Pragmatic Idealism: notes on a Framework

April 8, 2011/WaPo/ Henry Kissinger and James Baker

Like most Americans, we believe that the United States should always support democracy and human rights politically, economically and diplomatically, just as we championed freedom for the captive peoples of the Soviet empire during the Cold War. Our values impel us to alleviate human suffering. But as a general principle, our country should do so militarily only when a national interest is also at stake. Such an approach could properly be labeled “pragmatic idealism.”

Libya is arguably an exception to the rule. While the United States did not have a vital interest at stake in Libya, a limited military intervention solely on humanitarian grounds could be justified. Moammar Gaddafi’s forces had already caused heavy casualties among civilians and were on the verge of capturing Benghazi, with possibly dire consequences for its inhabitants. Gaddafi’s armed forces were weak. He was unpopular at home and friendless abroad. Both the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League had called for action.

Nevertheless, our idealistic goals cannot be the sole motivation for the use of force in U.S. foreign policy. We cannot be the world’s policeman. We cannot use military force to meet every humanitarian challenge that might arise. Where would we stop? Syria, Yemen, Algeria or Iran? What about countries that have been strong allies but do not share all of our values, such as Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia? What about humanitarian violations in other countries, such as Ivory Coast?

As events unfold in North Africa and the Middle East, it is imperative that we look at each country individually. In this spirit, we offer a few guidelines:

First, when using force, we must establish a clear and specific goal. The objective of protecting civilians is consistent with our values. But it is inherently difficult to keep such an effort limited. The need for humanitarian intervention almost invariably arises from the necessity of protecting populations from their own governments or from the collapse of government altogether.

This provides incentives for strategic foreign policy considerations, such as regime change or nation building. But if we articulate a goal of regime change in conjunction with military intervention, we will be expected to employ the means required to effect it. A disconnect risks confusion among allies, adversaries and the American public, as well as mission creep. Failure to achieve proclaimed objectives then turns into a strategic setback.

Second, we should examine the circumstances in each country in terms of its specific conditions and seek to relate its culture and history to our strategic and economic interests. This will allow us to analyze the motives behind the various mass demonstrations and develop appropriate individual responses to each.

Third, we must know exactly what and whom we are supporting. In Libya, we have in effect taken sides in a civil war. But it is not enough to oppose a despot. We need some assurance that a succession would not create its own major problems; therefore, it is important to have a concept of order after regime change. The last thing the region needs is a series of failed states.

Fourth, there must be domestic support in the United States, which is usually obtained by congressional backing. Conducting policy without such support is very difficult in the short term and unsustainable in the long term. The experiences of the Korean, Vietnam and second Iraq wars show that prolonged stalemates sap public support.

Fifth, we should consider unintended consequences. We need to think about how to protect pro-Gaddafi civilians from atrocities at the hands of rebel forces. The action in Libya may tempt the Iranian regime to speed its development of a nuclear weapon, especially when Iranians consider that Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program for closer ties to the West. Rogue states have to remain convinced of our determination to resist nuclear proliferation.

Sixth, and most important, the United States must develop a firm and differentiated understanding of its vital national interests. Not every upheaval in the region has the same origin or remedy. The Arab Spring has the potential to become a great opportunity for the people of the region and the world. Over time, fostering democracy may provide an alternative to Islamic extremism; it may also, in the short term, empower some of its supporters. We need to develop a realistic concept of what is achievable and in what time frame.

We have a vital interest in long-term stability in the Arabian/Persian Gulf, the source of much of the world’s energy. We have a similarly critical interest in seeing that countries in the region do not become breeding grounds for Islamic extremists.

The United States should pursue a policy that couples our determination to protect our national interests with promotion of the values that have made our country great — democracy, freedom and human rights. Such a policy of pragmatic idealism is the best way to confront the challenges and opportunities of the momentous transformation taking place in the Islamic world.

Henry A. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. James A. Baker III was secretary of state from 1989 to 1992.

Me:

"Pragmatic idealism," "progressive realism," sounds the same to me and it sounds right.

Libyan Hand Off: Unconscionable?

Abe Greenwald/Contentions/ April 4, 2011

Here, in the words of one Libyan rebel leader, is what’s happening in Libya since the U.S. has embraced that global panacea, and virtue of virtues, multilateralism:

“There’s a delay in reacting and lack of response to what’s going on on the ground, and many civilians have died and they couldn’t react to protect them,”

the official, Ali al-Essawi, the foreign policy director of the National Transitional Council, said in an interview on Monday in Rome.

Mr. Essawi said the problems began after NATO took charge of the air campaign from the United States, Britain and France, and that he now foresaw a long, drawn-out battle with NATO at the helm. Many pundits maintain that, today, America not only should act multilaterally in all foreign-policy endeavors, but that it must do so. This is the line pushed by very popular foreign-policy establishment figures, and it has to do with clever notions like “soft power” and the “post-American world.” It’s very cute in a takes-a-global-village kind of way.

