"Current impasse" in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a sad cliche. There has been only one "current impasse" and it probably began some time in 1999. Since then, there has been really nothing to show for all the meetings and photo-ops and talk about peace, other than bombed out Palestinians and blown-up Israelis. That is the meaning of "peace process" in this neighborhood. Therefore, the enthusiasm of Mr. Obama for another round of "peace process" was greeted with some apprehension. Many of us have had about as much peace process as we can stand. The apprehension was not unjustified.

Who is to blame for the "current impasse" or rather, the current rerun of the movie called "Current impasse in the peace process?" Who is not to blame?

Both Israeli and Palestinian leaders insist that they want peace. Nir Hefetz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's media advisor, recently repeated another cliche of the "peace process: "Nobody wants peace as much as the Israeli people." And Mahmoud Abbas likewise claimed that the Palestinians want peace, but Israel does not.

Mahmoud Abbas recently added another act to the dog and pony show by insisting that he will not run again for the office of Palestinian President. It is not really clear if he intends to hold elections. If he did hold the promised elections and ran, Abbas, like Arafat before him, would essentially be running unopposed, since the Hamas would boycott the election. His election would no doubt be hailed, like that of Arafat, as a big victory for democracy.

Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in fact took stands that were just "reasonable" enough to assuage Americans, and just impossible enough to ensure that the other side would not consent to renewing peace negotiations. Abbas insisted on a freeze on building settlement housing before beginning negotiations. Netanyahu allowed for a "partial" settlement freeze that may in fact be no freeze at all, since it includes completion of 2,500 units that were already started. The talk about peace, on both sides is part of the dog and pony show that is performed for the benefit of foreign public opinion. The claim that "there is no peace partner" - yet another cliche of the "peace process" - is a convenient cover for internal consumption.

Evidently, both sides are afraid that in in fact there is a peace partner on the other side, or that there might be one. If they ever got around to peace making, both leaders would be in the position of the dog who chased trucks all his life, and finally caught one. They would have to make unpopular concessions (another cliche for those who are counting) and show extraordinary leadership. They can't show abilities they don't have, and they themselves have made the concessions unpopular by constantly insisting on demands and positions that make peace impossible - united Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, but Palestinians can't have peace until there is a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, including all of East Jerusalem of course. Time and again, Abbas has said that Right of Return for Palestinian refugees is an absolute demand of the Palestinians. For Israel this is unthinkable, and Abbas knows it. Concessions on any of these issues become more and more unpopular, because leaders and governments ensure that they are unpopular.

If Mr. Abbas really wanted peace, he would sit down at the negotiating table. Whether or not he negotiates, the same number of settlement housing units will be probably be built in the coming months, and whatever is built is nothing compared to what was already built, and what will be built in future years if he does not make peace.

If Mr, Netanyahu wanted peace, and wanted to demonstrate that the Palestinians do not want peace, he would give Mr. Abbas his settlement freeze, and then propose, publicly, a realistic and generous peace plan. He would let Mr. Abbas be the one to say "no."

But it is not only the leaders who are to blame. Their hard line stands were rewarded by broad public support. A recent poll shows that Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah would trounce Hamas and its candidates in elections. Netanyahu's popularity has increased since he was elected as well. Talking tough pays political dividends.

The United States is to blame too. Barack Obama went into the peace process like a bull in a china shop, and things went flying. The United States seemed to promise the Palestinians an Israeli settlement freeze, and they seemed to promise Israel concessions from Arab states as a reward for the settlement freeze, as well as a tough policy on Iranian nuclear development. But Mr. Obama could not deliver on any promise.

Hillary Clinton was next in the China shop. Her remark about "unprecedented" Israeli concessions provoked an inevitable storm of protest from the Palestinians and their Arab backers, whereupon the mighty superpower beat a hasty retreat, with Clinton calling for a permanent end to all Israeli settlement activity. The Palestinian reaction was foreseeable - it "didn't take a rocket scientist." If Hillary Clinton wasn't prepared to defend her remarks about Israel's unprecedented step, why did she make them? If the US was unwilling to force Israel to stop all settlement construction, why did they insist on it so publicly? If they were unwilling to force Arab states to make minimal and nominal concessions concerning recognition of Israel, why did they raise the issue and demonstrate American weakness and the hopelessness of the peace process?

Tom Friedman probably expressed the disgust of Americans with the 15th rerun of the peace process movie:

Obama administration officials may be the only ones who don't understand that they are watching the 15th rerun of the "peace process" movie on a bad cable TV channel. Tom Friedman is not a "neocon" or peace skeptic. He was one of the most stalwart supporters of the peace process. Friedman also helped bring the Saudi Peace initiative into the world. If he has given up, it is significant and indicative. But there are a few problems with Friedman's jocular movie analogy and his recommendation to "just go home." Friedman forgot that there are more scenes to the movie. After the peace process scene, there is generally an outbreak of violence, the seeds of which are already being prepared. What's more, actual people get blown to bits in making the movie. It is not a work of fiction. And most important for Americans, perhaps, the renewal of the conflict may affect the price of oil. While Americans might not be stirred by the melodramatics of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, or even by the drama of suicide bombings and invasions of Gaza, if the price of gasoline is increased by ten or twenty cents per gallon, they might be forced to move their attention from the Rose Bowl and the Super Bowl to the Middle East.

Americans have to recognize that they are not innocent bystanders watching a movie about the peace process. If the Hamas now rules in Gaza, that is a direct result of US intervention to ensure they participated in Palestinian elections, in violation of the Oslo Interim Agreement. The US pays for Israeli army hardware, and it also pays for Palestinian schools to teach that Haifa is a part of Palestine. Mr. Friedman, your tax dollars are at work.

The US government has to stop acting as though they don't know how the movie played out in the past. They have, in fact, a unique opportunity. Suppose the 1938 Munich negotiations had been rerun a dozen times. Wouldn't Mr. Chamberlain, even the stupid Neville Chamberlain, have eventually caught on and said, "I'm not going to stand for this again. I won't be fooled by Hitler this time around."

The United States has a chance to change the peace process movie. They are not part of a passive audience. They are actors. Perhaps they can try a little ad libbing. Instead of smiling and looking for photo opportunities and blaming the sides and giving up, as they usually do about this point, the United States can lay down the principles of a peace agreement right now. They can't force the Israelis and Palestinians to accept the principles, but on the other hand, the Israelis and Palestinians can't force the United States to continue their generous aid programs either. The United States can make it clear that it doesn't have to bankroll the Palestinian Authority, the UNRWA or Israeli defense needs unconditionally and indefinitely. The US is not obliged to prop up the "moderate" Saudi regime either if they won't show a little flexibility on the elusive Arab peace initiative.

We have gotten to the part of the movie where every party points the finger of blame at the other party, and the United States is about to walk out on the mess it helped create, as the Bush administration did. Can we change the movie this time? But who wants to bet that the cowboy will not once again get shot in first scene this time around?

Ami Isseroff

Eugene Ionescu or Samuel Becket could have written a play called "The Middle East Peace Process." Yesterday, in the Yet Another Middle East Summit that took place at the UN, we witnessed another scene in that play. Vladimir, Estragon and Godot himself appeared on the stage, said the same old things, provided the usual photo op, and departed to polite applause.

Over and over we hear the same pronouncements about the urgency of peace, about the final status agreement that is within reach, about the confidence building measures, about the need to compromise and make painful sacrifices, about the willingness to take risks for peace. We see the same photos of handshakes, tableaux that are repeated without end. The play has been running so long that all the actors have changed. Vladimir is played by Benjamin Netanyahu replaced Ehud Olmert, who replaced Ariel Sharon, who replaced Ehud Barak, who replaced Benjamin Netanyahu in his first appearance, who replaced Shimon Peres, who replaced the original Yitzhak Rabin, Estragon is ably portrayed by Mahmoud Abbas in place of Yasser Arafat, and Barack Obama replaced George Bush the Second, who replaced Bill Clinton, who replaced George Bush the First. Life, after all, must go on.

The essence of this postmodernist drama is that there is really no metanarrative. There is no plot. There is no progress, because there is nothing to progress towards. It is pointless diplomatic Dadaism. It cannot progress because of the "Human Condition" or in this case, the condition of the Middle East.

In addition to the three main protagonists, there are many choruses. These are "analysts," NGO activists, UN and EU officials who appear on the stage between the major scenes. They are all visible to the entire audience, but by a miracle of acoustics, only their partisans in separate parts of the hall understand their chants. They are saying, "It is the fault of the Israelis," "It is the fault of the Palestinians," "One State, One State" "End the Occupation," "Stop Terrorism," "Support the President," and other mindless slogans. The various audiences can see that since the first act all choruses of the opposing sides where transformed into donkeys and rhinoceroses, but to partisans of a particular group, their own chorus looks normal.

Some action is also provided in the form of suicide bombers and rocketeers, assassins and IDF commandos who appear periodically to relieve the boredom. However, it is not certain that this action is part of the play.

There is, as in all good drama, a play within a play. The excitement and suspense for this summit scene was not provided by the plot, which is intentionally repetitive and empty, or by the predictable and tired dialog, but by the making of the play, the achievement of actually having a summit. For a minute, the audience was amazed and said, "Holy sh*t! The man really can walk on water." But the moment passed. The motor boat that was used to create the illusion that Godot, the metaphorical savior, could "walk on water" was revealed to the audience. The next round of excitement will be provided by the attempts to get the sides to negotiate. Never mind that the summit was empty of content, as it had to be, and never mind that the negotiations will be empty of progress or content as well. The show, after all, must go on, "The play's the thing, wherein we'll catch the attention of the audience."

Aaron David Miller, a veteran negotiator, pointed out:

"The problem with the Obama administration policy is not the man, Obama or Mitchell; it's the mandate," Mr. Miller said. "It should be clear to all but the eternally obtuse that a conflict-ending agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu and a divided Palestinian national movement is probably out of reach. The question then becomes what is the connection between trying to get the Arabs to do partial steps for normalization and the Israelis to do a partial settlement freeze and the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement?"

It is more accurate to say that there is no mandate, or if there is, it is an impossible one. The mini-goals that are set up - confidence building measures, settlement freezes, another round of negotiations, are all meaningless and irrelevant to achieving peace. They are red herrings induced by the sides to serve as fodder for a meaningless process that cannot produce peace.

