Aaron Miller on Israel-Palestine: It's Pretty Hopeless
It's not good when someone who has devoted his entire career to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians sounds like he is giving up.
But Aaron Miller seems to be doing just that. And that is scary because Aaron Miller is invariably right. He is also trusted by Israelis and Palestinians and by the six Secretaries of State for whom he worked.
He says this "But to imagine that we've seen the end of this war is to believe in the peace process tooth fairy. And that means - to use the African proverb - when elephants fight, the grass dies. And the grass in this case tragically is Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis in border communities, and assistance efforts. Talk about throwing good money after bad. But on balance, I suppose there's a rough compensation here: America helped pay for the Israelis to blast a fair amount of Gaza; I guess it's only right that we help defray the costs to rebuild it. In short, without an effort to put the Palestinian humpty dumpty together again with a unified view of governance and negotiations as well as a coherent strategy to achieve Palestinian national aspirations, it's hard to see how there can be sustainable development in Gaza. And doing that is beyond the skill set of anyone I've talked to lately."
Check it out.
Last time I heard Miller speak was circa 2004, and he was down to hoping that by working with Palestinian and Israeli kids, maybe something could be done that might bear fruit in a couple of generations.
Sounds like he's even given up on that, now.
March 10, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
i dont blame him.
the atmosphere in israel now especially among the young is towards war and more war till all the arabs are out of israel and all the palestinians are dead or enslaved.
heres a piece well worth your time
http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/
March 10, 2009 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is the attitude toward Israel among the young Palestinians? Is there some reason why you are only evaluating one side of the balance?
March 10, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes its called balance and showing the other side.
Something people like you are afraid to do or prefer to ignore.
March 10, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not called balance when you only show one side, which is what you did.
March 10, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's become so hopeless that I don't wish to read about it. Yet I do.
This is what happens when religion runs amuck.
March 10, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not religion, it's two different societies trying to live on the same piece of land.
Israel has managed to destroy Palestinian national aspirations without winning any security for itself.
March 10, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you single out Israel for blame, are you implying that Palestinians, like children, have no responsibility for their own actions?
March 10, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Progressive Conscience asks When you single out Israel for blame, are you implying that Palestinians, like children, have no responsibility for their own actions? I'm not "eatbees" but no -- I'd be implying that the Palestinians for 60 years have lacked the power to act as badly as the Israelis. Responsiblity is a function of power.
Equivalence is impossible when one side has all the guns and wilingness to use them and the other side has all the dispossession, misery and death.
March 10, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bombs, rockets, suicide belts, even ballots, are powerful tools that Palestinians have misused. Israel has suffered enormous amounts of misery and death, as you surely know despite your callous comment.
Both sides have responsibility here. To act like only Israel is responsible is deeply condescending to the Palestinians. It is reminiscent of those pseudo-progressives who believe that African Americans have no responsibility for improving their own state here in America because they have no power. Such attitudes have the potential to hold the powerless back far longer than an honest acknowledgment of the failings of both sides.
March 10, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Still willing to bet here ... the situation will not improve in one year, five years or ten years from now.
Does anyone want to take my money ?
Hopeless: all the reasoning and logical analysis is useless because people there are actuated by brain-stem processes. The front of the brain is ignored when the amygdala is in charge.
The people who hate are running the show ... and it is now a very boring side show.
March 10, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
BUSH TO CHIRAC: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East"
FROM THE ARTICLE "When God Spoke to Me": .....During those private interviews, Jacque Chirac had purportedly confessed to the journalist some personal remarks regarding the faith of George W. Bush that seemed quite daunting. He told the journalist that the latter called him twice beseeching him basically, in the name of their common “spiritual faith”, i.e., “Christianity”, to join the collective effort of the coalition being formed to wage a preemptive war against Iraq. In his first telephonic call he reportedly said to Jacque Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East” and then added that “the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled”.....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14890
March 10, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Depressing indeed.
But allow me the point out that Miller's message is quite similar to what the oft (and unfairly, I'd add) maligned BradtheDad has said here many times. While bold action would be welcome, perhaps the best we can hope for are steps to put the Palestinian economy and polity back together -no easy task, and one made particularly difficult given that, as Miller aptly observes, "Hamas legitimacy rests on armed struggle."
