I was able to follow US-Mideast diplomatic developments at close range and consult with many knowledgeable players and analysts, I sense that the Arab-Israeli peace process in the Middle East (now focused on the energetic attempt to launch Palestinian-Israeli “proximity talks”) is as much about political process in the United States as it is about diplomatic moves abroad.
This may not be welcomed by those who want Washington to offer a peace plan and use its influence to push the Arabs and Israelis to negotiate a permanent agreement. It is, though, a reminder of how power is exercised in democratic societies, where decision-making reflects the intersection among national politicians, presidential leadership, special interests, electoral considerations, the foreign policy bureaucracy, and the impact of other American global interests. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government and its proxies and supporters in the US are actively engaged in playing the game of democratic power politics inside the United States, while the Arab world is not.
The outcome of recent developments – especially American-Israeli tensions – remains unclear, but one thing is rather obvious so far: the last year has seen significant new changes in the tone and substance of American government policies regarding Arab-Israeli peace-making and wider Middle Eastern issues, mostly manifested to date at the level of official rhetoric. Policies on the ground follow more slowly, because they need one or all of the three elements that remain missing from the mix today: explicit approval by the US Congress, less formal consensus within the power elite in Washington and major American cities, and the active engagement of all the core players in the Middle East.
The significant new developments include: President Barack Obama’s swift moves to re-establish the US as an active mediator among Israel and the Palestinians, and his persistence after Arabs and Israelis both flatly rebuffed his initial proposals last autumn; his administration’s explicit and repeated calls for a freeze in Israeli settlements as a critical first step towards starting the “proximity talks”; the parallel public expressions of concern by top political and military figures that, a) the Arab-Israeli adversely impacts US foreign policy and military aims in the region, and, b) resolving this conflict is in the national strategic interest of the United States; and, the real debate under way in Washington, often in public, about whether and how the US should proceed on promoting Arab-Israeli peace talks, and where this matter falls within the wider constellation of all American priorities in the region (energy flows, Iran, terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan).
Policy, however, does not happen in a vacuum, and we are witnessing these days the fascinating epic of how centers and instruments of political power within the United States jostle for advantage, even on an issue that the American president and his top military brass proclaim is of vital national strategic importance at a moment when the US military is widely extended throughout the region. In democratic societies, unlike the entire Arab world, a politician or national leader behaves according to several impulses: the intangible element of character, or charisma, and the very tangible elements of political self-interest and raw national political cost-benefit analyses.
The combination of Obama’s character and his sense of how important it is for American national interests to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict have propelled his moves in the past 15 months; his decisions from now on will be driven mainly by calculations of political self-interest for him and his Democratic Party in an election year, and whether he generates enough serious, tangible responses from Arabs and Israelis to continue with an initiative that could expose the United States to charges of diplomatic incompetence, naïveté or irresoluteness. These forces will be further influenced by developments in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, and his continued domestic record, such as passing financial regulation or immigration policy reforms.
The last 15 months have confirmed for those who had any doubts that US foreign policy, for good or ill, is an extension of US domestic politics, an arena where Israel has real clout while the Arab world generates mainly derision. The idea that the US can “impose” a peace settlement in the Middle East is not realistic, when the president struggles and compromises to pass legislation on critical domestic issues. This should not detract from the historic changes under way in the Obama approach to Arab-Israeli peace-making; rather, it should make us understand that whether the changes in the rhetoric and style of the past 15 months will continue to translate into real foreign-policy changes will be determined by the hard calculations of political incumbency, electoral expectations, and national cost-benefit analyses, rather than personal sentiment, or a commitment to ethics, justice, or the international rule of law.
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