That it’s also perilous seems not to concern Barack Obama. By handing over the direction of the Libya campaign, Obama is placing the promotion of a popular narrative (America as the humbled ex-superpower) above both American interests and humanitarian responsibilities.
Both Obama and his advisor Samantha Power like to talk about the “stain” that would be left on our consciences should America allow Qaddafi to massacre his people. Powerful stuff, no doubt. Yet, when those very people explicitly request American – not NATO – leadership, the administration is content to soothe its conscience with self-congratulations about multilateralism.

If the campaign against Qaddafi fails because of the White House’s coalition fetish, Obama will have to account for betraying his appeals to our collective morality with his insistence on promoting a popular anti-American narrative. There’s no pleading multilateralism after deadly defeat.

Me:

This is a poorly reasoned post, respectfully, verging on knocking down a straw person.

You say that many say that the U.S. must act multilaterally in all military actions: “…America not only should act multilaterally in all foreign-policy endeavors, but that it must do so.” But no one says that America can’t act unilaterally in its own defence, for example, and no one says categorically that any military action necessarily America must act multilaterally.

From that non starter of a proposition, which you deride as “it takes a village,” a sentiment which, in context, you seem not to understand, you, without showing your step by step work, leap to tarring Obama with this canard: “That it’s also perilous seems not to concern Barack Obama.”

You then get incredibly garbled:

… By handing over the direction of the Libya campaign, Obama is placing the promotion of a popular narrative (America as the humbled ex-superpower) above both American interests and humanitarian responsibilities…

Let’s unbundle some the defect in this reasoning:

first is the notion that Obama is acting multilaterally in this particular instance, which he is, in the service of a narrative rather than in the service of an assessment as to what benefits America in trying to balance values and interests;

second, you assume without demonstrating that is it breaches American interests in acting multilaterally in this particular instance. Your problems here include your conflation of this, the Libyan, action with all American military actions.

third, your sheer, talking point assertion, rather than a reasoned argument, is manifest in your failure to indentify what interests are being breached any why and your failure to identify the countervailing interests served by multilateralism here;

fourth, the same problems attend your failure to identify the source and the nature of American “humanitarian responsibilities” breached by America after its instrumentality in seemingly preventing a massive massacre in Ben Ghazi, for which, tellingly, you give your President no credit.

You then go on to complain about American betrayal of the rebels’ plea for American aid based on your citation of an apparent quote from a Mr. Essawi. You make no reference to American continuing war efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq, the financial constraints America suffers under, the arguable wisdom of a flexible strategy geared to minimizing worst cases as opposed to spending blood and treasure in seeking best cases in Libya.

I suggest you read, for example, http://www.tnr.com/article/world/86148/obama-libya-qaddafi-al-qaeda-nato, and at a minimum acknowledge different, rational analyses of Obama’s Libyan policy. That would make the difference between reasoned debate in the service of your point of view and mere ideological, talking point polemic.

An Answer To Bronner: How To Handle A Palesitnian State

Elliott Abrams//The Weekly Standard//April 3, 2011

With the Great Revolt of 2011 shaking Arab capitals, Israel briefly seemed a Middle Eastern Switzerland when March began. There were no demonstrations, there was no dictator to protest, and there had been three years without terror. Gone were the once omnipresent security guards at restaurants, challenging you before you entered with a careful look and the question “Do you have a weapon?” Then on March 11, terrorists savagely murdered five members of a family in the settlement of Itamar, and on March 24, a Palestinian bomber brought back the old days: one dead, dozens wounded at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Israel’s short vacation from history had ended.

That vacation had been partial, to be sure. Hamas and other terrorist groups had periodically lobbed rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel, though here too the pace and range of the shots was suddenly climbing. And no doubt many terrorist attacks were foiled by steady police work. But the confrontation with the Palestinians was stalled, frozen, during the two Obama years.

The leader of the PLO, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, has spent these years touring the world, avoiding any serious engagement with Israel. He has been a happy man: Travel is less stressful than the difficult work of state-building, which is left to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; the lack of negotiations means Abbas avoids the controversial compromises a genuine negotiation would entail; and his refusal to negotiate has been arranged and defended by the Obama Doctrine that “settlement activity” is the true obstacle to Middle East peace. For it has been American policy since January 20, 2009, that Palestinians need not come to the table unless there is a 100 percent Israeli construction freeze in Jerusalem and the settlements.

The Obama administration abandoned that doctrine last November, and its champion, George Mitchell, ever since has been an invisible man. No policy has been proposed by the White House to replace its calamitous belief in the construction freeze delusion, at least not yet. But Israelis are sure something is around the corner and are debating whether to wait—or to act.