March 10, 2009 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"perhaps the best we can hope for are steps to put the Palestinian economy and polity back together"
AG - I had to laugh when I read this. Israel has no intention of letting the Palestinians either in Gaza or the West Bank have any kind of viable Life. The talk in Israel now is -we've got the Palestinians demoralized and on the run now is the time to keep pushing them so they either leave or go peacefully to their autonomous reservations.
This is the direction the train is running and no one is strong enough to derail it. Within 10 years the Zionists will have won Judea and Samaria and the Palestinians will be consigned to the same fate as American Indians, except for citizenship.
March 10, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
JD:
I know you are familiar with Israel and read with great interest your post about your experience. I always listen to what you have to say on these subjects.
All I can say is that your experience with Israel is completely different than mine. Granted, I have rarely deviated from the Tel Aviv/Haifa axis and have only the slightest contact with the religious and the Russian communities that give the right its greatest support. But even among the most ardent right-wingers I have encountered, the mood is of weary resignation with war. The sentiment could be described as, "we've tried to offer the Palestinians their state. They will never accept us. The only language they understand is force." (I'm not endorsing this viewpoint, by the way). But in my anecdotal experience, there is no desire to drive the Palestinians out and take over the West Bank as you seem to suggest. My experience is borne out by opinion polls showing that most Israelis recognize that they cannot indefinitely rule over the West Bank and Gaza. Even the noxious Lieberman favors giving up most of the West Bank as part of a peace agreement.
Also, FYI, I responded to your comment on the previous thread.
March 10, 2009 11:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Plus, Chas Freeman just got blocked. I've never been more proud to live in Israel Part II.
Oops, I mean the United States. Why did I slip and call it Israel? Strange mistake for one to make...
March 10, 2009 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
If there will ever be peace in Palestine it will come not less than between two and three generations after the last Palestinian has been shot dead by the IDF. It is a constant source of amazement that the Israeli generals believe that a military strategy that punishes the occupied population by killing civilian men, women and children will make Israel more secure. Such a mindset astonishingly ignores the hatred inculcated in every Arab family who suffers a killing an/ or the razing of their home by heavily armed troops and/or the destruction of their olive groves and the curtailment of their water supplies. I can only assume that these military men know little about life and people other than the use of power against a virtually unarmed civilian population. That they believe that their acts today ensures the security of the Jewish State for their children and grandchildren - is extraordinary in its naivety. Theodor Herzl would be incredulous that his down-trodden and maligned people should have transmogrified into this brutal oppressor who sees no wrong in their actions but can justify killing of hundreds of innocent women and children in GAZA, as merely 'collateral damage'.
March 11, 2009 3:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why amazement? That's what generals think. All generals. To a hammer everything looks like a nail.
It's counter productive defeatism to give up.
Fix the things that can be fixed .
Improve the lives of the Gazans and of Palestinians in the diaspora where-ever. Water and power that works, schools and hospitals , ditto. Support their export industries.
Like "chickensoup" can't hurt , might help.
And if it doesn't, it will be a good thing for every human being who benefits from it.
What absolutely won't help is causing the Gazans or any other Palestinians to live lives of misery in the hopes that tha will turn them against their leaders.
March 11, 2009 7:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sad and pathetic. While we pay to rebuild the same lace we helped destroy, Netanyahu will be furiously working to annex more and more of the West Bank so that the prospects of the 2 State Solution will officially be dead. This pattern of de facto ethnic cleansing will be a stain on the reputations of the United States and Israel for a century; a century that will see the precipitous decline of both of our countries and some would argue, rightfully so. We have made our beds...