Suppose that Mr. Netanyahu were to give in to the demands of Mr. Abbas and freeze all settlement construction for a year, or two years or five years or ten years. Suppose that Mr. Abbas were to concede to Mr. Netanyahu's demands and give up the infamous "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, concede that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and concede it is just barely possible that Jews have some connection to Jerusalem and some rights there. Could Mr. Abbas remain in office for an hour after he made such a declaration? If he signed a peace agreement, could he (or the United States) prevent the Hamas from raining rockets on Israel from Gaza or overthrowing the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank as they did in Gaza? If Mr. Netanyahu wanted to give up all of East Jerusalem and allow Israel to be flooded with millions of Palestinian refugees as Mr. Abbas demands, could he get such an agreement past a referendum in Israel?

So if no agreement is possible, what does Mr. Obama want? Where does he really think this process will lead? It is anyone's guess.

Those who criticize Benjamin Netanyahu for not freezing settlements are right, but they are right for the wrong reasons. A settlement freeze - complete and absolute, for two years, would be a brilliant Israeli diplomatic move. In that time, Israel would require that the Palestinians come up with realistic peace proposals that didn't include destroying Israel and removing the historic part of its capital city, and disarm the Hamas as they were required to do under Phase I of the roadmap. The Palestinians could never meet any of those conditions, and Israel could show conclusively that the process is hopeless and pointless. The Palestinians could likewise sow confusion in the Israeli camp by agreeing, for example to the Clinton Bridging Proposals. The United States can hardly abrogate its own proposals, and Israel already supposedly agreed to them. But if the Palestinians were going to agree to those proposals, they could have done so in 2000. Probably it was decided that agreeing to those proposals would be bad for the health of the Palestinian leadership. If Netanyahu agrees to them he would probably be out of a job or worse. For the American producers of the play, it makes no difference. Deceased or deposed protagonists can be replaced by others, as long as the show goes on. For the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, it does make a difference, but nobody in Washington considers that problem. Any action can only lead to a further stalemate and more empty "process," but it helps the DC bureaucrats get through another day.

However, outside the diplomatic theater, the play of real life and real geopolitics progresses. The peace process is going no place, but other processes are headed in various directions. The Hamas are entrenching themselves in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority with the cynical collusion of the European Union, is planning to announce a state unilaterally in about two years. The bonus for the EU is that if they succeed, they would have replaced the United States entirely as the diplomatic arbiter of the Middle East. There would be a new Godot, perhaps with a Spanish or French accent. The US would be needed only to pay for the Palestinian state and probably to send troops, while the EU rakes in the benefits. One way or the other, that scenario must lead to violence, but that is no concern of Mr. Moratinos and his friends, who are running their own play. The Palestinians will send suicide bombers and rockets, the Israelis will send the IDF, the UN will send Mr. Goldstone to scold Israel about war crimes, and the EU will preside over a new version of the peace process play.

In order to break out of the theater of the absurd before it is coopted by other forces, Mr Obama must fix what is wrong instead of working on what is convenient. Obama must somehow deliver Gaza without Hamas and a PA that is really ready to make peace before Israel will elect a government that will seriously talk about peace. He must also simultaneously deliver an Israeli government that will talk peace and mean it, in order to justify getting rid of Hamas and getting concessions from the Palestinians. If he could do any one of these things, he probably really could walk on water. Both together are just not going to happen, especially as there is no sign that anyone in the US administration understands the problem or cares.

Ami Isseroff

Original text copyright by the author and MidEastWeb for Coexistence, RA. Posted at MidEastWeb Middle East Web Log at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000776.htm where your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Distributed by MEW Newslist. Subscribe by e-mail to mew-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by email with this notice and link to and cite this article. Other uses by permission.

Almost everyone says that Israelis are angry with the United States and President Obama, and Americans are angry at Israel. If "everyone says it," it must be true. Israelis are also angry at American Jews, supposedly, and American Jews are angry at Israel. It's supposedly all about the US demand for a freeze on building in West bank settlements, an issue that revealed a gap of understanding and trust between the Israeli government and the American administration, and between Israelis and (some) American Jews.

The poll data on Israel seem to be unambiguous. According to one survey, only 12% of Jewish Israelis believe President Obama's policies favor Israel. According to another survey, only 4% of Jewish Israelis believe President Obama's policies favor Israel. At least one person expressed the bizarre opinion that this is due to Israeli racism. Since 31% of Jewish Israelis believed Obama is pro-Israel last May, and larger percentages approved of his election, this is unlikely, unless most Israelis had not noticed Obama's skin pigmentation at the time.

US opinion is not as unequivocal. The National Jewish Democratic Committee and the J Street lobby group insist that they represent a majority of Jews who back President Obama. Polls tell a different story. One poll taken in August found that while 92% of American Jewish Democrats support President Obama's policies in general, 52% of them do not agree that Arabs will leave in peace with Israel if the Palestinians are given a state, and the same percentage support continued building in the settlements to allow for natural growth. A recent poll of all American voters found that 53% oppose and 43% support the Palestinian position that negotiations should not be resumed until there is a total settlement freeze. The same poll also found that 72% of American voters agreed that Israel should be allowed to "accommodate natural growth" in the settlements, and that there has been a significant increase in support for Israel.

Thomas Friedman offered some "marriage counseling" on this issue last month. Friedman is certainly right that Israelis who characterized Jewish officials in the American administration as "self-hating" because they favored Obama's policies were out of line. There is no reason to expect that American officials of any religious or ethnic origin will do anything other than fulfill the duties of their office to the best of their abilities and be loyal to their boss and the American government. On the other hand, this should also have been remembered by those who early insisted that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a neo-con Likud Zionist and an agent for Israel.

But Friedman's "counseling" probably didn't get a very favorable reception in Israel, since it was along the lines of, "We are right and you are wrong and that's the end of it." Freedman wrote, "Bottom line: Israelis need to understand this is not the Bush administration anymore..." It seems Israeli Jews do understand that. However, that doesn't mean they have to like it. Friedman, who was personally involved in the Saudi peace initiative, may not be entirely objective.

Without deciding who is right and who is wrong, I would like to try to explain the positions of each side, each of which seem to be ignoring salient facts in favor of others.

A substantial percentage of Israeli Jews believe that Obama is neutral between Israelis and Palestinians, which is not such a terrible "accusation" after all. There are certainly aspects of American policy that cannot be said to favor Israel, and it is the right of Israeli Jews to evaluate American policy as they see fit, without being accused of racism.

That said, Israelis seem to have a blind spot about the settlements, and the damage they are doing to Israel's international standing. That is even more true in Europe than in the United States. There is no doubt that the vast majority of world opinion insists that Israel must eventually dismantle the settlements and that the refusal of Israel to consider a real settlement freeze has caused anger throughout the world and isolated Israel. Even relatively hawkish Israelis realize that the dream of Greater Israel is doomed and that it will be necessary to withdraw from most, if not all of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements that are being built there. On the other hand, the Obama administration emphasis on the settlement freeze over and above all other issues has contributed to Israeli isolation. This is a major point that has fueled the anger of Israelis.

From the official point of view of the American administration and liberal American Jewish groups like J-Street, the case is cut and dried. The Israelis stop building settlements, a peace treaty is concluded, Israel gives up some land, all the Arab states make peace with israel, and everyone lives happily ever after. The Palestinians undertook to curb incitement and to end armed terrorist bands and they have done so. Now it is Israel's turn to comply with the first phase of the roadmap by freezing settlement construction and removing illegal outposts.

From the Israeli Jewish point view, that vision is mistaken. While Hamas is in power in Gaza, there can be no peace treaty. Neither the Obama administration nor the government of Mahmoud Abbas offers a practical way to eliminate Hamas, and there seems to be no chance of forming a united government in which Hamas agrees to reasonable peace terms. If there should be such a united government, it is more than likely that Hamas would take it over, and the Gaza situation would spread to the West Bank.

Worse, there doesn't seem to be much hope for reasonable peace terms from the "moderate" government of Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has insisted over and over on "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees, and Israeli evacuation of all of "Arab" East Jerusalem, including the Jewish quarter of the Old City, the wailing wall and the Hebrew University campus on Mt. Scopus. Abbas and Arab countries have also explicitly refused to recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, because that would void the possibility that descendants of Palestinian refugees could enter the country and form a majority, ending Jewish self-determination. His positions are backed by the Arab states and were reaffirmed in the recent Fatah foreign policy platform. Taysir Tamimi, the Palestinian Authority appointed Chief Justice of Jerusalem, insists that there is no evidence that Jews ever lived in Jerusalem or that there ever was a temple.

To most Jewish Israelis, the wonderful "peace deal" proposition looks like "If you give up your capital city and your right to self determination, we will make 'peace' with you." Giving up national self-determination and your capital city are terms appropriate for unconditional surrender, not peace.

As for Palestinian compliance with Phase 1 of the Road map, the rockets and mortars launched regularly from Gaza are proof for Israelis that the Palestinians have not disarmed terrorist groups. Statements like that of Sheikh Tamimi, as well as Palestinian Authority sponsored programs that teach Palestinian children that Haifa is the largest port in Palestine, make it clear that the Palestinian Authority has not ended incitement.

From the Israeli point of view, with no peace in sight, what is the point of a settlement freeze? The settlement freeze would not be a temporary one until peace is rapidly concluded. It would be a semi-permanent blight on all Jewish communities, including those that by "consensus" will remain Israeli territory, such as Gush Etzion. as negotiations dragged out indefinitely.

In Israeli eyes, the inability of the Obama administration to obtain any concessions from the Palestinians or the Arabs regarding right of return, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, an end to incitement or the Jerusalem issue, as well as the American unwillingness to apply the same sort of heavy handed public pressure on the Palestinians that they applied to Israel, constituted a one-sided and unfair policy that isolated Israel in order to obtain a pointless result. Moreover, the American government was apparently violating a verbal understanding reached previously with the Bush administration, concerning natural growth in settlements.

