A dozen years ago, former senator George Mitchell helped to broker a peace accord, the "Good Friday agreement," between warring Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The Irish still appear to be grateful. But I'm not so sure about Israelis and Palestinians -- who appear to be doomed to listen to Mitchell draw parallels between their conflict and that of the Irish at every possible opportunity.
"I have in the past referred to my experience in Northern Ireland," Mitchell said at a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday, following the latest round of talks between Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. No kidding. Mitchell has brought up his previous experience as broker in virtually every media briefing he has conducted since his appointment by President Obama in January 2009.
His invariable point is simple, and alarmingly reductionist: Northern Ireland's conflict had dragged on for decades and was considered intractable by most. Then Mitchell began chairing negotiations -- and in less than two years, a deal was struck. It follows that Israelis and Palestinians can also overcome their seeming intractable differences in less than two years.
Mitchell reported on Wednesday that his Middle East clients are actually ahead of the Irish timetable: "The negotiations there lasted 22 months," he said -- a fact that the press has been reminded of numerous times. "And it was many, many months into the process before there was a single, serious, substantive discussion on the major issues that separated the parties.
"In this case, within a matter of literally days since this process began, the leaders have... engaged directly, vigorously, seriously in the most difficult and -- in what are among the most difficult and sensitive issues that they will confront." Mitchell cheerily concluded: "This is a strong indicator of their sincerity and seriousness of purpose."
Netanyahu and Abbas no doubt were pleased to hear how favorably they compare with Gerry Adams and David Trimble. So far, of course, they haven't seemed to make much progress on those "sensitive issues"; in fact, they have been rejecting each other's positions in public.
But that shouldn't be too worrisome, according to Mitchell's Irish model. "I’ll return, if I might, to my experience in Northern Ireland," he said at an Aug. 20 briefing at the State Department. "The main negotiation lasted for 22 months. During that time, the effort was repeatedly branded a failure. I was asked at least dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times when I was leaving because the effort had failed.
"And of course, if the objective is to achieve a peace agreement, until you do achieve one, you have failed to do so. In a sense, in Northern Ireland, we had about 700 days of failure and one day of success."
Okay, so we need only wait for the day when Netanyahu and Abbas suddenly "say yes instead of no," as Mitchell put it about the Irish in a press conference last year. But what about the extremists in the region, like Hamas, which have vowed to violently disrupt any movement toward an accord? Mitchell's Irish analogy covers that, too.
"The reality is that in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, the political party that is affiliated with the IRA, did not enter the negotiations until after 15 months had elapsed," Mitchell told reporters Aug. 31 at the White House. "And only then because they had met two central conditions that had been established. The first was a ceasefire, and the second was a publicly stated commitment to what became known as the Mitchell principles....
"So there are analogous -- not identical and not directly comparable -- conditions that have been set forth by the Quartet with respect to Hamas. And if there is movement to accept those principles, as ocurred with Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland, why then, of course, they would be welcome."
So Hamas will follow the path of Sinn Fein and the IRA? That seems a bit of a stretch for a movement that two weeks ago proudly claimed credit for the murder of six Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Mitchell's observation about the leaders' embrace of serious issues also appears a little strained: After all, Israelis and Palestinians have already discussed those same issues in multiple sets of negotiations dating back to 1992 -- most of them involving Abbas, Netanyahu, or both. The problem has not been that they won't take on the issues, but that they have been chronically unable to bridge their differences on them.
Mitchell himself has taken to pointing out that "circumstances are very different" between the Middle East and Ireland and that "one must be careful about transferring principles," as he put it Wednesday. Yet he keeps doing it. I can't help but wonder if his memories of past glories are clouding his judgment of current events.
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