Secretary of State John Kerry worked behind the scenes in the last few days to pull off a cascading set of maneuvers worthy of “House of Cards,” the Netflix blockbuster. But it turns out Kerry is no Frank Underwood.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Kerry’s three-way deal yesterday, as did Jonathan Pollard, the convicted spy at the heart of it. Even the White House did its best to stay away.
Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, would never find himself so humiliated, so publicly.
But that’s the end of the episode; here’s the start:
With his own April 29 deadline for a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal fast approaching, the Palestinians refused to go along with any extension unless the Israelis made more concessions — even as the Israelis were actually backing away from one concession they’d promised.
Right-wingers threatened to pull out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government if he stuck by a previous Kerry-built deal, and released dozens of Palestinian prisoners (including convicted killers) from Israeli jails for the fourth time in nine months. Meanwhile, Abbas was actually demanding additional releases as his price for letting Kerry kick the can down the road.
To save his pet project from collapse, Kerry got creative: How about an American concession instead?
And thus a deal was born: Washington would commute the life sentence of Pollard, who’d heroically land in Israel before Passover, the Jewish holiday of freedom. In return, a grateful Israel would release a new batch of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and slow down West Bank construction. Palestinians would then refrain from taking their case for statehood to the United Nations, and suspend their attempts to put Israeli officials on trial as “war criminals” in international courts.
And the nearly expired peace process would be extended for another year.
Oops: Shortly after details of the convoluted scheme emerged yesterday, Abbas said no deal.
In his Ramallah office, he signed a directive to join up “Palestine” with 15 UN and other international bodies and treaties. To add insult to injury, he then canceled a meeting with Kerry that was scheduled for Wednesday.
Next, Pollard rejected the deal. The former US Naval Intelligence officer, who’s spent the last 29 years in federal prison after admitting to stealing documents and transferring them to Israel, on Tuesday waived his right to a parole hearing, according to a spokesman for the Butner, NC, prison.
Then the White House (where reportedly there was some grumbling about tying a presidential commutation of Pollard’s sentence to Kerry’s pet project) pointedly announced that no Pollard-related decision has been made yet.
The Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who supports releasing Pollard for humanitarian reasons, denounced the effort to use him as a “bargaining chip.” Other Jewish-American leaders (who have long resented the Israeli use of an American Jew to spy on America) are unhappy, too. As are those in Washington’s intelligence community who want Pollard to rot in jail for his crimes.
All in all, a humiliating day for Kerry, who briefly interrupted his endless shuttling between Abbas and Netanyahu yesterday for a NATO meeting in Brussels.
But not to worry: “It’s premature to draw judgments from today’s events” about the future of the Palestinian-Israeli talks, the tireless secretary told reporters in Brussels.
True: Abbas has been known to posture before turning around and signing deals. But even if Kerry’s Pollard deal somehow actually still comes through, it’s not the kind of move Frank Underwood would’ve ever bothered with.
Yes, devious Frank Underwood may have considered all of Kerry’s angles. But then (over a cigarette with his equally devious wife) he’d reject them as too fantastic and unworkable, and incapable of yielding any substantial benefit.
The Palestinians assume the current Israeli government will never give up on the settlement project. Israelis think Abbas is too weak to sign peace, let alone keep it. In any case, the region’s conflicts now go far beyond those that an Israeli-Palestinian deal would resolve.
As brutally selfish as Underwood’s ambitions may be, his plotting, while creative, is always reality-based.
When Kerry gets as creative as Underwood, as he did this week, he also tosses realism out the window.
Sooner or later, his dream of negotiated Mideast peace will collapse like, well, the house of cards that it is.