

A millionaire's son that sets off to kill 200 passengers and himself is not a rational person.

JOHN1

6:33 PM ET

U.S. actually _does_ have leverage -- but it remains unused

Mr. Miller writes that if the two sides can't negotiate, "no matter what Barack Obama wants, you might just as well hang a 'closed for the season' sign on the prospects of a two-state solution for now and for the foreseeable future." So we're to believe that America -- Israel's patron and a major PA contributor -- has basically no leverage if the two siblings can't get along.

But where is the evidence? In fact the U.S. has chosen not to exercise its leverage. Netanyahu knows that when it comes to pressure, the U.S. is a paper tiger. If we _really_ wanted movement, we could tie loans, outright foreign aid, or military cooperation to Israeli actions in the occupied terriitories and East Jerusalem. But _before_ negotiations even began, George Mitchell said such options were off the table. Nice.

Of course, aid to the Palestinians is tied to their actions, and Abbas has acted as a dutiful quisling (dismissing the Goldstone report, attacking West Bank Palestinians protesting the Gaza siege) in accordance with what he sees as American wishes. His popularity has plummeted accordingly.

Mr. Miller's "we can't do anything they don't want to do" argument was the Bush administration line, justifying eight years of inaction. And now, after initial energy, Rahm Emanuel hinted a couple months ago that the Obama administration will also take the same line: America's hands are tied if Israelis and Palestinians can't play with others.

It's amazing that this conflict appears to be the only one for which the U.S. can't use incentives or penalties to try to achieve results that are in the American interest. Instead, Israel does what it wants and continues to colonize land; the State Dept. issues communiques saying it's "dismayed"; and Israel dominion over another people continues unabated.

Might Mr. Miller and like-minded Serious Thinkers ever advocate actually penalizing Israel for its policies that go against American interests?

SABABA03

10:09 PM ET

If there is a will, there is a way.

First, I really suggest to many pro-Palestinians to stop blaming Arab's own internal strife and conflicts all on Israel. If a small country of only 7.5M people is capable to manipulate and affect the lives of 350M people, that does not say much about the viability of the Arabs as organized societies. Does it?

If Hamas & Fatah can't bury their hatches, and learn to unite for the common goods - then perhaps they have never been one entity called "Palestinians". Their so-called unity is just by name, designed and intended to remove Israel from the ME, and not necessarily end the suffering of their own people.

Do Israeli leaders read these signs, I am sure they do. As much myself as an Israeli wish to see new settlement in WB to stop, Hamas's actions and stated goals leave no room for us the moderate Israelis to come to their defense for independent state of their own.

As long as good and honest Palestinians feed their children daily dose of hatred toward Jews, citing passages from the Quran, where every tree and rock call Muslims "here is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him", citing these filth as holy deeds, handed down by almighty Allah, we will not have peace in any form and shape. And no peace treaty can erase these "holy tenets" from the Quran

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just the symptom and direct manifestation of the deep hatred going back to Muhammad himself.

First and foremost, Pals need to demonstrate to the rest of humanity their ability to live in peace among themselves, before others can trust them with the security, and the future of their people.

LIKUD OF HOLLAND

10:05 AM ET

Utter nonsense that Israel is to blame

In 2000 Israel (PM Barak) offered Arafat a Palestinian state in 97% of the territories with East Jerusalem as capital. Rejected!

MARTY24

1:36 PM ET

Middle East "peace process"

I wonder if I am the only one who has noticed that for more than sixty years efforts to bring peace to the Middle East have been based on getting Israel to make substantive concessions to the Arabs in exchange for vague assurances, and that this approach has never worked. Maybe this means that the assumption underlying this approach , that Israeli policies have caused this problem, is simply wrong.

If one makes the alternative assumption, that Arab. or perhaps just Muslim, hostility toward the very existence of Israel caused this problem, then pressure on Israel simply exacerbates it and Mr. Obama's approach was fated to fail.

Freeda2 claims that the rockets fired from Gaza are a response to the "Israeli blockade," but ignores the reality that rocket attacks began almost immediately after Israel withdrew from Gaza. She should consider what might have happened had Gazan Palestinians chosen to exploit the hothouses and other infrastructure left behind to build their economy rather than destroying it all. She also doesn't seem to understand that checkpoints and the security barrier are responsible for reducing the level of violence; if they were removed, violence would resume.

The key to peace today, as it has been for at least sixty years, is for Arabs/Muslims to understand that they are not privileged people entitled to decide what rights/privileges other peoples will have, even if those people are Jews. That the Jews/Israelis are currently in a position of military control doesn't change this.

Foreign Policy Magazine

Sobering up on Arab-Israeli Peace

After a bruising first year, Barack Obama is realizing that the Middle East peace game is much tougher than he imagined.

BY AARON DAVID MILLER | JANUARY 7, 2010

(6)