They fear two developments. The first is a Quartet Plan: a statement by the United States, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union via the Middle East Quartet that proposes the outline of a final status arrangement. The Israeli nightmare has the leading nations of the world demanding terms about borders, security, and Jerusalem with which Israel cannot live—and then finding Israel further isolated and demonized. The EU is leading this Quartet effort, but every Israeli official with whom I spoke said the United States is waving the Europeans on and hiding behind them.

The second potential disaster is a Palestinian effort at the U.N. General Assembly in September, where the “State of Palestine” would be recognized on “1967 borders” and Israel’s presence in the West Bank would become the basis for a further expansion of boycotts, demonstrations, and delegitimization campaigns. These campaigns are well underway and especially in Western Europe would gain great strength from such U.N. action, it is argued.

Now, these fears may not pan out. What if the Quartet proposes new Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on its outline, but the Palestinians—true to the Obama Doctrine of 2009-2010—yet again refuse to come to the table unless there is a total construction freeze? Palestinian intransigence would deliver Israel from its dilemma. European diplomats claim that Abbas has sworn he will negotiate if the Quartet Plan is sufficiently generous, a clever position that maximizes European incentives to buy his cooperation with language that leans further and further toward Palestinian demands. But unless and until the Quartet acts, no one can know for sure.

Israel may also be saved by moves toward “Palestinian unity,” meaning the replacement of the Fayyad cabinet with one consisting of technocrats who represent both Fatah and Hamas. Under the terms that have been discussed, security in the West Bank would remain exclusively in the hands of the PA security forces, while Gaza would remain under Hamas. Such an arrangement could benefit the PA because it would regain a presence in all the nonsecurity ministries in Gaza and begin to reestablish itself there.

But the American relationship with the PA relies on the absence of Hamas from the government and the presence of an honest and effective prime minister in Fayyad. A Hamas role will raise immediate legal issues under our antiterrorism laws as well as political problems: Will the White House really demand that Israel negotiate with a coalition that includes terrorist groups? Will Congress, and even European and Arab aid donors, fork over cash if Fayyad is not there to guarantee that it will not be stolen?

Here again the outcome is uncertain. Under the Palestinian Basic Law, Fayyad’s time to form a new cabinet has already run out, been extended, and run out again, and Abbas must now ask someone else to attempt to form a government. But the Basic Law has been ignored a thousand times and may be again, and Abbas has good reason to worry about any kind of unity government—for if there is unity and cooperation, what is the excuse for delaying parliamentary and presidential elections, both of which appear to inspire no enthusiasm among Abbas and his old cronies in the Fatah party?

So on the international scene and within Palestinian politics, Israel cannot be entirely sure what it will soon face. Much more important, no one can say with assurance where things are heading in Cairo, Amman, Beirut—or now even Damascus. Many Israeli officials therefore counsel waiting, or “watchful waiting,” or “letting the dust settle,” or a dozen other terms that all mean “Israel should do nothing.” This is hardly a moment for bold steps, they argue.

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the problem of predicting in whose hands the key Arab states (and their armies) will be tomorrow morning is compounded by politics in Jerusalem and Washington. In Jerusalem, any bold move could destroy his coalition, leading Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party to bolt. Lieberman may want to do so soon anyway, wishing to act before his expected indictment this year on a variety of financial charges. Numerically, those Knesset votes could be replaced by the greater number of seats (28 versus 15 for Lieberman) held by the Kadima party, a natural partner for Likud should Netanyahu decide on some initiative, but most Israeli observers think this a doubtful outcome.

Netanyahu and Kadima leader Tzipi Livni have been attacking each other regularly in the past year, so personal relations are shot. And with Netanyahu now two years into his term, Livni may wonder why she should rescue him and be his foreign minister when in another year she might be his successor as prime minister instead. Some analysts argue that if Netanyahu undertook a big initiative Livni would have to support it, perhaps from outside the government: She could say she would not use votes of confidence to bring him down as long as some agreed plan was under way.

But it doesn’t take a genius to see why Netanyahu fears being in that position, his political fate dependent on a party and a person—even if she is serving as his foreign minister—itching for his collapse. So Netanyahu is thinking. In early March his spokesmen talked of a major speech soon, perhaps delivered in Washington, but then backed away from the plan. A big, bold step is attractive to Netanyahu, but not one that turns out to be politically suicidal.

“Bibi is torn,” one adviser to the Israeli government told me. “He understands the camp saying the momentum is strongly against Israel now, saying U.N. action to recognize a Palestinian state against Israel’s wishes could be dangerous. He understands pressure will grow, isolation may grow, boycotts in Europe may grow. He knows we could be a lot worse off in a year than we are now. But he knows what he wants to prevent, not what to do to prevent it. He has no real policy. He’s just like Obama.”

And Obama is a critical factor here. Entirely missing is a relationship of confidence between the United States and Israel that might foster boldness or risk-taking. In a situation in late 2003 where negotiations were dead in the water and diplomatic initiatives he viewed as dangerous were surfacing, Ariel Sharon acted: He decided to get out of Gaza. But in reaching and implementing that decision he had the full support of George W. Bush, with whom he carefully negotiated a series of supportive statements and pledges.

