Hillary, Udi and Amira, around the kitchen table

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, believes it’s critical that the leaders now trying to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace have grassroots support.

Here’s what she said at the launch of talks last Thursday, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas:

Peace needs champions on every street corner and around every kitchen table. I understand very well the disappointments of the past. I share them.

I wondered while she was saying it, in the vaunted eight floor Benjamin Franklin Room in the State Department: How did saying it make it so? Did she think enough Israelis and Palestinians were watching this to buy into it?

Moreover, we’re long out of the era of "So it is said, so it shall be done," when pronouncements demanding public support from giants like, say, FDR or David Ben Gurion or Winston Churchill held the power to be heeded. Leaders have shrunk.

I should have given her more credit: Clinton is a natural "get" for reporters in these circumstances, and she acceded to an interview — but insisted on making it a joint interview, by highly regarded TV reporters on two highly rated newscasts, Amira Hanania Rishmawi of Palestine TV and Udi Segal of Israel Channel 2.

Those are good optics, as far as humanizing the "other" for each side.

Here’s how Clinton starts:

First, thank you both for giving me this opportunity not only to talk to you, but through you to Israeli and Palestinian citizens. And I thank you for that.

The United States believes very strongly, and we are totally committed to working with and supporting the efforts of the Israeli and Palestinian leadership and people to achieve a viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel living side by side. That has been a personal commitment of mine going back many years, and I believe first and foremost it is in the interests of the people of Israel and of the Palestinians, and particularly of the children.

And here’s the picture:

Each reporter also seemed to understand the symbolism:

UDI SEGAL : Madam Secretary, Shalom, and thank you for this unique opportunity with my colleague, Amira Hanania.

AMIRA HANANIA RISHMAWI: Thank you very much, Your Excellency, for this interview. We’re taking your – from your time to send some messages, very important messages, to our people. I want to start directly, because I know your time is tight. I will start in asking, this Administration repeats that the Palestinian state is a strategic American interest. Is this become slogan for varied and concrete policies and steps to be taken from your side? Touch on that.

"My colleague," "Our people." These are subtle — but not insiginificant — journalistic nods to Clinton’s agenda.

As this New York Times analysis by Mark Landler points out, Clinton is now thoroughly invested in the process, which means she has to persuasively make the case to each side that she has its interests at heart, while not alienating the other side. That’s why, in the interview, she reminds viewers that she was the first U.S. official to endorse Palestinian statehood, back when she was First Lady:

I have not only supported the efforts that have come before, but was deeply involved in the support of what my husband tried to do in the 1990s. And I think I’m the first person ever associated with an American administration who called for a Palestinian state as a way to realize the two-state solution.

That landed her in pro-Israel controversy back then; now, with the Netanyahu government on board for two states, it adds up to, "I was first, and it turns out I was right." 

It also adds up to a safe wink to the Palestinians that she’s on their side, and has been all along.

Her wink at Israel is even more subtle, but perhaps a little more dangerous.

Udi tries drawing her out on Jerusalem, but she won’t bite:

UDI SEGAL: You spoke about a core issue. I’m a little confused. When you were a candidate for presidency, you said that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel. Then you retracted from this statement like the candidate, now President Obama. Who should we believe, then? Candidate Clinton or Secretary of State Clinton?

SECRETARY CLINTON: You should believe that I am committed to a safe and secure Israel, and that I believe a two-state solution that realizes the aspirations of the Palestinian people is in the best interests of Israel. Jerusalem is a contested, emotional issue for both Israelis and Palestinians, and really, for Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world, as you well know. I want to support what is the outcome that the parties can agree to. And I think both parties know that they’re going to have to engage on this issue and come to an understanding and a resolution so that Jerusalem becomes not the flashpoint, but the symbol of peace and cooperation. And so I am fully supportive of what can be negotiated between the parties.

Instead, the wink comes immediate following, with an anecdote:

QUESTION: You mentioned your husband. Maybe on a personal note, do you have an extra incentive to keep on from the point that your husband left it, and this time, succeed?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, there’s no doubt about that. Both my husband and I were very sad that we missed that opportunity. And I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. We – they were so close. I mean, then-Prime Minister Barak and then-President Arafat were so close. And my husband expended so much energy because he cares so deeply. And when he left office some weeks later, Yasser Arafat called him and he said, “Well, now, we’re ready to take the deal,” and my husband said, “But I’m not the president anymore.”

Translation: I know Israel was ready then, I know it’s ready now. Like my husband has said (more explicitly), Arafat was the screw-up.

The danger here is that Arafat is still revered as a symbol among Palestinians.

I don’t think it was a throwaway, though. In his speech Wednesday night welcoming the Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian leaders to the talks’ launch, President Obama pointedly noted Egyptian, Israeli and Jordanian predecessors — but left Arafat out:

President Abbas, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Your Majesty King Abdullah, and President Mubarak —- we are but five men.  Our dinner this evening will be a small gathering around a single table.  Yet when we come together, we will not be alone.  We’ll be joined by the generations —- those who have gone before and those who will follow.

Each of you are the heirs of peacemakers who dared greatly -— Begin and Sadat, Rabin and King Hussein -— statesmen who saw the world as it was but also imagined the world as it should be. It is the shoulders of our predecessors upon which we stand.  It is their work that we carry on.  Now, like each of them, we must ask, do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?  

This should be very reassuring for Israelis, who feel profoundly betrayed Arafat’s effective walkout from Camp David in 2000, and by his perceived role in fomenting and sustaining the subsequent Intifada. Nothing makes Israeli and pro-Israel officials more furious than the revisionist notion that both sides were equally to blame for the failure of those talks.

They should consider themselves winked at.