War threatens the Korean Peninsula, Syria is imploding, and negotiations with Iran are at an impasse -- even as the centrifuges continue to spin toward a nuclear nirvana for the mullahs. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry spent his weekend trying to wrestle with the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
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Confused about Kerry's priorities? Don't be. Pushing for progress on the Mideast peace process is both necessary and commendable.
The Palestinian problem isn't the key to regional tranquility. It never was and never will be. But it will continue to be a drag on American credibility in a region that has grown increasingly angry, anti-American, and dysfunctional -- particularly now that acquiescent authoritarians like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak have passed from the scene. The United States has less regional cover now, and its policies are more exposed to the fiery cauldron of Arab public opinion than ever before.
The issue isn't whether the United States should engage, but how. Kerry, Obama's point man for this mission, confronts a conundrum: The two-state solution is too complicated to implement now, but it's also too important to abandon. It's hard to see how to square this particular circle at the moment.
That brings us to the matter of John Kerry and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. As the secretary of state undertakes his third visit to the not-so-holy-land in as many months, here are four "don'ts" -- and one "do" -- about how to revive the stalled peace process.
Don't call this a shuttle
Kerry hasn't used the "s" word, to my knowledge. He's said repeatedly -- probably too many times -- that he isn't carrying a ready-made plan or initiative in his pocket.
But the press -- struck by the difference in style from his predecessor, Hillary Clinton -- has started beating the drum that we're heading into some kind of U.S. shuttle diplomacy. Sooner rather than later, some journalists would have you believe, the secretary of state will embark on some urgent mission in which he hooks the parties around some negotiating text and shuttles back and forth between the parties in breathless pursuit of an agreement. We can only hope so.
In the Middle East context, the "s" word was first used by Henry Kissinger in 1973 and 1974. The late Undersecretary of State Joe Sisco, or more likely the inestimable Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders, invented the term. It would come to describe the successful pursuit of three disengagement agreements -- two between Israel and Egypt, and one between Israel and Syria. The latter took 33 days -- making it the longest period in which a secretary of state had been out of the United States since Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State Robert Lansing attended the Versailles peace conference in 1919.
But whatever Kerry is trying to do, he's not shuttling. A couple of meetings in Jerusalem and Ramallah doesn't a shuttle make. Shuttle diplomacy requires urgency, Arabs and Israelis who really are serious about a deal, a negotiating text, and a willful and empowered mediator prepared to use honey and vinegar to bring the two sides together. It helps immensely if the broker is prepared to walk away from the enterprise if the parties don't cooperate. Is any of that in place now?
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