Sharon decided to act without an agreement with the Palestinians: “I will take these new steps as unilateral steps; I don’t want to be in their hands,” he told me at the time. The theory was simple: If there is no real negotiating partner, try to shape Israel’s future yourself. Don’t wait, and don’t limit yourself to what the Palestinians will agree to right now. But Sharon asked Bush for what he called “ideological compensation” to make up for the lack of actual compensation from the Palestinians for his moves.

There would be no peace treaty, no Palestinian concessions, no abandonment of claims by the PLO; instead there was Bush’s endorsement of several critical Israeli positions in his April 14, 2004, letter to Sharon. There Bush addressed both the refugee and settlement issues. He stated that Palestinian refugees had no “right of return” to Israel and would have to find a future and a solution in the eventual state of Palestine, and he argued that a return to the 1949 armistice lines—a term he used in preference to “1967 borders”—was unrealistic given the existence of the major settlement blocks. To Sharon these statements by the president of the United States were critical gains for Israel, and they were soon endorsed by resolutions in both houses of Congress.

But those statements have been forgotten and abandoned by the United States, treated by the Obama administration as if they were some kind of private gesture by Bush in a personal note to Sharon. This devaluation of solemn pledges among allies has been a huge Obama mistake, for it undermines the value not only of past American pledges but of his own future words as well and makes Israel far less likely to take risks for peace.

So Netanyahu faces a series of difficult choices with few safety nets in view. Old partners like Mubarak are gone; domestic politics presents the usual Israeli field of battle (President Bush once described the Knesset as a “shark tank”); and the Obama administration is universally viewed in Israel as unsympathetic and unhelpful. Netanyahu can be forgiven for hesitating, hoping that some Palestinian error will save him or that he will find a magic solution that will meet all his needs, avoid risks, preserve his coalition, and escape international censure.

But Israel has not survived into 2011 by such a posture, and it should act—not wait for the EU, the U.N., the Palestinians, or the Americans. If there is a Quartet plan, Israel should accept it unless it is hopelessly and irredeemably biased and should demand immediate negotiations with the Palestinians—not because they will succeed but as a means of shifting pressure away from Israel.

Several Israeli officials told me they feared the Quartet would endorse “1967 borders,” or “1967 borders with agreed swaps,” at least as a basis for negotiations. It is impossible that the Quartet would endorse “1967 borders,” for Americans and even the Europeans understand this would put the Western Wall inside Palestine, an absurd result. The swaps formula is manageable: Israel should reply to it by saying, “Okay, then we all agree, just as President Bush said in 2004 there will be no return to the 1949 Armistice lines. We are glad to see the Quartet acknowledging this basic truth.”

But Israel should not be frozen in fear of a Palestinian declaration of independence or recognition at the U.N. and should in fact head it off. Perhaps the next country to recognize an independent Palestine should be Israel.

This is, after all, a declared Israeli policy goal. As early as June 2003, Sharon said it at the Aqaba Summit: “Israel, like others, has lent its strong support for President Bush’s vision .  .  . of two states—Israel and a Palestinian state—living side by side in peace and security. .  .  . It is in Israel’s interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state.”

His successors Olmert and Netanyahu have also endorsed this outcome. It is obvious that Israeli recognition would immediately devalue that Palestinian diplomatic campaign aimed at racking up additional endorsements each week, and could allow Israel to help define what “recognition” means anyway. For example, does Israel “recognize” Syria, a regime with which it has been in a state of war since the day it came into existence? “Recognizing” that Syria exists as a state eliminates none of the disputes between Israel and Syria. Many of the countries that have “recognized” Palestine have used different verbal formulas in doing so and mean different things by them, and Israel’s own formula would make that fact even clearer and therefore more confusing.

Israel should say that with this new state of Palestine it has a million practical issues to discuss, beginning with grave border disputes but continuing from customs issues to the management of the Allenby Bridge to possible use of Mediterranean ports. Personal status issues are dangerous and complex: What is the situation of Israelis in areas the state of Palestine views as its own? Is it the Palestinian position that the new state must be Judenrein, a position President Abbas has repeatedly taken? Israel should immediately challenge that position in every possible forum, for it is an indefensible racist view that the EU for one will have to denounce.

Israel should demand immediate negotiations on all these complex matters, and remind the world that the dozens of statements “recognizing a Palestinian state” actually do nothing to advance the parties toward the resolution of the issues they face. In fact, commencement of practical negotiations on some of these issues between Israel and “Palestine” might lessen their appeal as great causes and turn them from emotional claims into tedious and detailed bargaining positions.