What hides behind the term "settlements?" For the Americans, "settlements" do not include only the communities in the West Bank that house about 250,000 people, They also include all of the Jewish neighborhoods east of the 1949 armistice border ("green line") in East Jerusalem. Americans and Palestinians insisted that all building must end there as well. Jerusalem had a special status, as it was to have been internationalized according to UN resolutions. The internationalization, which was to have included a wide area encompassing Bethlehem, was never implemented. Instead, the Jordanians annexed Jerusalem without international recognition in 1949 and the Israelis did the same following the Six Day War. There is a consensus of Jewish Israelis that at least a part of East Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty. Israeli Jews were forced by the Americans to choose between a settlement freeze and Jewish rights in Jerusalem. Of course, they chose the latter.

A large percentage of Israelis understand that the settlements are doomed. Israeli anger is not mostly about settlements themselves. The American government could have accomplished a lot more without evoking Israeli anger if they had handled the issue less clumsily.

Perhaps the demonstration of a "tough line" against Israel is America's way of winning back Arab and Palestinian support and trust. However, the Israeli right has managed to capitalize on the anger of the Israeli public. Playing on the various issues for all they are worth and then some, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have obtained American agreement to a compromise settlement freeze that excludes Jerusalem. However, even before this agreement was in place, the Israeli government violated it by announcing approval of 500 housing units in addition to the 2,500 being built, evoking a pointed public scolding from the Americans. Evidently, Netanyahu felt he needed the "in your face" announcement to get support for the freeze from his right wing coalition. He is counting on continued Israeli anger to support the government against the Americans. Unfortunately, he may be right. When people are angry, they don't always think rationally, and they may do destructive things. Israelis should not forget that the United States still holds all the aces.

Ami Isseroff

According to a recent poll, President Obama has managed to do a remarkable thing: He has managed to convince both the a majority of Palestinians and a plurality of Israelis that the United States sides with their enemies:

12% of Israelis and 64% of Palestinians think that Obama's policy is more supportive of Israel; 40% and 7% respectively think it is more supportive of the Palestinians, and 38% and 23% respectively think it is supportive of both sides equally.

Obama has once again confounded skeptics and done the impossible. All together now please, "Yes we can!"

Not long ago, Aluf Benn in the New York Times, and Bradley Burston in Haaretz, both call on Obama to come to Israel and talk to Israelis, redressing the imbalance of attention he has given Arab and Muslim countries, and explaining how US policy is going to help Israel Professor Alon Ben Meir has added his voice to theirs:

It is critical at this juncture that President Obama now personally appeal directly to the Israeli public. This must include a massive public relations campaign, where the US President can reach out to Israelis through op-eds in Israeli papers, interviews on Army Radio, and appearances on Israeli television channels.
..
The president must also explain that in order to keep his commitment to seeing out a final agreement, the parameters must covers all conflicting issues, especially the final border, settlements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future status of East Jerusalem. By providing a vision of the "big picture" Obama would be able to foster the confidence that incremental building measures will indeed lead to the desired structure of peace. For Israel to make progress on halting settlement growth, Netanyahu must be able to trust that Obama is applying equal pressure on the Arab states to deliver concessions with the goal of normalizing relations with Israel.

Ben-Meir's idea is totally divorced from the reality of Israel and Palestine. Obama and his spinologists will come here and offer what? Let's look at the offer from the point of view of the Israelis and Palestinians, rather than from the point of view of the Americans. To the Israelis Obama will "offer" that they must give up large parts of the West Bank including Jerusalem. To the Palestinians he will "offer" that they must give up their cherished dream of "right" of return for Palestinian refugees. And what will they get for this? Very likely, they will both get a Hamas controlled government in the West Bank as well as Gaza, oppressing the Palestinians and raining down rocket fire and mortars on Israel. Truly an offer that nobody could refuse!

After 18 years of futility, terror and bad faith, what Obama needs to do is to restore confidence in the peace process, to show both sides that he has some real deliverables to offer in return for concessions he is demanding, rather than PR and schmaltz. Let's assume that inevitably, Israel will have to agree to a settlement freeze. What another government would have done with grace, will be conceded by the Netanyahu government after much kicking and screaming to satisfy internal political needs. But then what? Will the Palestinians concede their demand for "Right" of return, which is now reiterated yet again in the Fatah Program? Will Israel or the Palestinians be willing to yield a millimeter of East Jerusalem to the claims of the other side? Will anyone be able to dislodge the Hamas from Gaza or get them to agree to the terms of the peace process? If not, another year or two years will be passed in futile negotiations, and at the end of the process, the Israelis will have moved further to the right, and the Palestinians will be further radicalized, in total frustration over a nightmare that is all process and no peace.

Nobody here thought that Mr. Obama could really walk on water, but it might have been thought that so august a personage could at the very least, obtain by his prestige in the Arab world, as a personal favor, the release of one single kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and thereby end the Israeli blockade of Gaza as well. He didn't even try. He didn't even manage to get a Red Cross visit for Shalit and arrange conditions conforming to international law. One little "Confidence Building Measure" like that would do more to restore Israeli confidence that all the bumf that can be spun by public relations spinologists. Palestinians and Israelis all know now about the promised "new Middle East." We are living in it. This is what it looks like. This is the result of the "peace process."

An article by Walid Salem, calling for bypassing the second stage of the roadmap, illustrates the unbearable absurdity of the "peace process." Salem notes that the second stage of the roadmap marks a Palestinian state with provisional borders as optional, but the third stage calls for a mandatory conference to affirm the provisional borders of the option. The document that was signed off by all sides contradicts itself. The sides signed off on nonsensical provisions in a document that was supposed to determine their fate! Perhaps there was a meeting or a photo-op deadline that required that the document must be signed. Is this a serious process? Is there anything the sides would not agree to in order meet some trivial deadline? If the photographers are waiting in the Rose Garden, will the Palestinians and Israelis sign and agree to sprout wings and fly?

Now Salem wants to bypass other provisions for an international force, because after all, so much changed since the document was signed, and since the force might constitute "occupation." If the provisions were not agreeable to the Palestinians, why did they agree to them? That is the history of the entire "peace process" in a nutshell: Each side agrees to provisions it cannot keep and doesn't intend to keep, and then "sh*t happens" and the process goes out of control and the USA does nothing, and then each side wiggles out of its commitments. The road does not follow the plan of the road map. There is a detour. The bridge is washed out and everyone ends up in a ditch.

The Israelis agreed to freeze settlement construction and remove the illegal outposts. About five years passed and almost nothing at all happened except more settlement construction and removal of some outposts that were quickly rebuilt, but the US did nothing about it. The Palestinians agreed to end terror and round up illegal weapons. Now Walid Salem tells us complacently that the Palestinians have complied. Perhaps they did, with the small exception of Gaza, where the terrorist Hamas is in control. Only yesterday two mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza, and a Palestinian was killed while trying to plant a bomb. That is the extent of the compliance of the Palestinians with the road map. Of course, in retaliation for the mortars, Israel bombed the smuggling tunnels and killed 3 Palestinians. A normal day in the new Middle East, where everyone lives in peace and harmony, enjoying the benefits of the "peace process." This mind you was a slow week in the peace process. Wait until the "peace process" gets going in earnest again. In the "good" period of 1996 you could have 30 or so people blowing up in a bus in a single day.

How can Mahmoud Abbas demand a state when he cannot even set foot in Gaza? When his own Fatah delegates were not allowed to leave Gaza to attend the Fatah convention? How can the U.S. expect Israelis to believe in a peace process while Hamas rules in Gaza? Perhaps they think that after there is a wonderful model of peace agreement concluded between the Palestinians and the Israelis, there will be free elections in Gaza. Even assuming that Palestinians would favor such an agreement, which undoubtedly would involve conceding their dearest principles, does anyone believe that Hamas would allow itself to be removed from office in free elections and simply lay down its arms and become a political party? A party dedicated to what principles? Killing the Jews who are hiding behind the gharkad tree in order to hasten the end of days, as they vow in the Hamas Charter?

If the United States wants to advance the peace process, it must do more than pressure Israel, the Arabs and the Palestinians. It has to pressure itself. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority can solve the problem of Hamas, and until Hamas is removed or disarmed and persuaded to join the peace process, there can be no peace. The presence of the Hamas in Gaza is a direct consequence of American meddling in the Palestinian election process. "You broke it, you pay for it." The "peace process" can only succeed if both sides understand that commitments are irrevocable and will be enforced. The "peace process" can only succeed if someone is there to ensure that the documents being signed make sense and that the sides can and will comply with them. All these are roles that the United States must assume.

While the US should not try to force a settlement on the sides, it should make clear what are its acceptable and unacceptable parameters for a peace agreement. The sides have contradictory and mutually exclusive claims. Both claim all of East Jerusalem, which is an impossible demand to fulfill. Israel insists on recognition of the Jewish right to a national home in Israel, the issue at heart of the conflict since the 1920s. The Palestinians insist on "Right" of return for refugees and refuse to recognize the Jewish right to self determination, a condition which to Israelis means "peace without Israel" rather than "peace with Israel." What is the stand of the United States and the European Union on all these issues and how do we get to a reasonable compromise, if such a compromise is possible?

For all the illogicality of the Middle East, there are two wildly absurd ingredients in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that were made in New York rather than in the Middle East. The US contributes to these absurdities, which stand in the way of an agreement, but while telling everyone to "take risks for peace" it does nothing to undo the damage done by the UN imposed fiats. The first is the internationalization of Jerusalem, which was often reiterated but never enforced. This is supposed to include not only all of East and West Jerusalem, but also Bethlehem. This fiction has been on the books since 1947. How can Israelis believe in the "unbreakable bond" between the United States and Israel, when, in defiance of its own Embassy act, the United States will not even recognize Rehavia or Kiriat Hayovel as part of Israel? The second is the UNRWA, which, thanks to the generous contributions of the United States and EU members, perpetuates the misery of the Palestinian refugees, and provides an excuse for not offering them decent lives. Generations have rotted in the camps. The sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and the sons of sons. But the United States and the other great powers will make no move to lift the sentence of living death imposed on the refugees, to offer them asylum and a decent life in other countries.

