All posts tagged george mitchell

I have thought for some time now that the Obama administration’s experiment with George Mitchell had failed.

Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell and his team made two key errors: they believed that the near term pluses of an ultimate deal between Palestinians and Israelis would outweigh the political benefits of intransigence by both respective governments — and they felt that helping Palestinian moderates deliver resources to their people would help them achieve a legitimacy competitive against Hamas. They were wrong on both counts.

Mitchell’s “too much too late” strategy of trying to prop up Mahmoud Abbas and to make him — and moderates on general — look like they were political winners and could deliver results to their people badly backfired. Mitchell engineered with both Abbas and Palestine Prime Minister Salam Fayyad the most pro-American, pro-Israel deal making government imaginable — and yet Israel was able to shrug them off. Hamas sat on the sidelines of Mitchell’s efforts, waiting for a knock on the door that never came, and watched Israel and Palestine peacemaking efforts collapse — while Hamas’ own legitimacy rose in the eyes of frustrated Palestinians.

One senior Defense official once said to me that Mitchell always talked in terms of forty year cycles — and that this official wanted to know if we were still in year 1 of that cycle, or year 39. He said that when Mitchell plodded slowly along describing his strategy, this official wanted to “punch a pencil” through his own head.

Mitchell failed to inspire the Palestinians and Israelis to embrace their long term interests over short term political itches — and he lost the faith and support of his colleagues inside the administration.

To some degree this was inevitable. Dennis Ross became the person in the administration that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preferred to communicate with, circumventing entirely George Mitchell and his team. When Obama failed to insist that only Mitchell be the lead and allowed a bifurcated operation, Netanyahu has been able to play one side off the other.

Mitchell has had almost no contact with Netanyahu over the speech that the Israeli Prime Minister will soon be giving in Washington — and the next big Obama speech on political change in the Middle East/North Africa region will have none of Mitchell’s DNA in it.

It’s regrettable that Mitchell failed as he is an outstanding public servant who has served the country well in the past. I had high hopes for him when he came in — and hoped he would soon understand that the Israel-Palestine divide was not like the Northern Ireland peace process because there was an urgency and global severity to the Israel-Palestine fault line that had a consequential weight geostrategically that Northern Ireland never did.

I admire Mitchell, but the administration — if it is going to continue to give any focus to the Israel-Palestine issue — needs to cease half-way efforts and needs to stop allowing Netanyahu to set the temperature and terms in the region.

Obama needs to lay out his own expectations of a political outcome and have the parties react to that — not naively wait for them to come to terms with each other. They never will and their political institutions cannot bear the pressure of such an agreement. Stakeholders in the region must adopt the Obama parameters and become the seducers and enforcers of an ultimate deal.

That’s what needs to happen. Many in the administration know it — but the politicos in the Obama White House have been the most recalcitrant. It’s a tough knot for them politically.

But until there is a deeper strategy, with broad stakeholder support in the region, and something that can withstand inevitable Congressional criticism — the Israel-Palestine ulcer will continue to worsen and will eventually animate the frustrations of a new set of leaders throughout the Middle East.

Photo: [U.S. Department of State, Flickr]

George Mitchell was appointed, with much fanfare and to the delight of many observers (including this one) on President Barack Obama’s second day in office, to the thankless task of trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

With far less fanfare, and an air of gloom instead of anticipation, it has now ended.

His term of office was supposed to be two years; in actual time, his tenure lasted a bit longer, but in practical terms it was considerably shorter.

Over a year ago, when it became apparent that Dennis Ross, with whom Mitchell did not see eye to eye, was working his own well-established channels with the Israelis (and in particular with Benjamin Netanyahu’s close friend and adviser, Yitzhak Molcho), Mitchell was already being sidelined.

At this point, he hasn’t been to the region in five months, and since his appointment, there’s been about a month of actual discussions between the parties.

So his resignation is rather like the end of a lopsided basketball game whose outcome has not been in doubt for some time, and the string has just finally played out; in and of itself, the resignation means very little.

What is more telling are the responses to Mitchell quitting and the timing of it.

On the responses, what could be more illuminating than these two responses?

Netanyahu: “[I regret] that the Palestinians refused to come to the talks Mitchell was working to promote, piled on an endless number of preconditions that made his job more difficult, and in the end even joined with Hamas.”

Nabil Sha’ath, senior PLO official: “The man was not given any support and he failed. I don’t really blame him. He found himself without any initiative or ability to move ahead. He found himself doing a futile job. I liked the man. He is honest and hard-working, with lots of experience.”

So Israel blames the Palestinians and the Palestinians, who take Israeli intransigence as a given, blame Obama. Just another day at the office.

But it does sum up the image of futility that Mitchell’s tenure will now come to symbolize. Israel really doesn’t want to abandon the West Bank, all the more so now because they know there’s no way to do that without including Gaza in a Palestinian state anymore.

The Palestinian leaders, for their part, have been rudely awakened to two facts: one, that they can make enormous concessions even on Jerusalem and refugees and it will not be enough for Israel. And their own population is not at all pleased even by what they have offered.

With Obama following his predecessors in his refusal to put any serious pressure on Israel while threats to aid to the PA, which is far more crucial to them than the much greater aid is to Israel, are easily bandied about, there is no hope for a resuscitation of a peace process that remotely resembles the one that is now buried. That may be for the best, but it certainly rendered Mitchell completely useless.

Mitchell’s letter of resignation was dated April 6, yet it was only made public this past Friday. And is it a coincidence that Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama ended up being scheduled for the same day as Mitchell’s resignation takes effect?

There’s a lot of room for speculation here, and a lot is being done. But it seems to me that the seemingly coincidental timing sends Netanyahu a message: we won’t play this in public, but it was you that made Mitchell’s job so futile.

Whether or not that’s true, what is clear is that Mitchell’s resignation is another factor that will make it more difficult for American-brokered talks to recommence. And even Netanyahu knows that, whether or not he really wants talks to go anywhere, their complete absence for an extended period will increase pressure on Israel.

Without talks, Israel and the Palestinians invite greater international scrutiny and involvement, and that’s a scenario that has absolutely no upside for Israel. And clearly, if there is no peace process, whether genuine or just public theater, there certainly will be no way to prevent the Palestinians from pursuing their statehood vote at the UN General Assembly in September.

That vote will most certainly be won by the Palestinians, putting Israel in the position of having to defend its actions not just against the population of an occupied territory (however “disputed” Israel would prefer it being seen as) but against a recognized member state of the United Nations.

This is the position Israel has put itself in. It is the situation Obama is going to have to address, whether in his speech later this week or the one he is expected to give in August.

In the end, Mitchell’s departure means that Obama no longer has the option of simply performing the Oslo play that he and his two predecessors in the Oval Office have allowed to run long after it should have closed.

It will no longer play in Arab capitals that can ill afford to be seen as indifferent or, worse, an obstacle to resolving the Palestinian question. And the PLO/PA seems no longer willing to take the stage in this theater any more.

With Congress in full AIPAC-driven mode and a re-election campaign for Obama just kicking off, the pressure on Obama to continue to support Israel’s occupation is at full force, and never mind the massive damage these policies are inflicting on Israel and on the US’ ability to maintain good relations in the Arab world, let alone the devastating effects on the Palestinians.

But more than ever, Obama’s choice is a very stark one: either go along with a politically motivated and strategically bereft Congress or do what is obviously in the US’, Israel’s, the Palestinians’ and the whole Arab world’s best interests and present an American peace proposal that, whatever leaders say, can be accepted, or at least worked with, by both mainstream Palestinians and Israelis.