But this is diplomatic gamesmanship to combat diplomatic gamesmanship. Protecting Israel’s interests may start with clever diplomacy but cannot end there. If Israelis are convinced they must separate from Palestinians, who should “govern themselves in their own state,” they should begin to change the pattern of their presence in the West Bank. There is a wide consensus in Israel that separation from the Palestinians is right, and safer, and in Israel’s long-run interest: Since the second intifada the dream of living together in peace has been dead, but the goal of living apart in peace is not. Yet current Israeli policy treats separation as a prize the Palestinians must win through concessions at the negotiating table, as if it were in the Palestinians’ interest but not Israel’s.

That is a self-defeating stance, incurring growing penalties in international isolation and condemnation while moving Israel no closer to its desired goal. Israel should start to disentangle itself from governing the West Bank and the Arabs who live in it, and if this cannot be achieved through negotiations with the Palestinians it should be achieved through Israeli-designed unilateral steps that maximize Israeli security interests.

One example: passage in the Knesset of a compensation law buying the home of any settler who wishes voluntarily to move back behind the security fence, whether to Green Line Israel or a major settlement. Another: turning additional areas within the West Bank over to the PA for normal daily governance. Such moves, which signal an intention to change the ultimate pattern of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, do not require abandoning the IDF’s security role there. Nor do they require or accept a total settlement freeze, which would be counterproductive: Whatever the wisdom of a freeze in outlying settlements that will eventually become part of Palestine, to freeze construction in the major blocs that will remain parts of Israel is to send exactly the wrong message.

Israeli officials should explain the policy to the Obama administration and the Europeans (among whom some consequential leaders, like German chancellor Angela Merkel, are still friendly to Israel): It looks like final status negotiations are not on, and anyway they may take forever or may fail. So Israel will act, trying to shape a better future for itself without harming the Palestinians. We won’t wait for them, but nothing we are doing closes off possibilities for future agreements. In fact, reaching those agreements will become easier over time, not harder, if Israel begins to act now.

Israel should use as its set of principles the Bush letter of April 14, 2004, in essence demanding that the United States adhere to pledges made about the key issues. No “right of return” for Palestinian “refugees” except to the new state of Palestine; secure and defensible borders for Israel; no full return to the 1949 lines, given the new realities on the ground; final borders to be mutually agreed; Israel as a Jewish democratic state.

But Netanyahu will have to act as well as speak, telling both Israelis and foreigners what he will do to begin to shape an outcome where there are no Israelis in over 90 percent of the West Bank. He can maximize the ability of Israel’s friends and supporters, not least in this country, to support Israel if he acts with boldness and principle to guarantee the future safety of the Jewish state.

Netanyahu will also need to explain that when acts of terror emerge from the West Bank they will evoke the air and land responses needed to keep Israel safe and keep those territories from terrorist control. In the long run, it is difficult to see a secure Palestine without some link to Jordan, though it may take years to emerge. Whether that is in the end a “dual monarchy” arrangement—one king, two parliaments, two prime ministers, with the formal creation of a Jordanian-Palestinian entity—or a security deal allowing for a significant Jordanian role in trilateral security arrangements among Palestine, Israel, and the Hashemite Kingdom, remains to be seen, but no such options should be discarded.

Netanyahu, who quit his position of finance minister under Ariel Sharon when Sharon began the disengagement from Gaza, now finds himself in a remarkably similar spot. In addition to the coalition troubles he faces, he has a very tough political problem within Likud. Moreover, he must face the settler lobby and decide whether to challenge it now. He should, for at bottom he has a message that the vast majority of Israelis and indeed the vast majority of settlers accept: that the security of the State of Israel is paramount. Zionism aims at a Jewish democratic state, which in turn requires a territory where Jews are the majority.

That was the logic of partition in 1948, and it remains the logic behind separation from the West Bank and the 2.5 million Palestinians who live there. Zionism also taught self-reliance, acting to create facts rather than relying on luck or fate or someone else’s benevolence to do the job.

The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Abba Eban famously said, and their political division and terrorist leaders may save Israel yet again from extremely difficult decisions. But most Israelis understand that relying on Palestinian errors to protect themselves is dangerous: Israel cannot win itself a secure future by watching and waiting and avoiding action. Israel’s future requires separation from the Palestinians, and neither the upheavals in Arab capitals nor the presence in Washington of the least friendly president in decades changes that.

Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

Dire Scenario For Israel

Ethan Bronner/NYT/April, 3, 2o11

JERUSALEM — With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution.

“We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September,” said Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at a conference in Tel Aviv last month. “It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action.” He added, “Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.”

With aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thrashing out proposals to the Palestinians, President Shimon Peres is due at the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Obama and explore ways out of the bind. The United States is still uncertain how to move the process forward, according to diplomats here.

Israel’s offer is expected to include transfer of some West Bank territory outside its settlements to Palestinian control and may suggest a regional component — an international conference to serve as a response to the Arab League peace initiatives.

