AmbassadorBlog

Arab gestures, facts on the ground, and the shrill hysteria of incitement.

As a part of the package the Obama Administration is working out with Israel on the settlements freeze and return to negotiations, there is reportedly a promise of some gestures from the Arab world in the form of opening trade offices and providing overflight rights for Israeli commercial aircraft to link Israel to Asia. Arguably, these would be positive steps in creating a better atmosphere for peace, but would they make a significant difference? In fact, they are not likely to change attitudes where they count the most - in Israel and Palestine.

Last June, The Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace published a poll of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian attitudes toward peace (http://truman.huji.ac.il/poll-view.asp?id=279). The results were not very encouraging.  While the majority of Israeli Jews felt that the conflict with the Palestinians imposed a high to unbearable cost on Israel, a similar number believed that Israel could bear that price for decades and even forever.  What those numbers should be telling the Arab rejectionists and the hostile regime elements in Gaza is that Israel can live with a sustained level of violence indefinitely.  Too many Palestinians got the wrong message from the Israeli excursions into Lebanon and their withdrawal under pressure.  In fact, if the shelling from Gaza starts up again, most Israelis believe a military solution to that problem is possible.  30% would reoccupy Gaza and over half of all Israelis think that Israel can overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza if it so desires.

What I found striking about the poll was the fact that 62% of Jewish Israelis thought that the aspiration of the Arabs, in the long run, was to conquer the state of Israel and of that number, 42% thought the goal was to destroy a significant part of the Jewish population in Israel.  If that is your assumption about the people you are expected to negotiate with, then the price for any concessions would seem to be too high. This cynical attitude about the prospects of living in peace is reflected at many points in the survey on both sides.  65% of Palestinians and 63% of Israelis believe it is impossible to reach a final status settlement these days.

Gestures by the Bahrainis or Qataris, or any other Arab state, are not going to change these numbers.  To imagine that peace is possible on this foundation of deep mutual antipathy and mistrust really stretches credulity. Peace may be a function of Prime Ministers and Presidents, but it is ultimately dependent on the people of both sides.  Confidence has to be built from somewhere below zero where it currently resides.  That will only happen when the voices of reason can out-shout the voices of intolerance and irrationality, when children are taught facts rather than slogans, when the media no longer points the camera at the loudest voice in the room, and when we get back to efforts to purge ourselves, our schools and our media of incitement.

We tried it once in 1998 as a result of the Wye agreement.  We formed an anti-incitement committee and even had meetings for several months.  Unfortunately, only the Americans took it seriously. As a result, it was still born. Perhaps the Obama Administration should consider leading a new effort, but this time with the energy and eloquence of the President of the United States. Peace is not going to come from clever formulas and untenable compromises.  It will only come when the people who are most affected want it to come, and believe in it.  That is not the case today.   

The Thirteenth Palestinian Government

From the earliest days, once the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat forced the United States back in 1978 to take an active role in resolving the Palestinian problem, we have largely focused our efforts on security and the key final status issues like borders and Jerusalem.  President Bush embraced the  policy of a two state solution, but aside from some discussions in the context of the Autonomy negotiations and in the Oslo process years ago, there has been very little focus on what the Palestinian State will look like, how it will be organized and what are the premises on which it will be based. Presumably, these are questions that the Palestinians will have to answer in due course.  But, it is very hard for me to imagine that Israel, or for that matter the United States, is a disinterested party.  Will the Palestinian state look like Gaza under Hamas?  If that is the expectation then it is not very likely that negotiations on the final status, even if started, would ever result in an agreement.  

What we have all known for a long time is that Israel will not accept a hostile, independent state in the West Bank and Gaza and nor should it.  If there was ever any doubt of this, all we need to do is to examine the Israeli and US reaction to Hamas' rule over Gaza.  The Israelis will have to know who their neighbors are and will have to have a high degree of confidence that once a Palestinian state is established, it will not become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.  Without a substantial degree of mutual confidence, issues like security, settlements, borders, Jerusalem and refugees cannot be resolved.  This is not only a question of lines on a map.  It is also a question of intentions.

Certainly, the Palestinian record thus far does not fill one with confidence.  The divided polity, the clinging to rhetoric instead of reality, the record of corruption in the Palestinian National Authority,  and failure to govern effectively even in areas where the Authority has sway, creates the expectation of failure, instability, and continued hostility toward Israel as the path of least resistance.  Palestinians have been reluctant to take on the hard issues of coming to grips with their internal differences using the excuse that with the Israelis hovering over every decision and intervening at will, the Palestinians cannot determine their own vision or begin the construction of their own state.  They have been unwilling to take the difficult steps of forging a common Palestinian vision and policy in the absence of the concrete governmental structure of a State in being - until now.  

