Amotz Asa-el
Bitterlemons (Opinion)
October 22, 2007 - 11:50am
http://www.americantaskforce.org/AGAINST%20ALL%20ODDS


Kissinger, said author Joseph Heller, brought peace to Vietnam the way Napoleon brought it to Europe: by losing. Now a variation on this theme may slowly be emerging in the Middle East.

No, the Middle East will not emerge from Gaza's surrender to Hamas as pacified as Europe did from Napoleon's trouncing in Waterloo, and no, there is no diplomatic genius of Kissinger's or Prince Metternich's caliber waiting in the wings. It's only that the world's most conflicted region has become crowded with losers whose quest to accomplish something, anything, may make them write some history, against all odds.

With President George W. Bush up to his waist in his Iraqi campaign's bloody aftermath, PM Ehud Olmert up to his shoulders with his Lebanese war's political fallout and President Mahmoud Abbas up to his nose in his tragic career's Gazan epilogue, the three now share a tunnel in bad need of a ray of light.

Personally, Olmert's situation is the most precarious. Unlike Bush, who cannot run for reelection in fall 2008, and Abbas, who says he will not run in the early election he may soon call, the Israeli premier intends to run in Israel's next election that may take place next year, some two years ahead of schedule. Currently, Israelis say they will vote for anyone but Olmert, whose approval ratings have been in single digits for the past year.

Paradoxically, the more the three's political flames wane, the more their diplomatic opportunity shines. Though stemming from different sources--Bush is focused on his legacy, Abbas on his people's cohesion and Olmert on his political survival--the three share a sense of urgency as they prepare for the peace conference Bush has called for the fall.

In and of itself, the idea of a Middle East peace conference goes back to the 1970s when diplomats on both sides of the Cold War hoped it would make Israel cede land and its enemies embrace peace. In Israel, the idea was originally anathema to the Right, where it was suspect as a ploy to kill the idea of Greater Israel. When such a conference finally convened, in Madrid in 1991, Israel was actually led by ultra-hawk Yitzhak Shamir and the conference generated no deals.

Since then, however, Israel's consensus has shifted leftwards as it abandoned Gaza and fenced off much of the West Bank. Similarly, Palestinian Authority leaders who in summer 2000 at Camp David displayed a diplomatic maximalism followed by massive violence now realize that if they don't quickly produce a state, Gaza's destitution and fanaticism may well arrive at their doorstep. And as for America, the White House must soon deliver something that offsets its failures in Iraq and shortens the gap that currently yawns between Bush's original visions and the Middle East's ultimate realities.

Still, chances of a breakthrough remain questionable.

In Israel, the missile attacks that followed the unilateral retreats from Gaza and Lebanon have dented Olmert's stature as a leader, let alone a statesman. Any deal he tries to deliver will now face much more effective opposition from the Right than it might have faced prior to his Lebanese misadventure.

Abbas' situation is not much better. True, he may no longer seek reelection but, sympathies aside, he is now seen as the man who got lost in Yasser Arafat's shoes, presiding over a spectacular failure to keep the Palestinian people intact. Any deal he proposes will inevitably include compromises that Hamas can be counted on to attack with fury and efficiency.

For Bush, the conference is about salvaging the great vision he unveiled for the Middle East in June 2002, when he diagnosed despotism as the Middle East's illness, ruled that freedom is the prognosis and presented himself as the surgeon. Since then, his operating table has hosted thousands of American GIs and Iraqi civilians while the freedom, prosperity and stability he promised never arrived.

Yet all this weakness paradoxically creates clout as all three men, including Olmert, have little left to lose and may end up taking risks--Olmert territorially, Abbas politically and Bush financially--they might otherwise have avoided. Indeed, were it up to these three embattled leaders Palestinian statehood would arrive within months. Unfortunately, it is also up to the Islamists whose audacity the three have experienced, each in his turn, firsthand and unprepared.

Now Bush, Abbas and Olmert clearly know who the enemy is and what to bring to battle with it. What they don't know is whether they still have the time and following that such a confrontation demands. Early elections in Israel and the PA will of course tell them the answer to this question, but they may come to regret asking it in the first place.




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