In this bifurcated town, I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to encounter Aaron David Miller, even if you end one of his pieces a little more depressed.
Miller, currently at the Wilson Center, bases his assessments on his experience as a negotiator for Republican and Democratic presidents, and owes no camp — here or in the Middle East — his allegiance.
His five myths about Middle East peace-making, in today’s Washington Post, spares no one. Consider what he has to say about settlements:
On the Israeli side, there is indeed no greater obstacle. For more than four decades, the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has reshaped Israeli politics for the worse, humiliated Palestinians and made an already complex process even more complicated. And Israel’s recent refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement construction has threatened to undermine the negotiations before they have a chance to get serious.
Successive American administrations have not taken the settlement issue as seriously as needed. The U.S. line has always been the same: Getting to the negotiations is the only way Palestinians can address the settlement issue.
(snip)
But even if the settlement issue were resolved today, negotiations would still confront another galactic challenge: a crisis within the Palestinian national movement, with two authorities governing two discreet areas with two different security services, two different patrons and two different visions of the Palestinian future. The upshot of the battle between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is that without a monopoly over the forces of violence in Palestinian society — without one authority to silence the guns and rockets — no agreement can be implemented.
Imagine that, an ability to address the issue, walking and chewing gum at the same time: Settlements, Miller says, are indeed damaging and Americans have been too easy on Israel; but the the inability of the Palestinians to get their act together is even more lethal.
I don’t know who else makes both points simultaneously. You don’t have to endorse his conclusions to appreciate the integrity of someone who does not flinch at a conclusion simply because it won’t please one side or the other.
Go ahead and read the whole thing, and what he has to say about the other four myths: Direct negotiations, the U.S. as honest broker, pressuring Israel, and the importance of Arab-Israeli peace to U.S. interests.
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