TIME IS against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. With 10 months left in the Bush administration, the opportunity for a Palestinian and Israeli peace may soon pass her by. During November of last year, in Annapolis, Maryland, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to seek a peace plan by the end of the Bush term. With a jaded Israeli and Arab public and a heavy dose of skepticism from diplomats, the prospect of a perpetual peace seems like nothing more than an optimist's dream. But when David Makovsky, a senior fellow and program director at The Washington Institute, spoke at the University on Tuesday, he reminded us that pragmatism can eventually lead to a lasting peace. ?
In a public discussion sponsored by Hoos For Israel, Makovsky spoke about the role of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Like Middle East historian David Lesch and other prominent scholars of international politics, Makovsky does not see the Arab-Israeli tension as an ancient religious struggle.Instead, he persuasively frames it as a modern, political conflict. He views the ongoing bloodshed as a violent and horrible tragedy, but one that can eventually be reconciled.
With refreshing honesty and fairness, Makovsky never framed his talk as a necessary battle of opposing camps, but spoke only of human dignity and enduring reconciliation. The president of Hoos For Israel, Yakov Medinets, said this after the event: "we want to promote a solution that is balanced and able to last ... what needs to be achieved is peace."
Tied into all of these ideas is the role the United States should take in the peace process. As a superpower situated across the globe, America is not burdened with the violence that many Israelis and Arabs constantly face. This separation from conflict gives American diplomats an optimism and hope that many Middle Eastern politicians no longer possess. Where the political moderates of Israel and Palestine are criticized by extremists, Americans like Rice offer diplomatic courage for these leaders to stand behind. When Rice pressures Israel to make their West Bank checkpoints more open and efficient, Abbas will be pressured to take responsibility for the security risks that such opening-up will create. And as Middle Eastern public support erodes from this kind of controversial, progressive policy, potentially positive outcomes will help to bring it back.
The problem again, is time. The longer it takes Abbas and Olmert to create a peace plan, the less likely such plans will actually be enacted; because while moderates are quietly negotiating, rejectionists are loudly preaching resistance. According to Makovsky, one of the political slogans of Hamas was: "better three years of resistance than ten years of negotiation." And for both the Arab and Israeli general public, the long, drawn out talks seem like a re-run of the past thirty years -- of failed attempts and empty chatter. If the peace talks begin to disintegrate, or no concrete results are produced, Makovsky fears that Abbas and Olmert will be unable to win re-election. If pragmatic moderation fails, future attempts at reconciliation will be crowded out by harsher, more extreme alternatives.
But even with the slow pace of peace, a mutual respect between the two leaders endures. And the issues that are being negotiated -- Palestinian refugees, borders and Jerusalem -- are the very issues that form the core and identity of this crisis. It seems that for once, the matters that are the most sensitive and important are the same ones that are being discussed.
Where past peace plans called for a complete withdrawal of occupied territory, this plan recognizes that smaller steps have to be taken first. Makovsky believes that if Abbas and Olmert can improve life on the ground for Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, the two leaders can use their positive record to propose a broader peace involving Gaza and Jerusalem. Makovsky thinks that with improved security and infrastructure, Olmert and Abbas can build political momentum, win their re-elections, and secure more time to build peace.
Since both leaders have pledged to seek a plan, it seems unlikely that deep-set ideological differences are holding the Annapolis plan back. The slowness of this particular peace process can more accurately be attributed to the ongoing hostility between the two peoples and the complexity of negotiating incremental, detailed steps.Still, it will probably be the next American president who will have to pick up where Rice has left off.
In a way that may be foreign to us, to say that something is "history" while living in the Middle East is to mean that it is alive and present. The resentment and blood, so common in that part of the world, is rooted in a modern history that haunts Israelis and Arabs every day. But their recent history, their present, their occupation and terror seems more intertwined than it ever has been. Perhaps in their frustration, in their loss, in their resilient suffering, they have taken one step closer to each other.
Hamza Shaban's column appears on Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hshaban@cavalierdaily.com.
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