Driven by popular demand and a need for self-therapy from all the madness, I continue with the "Israel-Palestine 101" series, accessible via the IP101 tag. [there are diaries written by others which I tagged with this tag as well.]
A few days ago I challenged the conventional Israeli and Diaspora-Jewish wisdom that Bush was "good for Israel" (even Haaretz called him a "dedicated friend"). Rather than make arguments and refute counter-arguments, I chose to look at the raw historical record. I detailed the major events and processes in Israeli history during the last seven US Presidents, starting with Johnson. Against this background Bush’s record is dismal indeed. But surprisingly, two others emerge with records that are (roughly speaking) just as bad: Nixon and Reagan. The fact that it is these two who are flagged as (potentially) bad for Israel too, indicates that this is not random, and is related to a President’s qualities. How and why – using some key turning points from these three’s tenure – below the fold.
A President’s Unique Leverage
Israel is a small immigrant nation embedded in a large and hostile indigenous environment. Moreover, its independence was brought about via massive support from world powers. Naturally, Israel sees having strong allies and forging international coalitions as a life-or-death matter. The obverse is that Israel’s critical allies do have quite a bit of leverage upon its policies.
US-Israeli relations have become more and more intimate since 1967. Israel’s military has increasingly relied upon American arms – and upon foreign-aid money to buy those arms. Israel’s foreign policy has gradually stopped catering to the sensitivities of anyone but the Americans – counting on the latter to bring the rest of the West in tow when needed; and if not, at least to cast a veto at the UN Security Council.
Being half the world away, and usually also ignorant of the intricacies of Middle East history and culture, US Presidents and their chief diplomats are generally ill-equipped to figure out all that happens on the ground in Israel-Palestine. This distance-and-knowledge gap grants Israel quite a bit of baseline maneuvering freedom. Crap happening as a result of uncoordinated Israeli acts on the ground can always be attributed to – and explained away as - "misinterpretation" of prior coordination. Yet, when a US President decides where he wants to take things, and puts his foot down, Israel’s leaders cannot afford to ignore him. But it has to be the President himself; as we shall soon see, any lesser mortal simply won’t do.
On to the failing Presidents.
Nixon: The Great Fall
It was Johnson who let Israel keep the 1967 war loot "temporarily". But given the short time frame till his term ended, and how crazy 1968 was for the US, he cannot really be faulted for not keeping a closer tab on the Middle East until stepping down. By early 1969, however, it was clear that things weren’t going well.
Israel’s official foreign-policy stance was that the Occupied Territories are retained as a "bargaining chip" – to be returned for full peace once the Arabs climb down from their rejectionist trees. From the start this position was somewhat tenuous: the Territories as "chips" were a bit too large to place in one’s pocket. Sinai alone was 3 times larger than all of Israel. The West Bank and Gaza combined had a hostile population roughly half Israel’s size. And indeed, anyone looking at the situation for more than half a second could see that these were not "chips" anymore. To continue the allegory, Israel was busily sewing these "chips" into its own flesh – setting up government-sponsored settlements everywhere, extending civilian infrastructure, restructuring its economy to include Occupied Palestinians as the main source of cheap labor, and building huge military bases in the Sinai. Moreover, Israel’s domestic discourse was completely taken over by a "finders keepers" euphoria. Meanwhile the Arabs weren’t sitting put. Egypt launched a War of Attrition along the Suez Canal – meaning that the Canal continued to be closed, hurting the world’s economy. The Palestinians, having spent 1949-1967 reeling from the Nakba’s exile and dispersion, found their unique, rather militant voice, and were giving trouble all over the place. In a nutshell, the 1967 war – so sweetly won in only six days - was anything but over.
It is no wonder then, that Secretary of State William Rogers decided to take initiative. The Rogers Plan, announced in a December 1969 speech and made official a half-year later (link), put forth the "land for peace" principle, as part of a comprehensive arrangement that will also take care of the 1948 refugee problem. The speech itself was a paragon of progressive-realist, balanced insight into the problem. Over 95% of Kossacks would be proud of it. [And no mainstream American politician of the 1990’s and 2000’s would dare say anything remotely like it.]