Finally, the US must consider the consequences of failure. It is no longer really a question of "taking risks for peace." After 18 years of consecutive fiascoes that usually ended in bloodshed, failure of any Middle East peace process initiative is almost a "sure thing." At this point we are at an impasse. An impasse is not good, but it is not the worst thing that could happen. It is not descent into chaos. Both sides are asked to give up their semi-livable niches. The United States is demanding that both Palestinian and Israeli leaderships and peoples take a great leap on their motor cycles over a ravine and land where? The other side is not paved yet. Supposedly, it will be finished in the act of leaping, which is required in order for the miracle to occur. It must include ratification of the agreement by the people on each side, and removal of the Hamas from the equation. It must also include something that didn't happen in 18 years of "peace process": implementation of the agreement to the letter. What happens to the Fatah movement and Palestinian Authority if they give up right of return of refugees and other concessions, and Israel for some reason does not deliver on evacuation of settlements? What happens to Israeli leadership if they make the necessary territorial concessions, remove thousands of protesting, kicking and screaming and protesting settlers, and all Israel gets in return are more rockets and mortars and suicide bombings? Will the "peace" be a bigger and better version of disengagement? Will the failure once again be blamed on something Israel did or did not do? Or what happens if nothing happens, and there is no agreement and just a continuation of the stalemate? What is plan B? If Mr. Obama is going to come here, he had better have answers to these questions for everyone, not just spin about taking risks for peace and change we can believe in, and not just schmaltz about the beauties of Islam and the unbreakable bond with Israel.

Ami Isseroff

Throughout the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and especially during the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," both Israel and the Arab side have been engaged in a carefully designed "peace war," the object of which is to make peace impossible while creating the appearance that their side wants peace, while the other side is an obstacle to peace (see What makes Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives fail?). The Americans and Europeans, lured by the tantalizing prospect of peace in the Middle East, have allowed themselves to fall into successive traps that complicate the issue, and allow the sides to use the mediators to extract money as well as support for their claims, in order to bolster their own positions and continue the conflict. The fate of the Obama peace initiative is no exception.

The latest gallant and doomed foray of the Americans came in the form of a demand for a settlement freeze, suggested by repeated Palestinian protests at Israeli settlement construction. The Palestinians announced that they would not continue negotiations unless there was such a settlement freeze. Notwithstanding the fact that Palestinians had been content to negotiate with the Olmert administration while settlement building had continued apace, this demand in itself was, on the face of it reasonable, since Palestinians had insisted that there was no point in negotiating while Israel continued to build settlements deep in Palestinian territory.

The Arab states and the Palestinians perceived that the United States under the Bush administration was partial to Israel in mediating the conflict. In order to regain prestige in the Arab and Muslim world, the United States found it necessary to demonstrate impartiality by confronting Israel publicly, in a way that may gain admiration and support in the Arab world, but which almost guarantees that there can be no possible Israeli acquiescence in US demands.

The Arabs are known for their pride and independence, but Israelis have some of those qualities too, as do all peoples. The US presented its demands for a settlement freeze in a public, confrontational way that would curry favor with the Arab side, but was bound to be a perfect domestic issue for Israeli right wing foes of the peace process. The latter were quite happy to circle the wagons to protect what suddenly became a national consensus. The stand of the Israeli government garnered support from the major opposition parties, Kadima and Labor, because those parties had no other politically viable choice. Only the tiny Meretz party objected. Their protest, of course, was not understood, and will only serve to make the tiny Meretz party even tinier.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians had maneuvered well. The Israelis, by building settlement units in the West bank, have more than doubled the Jewish population there since 1993, making it increasingly difficult to contemplate moving large blocs of settlements. The Israelis agreed to remove some illegal outposts and to implement a freeze on building new homes in the West Bank in the Road Map for peace "except for natural growth" - but then they stretched the envelope of that agreement by building way beyond the requirements of "natural growth" and encroaching increasingly on Arab territories. As for the illegal outposts, it seems that in balance, not one was ever permanently removed, though some dramatic shows of removal were staged.

The ostensibly legitimate Palestinian demand was intentionally designed to be impossible to satisfy. Stopping all building of any kind permanently would mean that Israel dooms all its communities beyond the green line. Not only isolated settlements like Yizhar and Tapuah and the settlement inside Hebron, and not only large towns like Ariel and Maaleh Edumim, but also the four settlements of the original Gush Etzion, kibbutzim which Arab attackers ethnically cleansed in 1948, as well as the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, likewise ethnically cleansed in 1948, as well as the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol in Jerusalem, built on no-man's - land, and the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University, isolated by the Jordanian conquests in 1948, not to mention the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Nobody would want to live in communities that are permanently denied the right to expand, except perhaps in societies that have absolutely zero population growth. Even in such societies, old buildings are replaced by new ones, and new roads and other improvements are made from time to time.

There is no way that Israel could satisfy a demand for a complete settlement freeze including Jerusalem without in effect, surrendering all Jewish national rights in East Jerusalem in advance, as well as all territorial rights in the West Bank. Since that is what the Palestinians want, there is no compromise agreement that will ever satisfy the Palestinians. The Americans and Israelis may reach a compromise, but it will probably never satisfy the Palestinians. The Americans blundered on into the trap, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that Jerusalem is no different from any West Bank settlement. Jerusalem was certain to be an issue from the start, and that was the intention of the Palestinians. Jerusalem is an issue in its own right, but no issue ever exists in isolation, and one issue or demand can always be used to "score points" regarding a different issue or "right."

The Israelis contributed to the impasse by approving a plan to build a hotel in East Jerusalem. On the one hand, the Shepherd hotel and its grounds have been Israeli property for a long time. On the other hand, they are located in Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood that according to the (Bill) Clinton bridging proposals of 2000 would have been part of an Arab Palestinian state.

Suppose that some way could be found to resolve the settlement freeze dispute that was satisfactory to everyone, or at least to the Palestinians? Would this be a giant step forward in resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict? It is not likely. The Palestinians do not have a united government, and if they ever achieved unity, they would necessarily have a government that rejected the principles of the peace process, which the Hamas movement does not recognize. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, as well as Hamas, all insist on the impossible to fulfill demand of "right" of return for Palestinian refugees. None of them would be willing to recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people. The settlement freeze issue was convenient for the Netanyahu government, which has built a consensus around Jerusalem. However, the intent of the policies it pursues seems to be to protect the settlements in Yizhar and Hebron and Tapuach, not just Jerusalem.

The Israelis and Palestinians have created the "perfect puzzle." It is insoluble because it is intended by design to be incapable of resolution. Of course, the issue could be resolved with good will and common sense on both sides, but if there were good will and common sense on both sides, there would not have been any conflict in the first place.

Ami Isseroff

"The current impasse in the Israeli-Arab conflict" is an almost ideal all-purpose title for an analysis essay, as it could have been used almost any month in the last 62 years.

The prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians is so attractive to most people, the need seems so urgent and solutions seem so obvious, at least to outsiders. Why then, have repeated attempts at resolution failed so miserably? (for example, see The Peace Process is dead, long live the peace process).

The gallant and well meaning quest for peace in the Middle East of the Obama administration, and previous American administrations, variously known as the Oslo process, the "peace process," the Clinton initiative, the Bush road map and the Obama initiative, has foundered once again. It has allowed itself most recently, as usual, to be ensnared in demands that are impossible to meet and issues that are designed to be incapable of resolution. Instead of focusing on core problems, the "peace process" has once more been diverted to a sterile and hopeless debate about an issue that is a symptom, not a cause. This essay explores the background of the problem.

Since November 29, 1947, there has only been a single real issue in the Arab Israeli conflict: The willingness to implement, in principle, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which partitioned the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. This issue breaks itself down into two components:

1. The willingness of Palestinians and Arab states to recognize the right of the Jewish people to self determination and to live in peace with a Jewish state.

2. The willingness of Israelis to recognize the right of the Palestinian Arab people to self-determination, to withdraw from territories conquered in the Six Day war, and live in peace with a Palestinian Arab state to be created in those territories.

The Arabs of Palestine have always refused to comply, or expressed willingness to comply that was really a refusal. They have steadfastly refused to recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, refused to recognize any Jewish rights in "Arab" East Jerusalem, and refused to give up the "right" of "return" for descendants of Arab Palestinian refugees. Most recently they made a point of turning down a quiet U.S. request to give up right of return. publicly and quite bluntly.

The Israelis expressed their willingness to comply in principle. However as the years wore on, policies wavered. After the end of the Israel War of Independence, it became less certain that Israel would accept an Arab Palestinian state in practice, but there was no problem as long as it was certain that they would not have to do so. In the 1980s, it was the declared policy of the Israeli government that there must not be a second state between the river and the sea. This changed following the Oslo accords, but Benjamin Netanyahu continued, until recently, to formally reject the principle of a Palestinian Arab state.

In the abstract, both the principal parties declare repeatedly that they want peace. As the "danger" of a peaceful resolution becomes more "threatening," both sides load their abstract declarations with conditions and complications that make peace impossible.

All sides have managed to completely obscure the issues, so it is not surprising that at every turn attempts to bring peace founder on this or that red herring that is raised by one or the other sides. The Arabs and the Jews, the UN and the United States, as well as some other parties, have each introduced totally extraneous demands, "rights" and requirements into their considerations that complicate the issues and either put the negotiations off track or mire them in irrelevancies and in attempted solution of issues that were deliberately designed to be impossible of solution.

The Americans, since the 1975 manifesto of Harold Saunders, have had a messianic view of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The solution of the conflict, in that theology, is the holy grail. It is key to solving all problems in the Middle East. After it is solved, there will be no more disputes or problems of oil supplies, legacies of colonialism, abridgment of human rights in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, or pressing problems of human rights and development in Middle Eastern countries. There will be no more water shortages, and the climate of the Middle East will become like that of the San Francisco Bay area. Perhaps the oceans will turn into pink lemonade and a non-denominational Prince of Peace will descend from the heavens to rule over a Middle East where people have the benefit of eternal life and unlimited wealth. Perhaps it is the attraction of this eschatological vision that drives the United States government to don its shining armor and stage its gallant but risky and ill advised forays into the battle for Middle East peace, with much more determination and valor than wisdom or discretion. Perhaps also, the understanding of the sides that the Americans are so interested in peace creates a sellers market, and forces up the price demanded for that peace. The Americans want peace in the worst way, and they are going about it in the worst way possible.

