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May 5, 2000/30 Nisan 5760, Vol. 52, No.35
Advice from the bench
KENNETH W. STEIN
Kenneth Stein, professor of Middle Eastern history and political science at Emory University in Atlanta, pens an open letter to Dennis Ross and Aaron Miller, U.S. Middle East negotiators, on managing the next stage in Israeli-Palestinian final status talks. |
| Dear Dennis and Aaron: Welcome back to the Holy Land. I only wish I had your frequent flier mileage from the hundreds of trips you have clocked over the past decade and more. Dennis, I still remember your attendance at our Arms Control Consultation at Emory's Carter Center in the mid-'80s. Many negotiations have transpired since Jim Baker and you cobbled the Madrid Conference agreement together in 1991. If nothing else, you deserve enormous credit for resilience, steadfastness and commitment. As for you, Aaron, I still regret having played tennis with you when we were graduate students at Michigan. Our dissertation adviser would barely recognize our engagement in Middle Eastern matters; I know he would be proud of you. Among the three of us, I think I have the cushiest job; I only have to worry about academic politics and teaching about the conflict. You have to manage it. I thought you would not mind me throwing some historical perspective at you as you embark on this next stage of final status talks with the Palestinians and Israelis. Luckily, you are no longer in the "negotiation-seeking" phase of talks; you are in the midst of the "negotiation-making." But be prepared, even if you accomplish some unanticipated breakthrough, to stay involved in the third phase - "negotiation-keeping." This is unlike a football or basketball game where time runs out; it is an extra-inning affair with knockdown pitches, on-field brawls, and each manager emptying his bench and bullpen. If we are lucky, the next U.S. administration will sustain our historic bipartisan foreign policy of giving our best to reach a series of durable and comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlements. Given your admirable track record under both Republican and Democratic presidents, maybe you two can stay at this until you retire to some diplomatic Cooperstown. I noted recently in the Arabic and Hebrew press, as well as in interviews given by relevant political leaders, that there are hopes that you will apply pressure to one side or the other. Be prepared for news reports that will proclaim you are biased in favor of one or the other; no doubt, you have heard that before, and even felt the sharp tip of both the Hebrew and Arabic pen. But take heart, it was that way 80 years ago. Convincing the umpire of the righteousness of one's nationalist cause against the other community was the modus operandi for both Arabs and Zionists in Palestine. The degree of beseeching caused Britain's Jerusalem District Commissioner, Ronald Storrs, to remark in the early 1920s, "Two hours of Arab grievances drive me into the synagogue, while after an intensive course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam." And Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, Sir John Chancellor, in defining the intermediary role which Britain was playing between Arab and Jew, told his son in early 1930, "There is a tendency here to regard the government as sort of umpire and scorer, trying to hold the balance between the two races, noting when one scores off the other, and regarding it as only fair that the next point in the game should be scored by the race that lost the preceding one." Hang tough. Neither side can resolve this complex dilemma without the United States as referee and guarantor. Remember what Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's political adviser, Usamah al-Baz, said last year. The main sponsors of this peace process are Egypt, the United States and the European Union, supported by Russia, but "sponsors and advisers are one category; only the United States is enmeshed in the day-to-day negotiations and can provide the guarantees necessary for a workable outcome." How many times have there been short interludes between talks because one side or the other called a timeout? Palestinians and Israelis may not want an agreement between them, but they need one. Their track record is to come back to the table, even without our involvement. But in the end, they want and need the United States for the take-off - so we will be there for the landing. Both of you enjoy the precedent of enormous flexibility. You can pick and choose what is needed at any particular moment. Your predecessors, from former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Warren Christopher to all those special negotiators in-between, have played various and sundry roles: adviser, architect, catalyst, cheerleader, choreographer, engineer, facilitator, financier, friend, fund-raiser, guarantor, hand-holder, mailman, mediator, messenger, nag, ring-master, wordsmith and umpire. Likewise, we have employed a variety of procedures to reach conclusions: conference diplomacy, mediation, presidential involvement, active participation of the secretary of state, special negotiators working the problem privately and publicly, shuttle diplomacy in the region, and closed conference diplomacy. Our U.S. preference has been, as you aptly showed in shepherding the 1997 Hebron Agreement and others to workable conclusions, that we neither have a specific blueprint in mind, nor do we condone unilateral actions. However, lots of folks in the Holy Land have done amazing things with water - walked on it, parted it, thrown bread on it and turned it to blood. May I suggest finding a couple of billion dollars to build a water desalination plant? It is not one of those earlier miracles, but it might work with incredible benefit to all. I'll read the research papers on Palestinian Arab refugee creation and the organization of the Yishuv. Stay (y)our course: search for the fair, balanced, equitable, enforceable and collaborative conclusions; you are admired for being Cal Ripken-like diplomatic iron men. Good luck, Ken |