The Rogers Plan was dead on arrival. As to why, the fogs of propaganda war cloud the picture (for example, wingnut sites claim the Arabs rejected it, thus pushing aside the inconvenient fact that Israel rejected it rather strongly. According to Wikipedia, the Arabs actually accepted it as did the Soviets.) Here’s what I could find, beyond reasonable doubt, from cross-checking different sources:
- Golda Meir’s Israeli government was very vocal in its opposition to the Rogers Plan, and the "pro-Israel" crowd was soon depicting Rogers the man as a problem.
- National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger – definitely the tone-setter on foreign policy under Nixon – got into a personal conflict with Rogers. On the issue itself, Kissinger thought the Arabs wouldn’t dare mess with the IDF now, and therefore time is on Israel’s side. He also probably shared his views on this with the Israelis – so they felt they had at least one open ear in Washington.
- I haven’t found any evidence or quote of Nixon backing Rogers and placing his personal weight behind the plan. Rather, it seems that he was leaning to view things Kissinger's way.
- The fact that Egypt’s new leader Sadat was openly courting a "land for peace" deal with Israel from 1971 onwards, and kicked all Soviet advisors out of his country the next year, did little to further the plan’s prospects.
Rogers resigned shortly before the 1973 war with Kissinger taking his place, just as Sadat was busy preparing the October 6 surprise attack. The war itself need not be described here.
Again, the Web is rife with the urban myth that "Israel won the 1973 war" – just because the US delayed the UNSC ceasefire resolution long enough for the IDF to post net territorial gains on both fronts. This myth, not coincidentally, misses the main point. Unlike Israeli politicians, who – despite having launched countless wars and operations – have not yet internalized the basic lesson, Sadat did use the one war he started as "a continuation of diplomacy by other means."
Sadat's pre-1973 diplomacy was ignored; so he resorted to war, whereby he got exactly what he originally wanted. In short, he won. The Syrians have not quite won in this sense. But using the same measure, it is beyond doubt that Israel – no matter where its armed forces stood when fighting ceased – had lost, big time. By the time Nixon resigned in 1974, Israel’s economy was in shambles, its military – at that time, the nation’s heart and soul - battered and demoralized, its prime minister and IDF’s chief of staff forced to resign. Meanwhile, pretty much the entire Third World had cut off relations with us, embracing the Palestinian cause instead.
All this did not deter President Nixon – looking for the last place in the world that would accept him with open arms – from visiting Israel in 1974, as a "dedicated friend" I suppose. I remember it well: as second-graders in Jerusalem, we were each given an Israeli and US flag by our teachers. We then lined up along Herzl Boulevard and waved our little flags at the Presidential motorcade - on its way to the mandatory Holocaust-museum stop.
Main lessons: Israel is not disposed to do much diplomacy on its own, and often has to be dragged towards it kicking and screaming. But sometimes diplomacy is exactly what Israel urgently needs - and no amount of subsequent assistance will make up for its absence.
Also, it matters little what "the President’s men" say; it’s what the President himself says (or doesn’t say) that counts.
Reagan: Courting Disaster
Skip-hop to mid-1982. Thanks in no small part to President Carter’s hands-on diplomacy, Egypt was removed from the "Enemies" column and Israel had just completed evacuating the Sinai in return. Up north, the PLO (then considered a terror organization by the US) controlled southern Lebanon, but observed an unofficial cease-fire with Israel. Security Minister Ariel Sharon was looking for a pretext to invade South Lebanon and kick the PLO out. The shelf plans were ready. The pretext was provided in London of all places: a renegade Palestinian faction tried to assassinate Israel’s ambassador. The invasion took off, backed by a tacit understanding with the US that Israel will avoid fighting any Syrian forces stationed in Lebanon. The US probably also made sure Egypt won’t even think about undoing the brand-new peace treaty. Four days into the invasion, the US vetoed a UNSC ceasefire resolution. By that time IDF forces were already fighting Palestinians, Syrians and also any Lebanese who resisted. Within a few more days, the IDF was stationed in Beirut’s suburbs and blocking the main highway to Syria.