To satisfy obscure and unacceptable religious considerations, the UN created the unworkable issue of internationalization of Jerusalem, which it never seriously tried to implement. Neither party to the conflict wants such a solution, there is no way to enforce it, and no reason for it. That did not prevent the UN from passing numerous resolutions condemning Israel for violating the fictitious internationalization decrees, though no such resolution was ever passed condemning Jordan for equal violations in the period prior to 1967, when they occupied East Jerusalem and other areas that were to have been part of the international "Corpus Separatum." The United States, along with other countries, have exacerbated the internationalization aberration, to the absurd point where the United States will not register an American child born in Jerusalem - any part of it - as having been born in "Israel." This is supposed to lend legitimacy to the extinct internationalization proviso, but in fact it lends legitimacy to Arab claims on Jerusalem.

The Arab states also harnessed the UN to perpetuate the unique Palestinian refugee problem, which still exists because the Arab states refuse to absorb the descendants of Arab Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israel war in the same way as Israel absorbed Jewish Refugees who became homeless as the result of the conflict. No other refugees in the entire world have the same "rights" as the Palestinian Arab refugees, thanks to special UN treatment of this problem.

The Arab states invented a "right of return" for these refugees and made it a condition of solution of the conflict. Of course, implementation of the "right" of return would flood Israel with descendants of refugees and make it impossible to implement Jewish self determination, the original intent of Resolution 181. The Arabs have steadfastly refused to recognize that there is a Jewish people, and pretend that there is only a Jewish religion, and that the demand for a Jewish state involves creating a state based on a religion. This complaint is somewhat absurd when it is made by states like Egypt that declare that Islam is their official religion. What is the Islamic Republic of Iran if it is not a "state based on a religion?" Does it not have a seat in the United Nations?

The Palestinians, abetted by the UN, falsely construed the "right of resistance" to occupation - a right intended to be exercised against enemy soldiers, as giving them a license to slaughter Jewish civilians, men women and children, anywhere in the world, including hi-jacking of airplanes and ocean liners.

The Israelis for their part have now elected a government that refuses to let go of sufficient territory in the West Bank to allow creation of a state for the Arab Palestinians, and have devised a "right" to build settlements in the territories of the West Bank. It is questionable whether settlement of Jews in those territories, especially settlement of Jews in places from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948, is "illegal" under international law. However, everyone can agree that there is no guaranteed "right" of a state or its citizens to settle people outside the internationally accepted boundaries of that state, and that massive and ongoing settlement activities are not going to improve the chances for eventual surrender of the territories to a Palestinian Arab state.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have made unjustifiably exaggerated claims regarding East Jerusalem that, like other claims in the conflict, are deliberately designed to be mutually exclusive in order to make any resolution impossible and to inflame sentiment on both sides. Israel has annexed a large area to what it calls "United Jerusalem." The Palestinians have begun to insist that the Jewish people have no national rights whatever in East Jerusalem (which they sometimes call "Arab East Jerusalem), that no Jews ever lived there before 1967 and that there was no Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem in ancient times.

Into this morass, the Americans have charged repeatedly. Instead of focusing on the core issues that are causing the disease of the Middle East conflict, they decreed that these should be relegated to the limbo of "creative ambiguity." No major issues were ever addressed during most of the peace process since the Oslo Declaration of Principles. The Israelis were free to proliferate settlements and the Palestinians were free to entrench their demands for return of refugees and for a Palestinian-state-with-its-capital-in-Jerusalem and to continue with "resistance," which was used both by the Hamas and by the PLO to sabotage the Oslo accords. If there is a right to resistance while a people are struggling for freedom, that "right" cannot be construed as providing a license to kill civilians and to violate and invalidate signed agreements that are part of a process intended to give a people who are under foreign rule their national rights. Nor is it a legitimate "peace" platform to insist, as the Hamas and Islamists do, that the only "just" solution to eliminating foreign rule of one people, is to substitute for it the enslavement or genocide of another people.

The current US-Israeli spat over the "settlement freeze," which will be discussed separately (see What makes Barack Obama and his Israeli-Palestinian peace Initiative fail?) is just another instantiation of the principles of hopelessness that have guided all Israeli-Palestinian "peace" initiatives.

Ami Isseroff

Danny Shapiro, a friend who has started working at the Peres Peace Center wrote the following account.

July 19 was the first day of a six day camp joining 32 Israeli kids, aged 12 - 14, from the poor southern towns of Yeruham and Sderot, and 28 Palestinian kids living in poverty and despair in the occupied territories.

The camp, held at Kibbutz Galon, is organized by the Peres Center's Sports Department. And as much as I read about this kind of program, no article I could read, or video I could watch, could in any possible way match the almost incredulous sense of wonder and inspiration aroused by seeing these sixty kids playing in Galon's pool together, and enjoying a multi-lingual Darbuka session with a Palestinian madrich (leader).

It was also fascinating and deeply impressive to speak at length with Issam, who works on a number of projects with the Peres Center. Issam grew up in Gaza and moved to Ramallah after Hamas came to power and he felt his life was in danger for his many years of reconciliation work. No doubt some of you know him.

His story is amazing. He sat in an Israeli prison and had a life-changing experience with an Israeli officer that put him on the path of working towards conciliation and peace. If I have the time I will write the story down and pass it along.

Issam reminded me again and again that not only was this the first time most of the Palestinian children had met an Israeli who is neither a soldier nor a settler - but for the great majority of them, this was the first time in their lives outside of their town or certainly the territories; the first time they had eaten in a restaurant; the first time they experience what even the lowest social and economic classes in Israel take for granted.

I have no illusions that the experience of these 60 kids, and that of the additional several hundred who will be treated to similar camps this summer, will make any serious dent in overall public opinion or attitudes, and certainly will not make the leaders on both sides more peace loving and conciliatory. But then, that (the latter, at least) is not the goal of the Peres Peace Center.

But this type of program most certainly changes attitudes (this is based on professional evaluation following multiple years of experience), and, if nothing else, humanizes the conflict for those who are involved in it; and injects a few rays of hope into our battered and shattered hearts and minds.

Can we hope that such efforts will proliferate in future? They will, if will will all fight for them. It is no secret that dialog and reconciliation efforts have enemies. Groups like PACBI and Alternative Information Center oppose "normalization." Fanatics ruined the beautiful one voice effort with threats of violence. We all remember the suppression of the Palestinian youth orchestra that played for Holocaust survivors. These efforts, these noble failures and tiny successes, show that the will for peace exists. In the long run, they are the real hope for lasting Middle East peace, for peace is not just a piece of paper. Isn't it worthwhile fighting for dialog activities?

Ami Isseroff

With respect to Western policy on the Middle East, the most significant events of the year may not be the Iranian election protests, or the US-Israel spat over settlements, or Palestinian unity or lack thereof. The most significant events may be the bankruptcy of General Motors, the world economic crisis, and the death of Michael Jackson.

The most significant of this decade regarding western Middle East policy was without a doubt the attacks of 9-11-01. Millions of people around the world, especially in the United States, suddenly became aware of the Middle East. Suddenly, people were discussing places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. Quran became a household word in much of the United States and Europe, as did Sharia and Fatwa. In the days and weeks following the attack on the World Trade Center, hundreds of thousands of people accessed each of the hundreds of Web sites like MidEastWeb. They were not looking for arcane explanations of Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden or Islamism. They were looking for maps. Evidently, they were trying to find out, "Where is this Middle East place that is causing all the trouble?

The 9-11 attacks, followed by the Iraq war and the London transportation system bombings, inaugurated an era in which larger and larger circles of people in the United States and Europe, not just foreign policy analysts, became aware of the Middle East and its importance. Terror (not militants) became important not just in Karachi and Jerusalem, but also in New York, London and Washington. Everyone developed an opinion, regardless of knowledge. In 2006, at the height of the Israeli war with Lebanon, a poll showed that 20% of American voters could not identify the Hamas, 25% could not identify the Hezbollah, and about 23% of the respondents claimed they had never heard anything about the Iranian nuclear program. What was most interesting, was that the respondents who claimed ignorance of the Iranian nuclear program had precisely the same opinions about sanctions against Iran as those who claimed to be informed. Facts are B*O*R*I*N*G, but everyone is entitled to an opinion, right? Opinions about peripheral issues like the Middle East are often held for psychological, sociological and political reasons, not for logical reasons. For example, a recent survey reported that only 6% of Americans thought it was very likely that Palestinian leaders would acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, while 21% thought it was "somewhat likely." A clear majority, 81% believed that this condition was a requirement for peace. 48% asserted that Barack Obama's policies toward Israel were correct. But the centerpiece of those policies is forcing Israeli concessions in order to get a peace agreement, even though most people noted that such an agreement is unlikely. 46% of those questioned on June 22, 8 days following Benjamin Netanyahu's speech accepting a Palestinian state, insisted that it was not very likely or "very unlikely" that Israel would accept such a state.

The unfamiliar was assimilated to the familiar, and Middle East policy opinions inevitably entered the rubric of familiar domestic politics. The villains of Afghanistan were confused either with domestic leftists or domestic Muslim immigrants, or alternatively, the entire "Middle East problem" (always treated as a monolithic whole) was blamed on "neocons" and of course, the Jews. There is no logical or ideological reason to tie together support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Hezbollah with "progressive" views, nor is there any particular reason for associating support for Israeli settlements and a stricter policy toward Iran, or for tying both of these issues to conservative politics. The Iranian government is not progressive, and Iranian policies threaten the US and its Arab allies. They are not related to Israeli settlements, and won't stop if there is a settlement freeze. Conversely, settlement building will not stop if the US takes a firmer stand against Iran or a less firm stand.

All the Middle East issues that were important until 2008, faded rapidly with the end of the Bush administration. The United States and Europe turned inward to cope with the financial crisis, and now Michael Jackson's death has practically blown away the last of the interest of the public at large in the Middle East. Hey, it's summer! Enough with all that foreign stuff, let's get serious and focus on what is really important, right?