Now the Palestinian National Authority is advancing a new approach in its program of the thirteenth government entitled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State" published in August 2009.  This is a document that has received little notice in the media, but which lays out a picture of a Palestinian state that could, if implemented, enable a constructive process of peace making.  The document includes a forward by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister that sets out the objectives of the Government for the next two years as a "full commitment to this state-building endeavor" and emphasizes that such a program is "critical" to the "creation of the independent state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital."  Fayyad's formulation in his cover letter is interesting since it is not found in the document itself.  He refers to "East" Jerualem - the document consistently refers to "Jerusalem" without any modifier.  The document itself has problems such as repeated references to UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which established the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to their homes based on their free choice.  However, the document assigns responsibility of dealing with the refugees to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and not to the Palestinian Authority or its government.  

The agenda that the program of the 13th government has set out is surprisingly detailed, which is unusual for political documents that have to appeal to a broad constituency.  What is even more surprising is the level of self-criticism that is implied by the document. Repeated references to the need for auditing government functions would appear to be in response to the heavy criticism of the Authority as being corrupt.  It would also tend to indicate that over the 17 years that the Palestinian Authority has been in existence, virtually no reforms have taken place, no strategic plan has been developed, no consensus on goals and vision has been reached, and that there has been little or no effort to establish the foundation for a viable Palestinian state.  A lot of the credit for this dysfunctional history has to be laid at the feet of Yasser Arafat whose style of governing was divide, conquer and never decide. 

While one could nit-pick the program. Certainly there are aspects that will cause heartburn particularly within the Palestinian community, but also among some Israelis.  Furthermore, there is a long distance between statements of intention and facts on the ground.  It remains to be seen if Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad can deliver on the vision and reform.   But it is virtually certain, in my view, that without such an effort on the part of the Palestinians, there will be no peace agreement, no Palestinian state, and no respite from terrorism.  The program's success is, as Prime Minister Fayyad says, essential if a peace agreement is to be reached. The program is predicated on and designed to help achieve the unification of the Palestinian polity, without which I do not give the peace process a snowball's chance of succeeding.  This is the very first time that we have seen a concrete, rational, official Palestinian projection of what a Palestinian state might look like and how it could sustain peace as a democracy based on the rule of law. That has been an important missing ingredient in all the past efforts to concoct a peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. We should give Salam Fayyad our full support and help him make his vision real.  

UN Peacekeeping - cheap at twice the price?

United Nations peacekeeping has been heavily criticized in books, articles, speeches and in our own Congress.  Criticisms have focused on the UN bureaucracy, the long lead time for establishing a peacekeeping mission, the failure of peacekeeping missions to completely fulfill their mandate, and, particularly, the handful of missions that went very badly wrong.  UN peacekeeping has become defined by Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan and not the other 58 peacekeeping missions that have been established by the Security Council since 1948.   

One of the harshest critics was John Bolton who served as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations in 2005 and 2006.  Interestingly, the Security Council approved over 100 resolutions in this period,  according to the record, Bolton voted for all of them. Since 1991, the United States has voted for over 1100 Security Council Resolutions.  And, in fact, the United States voted for all resolutions that were passed relating to Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan.  One would assume that it the United Nations peacekeeping operations are so flawed, the United States, which helps negotiate the enabling resolutions, would balk from time to time and issue a veto. 

There is no doubt that peacekeeping, as the UN practices it could be more efficient and more effective, but there easier or cheaper alternatives if we want international authorization and approval.  Without that approval, it becomes extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible to attract troop contributors. Some countries are precluded by domestic legislation from participating in a peacekeeping mission that is not sanctioned by the UN.

There are other optiions.  Regional organizations like NATO and the African Union have engaged in peacekeeping with mixed results.  The United States has composed ad hoc coalitions of the willing, with limited UN cover.  And the United States created a special purpose peacekeeping operation outside of the UN system in the Sinai with the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) mission to monitor the Israeli Egyptian peace.  It incorporates troop contributions from 11 different countries and is composed of about 3000 military and civilian personnel.   In 1993, the MFO operating budget was $56.1 million and while this cost was divided into thirds by Egypt, Israel and the US, the actual US cost was much higher since the Department of Defense absorbed the cost of the US troops, which amounted to $46.6 million.  While the MFO total cost is not out of line with UN mission costs for equivalent missions, the US contribution is significantly greater than the 25% we pay for UN missions.  In short, the UN is a bargain when it comes to peacekeeping and yet still Congress complains.  

The fact that the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld was anxious to cancel our participation in the MFO, suggests that the drain on US resources in terms of lift, logistics and retraining would exceed by a considerable margin the impact of a UN peacekeeping mission on our readiness.  So the question is not whether we should advocate unilateral or regional peacekeeping over UN missions, but which missions to mount through the UN. Or, more appropriately, when to pull the plug on a UN mission that has gone sour or is not fulfilling its mandate. 

