I’ve noted the irrational nature of believing in the “Middle East Peace Process” before. Now former Presidential adviser (and former peace process true believer) Aaron David Miller has penned an article demolishing the Middle East peace process for the delusion and sham it is.
Some choice quotes:
Etymologists tell us that the word “religion” may come from the Latin root religare, meaning to adhere or bind. It’s a wonderful derivation. In both its secular and religious manifestations, faith is alluring and seductive precisely because it’s driven by propositions that bind or adhere the believer to a compelling set of ideas that satisfy rationally or spiritually, but always obligate.
And so it has been and remains with America’s commitment to Arab-Israeli peacemaking over the past 40 years, and certainly since the October 1973 war gave birth to serious U.S. diplomacy and the phrase “peace process” (the honor of authorship likely goes to a brilliant veteran State Department Middle East hand, Harold Saunders, who saw the term appropriated by Kissinger early in his shuttles). Since then, the U.S. approach has come to rest on an almost unbreakable triangle of assumptions — articles of faith, really. By the 1990s, these tenets made up a sort of peace-process religion, a reverential logic chain that compelled most U.S. presidents to involve themselves seriously in the Arab-Israeli issue. Barack Obama is the latest convert, and by all accounts he too became a zealous believer, vowing within days of his inauguration “to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its Arab neighbors.”
Like all religions, the peace process has developed a dogmatic creed, with immutable first principles. Over the last two decades, I wrote them hundreds of times to my bosses in the upper echelons of the State Department and the White House; they were a catechism we all could recite by heart. First, pursuit of a comprehensive peace was a core, if not the core, U.S. interest in the region, and achieving it offered the only sure way to protect U.S. interests; second, peace could be achieved, but only through a serious negotiating process based on trading land for peace; and third, only America could help the Arabs and Israelis bring that peace to fruition.
As befitting a religious doctrine, there was little nuance.
He also points out that America has three much more pressing concerns in the Middle East, each of which is more important than the Arab-Israeli conflict:
First, there are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of Americans are in harm’s way and are likely to be for some time to come. Add to the mix the dangerous situation in Pakistan, and you see volatility, threat, and consequences that go well beyond Palestine. Second, though U.S. foreign policy can’t be held hostage to the war on terror (or whatever it’s now called), the 9/11 attacks were a fundamental turning point for an America that had always felt secure within its borders. And finally there’s Iran, whose nuclear aspirations are clearly a more urgent U.S. priority than Palestine. Should sanctions and/or diplomacy fail, the default position — military action by Israel or even the United States — can’t be ruled out, with galactic consequences for the region and the world. In any event, it’s hard to imagine Netanyahu making any big decisions on the peace process until there’s much more clarity on what he and most Israelis regard as the existential threat of an Iran with a bomb.
Read the whole thing, but keep one thing in mind: All in all, I think Miller is entirely too optimistic. He thinks some form of progress might still be made by American negotiators. I don’t.