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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
June 3, 2005
Aaron Miller spent 25 years of his life (about half) working to achieve Middle East peace under six secretaries of state. A Jew, from a prominent Cleveland family, he has managed to gain and maintain the trust of Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the region's other players.
In fact, Miller is one of the few officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking about whom few have anything bad to say. Certainly no one blamed Miller for the failure of the Camp David summit of 2000, in which Miller was one of the key mediators, although it served as prelude to the second intifada.
That is until Monday.
In that op-ed, Aaron Miller took upon himself some of the responsibility for that failure -- himself and the other members of the US "peace team". He does not absolve the principals themselves of responsibility. He blames Yasser Arafat for his "failure to negotiate seriously" at Camp David and Ehud Barak for pressuring the United States into a premature "make-or-break summit and then blam[ing] the Palestinians when it failed."
But he also believes that the American mediators deserve their share of the blame.
"With the best of motives and intentions," Miller writes, "we listened to and followed Israel's lead without critically examining what that would mean for our own interests, for those on the Arab side and for the overall success of the negotiations. The 'no surprises' policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking.
"If we couldn't put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one -- Israel."
Miller argues that the one-sided approach has always failed. In fact, US diplomacy has only succeeded when we have "functioned as advocates and lawyers for both sides" and not merely as "Israel's lawyer."
He recalls that it was honest brokering by secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker that resulted in the Sinai disengagements in the 1970s and the Madrid Conference breakthrough in 1991. And, he points out, America's most significant success in the region was accomplished through the even-handed mediation of President Jimmy Carter. It was Carter who produced the Camp David peace agreement which has resulted in a peaceful Israeli-Egyptian border for the past quarter century (and which has saved countless Israeli and Egyptian lives).
Miller is not interested in assaying blame for the Camp David failure. He will leave that to the historians. (Although Clayton Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David", based on interviews with Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Miller himself provides a comprehensive and acute account -- the best we're likely to see -- on the phenomenon Miller describes).
Miller's concern is that the Bush administration not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.
Miller's point is spot-on. The United States cannot perform the role of honest broker in the Middle East and simultaneously identify solely with only one of the two parties. The Israeli government should be able to relate to that. It has not permitted either the EU or the UN to play the role of mediator because it views them as too close to the Palestinians.
"What's good for the goose is good for the gander." The Palestinians have the right to expect fair mediation from the United States. Miller, who was there, does not believe that is what they have received.
But the Palestinians did not give up on the United States as an acceptable mediator. They understand that it is precisely because Israel is so close to the United States that it can play an indispensable role in producing an agreement. In other words, they recognize that Israel's trust in America is an asset to negotiations. "That is why -- even now -- when our credibility is so diminished in the region, they continue to press for U.S. engagement," Miller writes.
The good news is that the administration has now made clear that it has no intention of repeating the mistakes Miller decries. President Bush is determined to be an honest broker. Greeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, President Bush emphasized America's determination to implement the Roadmap and to move on from there to final status negotiations. Elaborating on his vision of "two states, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security," Bush stated that deviations from the international borders of 1949 must be "mutually agreed to."
"A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza. This is the position of the United States today, it will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations."
In no way did Bush retreat from his commitment to Israel. As Miller puts it: "There is no inherent contradiction between our special relationship with Israel and our capacity to be an effective broker" in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. That is what Bush conveyed yesterday -- an understanding that his friendship for Israel not only does not preclude friendship for the Palestinians, it requires it. Unless he has the trust of both sides, he will be unable to accomplish anything for either.
This is a promising time. An Israeli prime minister is risking everything to end the occupation of Gaza and part of the West Bank. A Palestinian President is rejecting terrorism in favor of building a working democracy at peace with Israel. And a US President is determined to take his two-state vision and turn it into reality by working with both sides, as a friend and partner to both.
For the first time in almost five years, there is every reason for optimism.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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