American diplomacy eventually kicked in, spreading flowery words and sending Lebanese-American envoy Philip Habib. But US efforts were single-track: getting the besieged PLO leadership to leave the country peacefully. As I just said: "diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means." Oops, wait: it should be the other way around. Well, that’s kind of lost on the great minds running Israeli strategy. Anyway, Sharon got what he wanted – the PLO out – then got greedy and set up his pal (the very same Bashir from "Waltz with Bashir") as Lebanon's President. This unleashed a chain of events that led to Christian Phalanges massacring an untold number of defenseless Palestinians (remember? The PLO was kicked out), under the watch of IDF forces.
And still, no palpable US pressure on Israel to withdraw. Israel’s formal stance, as I recall it, was that we withdraw only when the Syrians do (Syrian forces were invited years earlier by Lebanon’s government to stop the civil war, and had overstayed their welcome). As it was September by then, IDF forces started preparing to spend the winter on Lebanon’s numerous alpine ridges. Then another winter. And another one. Hundreds of soldiers dead, the government nearly went broke, 450% inflation - and still we "stayed the course." See, there was nobody home in Jerusalem: Sharon was ousted in early 1983, Begin stopped functioning shortly afterwards, and his eventual replacement – Shamir – was a nonentity. Only nearly three years after the invasion, under a different government, the IDF finally retreated from the Lebanese heartland (but still retained a presence in the south for 15 additional years).
Needless to say, throughout his years Reagan couldn’t care less about the godforsaken West Bank and Gaza. In the Egypt-Israel peace deal handed down for him to safeguard, these regions were to be cleared of IDF presence and turned autonomous, pending resolution of their final status. What a sad joke: since Sadat was dead and Mubarak weak and US-dependent (he still is), Israel ditched the talks in the early 80’s and proceeded to accelerated settlement-building and land-grabbing. To whoever objected – internally or externally – this policy’s proponents pointed to the Palestinians’ docility as proof that all is well. Then the West Bank and Gaza erupted. Still on Reagan’s watch.
Main Lessons: IDF generals always have some crazy plan ready in their drawers. When the US signs on to an Israeli military adventure, it better read the small print. Actually, there's no need to put on the reading glasses. Given their track record, these IDF drawer-plans are virtually guaranteed to backfire.
Also, one-channel single-track "diplomacy" designed to push an Israeli laundry list down Arab throats while ignoring everyone else’s needs – is ultimately bad for Israel too.
Also, when Israel signs an agreement the US needs to follow up.
Also, did anyone say "diplomacy"?
George W. Bush: Burying Hope
You know, I think the Bush years are pretty familiar to most of you. I won’t delve into every painful detail. We’ll stay mostly at the level of headlines. First, a rundown of major occasions when Bush repeated the mistakes of Nixon and Reagan:
- Neglecting diplomacy when it’s urgently needed: 1. From his first day in office until Israel’s invasion of West Bank towns in March 2002. 2. 2006-2008 after Hamas election victory. 3. Since 2002 - helping Israel ignore the Arab League peace initiative (a.k.a. "the Saudi plan").
- It’s what the President (not his underlings) says that counts: many examples (e.g., 2002’s "Sharon is a man of peace", or 2004’s "demographic realities" as a euphemism for settlements). But the crown jewel is definitely the June 2002 "Palestinians bad, go to your room! Israel good, take a candy" Bush address (link to a hilarious take on it by an Israeli satirist). This address effectively legitimized and cemented the re-Occupation open-air-prison reality (then still provisional), a reality which continues to this very day and which has brought Hamas its election victories.
- Signing on to little-understood adventures: 1. The aforementioned 2002 invasion. 2. The Wall/Fence/Barrier project, which 10 years ago was unimaginable. 3. Lebanon 2006 (though here it’s unclear whether US was a tagalong or a major instigator). 4. Gaza 2008-2009.
