The war between the Palestinians and the Israelis has, here in 2008, been around for so long that we actually have a routine to go through every time we get around to electing a new President. New leadership at 1600 changes the foreign policy landscape of the entire world and that always includes yet another chance to start over on the banks of the Jordan. Inevitably it insinuates itself onto the new President’s To Do list; how close to the top is sort of up to him but it will be on there, as inevitable as the sunrise.
Thanks to the incompetent machinations of Bush the Younger, Barack Obama is inheriting a Middle East in which the problem of Jews fighting Muslims over a few hilltops no one else gives a shit about actually isn’t the biggest problem in the region. Problem numero uno is the fact that our military is bogged down in Iraq to no discernable purpose and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, on a body count scale, quite humble next to that fiasco. Nevertheless it remains a fundamental source of conflict, especially in light of the disastrous framework of Bush the Younger’s misbegotten “War on Terror”.
First, a very brief history. As a direct reaction to the Holocaust the state of Israel was created with the blessing of the powers that be. There was a war which the Israelis won and in 1948 it officially became a state. Almost two decades later, in the 1967 depths of the Cold War, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, backed by the rest of the Arab states and the Soviet Union, decided to attack Israel. Their goal was to eliminate Israel as a political entity and they failed spectacularly. The Israelis slaughtered them in less than a week and took the Golan Heights (from Syria), the West Bank (from Jordan), and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt).
Six years later, in 1973, the Egyptians and the Syrians tried again. The end result was the same, Israel won, but this time the Arabs did much better. They still lost, but things started well enough that the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, thought for awhile that the end of Israel was at hand. The concept of Israeli military invincibility was shattered and suddenly the fact that Syria is much bigger than Israel in terms of people and land, and Egypt is much, much, much, bigger, seemed relevant again.
A scant six years later, in 1979, the Israelis and the Egyptians signed a permanent peace agreement. The Egyptians got the Sinai back and the Israelis got the recognition of the largest and most important Arab state. It was an unambiguous win for both sides. Moreover, it established the basic blueprint for resolving the lingering problems of 1948 and 1967: land for peace.
That was three decades ago and though the solution is obvious to everyone very little substantial progress has been made. Enter Barack Obama. His election was a global feel good moment of a kind that doesn’t come along very often and it might also be the best chance to diplomatically secure Israel since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated thirteen years ago. That is more or less the point that Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski made in the Washington Post on Friday, their concern is that Obama will see peace between Israel and the Arabs as something which can be safely delayed and miss his window of opportunity.
What Scowcroft and Brzezinski don’t mention is that the opportunity for a permanent deal is also significantly enhanced in the context of our coming disengagement from Iraq. It was in the wake of the Gulf War that the Arab powers had a real reason to trust the United States, and the Oslo process was a direct result of that. If Obama keeps his word and gets us out of Iraq, proving that we aren’t going to stay there and dominate the world’s oil spigot, the Arabs would have a similar reason to trust our commitment.
On the Israeli side there are the recent comments by lame duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stating the obvious: that Jerusalem must be shared, that the settlers must be pulled back, and that Israel cannot secure itself from rocket attacks through force of arms. Olmert is on his way out, but if his remarks reflect the general mood of the Kadima party and its supporters then the prospects for resolving the issue are greater still.
Whether or not any of these developments will be given a chance to matter is an open question. But there are a couple of hopeful precedents. Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat shook hands at Camp David a year and a half into Carter’s presidency; Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands at the White House less than year into Clinton’s. The two Democrats inaugurated since the 1967 war have produced two historic handshakes. By exploiting his own popularity and the popularity of ending the Iraq War, Barack Obama has a chance to make it three for three.