As a political issue, the Middle East is now a non-starter. American Jews voted for Barack Obama not because of his Middle East policies, but for the most part, regardless of those policies. Other issues were more important to all Americans. The conflict in Afghanistan can continue to deteriorate, hidden safely behind public indifference in the United States and Europe. The same is true of the security situation in Iraq, where well over a hundred people were killed in recent suicide bombings, but the American withdrawal continues apace. The Obama administration's Arab-Israeli peace initiative is unrealistic and will probably fail. The only question to be decided is who will be blamed for the failure. Worse still, is the possibility that the US and Europe will "succeed" in imposing a solution, and then walk away from the mess created by their "success," because their publics are no longer interested in the Middle East.

An important lesson of the Michael Jackson effect for Middle East policy makers is that public opinion is a short term phenomenon. The consequences of policies are not, of course. Long after Americans have gone back to watching the Rose Bowl and worrying about abortions and Michael Jackson's death and sex habits, millions of Iraqis are going to have to live with the consequences of the invasion of Iraq, the incompetent handling of the occupation, and the equally incompetent withdrawal. Politically, it will not matter very much in the United States unless it affects the price of gasoline. Similarly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a non-issue for most people, regardless of how many rockets fall on Sderot or how many settlements Israel builds, unless it can be shown to directly impinge on the things that really concern US voters, or unless the IDF or the Hamas kill a prominent American entertainment or sports icon. Nonetheless, geopolitical considerations are often put aside in favor of opinion that is driven by infotainment and popular fads.

Ami Isseroff

Almost anything anyone writes about the Iranian unrest may be true or false, and any predictions are likely to be wrong. The Iranians are now admitting that 13 people were killed yesterday, but CNN and others put the toll at 19-150 (see videos posted there as well). Protests erupted in Shiraz, in Isfahan and elsewhere. Basij thugs seem to be killing people even if they are only onlookers or look like protesters. Tanks had reportedly entered Azzadi Square on Saturday. On Sunday it was reported that Feezah Rafsanjani, daughter of Ayatollah Rafsanjani, and four other family members had been arrested. Iran has also expelled BBC reporter Jon Leyne. We can expect that media reports will be even more circumspect in the future.

We can ask some questions about this demonstrations, but we cannot give good answers:

Were the elections really faked, and how badly? All Iranian elections are undemocratic in that the Expediency Council allows only "Islamic" candidates to run. Whether and how much the returns were actually faked is unknown. If people were massively denied the right to vote, then even a full recount would not necessarily yield a different result. A letter of unknown authenticity was circulated, supposedly showing that in the actual results Mir Hossein Mousavi had gotten a large plurality- over 19 million votes out of 42 million cast.

Will the demonstrations lead to a "revolution?" Many point out that the 1979 Khomeini revolution was a process that developed over many months and believe that what we are seeing is "just the beginning." But there are a few significant differences. In 1979, the Shah was ill with cancer and left the country for treatment. Khomeini was not in Iran initially, but his followers had carefully prepared a network of activists over a long period. The Iranian army did not take brutal action against demonstrators, reportedly because they were warned not to do so by an envoy of the Carter administration. A general strike was called, and it could succeed because the opposition had the support of workers and peasants as well as of the educated elite. Thus fair the protests seem to be more the property of students and the more affluent classes. They are not confined to Tehran, but they do seem to be focused on universities.

What do the demonstrators want? - It is not clear at all hat the demonstrators or Mousavi want to overthrow the religious rulers of Iran. Mousavi is a conservative and a follower of Ayatollah Rafsanjani. Clearly, the demonstrators want more freedom and economic reform, and some stated that they want peace rather than a nuclear Iran. But these may all be palliative changes within the same framework.

Is the unrest related to US President Barack Obama's dialog initiative?. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said that Obama, "showed the deceitful meaning of change too soon." But this may be just another attempt at blaming the problem on foreigners. Kim Ghattas is sure that the protests are the "consequences of engaging Iran," but the issues that fueled them were brewing long before Obama was elected. Economic distress was aggravated by falling oil prices and there have been numerous protests in the past over the issues of dress freedom for women and civil rights. The elections would have been just as fraudulent if John McCain were president, and that was the main issue that touched off the conflagration. The relation between America's more liberal policy regarding Iran and the protests is about as proved or unproven as the relation between President Reagan's hard line on the USSR and democratization in that country.

Is there a reason for foreigners to express sympathy with the protesters?Everyone is surely appalled by the scenes of brutality. A lot of political pressure is building for statements and diplomatic protests. It is probable however, that external pressure and protests will serve to legitimize the regime. Ali Khameinei has already blamed the protests on the Zionist Radio and the bad British radio. Some Iranians who are basically sympathetic to democracy expressed resentment against foreign reporters who were "salivating" at the news of unrest and seemed to them eager to provoke opposition.

Ami Isseroff

How, you may ask, could the Iranian election results be worse than they are? A virulent demagogue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been 'elected' in a transparently fraudulent process in which the number of reported votes increased with d in a charming, orderly and improbable linear fashion as the count progressed. Voters found themselves locked out of polling places and protests were crushed with calm efficiency.

Consider the alternatives. Suppose Mr. Ahmadinejad's allies had done a much better job of election fraud, and had brought the elections to a close runoff, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a far more reasonable 53 or 55%. Or suppose that Mr. Mir Housein Mousawi had been declared victor?

It would have been really tragic had there been any result in the Iranian elections other than massive fraud, because then the leaders of the world might have applauded the "democratic" elections in Iran, without thinking about the nature of the regime they are calling "democratic." No matter who would have won these elections. Iran would still be a state in which the final word is that of the unelected Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader elected by the Council of Experts. These people make all the important decisions in Iran, including approval of laws passed by the Majlis assembly. They decide who may run in elections and what laws are legal.

There could not be an Iranian candidate who proposed to abolish the regime of the Mullahs or to allow women to walk about without the Hijab. No Iranian president would abolish the IRGC or stop support for the Hezbollah. And if there had been any such initiatives, the Guardian council or the Supreme Leader would nullify them.

Make no mistake. In principle, there is no difference between the Iranian system of "elections" and the Egyptian or Syrian system. Nobody would get excited if, in choosing between Assad and Assad, the results of the Syrian election had shown that 101% of the people had chosen Assad. Likewise, nobody is upset that in Saudi Arabia there are no elections at all.

Perhaps the worst aspect of lack of fair elections in many Middle Eastern countries is that the alternative is worse. Were there to be fair elections in Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia they might elect t an Al-Qaeda backed or Muslim Brotherhood government, as happened in the Palestinian Authority. One man, one vote, one time.

The surprise of much of the world at the blatant election fraud. is really surprising. Of elections in states such as Iran, Josef Stalin is said to have remarked, "In elections, it does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the votes."

In Lebanon there were recently elections that were applauded as paragons of the democratic process. But Lebanon too has a choice between a bad alternative and a worse one. The Christian/Sunni majority is maintained by a process of gerrymandering. On the other hand, the "opposition" Hezbollah is not really a political party. Imagine what US democracy would be like if the Republican party had a few hundred thousand troops with M16s and say, 10,000 rockets. But at least, Lebanese can usually speak their mind with relative freedom, unless they anger Hezbollah or sister Syria too much.

The Iranian elections were a fraud within a fraud, and could not have been "legitimate" no matter who was elected, because the real power rests in the hands of the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader, and because real opposition candidates would never be allowed to stand for office. It is tragically absurd if anyone mistook the charade in Iran for democracy, and it is silly to be shocked by the obvious rigging of the 'elections.' At most, Iranians had a choice between the Iranian equivalent of Stalin and the Iranian equivalent of Khrushchev. The Mullahs decided not to be polite about the fraud this time. So what?

As regards foreign policy issues, no matter who would have been elected in Iran, it would have made little difference to Iranian foreign policy or nuclear development issues. At most, a different Iranian president would not have continued the farce of Holocaust denial and the circus of anti-Semitic "conferences" with David Duke, but the general policy would have remained the same. The Iranian nuclear project began before the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. The Arak reactor and the Natanz centrifuges were hidden from the IAEA during the presidency of reformist president Khatami. In general, democracy is not related to atomic power. The United States, Britain and France, all democracies, all have nuclear weapons, and the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons. The real issue is not the Iranian bomb, but the Iranian quest to throw the United States out of the Middle East, and in particular the Gulf Area, and to replace the US as the dominant power in the region. With dialogue or without, the unfolding of the conflict between Iran and the United States must follow approximately the same course. Iran will not change its policy. It is up to the West to decide what they will do about it.

Those who expect a revolution in Iran will be disappointed. As long as the IRGC and the police apparatus support the government of the Mullahs, they will stay in power. Attempts by foreign powers to change the Iranian system of government would only result in legitimizing it as "patriotic" defender of Iranian independence. On the other hand, there is no reason to rush to legitimize and congratulate this nightmare regime, as would have happened no doubt, had the election fraud been perpetrated with more subtlety and savoir faire.

Ami Isseroff

Those looking for definitive policy statements in Barack Obama's Cairo speech will be mostly disappointed. Barack Obama's Middle East policy is still relatively unformulated or unannounced. If he has a detailed plan for foiling Al-Qaeda, for meeting the challenge posed by Iran and for bringing peace to the Israelis and Palestinians, he has not told us about it.

There was at least one great departure from traditional US policy, couched in most peculiar and ungrammatical language, but clear enough:

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

Presidential speech writers must know that "settlements" are not a verb, and they cannot stop. There are no new settlements, and in fact, it is disputable whether or not the construction violates any agreements. The point is however, that this is the first time a US official has questioned the legality of settlements or settlement activity. The writing is clearly on the wall for settlement construction, if not for the settlements themselves.

Obama talked about "Palestine" rather than a "future Palestinian state," which might also be a departure. Other than that, there was not much new. He reaffirmed US support for a two state solution, hardly a surprise, and included the ritual condemnations of terror. He kept a low profile regarding Iran, and while one might think that the North Korean nuclear test would have implications for US policy everywhere, Obama wasn't about to mention it. Nothing else he said that related to policy was really surprising, including his statement that Iran should have access to nuclear materials.

