She's Waiting

The New York Times tonight, reporting that Sen. Mitchell, President Obama's envoy, has been unable to persuade the Israelis to extend the ban on West Bank settlement construction:

The built-up areas make up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the West Bank, and Mr. Netanyahu is arguing that the 2,000 or so housing units that might be built in the coming year while a final agreement was being negotiated would matter little in the end. If the talks stop, the building would be likely to increase.

But Palestinians say they have been told for years that negotiations would bring an end to the settlements. The only way forward, they maintain, is to end the construction first.

Looking at it that way, Netanyahu's right. The question is whether all the other other issues, especially the status of Jerusalem, could be settled within those 2,000 settlement units.

What Israel Is Banking On

When Israel's recent hint that it would freeze West Bank settlements, followed by the more recent approval of some previously approved residences, is followed by a real freeze (whew!), the U.S. is reportedly finally coming with the goods from the Arab side:

[Obama Middle East envoy George] Mitchell is expected to convey “gestures of normalisation” from a number of moderate Arab states in recognition of Israel’s settlement freeze. These could include the reopening of interest offices and some trade and tourism ties.

She Still Needs A Future

There's a reason Presidents don't risk getting involved in the Middle East, with its ancient hatreds and treacherous politics, until relatively late in their terms, if at all. President Obama showed courage, perhaps born of naive self-confidence, by naming a Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, even before he was inaugurated.

In the months since, Mitchell has pressed Israel hard on the West Bank settlements. The Palestinians responded by spurning such incremental measures while refusing to budge on Israel's demand that they acknowledge that it is an inherently Jewish state. Now Israel has announced new settlement construction, prompting howls from Ramallah and a stern rebuke from the White House.

Michael Crowley speculates that Mitchell secretly green-lighted the new construction to help reset the Obama-Netanyahu relationship, presumably by making the PM appear less beholden to Washington in the eyes of Israeli voters. Crowley refers to reporting along these lines by Ben Smith at "Politico," but the link doesn't work, and I couldn't find anything from Smith except a blog item about the White House statement. If there's a chess game underway, I'd prefer to think that Mitchell and Netanyahu were collaborating on a message to the Palestinians that they need to bring something to the table, too. Otherwise, Crowley writes:

Obama has now essentially been flipped off by both the Israelis and the Arabs, no?

Which is precisely why Presidents usually stay away from Jerusalem until they've got almost nothing to lose. Israelis and Palestinians who really want peace might remember that an attentive White House will be nearly indispensable and begin to act accordingly.

Two Prime Ministers Passing In the Night

It should come as no surprise that the Jerusalem Post covers Israel-Palestinian issues more carefully than U.S. papers. Stateside, it does seem to be all about the West Bank settlements. In his comments in London today, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu put countervailing stress on Palestinian resistance to the idea of Israel as a Jewish homeland. The U.S. is neglectful of that issue, the Post suggests:

Netanyahu's comments came just hours before Wednesday morning's meeting in his London hotel, the Intercontinental, with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell during which the settlements, much more then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish homeland, are expected to be the focus of discussion.

Indeed no mention of the issue in this New York Times article about a new Palestinian National Authority road map for a state of Palestine within two years. It assumes east Jerusalem as the new nation's capital, which Netanyahu flatly ruled out in in his London press conference.

Get Her A Future

Friends think I'm naive (or just plain wrong) for believing that Israelis and Palestinians can share the Holy Land in peace -- in other words, that the two-state solution, now fully embraced by Barack Obama and his envoy, Sen. Mitchell, just like Bush and Rice before them, will work. Pro-Palestinian friends are afraid that Israel will never give up its settlements and that the security wall is being used to make a West Bank Palestine untenable. Orthodox Jewish friends equate the Palestinians with the Amalekites in the Hebrew Testament, who harassed Abraham and his people and were defeated, along with the Midianites, by Gideon. Bible-believing Christians often can't help thinking that God gave the land to the Jews. Secular supporters of Israel argue that the Palestinians can't be trusted, in part because Arab leaders throughout the region have conspired to keep them in refugee camps for two generations rather than assimilating them into Jordan, for instance, thus creating an uncontainable reservoir of hatred.

For all these reasons, Presidents usually avoid expending political capital in the region, or they wait, as President Clinton and Bush 43 did, until the end of their terms. Obama acted in the first hours of his Presidency. For such noble and perhaps politically self-sacrificial recklessness alone, he deserves our thanks.

Accepting his designation as special envoy, Mitchell, who helped Clinton untie the Irish knot, said that the problem is caused by human beings, and human beings are capable of solving it. About that, he is right. Israelis are people, and they must trust and share. Hamas are people, and they must accept that Israel will survive and thrive forever. Fatah are people, and they must earn the trust of Palestinians everywhere, and learn to govern a country and grow an economy after a generation of fighting and killing. Americans are people, and they'll punish Obama if he fails.

Like Mitchell, I'm hopeful, if only theologically. Someday, it must end, for the sake of the little girl pictured above and millions like her. I met her on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the summer of 2007, sponsored by my Episcopal seminary in Claremont. Having walked three miles through a desert wadi to Jericho, we were staggering toward the bottles of water on our bus. Children were asking for money, and I gave some to this little girl, smiled, and kept going. Then I felt a tug on my sleeve. I turned and saw her pointing at my camera. Godspeed, Sen. Mitchell. Get Israel security and peace, and get her a future.

Abraham, Barack, And George

"The Economist" sounds only guardedly hopeful about prospects in the Middle East as President Obama turns to the former senator who helped Bill Clinton earn richly-deserved accolades for driving the settlement of the Irish question, itself once thought intractable:

Mr [George] Mitchell, though, manages to sound confident. On Thursday he referred to the hopeful example of seeing centuries of violence come to an end in Ireland. “Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings—they can be ended by human beings”, he said. His new challenge may be to persuade rivals in the Middle East to consider their adversaries’ interests. In his 2001 report, he suggested that each side’s lack of appreciation for the other’s views encouraged rivals to adopt the most extreme positions possible.

Of course, the senator is right. For Presidents, the question has always been how much precious and finite political capital to invest in that most risky of investments, namely angry-human futures. Will Israel and the Palestinians be enlightened or exhausted enough to make peace? If they aren't, Obama will pay a price.

For now, all people of good will are with Sen. Mitchell as the U.S. is once against triangulated into humanity's longest-running family spat.