But Palestinian leaders, emboldened by support for their statehood bid, dismiss the expected offer as insufficient and continue to demand an end to settlement building before talks can begin.

“We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “Without that, our goal is membership in the United Nations General Assembly in September.”

Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials interviewed on the current impasse, most of them requesting anonymity, expressed an unusual degree of pessimism about a peaceful resolution. All agreed that the turmoil across the Middle East had prompted opposing responses from Israel and much of the world.

Israel, seeing the prospect of even more hostile governments as its neighbors, is insisting on caution and time before taking any significant steps. It also wants to build in extensive long-term security guarantees in any two-state solution, but those inevitably infringe the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

The international community tends to draw the opposite conclusion. Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, for example, said last week that one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Arab Spring was that “legitimate aspirations cannot be ignored and must be addressed.” He added, referring to Israeli-Palestinian talks, “It cannot be in anyone’s interests if the new order of the region is determined at a time of minimum hope in the peace process.”

The Palestinian focus on September stems not only from the fact that the General Assembly holds its annual meeting then. It is also because Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in September 2009 that his government would be ready for independent statehood in two years and that Mr. Obama said last September that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year.

Mr. Obama did not indicate what the borders of that state would be, assuming they would be determined through direct negotiations. But with Israeli-Palestinian talks broken off months ago and the Middle East in the process of profound change, many argue that outside pressure is needed.

Germany, France and Britain say negotiations should be based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, exactly what the Netanyahu government rejects because it says it predetermines the outcome.

“Does the world think it is going to force Israel to declare the 1967 lines and giving up Jerusalem as a basis for negotiation?” asked a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That will never happen.”

While the Obama administration has referred in the past to the 1967 lines as a basis for talks, it has not decided whether to back the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — the other members of the so-called quartet — in declaring them the starting point, diplomats said. The quartet meets on April 15 in Berlin.

Israel, which has settled hundreds of thousands of Jews inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, acknowledges that it will have to withdraw from much of the land it now occupies there. But it hopes to hold onto the largest settlement blocs and much of East Jerusalem as well as the border to the east with Jordan and does not want to enter into talks with the other side’s position as the starting point.

That was true even before its closest ally in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was driven from power, helping fuel protest movements that now roil other countries, including Jordan, which has its own peace agreement with Israel.

“Whatever we put forward has to be grounded in security arrangements because of what is going on regionally,” said Zalman Shoval, one of a handful of Netanyahu aides drawing up the Israeli proposal that may be delivered as a speech to the United States Congress in May. “We are facing the rebirth of the eastern front as Iran grows strong. We have to secure the Jordan Valley. And no Israeli government is going to move tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes quickly.”

Those Israelis live in West Bank settlements, the source of much of the disagreement not only with the Palestinians but with the world. Not a single government supports Israel’s settlements. The Palestinians say the settlements are proof that the Israelis do not really want a Palestinian state to arise since they are built on land that should go to that state.

“All these years, the main obstacle to peace has been the settlements,” Nimer Hammad, a political adviser to President Abbas, said. “They always say, ‘but you never made it a condition of negotiations before.’ And we say, ‘that was a mistake.’ ”

The Israelis counter that the real problem is Palestinian refusal to accept openly a Jewish state here and ongoing anti-Israeli incitement and praise of violence on Palestinian airwaves.

Another central obstacle to the establishment of a State of Palestine has been the division between the West Bank and Gaza, the first run by the Palestinian Authority and the second by Hamas. Lately, President Abbas has sought to bridge the gap, asking to go to Gaza to seek reconciliation through an agreed interim government that would set up parliamentary and presidential elections.

But Hamas, worried it would lose such elections and hopeful that the regional turmoil could work in its favor — that Egypt, for example, might be taken over by its ally, the Muslim Brotherhood — has reacted coolly.

Efforts are still under way to restart peace talks but if, as expected, negotiations do not resume, come September the Palestinian Authority seems set to go ahead with plans to ask the General Assembly to accept it as a member. Diplomats involved in the issue say most countries — more than 100 — are expected to vote yes, meaning it will pass. (There are no vetoes in the General Assembly so the United States cannot save Israel as it often has in the Security Council.)

What happens then?

Some Palestinian leaders say relations with Israel would change.

“We will re-examine our commitments toward Israel, especially our security commitments,” suggested Hanna Amireh, who is on the 18-member ruling board of the Palestine Liberation Organization, referring to cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli troops. “The main sense about Israel is that we are fed up.”

Mr. Shaath said Israel would then be in daily violation of the rights of a fellow member state and diplomatic and legal consequences could follow, all of which would be painful for Israel.

In the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, Ari Shavit, who is a political centrist, drew a comparison between 2011 and the biggest military setback Israel ever faced, the 1973 war.

He wrote that “2011 is going to be a diplomatic 1973,” because a Palestinian state will be recognized internationally. “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.” He added, “A diplomatic siege from without and a civil uprising from within will grip Israel in a stranglehold.”