March 11, 2009 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I said previously, there will be no peace...the cultural reality among the Arabs is pre-industrial, pre-technological, misogynistic, xenophobic and racist...and it will take another century before the grand-children of today's Arabs have been filtered through the West (with all of its paradoxical qualities of liberalism and imperialism, and its own xenophobia, racism and, etc, etc) before they return as (insert irony here) Arab-Zionists who have the money and cultural zietgiest to build a "democratic" Palestine...(which will only spin out a new set of problems for people to deal with because even the emergence of a "democratic" Palestine will not stop people from remembering and dreaming and scheming...)
until then, the world remains in thrall to oil and oil-money and between the Scylla and Charybdis of cultural ossification and oil, the Palestinians are screwed...as is everyone else...
A democratic Palestinian state would spark a full-blown Palestinian civil war which could easily bring in indirect or direct power from Israel, Syria and Jordan* as well as money (paid to both sides) by the oil-thugs...
Should the "democratic" forces win and create an independent relatively democratic Palestine such a state would either have to utterly compromise democratic principles to maintain alliances with dictatorial Arab regimes, or be isolated from and by said regimes who could not abide a free Arab state as it would uncomfortably highlight their repressive qualities and highlight the razors edge reality of Euro-American hypocrisy in which we talk about freedom and support dictators...
The situation in the West Bank and Gaza is odious...and it exists within and can not be understood outside of the wider and equally odious context of the interconnection of all things...the cheeseburger you eat today will be a calamity next week...in Gaza or Tel Aviv...which like a slap-fest in a Three Stooges short, will snap from a, to b, to c, as Moe Larry and Curly (and sometimes, Schemp) smack each other...until the next "thing" (i.e., the next event) starts the gyre to spinning again...
In other words, the Middle East is a Graham Green novel...the Comedians meets Our Man in Havana meets The Quiet American...
So it goes...
* and why are the "Jordanians" so out of the loop publicly...because 60% of the population of "Jordan" is "Palestinian" and a "Palestinian" state in the "West Bank" would eventually economically and culturally absorb and eliminate the Hashimite aristocracy...but not without yet another massive blood-letting...which would easily draw in Syria and Israel...and everyone else...so...so it goes...
March 11, 2009 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you came home and found your wife in bed with the heating-repair man – and he insisted that they were just talking - would he convince you, as he pulled on his pants?
When AIPAC supporters insist that accusations of undue influence on Washington and on US foreign policy are just imaginary nonsense – are you convinced, as you and other taxpayers fund Israel’s illegal settlement expansion, demolition of East Jerusalem homes and its continuing wars of occupation?
When Israel insists that Iran is within 4 weeks, or whatever, of building a nuclear bomb – are you convinced that the rhetoric is not just propaganda intended, by the already most powerful nuclear state in the Middle East, to incite the US to join the next world war?
When Iran is hit with nuclear warheads, and the attacker(s) insist it is in self-defence and not to retain hegemony in the region – will you be convinced, as the price of your gas doubles and the Dow Jones falls below 4000?
Think quietly about it - are you really that gullible or are you an educated, sensible guy (or gal) who can recognize a duck, as it waddles across the road in front of your house?
For myself, I want no part of the increasing drumbeat to war by those who inevitably will stay out of harm’s way themselves. By those who are adept at using words to sway political opinion and provoke military action – but who have never carried a rifle or gone without food. These are the people we need to beware of – because they can, and will, shorten our lives.
Postscript:
I have a close family member who has now left Israel after over 30 years. He has no regrets about his decision, and neither have I.
March 11, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Despite your rhetoric, I have no doubt that if things get bad again for Jews in Europe (God forbid), as they have periodically for many centuries, Israel would welcome its ungrateful son back with open arms.
March 11, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you haven't read it already, read Aaron David Miller's Much Too Promised Land, an insider's view of the history of Israel-Palenstinian-US negotiations. Miller was part of the inner MIddle East negotiating team under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II and also interviewed Kissinger, Carter and James Baker as part of the book. Absolutely fascinating book. Miller has strong connections to both the Palestinians and the Israelis (his parents were friends of Ben-Gurion) and he brings a much needed sense of history and reality to his writing. Despite the Israeli ties, he got some flak a few years ago for writing that the US had not been an honest broker in the peace process and too much an attorney for Israel. He speaks with authority and everyone should listen to what he has to say on the subject
March 11, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink