Friday Jan 01, 2010
Rosner's Domain: Stephen Cohen on why Middle East experts "want to de-emphasize the Palestinian question"
Posted by SHMUEL ROSNER
Dr. Stephen P. Cohen is the President of The Institute for Middle East Peace & Development and the author of the recently published Beyond America's Grasp - A Century of Failed Diplomacy in The Middle East.
Cohen has been a Middle East scholar, analyst and Track Two II negotiator for more than 40 years and has made some 150 trips to the region during that span. He served as Academic Consultant to the National Intelligence Council from 2003-2006 and on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World in 2003. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Lehigh, City University of New York, and at Middle East institutions in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. He speaks and meets regularly with high-level American, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and European officials. Cohen brought about the first secret official negotiations between Israel and the PLO under the supervision of Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres; served as a behind-the-scenes confidant of Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egypt's President Anwar El Sadat in the launching of their peace process; and is a senior member of the United States group engaged in off-the-record dialogue with Syria. He lives in New Jersey.
I sent him a couple of questions:
1. You say in your book (page 219) that "America had never had an adequate understanding of how essential settlement of the Palestinian issue was to the stability of the region". Why is it essential, and how do you answer the many experts who reject all "linkage" theories and who believe that settling the Palestinian issue will hardly change current trends in the ME?
The Palestinian issue remains a core unsolved problem of the Arab period under colonial control. I do not see Zionism as a colonial movement but I do see that the Arabs not only consider the Palestinian question as the most prominent and important remaining vestige of colonialism but that they also blame Zionism as the core of what helped to create a smooth transition between British colonial policy and the American search for a dominant role in the region.
Mr. Rosner, many writers on the Middle East want to de-emphasize the Palestinian question in order to deflect any major responsibility for its solution to Israel. The uniqueness of the Palestinian question is the way that it consistently retains its emotional significance for the Arab masses. The Arab satellite media have chosen to become the televisor of incidents of violence against Palestinians and of the restriction on their freedom of movement. These news clips are repeated incessantly. This emersion of Arab satellite television in imaging Palestinian suffering in almost every newscast puts this issue on the popular mind again and again so that popular consciousness becomes a burden on the regimes.
Public opinions in Middle East countries hold their own regimes responsible for the suffering they see by blaming their own regimes for weakness and for maintaining a strong relationship with the United States even while the U.S. supports Israel and is the essential basis of Israeli continued military control over Palestinian life and military occupation of Palestinian land. In this way, the Palestinian issue not only maintains the conflict between the Arabs and Israel but also exacerbates tensions between the U.S. and virtually every Arab country.
There are important indigenous conflicts, as for example, the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which are unlikely to be resolved by the Palestinian solution. More generally, the Shiite/Sunni schism was born long before Israel existed and is continuing to complicate regional relations until today. The problem within Lebanon especially that of the Maronite control of the Mount Lebanon area has been often exacerbated by Israeli-Palestinian issues but its core lies in un-resolved issues of the Christian presence. The years in which the Palestinians and their military movements were a state within a state were a major source of violence of the Palestinians against Israel and were responded to by Israeli insurgence into Lebanon several times, moreover it was within Lebanon and, before that, within Jordan that the Palestinian movement revived itself after its long hiatus, after 1950. Both Lebanon and Jordan will be much calmer societies with the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but there is no denying that the long period of conflict has helped to generate internal structural problems in both countries that will now not be fully removed by resolving Israeli-Palestinian issues. Thus, in Lebanon, the domestic conflicts of Maronites, Shiites, Sunnis and Druze are a structural problem that will require social re-engineering and reform of governance, both of which will take time, will require new kinds of national dialogue and a different level of political imagination than we have seen in the 20th century.
My point of view is that people have often tried to simplify the relationship between the issue of Israel-Palestine and the many other conflicts of the Middle East. They have strong inter-connections but it is certainly not the case that the solution of one would fully resolve the other conflicts. As for my book, I have written chapters about many countries, as well as a chapter on Israel itself and a separate chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because I want to show that each of these nations, including Israel, has a life of its own, as well as a life in the conflict. Though the conflict has important implications for many of these countries, they each have issues of their own that must be resolved. It is for this reason that I often say that conflict resolution requires attention, not only to the issues between the conflicting parties, but also to issues within each party. So, for example, in Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not fully subsume the internal religious conflict within Israel. However, the Palestinian issue has exacerbated the religious conflict within Israel. The issues of Jerusalem and land of Israel settlement or withdrawal are treated differently by secular Israelis than they are by religious Israelis.
2. Do you think that the current administration has better understanding of the centrality of the Palestinian issue - and how will you rank the administrations' performance (with regard to this issue) in its first year?
President Obama shows a more sophisticated understanding of the importance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian question but, his first attempt to bring a major change in the policies of the parties towards solution has failed. Obama now needs to move away from the exclusive focus on settlements to find a more convincing road to bringing Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate about permanent agreements. This revised approach needs to emphasize showing Israel how more important strategic goals will be served by negotiating agreements than by maintenance or expansion of settlement activities. He will have to show the Palestinians that, under his leadership, Israel will negotiate on the basis of the 1967 borders and will recognize that Jerusalem is important to Islam, not only to Judaism, and is as essential a component of Palestinian society, economy, politics and identity as it is for Israel.
