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Near the end of his insider’s account of the Bush administration’s efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace, author Elliott Abrams cautions about temptations in Washington to put “daylight” between America and the Jewish state. Whatever the circumstances, he writes, the result is that Israel always feels less secure and is thus less likely “to take risks for peace.”
The passage is part of a riveting chronicle of the last administration, but also serves as a not-so-subtle slap at the current one. With Barack Obama preparing for Tuesday’s trip to Israel and the West Bank, his first as president, Abrams offers a timely warning that Obama won’t achieve anything if he repeats the mistakes of the past, including his own.
The absence of serious peace talks during the last four years is largely a product of his misguided bid to tilt away from Israel and toward the Arabs. It was a policy Obama revealed in Cairo in 2009, pursued throughout his first term and, by making Israel nemesis Chuck Hagel defense secretary, continues in his second.
That fundamental error of “daylight” was compounded by another one, the full embrace of “linkage,” which holds that breaking the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock would be an elixir for the entire Mideast. It never made a whit of sense, and has been totally discredited by the Arab Spring turned Arab Nightmare. To insist otherwise is also to claim the mad mullahs of Iran want the bomb and Syria’s Assad is slaughtering his own people because the Palestinians don’t have a state.
Abrams, who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, including as the Middle East point man, deftly demolishes these and other myths. His book, “Tested by Zion,” opens with a bang — he recounts a meeting between Bill Clinton and Bush in the White House on the day Bush was inaugurated in 2001.
“That son of a bitch [Yasser] Arafat — don’t, can’t trust him,” a witness said of Clinton’s tirade against the late, double-dealing Palestinian. “The biggest mistake I made in my presidency.”
Monica Lewinsky notwithstanding, Clinton’s sense of betrayal sets the stage for a fresh approach, one locked into place by 9/11. After that horror, Bush understood and shared Israel’s determination not to yield to terror or reward it with concessions, although he was also the first president to make the creation of a Palestinian state official American policy.
Abrams, despite his fondness for Bush, faults him and especially his two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, for repeating Clinton’s mistake of succumbing to the lure of the “peace process,” even before the Palestinians have rejected terrorism.
Daily-life improvements for ordinary Palestinians and Israelis are the key to progress, Abrams argues. He approvingly quotes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as telling Bush not to “put all our eggs into the basket of diplomacy,” and that “reality on the ground will shape an agreement, not vice versa.”
Ironically, because of his first-term failures, Obama now gets something of a clean slate — there is no “peace process.” Moreover, the Iran situation, a takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood, combined with Hezbollah’s domination of southern Lebanon and the stranglehold of Hamas on Gaza, makes war more likely than even a cold peace.
The West Bank, the other half of Palestinian territory, has a better economy and some individual rights, though President Mahmoud Abbas is in the ninth year of a four-year term.
Against that backdrop, expectations are low that Obama’s visit will make a difference. One observer called it a “maintenance trip” and Abrams believes that, given doubts about Obama’s resolve on Iran, it will be “very difficult for him to persuade Israelis that he really understands their situation and will act.”
“Most won’t now believe him — too much water over the dam,” Abrams told me in an e-mail.
But we should not underestimate the Obama team’s skill at substituting spectacle for substance. Rejecting a speech to the Knesset, it scheduled a campaign-style event in a Jerusalem convention center, no doubt hoping the Obama “citizen of the world” schtick will numb the brains and stir the hearts of young Israeli dreamers. A similar gathering is planned with Abbas at a youth center in the West Bank.
So a peddler selling visions of hope and change will come to the Mideast. If its citizens are lucky, he will leave without making things worse.
A bogus excuse to riot
Say this for the critics of the New York Police Department: They never let facts get in the way of an excuse to riot.
The police shooting of gun-wielding Kimani Gray in East Flatbush fits all the stereotypes of trigger-happy cops — if you ignore the truth. Three witnesses said two officers repeatedly told the 16-year-old to drop the gun he had pulled from his waistband, but he refused and they fired.
If they had waited until he shot them, we’d call them heroes. Maybe dead heroes.
Gray’s death was tragedy enough for his family, but the thugs who “protested” by demolishing stores and rampaging visited suffering on truly innocent New Yorkers.
Fortunately, the rioters missed their sell-by date by about 40 years. With even Gray’s mother urging calm, universal outrage sparked by charges of “police brutality” is about as fashionable as hula hoops and the Black Panthers.
The numbers tell the tale: The 80 percent murder-rate decline in New York over the last 20 years has been nearly matched by the decline in police shootings. Cops intentionally shot 90 people in 1994, but only 28 in 2012.
By comparison, Chicago has one third of New York’s population, but its police shot 60 people last year.
That doesn’t guarantee every shooting is by the books, but recent history demands that cops get the benefit of the doubt. They risk their lives to protect ours and they at least deserve the same presumption as the rest of us: innocent until proven guilty.
Insanity is taking its toll
Here’s the doomsday thought for the day: Sam Schwartz, a k a Gridlock Sam, notes the latest round of toll increases on some bridges and tunnels, and writes: “The MTA has another toll hike programmed for 2015. By 2020 my analysis shows a cash round-trip toll of $25 at the Triborough, Throgs Neck and Whitestone among others; by 2030 it will be $50. We need a better way.”
Amen.
Playing mayoral-race card
Supporters of Bill Thompson don’t believe his terrible poll numbers in the mayoral race, especially one showing Council Speaker Chris Quinn beating him 3-1 among black voters.
“That just means a lot of black voters don’t know he’s black. They’ll come around,” one Thompson backer said hopefully.
Perhaps. But that doesn’t explain the bottom line of the Quinnipiac poll, which showed Thompson pulling only 11 percent among all voters.
Keep it low, Joe
So Vice President Joe Biden is leading the American delegation to Rome for the installation ceremony of Pope Francis.
Biden does know he has to be quiet, right?