This speech could not be about policy if its goal was to win over the citizens of the Middle East. There is no realistic policy statement that Barack Obama could have made that would satisfy the expectations of most people in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian conflict and America's role in the region. Some of the milder commentary, often quoting US officials and former officials:

How can the US come to terms with the truth that Israeli/Western hegemony over the Arab/Muslim world is on the wane? That translates into "The US needs to accept that it is a second rate power and yield to Iran." It's not going to happen so quickly.

But what Obama needs to insist upon is actually the dismantling of these [Israeli] colonies, which number more than 500 That's probably not going to happen without some Palestinian concessions, an idea which was not part of the deal contemplated by the author.

What was the real policy point of this speech? Perhaps there wasn't one. The speech itself was the point. The Bush administration was an easy act to follow, because under Bush, it was easy for terrorists and their supporters to make America into the issue instead of Al-Qaeda. A lot of it had to do with language and "tone." Talk of crusades and missions accomplished and triumphalism got a lot of people scared and helped to make the Bush administration part of the problem in the Middle East rather than part of the solution. Bush painted a big "Kick me" sign on the backside of the United States and invited everyone in the Middle East with a grievance, legitimate or not, to take aim. This speech cleared the air a bit, but it did much more than that.

To understand what it is about, we have to ask why so much effort and publicity were poured into a speech that didn't say much, and that could have been delivered as easily from Washington as from Cairo.

Obama is not the type of person who thinks in terms of grand strategies and geopolitics, it seems. Barack Obama played to his strengths. Barack Obama is a consummate politician. He understands how to lead, and how to make people enthusiastic about his leadership. His middle name is Hussein. Because of his skin pigmentation, his presidency embodies hope for minorities and the people of the third world. Unlike any other U.S. President, he is a figure with whom they can identify. Jonathan Freedland is precisely right when he writes that it is, the speech no other president could make. But he is wrong about the significance of the speech, when he writes

Whether this sensitive, supple and sophisticated speech will be remembered will depend on whether the rhetoric of respect is matched by a change in action.

. The practical results may not matter so much. They were not the point of this speech. There may or may not be substance to match the rhetoric.

Barack Obama understands instinctively the peculiar role of the popular leader in the Middle East, the role that every Arab and Muslim leader aspires to fill: the empty chair of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Rais whose pictures adorned households and cafes in the suqs of the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all aspired or aspire to fill that role, a role that would allow them to talk to the common people above the heads of their local leaders. Nasser never accomplished much for his country in terms of economic development, improving the lot of the common people or military victories. He didn't need to. He gave them pride and hope. Flowery speeches were not followed by action, but by more flowery speeches, which captured the imagination of his audience. Saddam Hussein was a leader of the same cut. Having improbably become President of the United States, Obama is, in a way, running for the even more improbable role of Rais of the Middle East.

Ami Isseroff

There are a number of more or less mythical narratives floating around about the Middle East today, and these have become rallying points for various groups who advocate this or that position. They generate a great deal of noise, but they are mostly about a virtual reality, not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, US-Israel relations or the problem or Iranian nuclear development.

US-Israel Split - Media are full of the so called US-Israel split. Thus far, all that the US has done is to demand removal of illegal outposts and an end to construction of new housing in settlements. It has also pressured PM Benjamin Netanyahu to reiterate Israel's support for a two state solution. Media talk about "settlement construction" is a bit misleading. The Israeli government has not approved or constructed new settlements since the Oslo Declaration of Principles was signed in 1993, with the exception of the Har Choma neighborhood which it considers to be part of Jerusalem and not part of the West Bank. Every previous US administration has condemned settlement construction including the Bush administration. Condoleeza Rice's pointed and outspoken warnings were the subject of much discussion in Israel. There has been no announcement of "reevaluation" (a la Gerald Ford) from Washington, as there is when there is about to be a real split, and there have been no public announcements of threatened economic or military sanctions or UN action (a la Dwight Eisenhower or the first George Bush). On the contrary, US has now promised to fund the Arrow III missile defense program. Haggling over the supply of F-35s and F-15 Silent Eagles may have more to do with technology transfer issues than settlements.

None of these are issues really matters of principle. One gets the feeling that after putting up enough token resistance, if American pressure is sufficient, and perhaps with proper carrots dangled, Netanyahu will do the necessary, even if the settlement freeze is temporary (or fictitious), the illegal outposts are rebuilt after destruction (as they always are) and the agreement to a two state solution is as worthless as the Hamas "acceptance" of a Palestinian state in 1967 borders. Palestinians were offered a state in 2000 and rejected it. If Benjamin Netanyahu is afraid of a peace agreement, he can offer the same thing with little fear that it would be accepted. Warmongers needn't worry, there won't be peace so fast. It is unlikely that any US administration will pressure Israel to accept any agreement that goes much beyond the Clinton Bridging Proposals of 2000, and those were unacceptable to the Palestinians and remain so.

Barack Obama had friendly meetings with both Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians' Mahmoud Abbas. He asked Abbas to stem incitement. He pointedly brought up the two states and settlement issues with Netanyahu, but these were not meetings that signaled breaks with anyone. Nor should anyone expect any dramatics on Obama's upcoming speech in Cairo, which will be more about style than substance. That too, should not be underrated.

Iran linkage and action on Iran - The story goes that the US is preparing a mighty coalition of states to do battle with Iran over its nuclear development program, and that Israel's acquiescence is required in order to make this possible. However, Arab states do not see any such linkage. They are anxious about Iran in its own right. In any case, it is unlikely that the United States can do much about Iran. The explosion of a nuclear device by North Korea shows that the method of diplomacy and sanctions is bankrupt and worthless. Nothing the United States has done since then can give anyone a reason to expect that the U.S. or the world will be able to stop North Korea from making dozens of nuclear weapons, including suitcase models, and selling them to paying customers like Al Qaeda (rumored to be a possible client) or Syria (supposedly Iran paid North Korea to build the reactor that Israel bombed in Syria in 2007).

The prospect of North Korean nukes is no doubt unappetizing for Japanese and South Koreans, but it also has additional secondary implications for the Middle East. There is no way the world can demand of Iran that it stop manufacture of nuclear weapons or refinement of uranium, if North Korea is allowed to have the bomb. It makes no sense. The United States is not going to invade Iran. There cannot be really effective sanctions without the cooperation of Russia and China, and that will not be forthcoming. Election of a different Iranian president will not be likely to have an effect. The clandestine Arak reactor and the manufacture of centrifuges were all begun during the rule of the "moderate" reformist Khatami. In any case, the reformist voe has been cleverly split so that hard liner Ahmadinejad is likely to be re-elected.

At most, Obama can offer Israel a green light to attack Iran on its own, provided Israel meets US demands for the peace process. This is not a great bargain, since as many US officials pointed out, such an attack is extremely risky, and it will not be much less risky with Arab backing, even if we could imagine that scenario. No matter what Israel does, it is not likely Arabs will back an attack by a Jewish state against an Islamic state. They can't.

Those of us who are avid followers of Middle East news should note that the Abbas visit, the Nethanyahu visit and even the issue of North Korean nukes, while all noted in the US media, seem to be be getting second or third rank billing after the vicissitudes of appointing a new supreme court justice, the death agonies of General Motors and other economic news.

Waiting game - According to commentary in the Washington Post, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas thinks he can simply wait until American pressure forces Benjamin Netanyahu from office, within two years. This is a rather dangerous delusion. Any elections in Israel are likely to produce an even more right-wing coalition, probably including the extremist National Union party, some of whom are followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahanah and make Avigdor Lieberman look like a wishy washy liberal. An obvious threat to the settlements will bring the settler lobby out in force, especially as many are already beginning to castigate Netanyahu as a traitor for agreeing to remove outposts. The Yisrael Beitenu party may gain votes too. Their turn in the government serves to legitimize their ideas and ideology. It is difficult to see that the Kadima party would get many votes. Israel Labor party might be able to support economic issues a bit, but it has a weak case, since it is in the government, and its organization is in shambles. Even if a dovish government were elected, it would not offer terms that are any better than those offered by the Olmert government, terms that the Palestinians rejected. In a fundamental sense, Benny Morris (see Benny Morris: One State, Two States) is right about essentials: No Israeli government will give up the Jewish right to self determination in a Jewish state of Israel. No Palestinian leadership seems to be able to accept it. For Israel, peace is the fulfillment of Zionism. For Palestinians and their supporters, peace is the "end of Zionism.." There is no compromise position between them. Until that changes, diplomatic dances are going to be nothing but futile shows to entertain foreigners.

Meanwhile, the Hamas are an immovable object in Gaza and time is not on the side of Abbas or Israel. The Hamas are rebuilding their strength, and leveraging on both the real and the hyped suffering of their people in the "Gaza Siege." It is true that if conditions were half as bad as people claim they are in Gaza, everyone would be dead there by now. But the propaganda creates its own reality. It mobilizes world sympathy for Hamas, and against Israel and Abbas. Even if Hamas does not take over the West Bank, as it is poised to do, as long as it rules in Gaza, neither Obama, nor Abbas, nor the Arab states really have anything to offer Israel, because Hamas will not agree to make peace with "Israel" - even if is not called a Jewish state. Indeed, Hamas have just now underlined and highlighted this point, warning Abbas not to give up Palestinian "rights" in return for U.S. "illusions." Hamas is controlled by Iran. Iran will never agree to any US sponsored peace, and they will not let Hamas agree to it either.

Nobody should have the illusion that there will be peace the moment Benjamin Netanyahu says "Two State Solution. Unless Palestinians and Israelis can agree on terms that both sides can live with, and unless the Hamas can be eliminated as a factor, verbiage will do nothing except improve the atmosphere.

How lovely it would be if Benjamin Netanyahu were to really agree to a settlement freeze, though I am not sure how it could be enforced in practice, and to really eliminate all the illegal outposts, and say the magic words "Two state solution!" The last really costs nothing -- Israel endorsed the two state solution already on several occasions. How lovely it would be if the Palestinian leadership would admit what the whole world knows, that the Jews had a temple and a sovereign presence in Jerusalem in ancient times, as well as a community that lived in East Jerusalem until they were ethnically cleansed in 1948, and that the Israelis have legitimate national rights in what the Palestinians decided to call "Arab East Jerusalem!" How reasonable it would be if the Palestinians were to give up the "right" of return to Israel, just as the Jews may need to give up the "right" of return to Neve Yaakov and settlements in Gaza which they abandoned in 1948!