Subtle Reading of Obama's Libyan Strategy by Steven Metz

The Logic of Obama's Libyan Policy

TNR/April 1, 2011

Strategy is a strange beast. Up close—as it is unfolding—even a good strategy can appear muddled, confused, and indecisive. Its logic only becomes clear over time. President Obama’s Libya strategy demonstrates this. It has drawn howls of criticism from across the political spectrum, most of the “muddled, confused, and indecisive” variant. But, when dissected, it does have an internal logic.

Put simply, Obama’s Libya strategy is designed to avoid the most undesirable outcomes rather than optimize the chances of a desired outcome, to do something without “owning” the conflict, to maintain maximum flexibility as the situation evolves, and to do all of this in the face of powerful constraints. The question is whether this strategy can actually work.

President Obama appears determined to avoid two particularly bad things: an outright Qaddafi victory—which might chill reform underway in the Arab world and unleash a new spate of support for terrorism—and Al Qaeda influence within the rebel movement. NATO airpower has helped prevent a Qaddafi victory, but ensuring a rebel victory might require arming, training, and advising the anti-regime forces. President Obama has not committed to this, telling NBC’s Brian Williams that he was “not ruling it out but I’m also not ruling it in.” This ambivalence reflects the fact that the U.S. objective at this point is not a rebel victory but denying victory to Qaddafi. If this objective holds, the Obama administration might be willing to tolerate a protracted conflict or even some sort of partition.

The question of an Al Qaeda role among the rebels—particularly if the conflict drags on—is trickier. Libya was an important source of outside fighters in the battle against the United States in Iraq. Undoubtedly some of these fighters returned home with extremist inclinations and military expertise. In a March 29 hearing, NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis told the Senate that intelligence agencies had picked up “flickers” of an Al Qaeda presence among the Libyan opposition fighters.

To deal with this issue, the Obama administration is first attempting to get a better picture of the opposition both through talks with its external leadership and, if news reports are accurate, by sending intelligence agents into Libya. Beyond that, the administration appears to favor engaging the rebels without embracing them. Given conditions, this makes perfect sense. If the United States rejects them now when they are most vulnerable and they do hang on and become more effective, the rebels could remain suspicious and even hostile toward the United States, perhaps accepting help from Al Qaeda or Iran. Engaging now does not guarantee influence but failing to engage guarantees that the United States and NATO will have no influence.

Critics of U.S. involvement with the rebels base their case on how little is known about them and on their military weakness. There is no doubt that the rebel movement is a loose, almost chaotic mélange of local factions with limited military ability. But almost every insurgency and rebel movement in history started this way, even ones that eventually succeeded, such as the Vietnamese and Chinese. While the Libyan rebels cannot decisively defeat Qaddafi at this point, neither can he defeat them, at least so long as NATO airpower is in play. Preventing an enemy from attaining victory is always easier than defeating an enemy outright. The Taliban shows that even a rag tag force can sometimes stave off defeat. This applies to Libya as well.

While seeking to avoid the most adverse outcomes, the Obama strategy also rejects American ownership of the conflict. The administration is actively seeking to have someone else take it off of America’s hands, particularly the provision of direct support to the rebels. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, for instance, told Congress on March 30 that other nations, not the United States, should arm the rebels. Clearly the Obama strategy is designed to find the middle ground between disengagement and domination. The idea seems to be to maximize flexibility by keeping all options open as long as possible. This is a good idea in a highly fluid situation.

The Obama administration also must implement this strategy in the face of severe constraints. In Washington’s hyper-charged political environment, whatever President Obama does provokes loud opposition. Foreign crises become stalking horses for broader political opposition. The days when partisan debate stopped “at the water’s edge” are long gone (as President Bush found out in Iraq). The fragility of the American economic recovery and opposition to government spending also constrain Obama’s options in Libya. No U.S. military option for a century has drawn as much cost scrutiny. Daily tallies of the expenditures ricochet across the Internet. In a broader but still important sense, the Obama strategy in Libya seeks to avoid replicating the Bush administration’s involvement in costly wars. This is nothing new—being “not Clinton” was important to the Bush administration so being “not Bush” is equally important to the Obama administration.

Still, history shows that having an internal logic—even a sound one—does not assure a strategy’s success. President Obama faces a number of major problems in pulling it off. For starters, he has not sold his approach to the American public and Congress. In the American system, mobilizing support is just as important to a strategy as its effect in the world. While it may eventually come, President Obama has not yet found his voice on strategy as he has on domestic issues.

Americans often attempt to understand world crises and conflicts through the lens of recent experience. This does not help President Obama generate support for his Libya strategy. Critics claim that, since the United States supported rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s and, today, is fighting the remnants and descendents of that movement, supporting rebels is always a bad idea. That this assertion misreads history—it was abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal that led to the dominance of extremists, not supporting anti-Soviet forces in the first place—and draws a general conclusion from a single example makes little difference. So far, though, the Obama administration has not quelled this criticism.

