[Man, I never thought I'd see this on the op ed page of the NYT]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/26cohen.html
The New York Times
March 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Fierce Urgency of Peace
By ROGER COHEN
Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to
Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel
he respects.
Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama
late last year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the
president, these foreign policy mandarins have concluded a "Bipartisan
Statement on U.S. Middle East Peacemaking" that should become an
essential template:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/26cohen.html
Deploring "seven years of absenteeism" under the Bush administration,
they call for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state
solution, "a more pragmatic approach toward Hamas," and eventual U.S.
leadership of a multinational force to police transitional security
between Israel and Palestine.
The 10 signatories -- of both the four-page letter and the report --
include Volcker himself, former national security advisers Brent
Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Senator Chuck Hagel, former
World Bank President James Wolfensohn, former U.S. Trade Representative
Carla Hills, former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations Thomas Pickering.
My understanding is their thinking coincides in significant degree with
that of both George Mitchell, Obama's Middle East envoy, and Gen. James
Jones, Obama's national security adviser who worked on security issues
with Israelis and Palestinians in the last year of the Bush
administration, an often frustrating experience.
This overlap gives the report particular significance.
Of Hamas, the target of Israel's futile pounding of Gaza, the eminent
Group of 10 writes that, "Shutting out the movement and isolating Gaza
has only made it stronger and Fatah weaker."
They urge a fundamental change: "Shift the U.S. objective from ousting
Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable
its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third
parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might clarify the
movement's view and test its behavior."
Although this falls short of my own recommendation that the United
States itself -- rather than European allies -- engage with moderate
elements of Hamas, such a shift is critical.
Without Hamas's involvement, there can be no Middle East peace. Mahmoud
Abbas, the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian Authority, is
a beleaguered figure.
The report goes further: "Cease discouraging Palestinian national
reconciliation and make clear that a government that agrees to a
cease-fire with Israel, accepts President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief
negotiator and commits to abiding by the results of a national
referendum on a future peace agreement would not be boycotted or
sanctioned."
In other words, stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel
and watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of,
and remains part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace
deal with Israel, that's workable.
Henry Siegman, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, whose
chairman is Scowcroft and board includes all 10 signatories, told me
that he met recently with Khaled Meshal, the political director of
Hamas in Damascus.
Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not
recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity
government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with
Israel.
De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a
constructive relationship, as Israel knows from the mutual benefits of
its shah-era dealings with Iran.
Israeli governments have negotiated a two-state solution although they
included religious parties that do not recognize Palestinians' right to
statehood.
"But," Siegman said, "if moderates within Hamas are to prevail, a
payoff is needed for their moderation. And until the U.S. provides one,
there will be no Palestinian unity government."
The need for that incentive is reflected in the four core proposals of
what the authors call "a last chance for a two-state Israel-Palestine
agreement." Taken together, they constitute the start of an essential
rebalancing of America's Bush-era Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.
The first is clear U.S. endorsement of a two-state solution based on
the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, agreed land swaps
where necessary. That means removing all West Bank settlements except
in some heavily populated areas abutting Jerusalem -- and, of course,
halting the unacceptable ongoing construction of new ones.
The second is establishing Jerusalem as home to the Israeli and
Palestinian capitals. Jewish neighborhoods would be under Israeli
sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty, with
special arrangements for the Old City providing unimpeded access to
holy sites for all communities.
The third is major financial compensation and resettlement assistance
in a Palestinian state for refugees, coupled with some formal Israeli
acknowledgment of responsibility for the problem, but no generalized
right of return.
The fourth is the creation of an American-led, U.N.-mandated
multinational force for a transitional period of up to 15 years leading
to full Palestinian control of their security.
Obama has told Volcker that he would, in time, meet with the
signatories of the letter. He should do so once an Israeli government
is in place. And then he should incorporate their ideas in laying out
the new realism of American commitment to Palestine and the new price
of American commitment to Israel.