- Failure to follow up: 1. The summer 2003 ceasefire with Abbas as PM (indirectly arranged with Hamas). At the signing ceremony Bush said he will "ride herd". Israel continued assassinating targets throughout, and made no improvements in obstacles on the ground. 2. The 2005 ceasefire with Abbas as president (indirectly arranged with Hamas). This much longer ceasefire and the Gaza evacuation, should have created conditions to bring Palestinian life back to normalcy, and to release Gaza from its prison state. Didn’t happen. 3. Throughout. Settlements. Continue. Unimpeded.
- One-channel single-track "diplomacy": Throughout.
The funny thing is, Bushco came into office loudly proclaiming that they did learn the lessons from predecessors on I-P. The lesson they learned was this:
"don’t get too close."
[Aside: To be honest, Clinton did get too close in the sense that he meddled in Israeli politics. Hard to blame him though, given that as soon as Netanyahu was sworn PM in 1996, the first thing he did was fly to Washington and give a Republican stump speech in front of both houses of Congress, during US election season. Anyway, The Clinton-Netanyahu "love affair" was probably the only time in US-Israel history, when the American President openly showed more hostility to the Israeli side. This wasn’t too bad for Israel actually: US pressure brought about the 1998 Wye Accord, arranged to revive Oslo and give Israelis their two quietest years since 1967. Check it out. Fall 1998 to fall 2000. But Clinton was so bought into the internal-politics "Labor good, Likud bad" mindset, that after Barak beat Netanyahu in 1999 he failed to follow up on Barak – who neglected to implement a single major point of Wye - and the rest is a very sad history.]
Ironically, in many ways Bush has eventually gotten closest to I-P than any prior President, and is certainly the one who left the strongest mark upon that country. For example, Bush was the first one to meddle in Palestinian politics (hat tip: Agha and Malley). Let us draw a list of new, previously unheard-of, precedent-setting sins Bush committed on I-P:
- Stacking the Pentagon and State Department halls with "experts" who were in fact narrow-minded zealots closely associated with Israel’s far right (Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Abrams, etc.). Needless to say, Palestinians had no chance of a fair hearing with these creeps around. But how can centrist and left-of-center Israelis expect to be taken seriously by anyone including their own public, when this is what Washington looks like?
- Meddling in Palestinian politics, including a 2007 coup attempt. End result: a politician originally considered a legitimate moderate leader by most Palestinians (Abbas) has been turned into a reviled, powerless puppet – and extremists are empowered.
- Setting up so many ludicrous Potemkin displays of "peace conferences" and "agreements," that even people who really work for peace did not want to say the word anymore, and tried to stay away from these freak shows.
- Pressuring the Israelis not to interfere with Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections (a rare instance of such pressure, applied in part thanks to Hamas adherence to ceasefire), and then – once Hamas wins – spearheading the move to boycott the Palestinian Authority, and making sure the rest of the West follows suit. I don’t even know how to define this travesty. Perhaps just this: the very definition of "travesty". And it certainly hasn’t helped Israel.
Finally, let us not forget the mother of all crimes: invading Iraq to re-design the Middle East. Thereby destabilizing the region and empowering extremists – which helped an Islamic wingnut get elected President of Iran in 2005. Even Israelis – who were initially told by their "analysts" that the Iraq war will be the Second Coming with manna falling from heaven – have finally come around to see that it has been ultimately to their detriment.
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To sum it up, one can see why Israel’s government and generals, and those who suck up to them, loved Bush. During his eight long-long-long-long years, they were like kids in a playground on a summer day in the Far North: all the games you feel like playing, the sun never sets, and unlimited free ice cream. [It will be a very steep, slippery climb for the Obama administration to get this pack of spoiled brats in order now.]
But for the rest of the 11-plus million humans elbowing for room in Israel-Palestine, there has never been a worse American President. Besides the measurable damage outlined in these two diary entries, the "intangibles" have taken an even more severe hit. During the Bush years, Israel-Palestine’s emotional, psychological, social and political terrain has become barren and bleak, devoid of empathy, hope and common decency, and brimming with vicious and destructive urges. As we have just witnessed in the Gaza war.