What’s needed for Arab-Israeli peace?

Twenty years ago today, the Arab-Israeli “peace process” was launched with The Handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. Many hoped for a lasting peace. What they got was an unmitigated failure. What went wrong? Or, perhaps, could this policy have ever worked? Now, amid the rise of Islamists, the upheaval in Egypt, the Syrian civil war, and an imminently nuclear-capable Iran, what might it take to achieve peace? Following the so-called Arab Spring, how should we view the Israel-Palestinian conflict? What should America’s policy be toward the region?

Those were some of the questions at a panel that ARI sponsored in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. Featured on the panel: Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum; Aaron David Miller, vice president for new initiatives and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor for Commentary magazine; and me.

Over at FrontPage magazine, Andrew Harrod has a good write-up on some of the key points that came out. Here’s a flavor:

Pipes’ answer to this impasse was to “give up on this model of diplomacy and substitute a model of winning.” The “clear message” of Israel and its allies like the United States to the Palestinians must be “you’ve lost.” Channeling his inner Ronald Reagan, Pipes deemed the proper strategy to be “really simple: we win, they lose.” Journo as well advocated a “binary” approach to the conflict of “defeat or victory.”

Journo complemented his desire for strategic clarity with a call to reject the “morally grey approach” often coloring perceptions of Israelis and Palestinians. Oslo’s “framework assumes you can ignore basic moral differences” pitting an Israeli democracy against a Palestinian leadership not interested in creating a free society. The “worst conceivable crimes” historically charged to Israel simply did not compare with the atrocities perpetrated by Israel’s Arab neighbors as presently in Syria.

Such grey-shaded views in a peace process, Journo analyzed, would only “encourage the more militant,” resulting not in reciprocal deals but “extortion.” The Oslo process apparently demanded, for example, that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would transform from an Al Capone-like terrorist into a Mr. Rogers-like good neighbor. Yet Arafat actually “had to do very little” to satisfy these high expectations.

The whole thing is here.

Image: Wikipedia (public domain)

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