In a broader sense, President Obama is struggling to transcend American history. For two centuries, Americans have believed that any use of military power is war, and the objective in war is victory over the enemy. They have little tolerance for military operations that deviate from this pattern, such as the limited use of force in support of diplomacy or armed action leading to something other than decisive victory. After a foray into “limited war” from Korea to Vietnam, the United States walked away from the idea. What became known as the Weinberger-Powell principles argued that the U.S. military should never be committed unless vital interests are at stake—and then, only with the intention of clear victory. This became inculcated into the American strategic culture. And, since World War II, Americans have also come to expect that the United States will dominate any military operations in which it participates. The normal state of affairs, Americans believe, is for the United States to be is the senior partner in a coalition.

The Obama strategy represents a step away from the Weinberger-Powell principles and the notion that the United States must dominate any operation where its military is involved. Whether it works will be determined by the unpredictable whims of Muammar Qaddafi, the willingness of other states to take some or all of the burden off of America’s hands, and the president’s ability to sell the American public and its elected leaders on a strategy that runs counter to their tradition and inclinations. While Obama’s Libya strategy has a distinct logic, its success thus remains in the balance.

Justice Goldstone Regrets

New York Sun Editorial

April 2, 2011

lt will be a while before we see an op-ed piece as newsworthy — and as galling — as that in today’s Washington Post by Justice Richard Goldstone. He is the former member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa who chaired the United Nations mission that issued a report alleging Israel committed war crimes at Gaza. Mr. Goldstone now says that if he had known when he wrote the report what he knows now the report would have been a “different document.”

The justice notes that the United Nations Committee of Independent Experts that followed up on the Goldstone Report has found that Israel launched investigations into more than 400 “allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza,” while what he calls the “de facto authorities,” meaning Hamas, “have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Mr. Goldstone characterizes his own report as having found “evidence of potential war crimes and ‘possibly crimes against humanity’ by both Israel and Hamas.” He now says that it “goes without saying” that the “crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional” in that “its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” But what he calls the “allegations of intentionality by Israel” were, he now says, “based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.”

He now is crediting the “investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report” as having “established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers” but also indicating “that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” He cites the example of one particularly horrifying story, which involved “the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home.” He now suggests an investigation and “appropriate process” is underway in Israel.

In the Washington Post the justice indulges in a certain amount of bellyaching about Israel’s lack of cooperation in his mission’s investigation. He asserts that “the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life.” But he states: “I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”

It is hard to think of a blood libel in recent years as bald as that issued originally by Mr. Goldstone. But it is all too common that accusations made against Israel, when followed by sober investigation, turn out to exonerate the Jewish State. It happened in respect of the massacre at Jenin that turned out not to have taken place. It happened with the shooting of Muhammad al-Durrah.

In his Washington Post piece, Mr. Goldstone also confesses to an error of judgment in respect of Hamas. “Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes,” Mr. Goldstone wrote in the Washignton Post. He said it was his hope “even if unrealistic” that Hamas would step up, “especially if Israel conducted its own investigations.”

He wrote: “At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality.”

This newspaper is not a psychiatrist, and what is going on in Justice Goldstone’s brain is beyond our ken. There’s a tone to the piece that suggests he is almost wheedling for forgiveness. He now wants the U.N.’s Human Rights Council to condemn Hamas’s “heinous acts in the strongest terms” and also to condemn the recent “inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.” The hope is as absurd as his call in the Goldstone Report for Hamas to investigate itself. For Mr. Goldstone to suggest, even by implication, that the U.N. Human Rights Council has any concern whatsoever for truth in respect of Israel simply asks the world to lend credence to a body that would be best disbanded. The fact is that war clouds are scudding over Gaza once again, and the most useful thing Mr. Goldstone could do now, having expressed his regrets, is pack up his briefcase and retire from public life altogether.

Just Because I Feel Like It: Lyrics to Backwater Blues

When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
Then trouble's takin' place in the lowlands at night
I woke up this mornin', can't even get out of my door
I woke up this mornin', can't even get out of my door
There's been enough trouble to make a poor girl wonder where she want to go
Then they rowed a little boat about five miles 'cross the pond
Then they rowed a little boat about five miles 'cross the pond
I packed all my clothes, throwed them in and they rowed me along
When it thunders and lightnin' and when the wind begins to blow
When it thunders and lightnin' and the wind begins to blow
There's thousands of people ain't got no place to go
Then I went and stood upon some high old lonesome hill
Then I went and stood upon some high old lonesome hill
Then looked down on the house were I used to live
Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go
Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go
'Cause my house fell down and I can't live there no more
Mmm, I can't move no more
Mmm, I can't move no more
There ain't no place for a poor old girl to go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPhE9o4cq3g