[lbo-talk] The Palestinian UDI as bargaining chip

[Marv Gandall]

I agree with most of SA's usual thoughtful comments below. What mostly caught my eye was Seigman's reference to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood. It's reasonable to suppose that the Obama administration has dusted the idea off to use as leverage against the Likud government following the latter's damaging refusal to follow the incoming administration's Middle East agenda. The PA subsequently produced a document last August pointing towards a Palestinian UDI if the Israelis did not consent to some form of Palestinian state within two years. It would hardly would have done so without George Mitchell's approval. The foreign policy establishment no longer seems to me to be as monolithic as SA suggests. Seigman and his board are all close to the Obama administration, including Scowcroft and other old guard Republican "realists" who were sidelined by the now discredited foreign policy neocons who surrounded Bush, but the divisions are still there, particularly over Israel.  My own view, FWIW,is that any formal settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis is contingent on a prior rapprochment between the US and Iran.
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On 2010-03-04, at 10:41 AM, SA wrote:


> Marv Gandall wrote:
> 
>> Siegman's suggestion may sound fanciful, but it comes from someone who is a former director of the American Jewish Congress and has close ties to the US foreign policy establishment. Siegman is currently head of the US/Middle East Project, a think tank lobbying for changes in US policy towards Israel, whose board is chaired by Brent Scowcroft and includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Sam Nunn, Carla Hills, Paul Volcker, Thomas Pickering, Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, and James Wolfensohn. The threat may be ultimately traceable to the exasperated Obama administration which has failed to effect any Israeli movement towards even the most enfeebled Palestinian state.
>> 
>> Siegman notably falls short of the calling for a suspension of US aid to Israel, the surest means of forcing Israeli complaince with overriding US interests in the Middle East, but criticism of Israel as an apartheid state from any quarter and for whatever purpose benefits the growing international movement for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions.   
> 
> I think you might be overestimating Siegman's influence. He's been quite radical on the Middle East for years, has been a strident supporter of reconciliation with Hamas, writes often in the LRB, has never been afraid to use the word apartheid. I'm sure he's enthusiastically in favor of suspending US aid to Israel, at least privately.
> 
> The illustrious names on his board aren't evidence of his influence. They're evidence of the fact that the US "establishment" as a group isn't particularly "pro-Israel," in the usual American sense. Scowcroft, Brzezinski, Wolfensohn - these people have always thought the AIPAC line was disastrous. It's domestic politics that keeps their view from winning out, not a lack of establishment support.
> 
> What those names have in common is not so much that they're the establishment (although they are) but that none of them is entertaining any hope for a high-profile White House foreign-policy appointment in the future - hence, they don't have to care about domestic politics. Whereas all the Brookings-type "pro-Israel" establishmentarians (who serve on other people's boards) do hope for high-profile appointments, so they toe the line (or they already believe the line, therefore get the jobs).
> 
> Go to a party full of career foreign service officers - surely the base of the foreign policy establishment - and after a few drinks see what their attitude on US appeasement of Israel over the past 20 years actually is. You might be surprised. Ask them why they don't speak up and see how fast the discussion turns to fundraising, Congressional primaries, lobbyists, etc.
> 
> SA
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