In Boston, you couldn't have found at least one Arab or Palestinian to give your group a little more legitimacy?

Do any Palestinians agree with your pronouncements, or are you just taking the liberty of speaking for them?

"In the end, however, we decided it would be more helpful to draft a joint statement "

I appreciate the effort - and I know how snide that sounds - but perhaps you could do even more. I don't know what that would be. But how many people read this blog, and how many read the Foreign Policy Association website? Again, I'm not trying to be mean, just realistic. I don't know what to make of it/them, but could you partner with, if not JStreet, some other advocacy coalition(s), such as organizations of synagogues (no, I don't know any) and mosques (no, I don't know any). At a bare minimum, I don't know how far you want to cross the line into advocacy, but I recall prior to the Iraq War, a full-page ad was taken out in the NYT. Easy for me to say from the friendly confines of the Internets, where I don't have to raise money or assemble consensus from a group of academics (always an easy group of cattle to herd, no doubt), but what about a similar ad, or the formation of an equivalent to Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy?

The Israeli behavior over the last week, the response of American politicians over the last week (legislators, not Administration), the "Petraeus" brief, the noxiousness of groups such as JStreet Does Not Represent Me - all infuriate me no end.

I thought it was interesting that quotes from Vice President Biden's meeting with Netanyahu appeared almost immediately in the Israeli press.

The Israeli government is notoriously leaky that way, of course, but the quotes both made clear the extent of American anger and cast an unfavorable light on Netanyahu. Raising the question, for me, of whether they came from our side or the Israelis. If Biden and the people with him are sophisticated enough to know how to leak material like this to the Israeli press in a timely way, good for them.

I've written your colleague, Lenore Martin, directly to express my appreciation for your efforts.

I only wish that before now you had shown greater sensitivity and care with the facts. I'm afraid that your public identification with the policy statement may be used against it with some effect.

Your paper seems to miss the history of all that has gone into getting the PA ready for governance, including writing a constitution and just general governance (as well as the longer history of terrorism, Arafat and his Tunis gang).

Your settlements section should isolate settlement growth by relevant political period, if possible. Settlement growth during Oslo was extraordinary and arguably with different intent than periods beforehand. Last, you seem to avoid the vexing issues of how Jews should live and be treated in a new Palestinian state - why? Why is you assumption that they *must* leave?

The security section is missing possible obligations of the neighboring Arab states to take action to de-militarize a 'failing PA', should that occur. Why should Israel take responsibility, alone? An international force is barely credible, but the U.S. might have a bona fide role of 'just being in the room', of making sure that security 'cooperation' doesn't fall apart completely because someone is protecting someone from justice that they shouldn't be, on either side. In general, a good 'security plan' probably has plenty to say about 'what to do' if things start to fall apart, for one reason or another. The last thing we need is unilateral unworking of all that was agreed under the pretext of 'national security imperative' - it would be better if there were at least some parameters talked about in advance.

You are missing insights into the failure of the 'summit mentality' that was Camp David. These 'summits' are not the way to think about an abiding commitment to peacemaking, at all. In fact, they suggest that there are times when 'peacemaking is ripe' and that is a bad thing to suggest, because it implies there are times when it is not...

Although you mention it, you give short shrift to the vexing problem of the Golan and the Syria track, which is possibly linked to containing Hizbollah, which would hopefully help Lebanon to control its borders rationally. The mention of water is a little cursory.

Although you have a lot of ideas about what should be done, there is very little original analysis of how people can keep things from getting done. That analysis is probably more important, given the stated goals. Of course, it is an unbounded set, but history can be a guide to help limit it.

Never mind, another brainstorm and another paper. Alas, so much to do do little time.
khairi janbek.paris/france

I think this outlines the most equitable resolution to this conflict imaginable or, at least, realizable, but it has two principal problems. For one, it doesn't outline a very convincing way to deal with the settlements on the West Bank. The only way to have a Palestinian state there is to remove virtually all of them. How do you do this? Secondly, it doesn't address the future sustainability or viability of a Palestinian enclave state, whose future development possibilities will be limited even if it has substantial territorial contiguity. Nice references to the UN and statebuilding don't cut it. I think these two questions have to be answered before the one-state solution can be taken off the table. Otherwise the choice is between apartheid and bantustans.

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog
March 25, 2010

From the Horse’s Mouth: Petraeus on Israel

By Max Boot

Back on March 13, terrorist groupie Mark Perry — a former Arafat aide who now pals around with Hamas and Hezbollah — posted an article on Foreign Policy’s website, claiming that General David Petraeus was behind the administration’s policy of getting tough with Israel. He attributed to Petraeus the view that “Israel’s intransigence” — meaning its unwillingness to give up every inch of the West Bank and East Jerusalem tomorrow — “could cost American lives.” His item received wide circulation though it may be doubted whether, as he now says, “It changed the way people think about the conflict.”

I tried to set the record straight with two Commentary items (see here and here) in which I suggested, based on talking to an officer familiar with Petraeus’s thinking, that Perry’s item was a gross distortion —in fact a fraud. I noted that in Petraeus’s view, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was only one factor among many affecting U.S. interests in the region and that Israeli settlements were far from the only, or even the main, obstacle to peace. I even suggested — again, based on inside information — that the 56-page posture statement that Central Command had submitted to Congress, which stated that the Arab-Israeli conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” was not the best indicator of his thinking. Better to look at what he actually told Congress — in a hearing he barely mentioned Israel (until prompted to do so) and never talked about settlements at all.

This brought hoots of derision from commentators on both the Left and the Right, who claimed that I was putting words into Petraeus’s mouth — that I was, in Joe Klein’s phrase, taking a “flying leap.” Predictably piling on were Andrew Sullivan, who said I was “glossing over” what Petraeus said, and Robert Wright, who claimed that, “by Boot’s lights, Petraeus is anti-Israel.” Diana West added a truly inventive spin, by suggesting that Petraeus was a protégé of Stephen Walt, who was his faculty adviser many years ago at Princeton before the good professor won renown as a leading basher of the “Israel Lobby” and the state of Israel itself. It was from Walt, Ms. West claims, that Petraeus imbibed his “Arabist, anti-Israel attitudes.”

So who was off-base here: those of us who tried to explain the nuances of General Petraeus’s thinking or those bloggers and commentators who tried to suggest that he is a strident critic of Israel?

The answer has now been publicly provided by Petraeus himself in a speech in New Hampshire. Watch it for yourself. A good summary is provided by the American Spectator’s Philip Klein, who was present at the event and asked Petraeus to clarify his thinking.

The general said that it was “unhelpful” that “bloggers” had “picked … up” what he had said and “spun it.” He noted that, aside from Israel’s actions, there are many other important factors standing in the way of peace, including “a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist. There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place. So again we have all these factors in there. This [Israel] is just one.”

What about Perry’s claim that American support for Israel puts our soldiers at risk? Petraeus said, “There is no mention of lives anywhere in there. I actually reread the statement. It doesn’t say that at all.”

He concluded by noting that he had sent to General Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, the “blog by Max Boot” which, he said, had “picked apart this whole thing, as he typically does, pretty astutely.”

I hope Petraeus’s comments will put an end to this whole weird episode. Those who are either happy or unhappy about the administration’s approach to Israel should lodge their compliments or complaints where they belong — at the White House, not at Central Command.

--Posted By Max Boot - 03.25.2010 - 12:11 PM

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