The President will also need to engage the kingdom of Saudi Arabia more effectively and with a greater appreciation of the Islamic dimension of Palestine and other Middle Eastern issues. On one point in particular Obama deserves a high grade. Unlike his predecessors, Obama started to face the Israeli-Palestinian problem in the beginning of his presidency, not in its last year. This gives Obama the opportunity to reshape his approach to the problem as he gains experience in it. We are in a phase of the history of this conflict in which religion has become critical again. Obama recognized that in his Cairo speech when he emphasized interfaith respect and understanding. He has not yet had the freedom of action to have worked in practical ways on this religious dimension.
3. You want the US to "help Israel solve its problem of the occupied territories". What's you recipe for achieving such goal?
I would not dare to claim that I have a recipe, for that you will have to turn to Julia Child. I would say one thing: the U.S. has to think more concretely about Israel's security problem of withdrawing from the West Bank. There can be no opening to bringing any missiles into the West Bank. Missiles in the West Bank would be a threat to Israel’s most important commercial airport, and through it, a threat to Israel’s economy. Missiles in the West Bank could also reach the largest concentrations of Israeli population. It would not be enough to count on the military dominance of the Palestinian authority over Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. In my view, there would have to be a NATO peace force with teeth, and those teeth would almost certainly have to be American. The American military and security establishment have to show willingness and preparedness for such a scenario. In addition to that, the U.S. needs to think through long-term security arrangements for Israel and for the Palestinian state that would become ironclad deterrents to anyone contemplating renewal of hostilities. Needless to say, the U.S. must maintain a high level of diplomatic initiative.
4. Since the book deals with background and history no less than it does with current policies, can you briefly tell us which US administration and President was the closest to "get it right" and had the smartest over-all ME policies (and why)?
In my book, I have shown why I am impressed with the decision of Franklin Roosevelt to go from Yalta, his last summit with Churchill and Stalin, to discussions with King Farouk of Egypt and especially with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. President Harry Truman had the strategic understanding of why the emerging Jewish state of Israel would be an important American ally through the Cold War. But, in the last years, I think George H. W. Bush, the first George Bush, and his secretary of state, James Baker, had the most intelligent perspective. Bush did not permit Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait to stand. Having defeated Saddam, he resisted the temptation of occupying a major Arab and Islamic capital and ended the war. Bush successfully utilized the world mobilization against Saddam to generate the Madrid Peace Conference. He tried, unsuccessfully, but with real muscle to stop Israeli settlements by using the loan guarantees trade-off.
5. In the chapter about Iran you write that "the notion that the US and Iran can somehow overcome this long period of alienation in one step and move directly to a strategic agreement st best is fanciful and at worst could exacerbate an already dangerous situation...".
- Do you feel that the Obama administration's strategy in 2009 was "fanciful"?
- If reaching a strategic agreement is impossible, how would you deal
with the nuclear issue that can't be put aside until relationships
incrementally get better, because this might take time and Iran might
be able to achieve its goal before it happens.
- Do you think that the Iranian regime is on its way down? would you
encourage Iranian opposition leaders to ante up their efforts?
Obama has chosen to engage Iran in a way that could, at its best, create the necessary link between gradual change and strategic understandings. If Iran can respond seriously to the proposal of placing its enriched uranium and its program for enriching more uranium on foreign soil, this could move matters dramatically enough to prevent the nuclear strategic arming of Iran. If Iran rejects this U.N.-backed proposal, the international community is in a much better political position to pressure Iran by sanctions or even by a naval blockade. President Obama chose Bill Burns to negotiate with Iran, an American diplomat who does not fool himself, nor try to mislead anyone else, about the difficulty of his assignment, but he has the integrity. I am confident that by early in 2010 Bill Burns will give an honest report of whether engaging Iran has a real chance of success. If he says there is no chance, the door will be open to justifying other options.
6. You are very critical of American and often Israeli policies - but your book does not reveal much when it comes to your view of Arab failed policies and positions. What do you think should be changed in Arab countries' policies in order to make the role of America as peace maker more fruitful?
I do, in fact, raise serious questions about Arab policies at various points in the book. I emphasize the failure of Palestinian leadership from the early 1920's in not building an effective civil society, not creating a structure of participatory governance and, most of all, for adopting a policy of "all or nothing" toward Zionism. The Palestinians decided under Haj Amin al Husseiny, the Mufti of Jerusalem, that any acknowledgment of the Jewish presence in Palestine is too much. Under his leadership, the Palestinians rejected even the most far-reaching British limitations on Zionism, because those proposals still allowed a measure of legitimacy to the Zionist enterprise. I also point out that their immediate turn to peasant revolt and violent resistance to Zionism when the British forces were too weak to provide law and order, for Arabs and Jews alike, encouraged Zionist leadership to build its own military force which turned out to be the kiss of death for Palestinian Arab control of the land. I criticized Nasser for refusing to cooperate with President John Kennedy when Kennedy offered to open a new chapter in American relations with Egypt. Nasser chose to pursue the Yemeni war against Saudi Arabia and, in doing so, opened the door to Kennedy's arms agreement with Israel, the first American arms agreement with Israel ever.
Most important is my continued emphasis on the failure of the Arab regimes that succeeded the Ottoman Empire to gain legitimacy of governance from their people and rely instead on military dictatorship, traditional monarchies and ineffectual attempts to destroy Israel by war. If you combine these criticisms, you can see that I recommend, first of all, the deepening of the Saudi-led peace initiative, which ended the Khartoum Three "No's" of no peace, no negotiation and no recognition. Second, or even first, I emphasize the Arab regimes must strengthen their legitimacy so that they are not intimidated by extremist opposition groups which are now mainly Islamists.