Middle East Progress

A new initiative from the Center for American Progress. They say:

Middle East Progress helps develop and highlight practical approaches to and voices involved in managing — and resolving — the Arab-Israeli conflict, with a primary focus on achieving a sustainable, secure, democratic Palestinian state alongside sustainable, secure, and democratic Israel. We believe such action will improve U.S., Israeli, and regional security, and America’s global standing, and reflects the will and aspirations of a vast majority of Israelis and Arabs living the conflict every day.

I say: Good for CAP. If I have one major criticism of their organization it's that it's struck me as unduly reluctant to take on issues that provoke serious disagreement within the Democratic Party camp, with things related to Israel and things related to trade being noteworthy examples. Those kind of issues, however, are exactly the ones where the world needs more think tanking to be done.

Comments

Another think tank set up to try and solve the unsolvable. The unfortunate fact is that there is no solution to the problems in Palestine that will simultaneously lead to the resolution sought by this think tank and at the same time be acceptable to both sides in the conflict. As the attached link makes perfectly clear, the Palestinians are not interested in any approach to a solution which leaves the Government of Israel in business. As a former UN representative in Palestine, Conor Cruise O'Brian once stated so succinctly, after many years in negotiating with both sides, "let them fight it out." When they get tired of fighting, at that point they may be amenable to a reasonable solution.

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/11295.htm

Posted by SLC | May 11, 2007 10:32 AM

I dont see anything in this press release that AIPAC would find threatening. Let's have new ideas, the Palestinians must reform etc, are a long standing part of Israeli nationalist/ settler-enabling rhetoric.

Posted by otto | May 11, 2007 10:36 AM

What the hell does a "West Bank/Gaza Political Risk Insurance Project Director" do?

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 11, 2007 10:39 AM

He takes out insurance for the Center for American Progress in case they say anything about Israeli policies in the West Bank or Gaza that CAP funders or Democratic party bigwigs don't like?

Posted by otto | May 11, 2007 10:44 AM

Slightly OT, but in response to your disappeared post on Northern Ireland as a model for Israel/Palestine peace talkes, there is a difference:

at some level even the hardest line Prods must realize that should the republican goal of a unified Ireland come true, how bad would being in conservative, Christian Ireland be for the largely conservative, Christian Protestants. OTOH, if say the British were to fully annex Northern Ireland and just make it part of Scotland or something (after all, Northern Ireland is approximately where the Scots were from before they conquered the Picts), would it really be that bad for the Catholics of Northern Ireland?

OTOH, if the (non-Jewish) Palestinians were to be fully integrated into Israel (e.g. in a one state solution), how would such goals of having a Jewish state as providing Jewish refugees with an actual place of refuge and ensuring access by Jews to Jewish holy sites be ensured against the tyranny of the majority? Yesterday it was Ariel Sharon who couldn't visit the Temple Mount 'cause he's a right-wing loon ... but tomorrow will it be me who can't visit because my liberal views might offend traditional Muslim sensibilities? Yet, a strengthenaning of the status quo into some sort of two-state arrangement won't do the Palestinians much good unless there is a serious reconstruction effort to do something about those refugee camps.

The situation is similar with the analogy made between what's happening with the Palestinians and apartheid. One big difference is that the most radical major figure on the Black-African side was Nelson Mandela: the risk for whites in ending apartheid was relatively low compared to the risk felt by Jewish Israelis who are looking at a situation in which even a two-state solution would involve being next to a state which might elect leaders wanting to drive all Jews into the sea ...

The stakes for both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are much higher than in Northern Ireland. For each side to even sit at the negotiating table is a huge compromise, considering how compelling and reasonable the mutually exclusive positions of both sides actually are.

Posted by DAS | May 11, 2007 10:49 AM

He takes out insurance for the Center for American Progress in case they say anything about Israeli policies in the West Bank or Gaza that CAP funders or Democratic party bigwigs don't like?

It crossed my mind that might be *exactly* what he did but then I realized no one would buy that risk.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 11, 2007 10:51 AM

When they get tired of fighting, at that point they may be amenable to a reasonable solution. - SLC

This would be true of Northern Ireland, but not Israel/Palestine -- because in the latter case, both sides already have reasonable positions. What is un-reasonable about Zionism? We Jews have been so persecuted, if anyone needs a homeland, it is us. And why shouldn't adaquate land be set aside for a homeland for us? why shouldn't it have defensible borders? why shouldn't the resulting state be able to act in the same way as other states have, including gaining control of lands won in a war started by the other side? The ultra-Zionist narrative wherein Israel ought to simply annex the West Bank (and Jordan should be the Palestinian state) is actually quite reasonable.

OTOH, the Palestinian side is also quite reasonable. Many Palestinians were kicked off their lands, hounded into refugee camps and now are oppressed by Israeli occupation, and Israeli occupiers stealing yet more land. Why shouldn't they be allowed to form a state with defensible borders, etc.? But the West Bank/Gaza Strip hardly form such a defensible state ...

The problem isn't that both sides aren't ready to be reasonable. Both sides already are quite reasonable. The problem is that neither side is ready to, as Kierkegaard might put it, take a leap of faith.

Posted by DAS | May 11, 2007 11:11 AM

"a sustainable, secure, democratic Palestinian state"

That is a good one. That rates up there with "the check is in the mail" or "I will still love you".

Posted by danceswithgoats | May 11, 2007 11:22 AM

That's just what the region needs: more international attention for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous international attention, from setting up a separate UN refugee bureaucracy for Palestinian refugees and their grand children (as opposed to the other UN refugee bureaucracy for... every other refugee in the world), to the Quartet, etc. have done nothing to help the conflict and have probably fueled it. Time for some benign neglect.

Like the Traveler said to Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, TNG (in a great twist, just when you expected a silly deus ex machina solution to a territorial dispute on some planet), "have faith in them to solve their own problems".

Posted by Julio | May 11, 2007 2:28 PM

"What is un-reasonable about Zionism?"- DAS

Nothing, unless an ideology predicated on anti-nativism, dispossession, secession and discrimination is unreasonable.

"Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.... We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia...." Theodor Herzl 1896

"But a political ideal which does not rest on the national culture is apt to seduce us from our loyalty to spiritual greatness, and to beget in us a tendency to find the path of glory in the attainment of material power and political dominion, thus breaking the thread that unites us with the past, and undermining our historical basis." Ahad Ha'am 1897

"MICAH 2:1 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.

MICAH 2:2 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.

MICAH 2:3 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks; neither shall ye go haughtily: for this time is evil."
The prophet Micah circa 700 B.C. or so

Posted by The Other Alan | May 11, 2007 3:31 PM

Time for some benign neglect.

That's two votes now for "let them sort it out". I rather doubt either of them *mean* that, it's more like "let's dump guns and loot on Israel and let's let them fight and see what happens".

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 11, 2007 5:37 PM

"I rather doubt either of them *mean* that, it's more like "let's dump guns and loot on Israel and let's let them fight and see what happens"."

They fought it out in 1948, before we were dumping any guns and loot on Israel. The Pals lost fair & square. Enough whining already.

I'd be happy to see us stop sending aid to Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt, and stay out of the whole business.

Of course, if Israel wasn't taking any money from the U.S., it wouldn't get pressured into making any lousy deals with its enemies. Then the Palestinians would have to decide between trying to defeat Israel and compromising with it.

Posted by Juan | May 11, 2007 7:33 PM