In the case of Bosnia, which started with a peacekeeping mission in Croatia to provide security for three UN protected zones, all the proper steps in terms of getting agreement of the combatants were in place and the mission was operational, until the mission was expanded and the original mandate changed.  At that point the Security Council, advised by the military commander in the field, should have taken steps to provide adequate resources to do the job and to renegotiate agreement for the mission by the combatants or it should have pulled the troops home and terminated the mission.  Similarly, there were points in Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan where the game changed from the original concept sold to the Security Council and on which the peacekeeping missions were based.  In each case there should have been a reevaluation and conclusion that unless conditions were again favorable, the missions would have to be aborted. This is easier said than done. 

Public opinion and pride seem to stand in the way of considered military judgment.  The Secretary General does not want to encourage unilateralism or admit that the UN cannot handle the job and the members of the Security Council are reluctant to back away from doing something to relieve an humanitarian crisis, which has captured the attention of CNN.  Everyone seems to have his eye on his own reputation or standing in the public eye more than on the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding.  The result is that the United Nations is discredited and its future ability to help devalued and people suffer. 

   

Alice in Lebanon

     The more we are confronted with the security problems of the post cold war world, the more we have to question the international system’s capacity to cope. We struggled with the mass starvation and collapse of order in Somalia. To our shame we saw 400,000 die in Rwanda. We saw atrocities and genocide in Bosnia. And now in Darfur, with several hundred thousand more dead, we seem incapable of dealing with the government of Sudan and its allied irregular forces. Are we becoming so immune to hands and legs being hacked off, women raped, and children violated and murdered?

     The United Nations is the favorite target of Americans, particularly the politicians of both our parties in Congress, as being responsible for the international community’s most devastating failures. Since I participated at the UN in some of those failures – Lebanon, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti – I tend to have a different perspective. We are quick to blame the United Nations because it is an easy target. It has no constituency to speak of in this country. And its operations and capabilities are a mystery for most of us. But the reality is that we ask too much of the UN at the same time that we deny it the resources it would need to actually do something about these human tragedies. And it is we, along with the other permanent members of the Security Council who set the conditions for failure.

     Take Lebanon, for example. The Security Council, where we have a veto, established a United Nations “peacekeeping” force, UNIFIL, to report on violations of the ceasefires we have negotiated over the years involving, at times the PLO, at times Hezbollah, Syria, and certainly Israel. The mission has always operated under the rules of engagement that state that UNIFIL units cannot fire unless fired on. At every point in its history, UNIFIL has been out gunned and out manned, obviously by Israel, but also for many years by Syria, by the PLO until 1982, and now by Hezbollah.

     In this case, as in many others, the concept “peacekeeping” is a misnomer. The UN forces are not “keeping” any peace. At most, they are capable of observing the behavior of the parties in Southern Lebanon, their area of operations, and reporting violations of a ceasefire that really does not exist and is seldom observed. Because the UN forces are stationed in positions that are vulnerable to any armed faction or, for that matter, to Israeli attack, there is a natural attitude of self-preservation. The peacekeepers have to ask themselves, do they really want to single out Hezbollah as a violator when well armed Hezbollah fighters are perched over their UNIFIL camp? The Israelis are somewhat justified in thinking that the UNIFIL operation is hostage to Israel’s enemies.

     Very obviously, UNIFIL did not stop the Hezbollah attacks on Israel and nor was it supposed to. So in the summer of 2006, Lebanon erupted again in a contest between Israel and Hezbollah. Sensibly, UNIFIL ducked. And when the Israeli forces withdrew from Southern Lebanon – again – the Security Council in its wisdom reconfigured the UNIFIL mandate and increased its size. Now it was supposed to monitor the ceasefire; to support the Lebanese Army in deploying to the south as Israel withdrew; to help the Lebanese Armed Forces create a weapons free zone south of the Litani river on the border with Israel, and help the Government of Lebanon guard its borders against infiltration of arms (to Hezbollah) by sea, by air and across the Syrian border. To do this, the Security Council authorized a force of 15,000 “peacekeepers.”

     But the council was not prepared to give this force the authority to enforce its mandate by arms since it was still under Chapter VI of the Charter and thereby restricted from using its weapons except in self defense. And in any event, 15,000 lightly armed UN troops could not hope to stand up to Hezbollah in a military confrontation.

     Poor UNIFIL - expected to do with a mixed bag of 15,000 toothless peacekeepers, what Israel could not do with its entire air force and 30,000 well trained ground forces armed with heavy weapons, ranging from tanks and heavy artillery to cluster bombs, mines and other assorted killing machines. Who wants to take bets that UNIFIL will be able to fulfill its mandate? And who wants to bet that the United States and other permanent members of the Security Council, who set up this operation, will escape free of blame when UNIFIL does not live up to the impossible demands those same permanent members placed on it. No, it will be the UN, that amorphous, “incompetent” organization that the Honorable Members of the House and Senate and much of the American public will blame. Some day we may recognize that the problem with peacekeeping may not be in the UN so much as it may be with us.

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Darfur, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Peacekeeping, Rwanda, United Nations, UN Security Council