However, these are not "minor details" that are standing in the way of peace, but are all issues that were created specifically in order to ensure that there cannot be a real peace process, and that is why neither side will be quick to give them up. This is true on both sides. It is certain that the whole refugee issue was perpetuated for over 60 years for that purpose, rather than resettling them in Arab or other lands. Otherwise, there could be no rational explanation why those people, originally about 700,000 in all, could not have been found homes in the vast deserts of Arabia or the empty mountains of Syria. And didn't Daniella Weiss explain on 60 minutes that the purpose of settlements is to ensure that there cannot a compromise with the Palestinians?

Ami Isseroff

Benny Morris
One State, Two States,
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009, 240 pp
ISBN 9780300122817

Almost any book about the Middle East by Benny Morris has to be an important book, and this one is both important and timely. The Obama administration is pressing for a "Two State solution" and the Arab states are at least saying they are committed to such a solution. At the same time, there were two conferences dedicated to a "One state solution" or alternative to the "two state solution. One conference was held by right wing Zionists, and one by anti-Zionists, each pushing "solutions" that will basically obliterate the other side.

Morris traces the history of various "solutions" proposed for the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. He shows that the various binational and cantonal solution never really had any support and are unworkable. He shows that all the "one state" solutions are fraudulent illusions, based on the underlying conviction that the land belongs to them, and the notion that it is possible to sell foreigners on dubious ideas such as the "Secular Democratic State" - an entity that does not exist, and could not exist in the Middle East. He likewise shows the very great difficulties in the way of a two state solution. It is hard to fit two little states in a tiny area about the size of New Jersey, with inadequate water supplies, and with one of the states split in two by about 50 KM of desert. The land from the river to the sea is a geographic unity he argues. The water supply of the coast depends on the West Bank, and Palestinian sewage flows into Israel on the rivers. The 2000 square mile Palestinian state would not be large enough to absorb all the Palestinian refugees. These are all important arguments, to be sure.

But then Morris proposes his own favorite solution, that the land of the West Bank will become part of Jordan:

.... a partition of Palestine into Israel, more or less along its pre-1967 borders, and an Arab state, call it Palestinian-Jordanian, that fuses the bulk of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the east bank, the present-day Kingdom of Jordan.

. Morris neglects to say what government there would be in Gaza, but he does say that the large area of the Palestinian-Jordanian state would allow for resettlement of the Gaza refugees there.

Alone among the proffered ideas, this one is not really analyzed critically. There are three obvious objections. The first is that if the land is a geographic unit as Morris states, given the West Bank and Gaza to Jordanian administration is not any better than dividing it between Israelis and Palestinians. The second is that the "Jordanian option" is as dead as the binational state and the "One State Solution." In fact, when the very same option was raised at the recent Knesset conference on alternatives to the two state solution, and an Israeli MK proposed a bill that would give Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry was quick to summon the Israeli ambassador and express its extreme displeasure:

Nasser Judeh issued a strong protest to the ambassador "over a debate in the Knesset on a motion on a so-called two states for the two people on the two banks of the Jordan River."

Judeh said Jordan was "dismayed by the debate and categorically and totally rejected the proposal submitted by a Knesset member, calling on the Israeli government for a clear explanation of what took place in the Knesset."

. It is indeed not clear why Israelis busy themselves with handing out citizenship in other peoples' countries and trying to decide the future of their neighbors for them, or what good anyone thinks can come of such debates. The proposed union of Palestine with Jordan would deprive the Jordanians of their kingdom. It would create a large Palestinian controlled state next to Israel. If Benny Morris is right that the irredentism of the Palestinian Arabs is implacable, this state would have every motivation to attack Israel, and a much better chance of succeeding than the tiny Palestinian state proposed in the two state solution. There is also the little matter of what happens to Gaza. Perhaps it will be evacuated and turned over to Israel in a territorial swap, which would leave the Palestinian-Jordanian state with no port on the Mediterranean, or perhaps it will be incorporated into Egypt, an idea that the Egyptians have rejected, or perhaps it will be part of the Palestinian-Jordanian state, a proposal that is bound to meet strenuous objections from Egypt. Thus, the only conclusion is that the "Jordanian option" is just as problematic as any other.

Morris is to be lauded for providing a more or less balanced account of the vicissitudes of "solutions" proposed to the Arab-Jewish and Arab Israeli conflict. It is a valuable antidote to the rosy and vacuous prattle of people who propose solutions that have no relation to the history of the conflict or the reality of Jewish and Arab national aspirations, as well as the deceptive disinformation and myths of advocates of the one state solution like Virginia Tilley. It is a reminder to airheads and spin artists that the conflict did not start in 1967, was not caused by the Israeli occupation of Arab lands in the Six Day War, and cannot be resolved simply by setting back the clock and the borders to June 4, 1967. It would probably save a lot of trouble and misunderstand if Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and everyone on their team had read this book before plunging ahead to cut the Gordian knot of Israeli-Arab peace.

But while Morris is balanced in the sense that he lashes out equally at both sides, he is not objective. He has a thesis and he sets out to prove the thesis. That thesis is that nothing whatever has changed in the basic positions of the sides in the Arab Israeli conflict in about 100 years, and in a sense it is quite true. The Arabs never accepted the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination in the land between the river and the sea or any part of it. The Zionists never really accepted the legitimacy of Arab claims to the same land. Any peace solution would be imposed on grudging partners, each of whom would be plotting to get back their lost land, or ready to seize it at the first opportunity. The Hamas certainly do not intend to give up their claim to all of Palestine. Some "moderate" Palestinians, like Abbas Zaki, insist that Fatah is still out to vanquish Israel:

"The PLO is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota...Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."

. This quote, from 2009, sounds no different than some of the many monstrous quotes that Morris assembled from 1948, and for that matter, not much different from what Arabs told the King-Crane commission after World War I.

Appearances might be deceptive. History often moves very slowly, and often the same slogans are used in new ways because of their symbolic value and historic resonance. However, even in the unchanging Middle East, things do change from time to time.

Morris makes an error or elision which may seem minor, but it hides a whole train of logic. He tells us that George Antonius was "Christian Arab Jerusalemite" (p. 103). True, Antonius lived in Jerusalem at the time. But Antonius, the father of Arab nationalism in a sense, was born in Egypt of Egyptian-Lebanese parents. He was born in 1891 in Cairo and only settled in Jerusalem in 1921. Like Izzedin el Qassam, Fawzi Al Kaukji and others who are thought of as "Palestinian" Arab heroes, Antonius was immigrant, with no more title to the land than any of the Jewish immigrants, many of whom settled in the land before these Arabs. The point is, that in those days, Palestine was the hood ornament on the automobile of Arab nationalism, a cause that was the focal point of many grievances. Palestine was the front line of the Arab national struggle, so the "fighters" came to Palestine and became "Palestinians." But the object was not creation of a Palestinian Arab state. The struggle in 1935 or 1948 was between the Arab people and the Jews, who were seen as interlopers representing Western imperialism. But Pan Arab nationalism of the kind represented by Antonius eventually faltered. He wrote "The Arab Awakening," but when the Arabs awoke, they saw that each Arab state had particular concerns that prevented it from engaging whole heartedly in an Arab nationalist enterprise. In the meanwhile Shiite and Sunni versions of radical Islamism developed, and a real Palestinian Arab nationalism emerged for the first time in history. These changes cannot be ignored entirely, but Morris did so. In a footnote (page 222 n20) he explains that the book is limited to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and therefore he did not discuss the threat posed by Iran to Israel. But Iran is directly relevant not only to Israel itself, but to the conflict with the Palestinians which it is interested in perpetuating, and because it is a threat to the Arab world. A good part of the Arab world now looks to the United States to save it from Iran, and is not at all interested in eliminating the "hegemony" of the United States and Western powers, as it might have been 30 or 50 years ago.

Iran is not the only factor omitted from Morris's considerations. The book is set in widely spaced type, and one has the feeling that it would have been much better if those spaces had been filled with much relevant material that was omitted. If we are talking of peace solutions, the fate of the various failed British and US initiatives such as the Rogers plan deserves careful examination. Most curiously, though you might not notice it on first reading, all the events of the 1948 Israel-Arab war seem to be omitted, as well as those of 1948-1967. Surely, the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem in 1948 had some important effect on the questions being discussed! Nonetheless the whole period and the problems it created are practically ignored. Likewise, Morris doesn't discuss the very relevant fact that no Palestinian state was created in the West Bank and Gaza between 1948 and 1967. That has to have a bearing on the "two state solution" question. It is fair to conclude in fact, that while the Arab states did not want a Jewish state, they didn't want a Palestinian state either, not in part of Palestine and certainly not in all of it, and they never made a serious attempt to create such a state. These omissions are all the more curious since Morris has written books and articles on both subjects.

The events that foiled the doomed "Oslo process" are also discussed only superficially. If you are convinced that the enmity is the result of basic initial conditions and is unchanging, then there is no point in discussing "subsidiary" events, because they could not really affect the course of history. In this way, of course, you bolster the case that the entire sorry course of Israeli - Palestinian peace was simply the unfolding of a fate that was written in advance. Morris doesn't pay much attention to the fact that Israel built homes for over 100,000 settlers during the Oslo period. This surely did not help to advance the peace process or show that Israel really intends to return this land. It is true, as Morris tells us, that Israel removed the settlers and settlements in Gaza, but that removal was on a much smaller scale. At the very least, the settlement activity and the continuation of illegal outposts have to be examined to see what they tell us about the different forces at work in Israeli society. The disengagement from Gaza had to be a sign that something changed in Israeli society and government thinking, since nobody builds settlements and homes with the intention of tearing them down.

Likewise the First Intifada and Al Aqsa Intifada should have been discussed not just as passive results of the underlying enmity. The Israeli over-reaction to the first Intifada, which resulted in numerous Palestinian dead, had to have had a radicalizing effect on Palestinians. As for the second Intifada, Morris contents himself with saying that there is "controversy" over whether or not the Palestinian leadership deliberately kindled it and goes into a long analysis of the pros and cons of the negotiations. It is most relevant for understanding the current impasse that Mahmoud Abbas himself explained in an article written in November of 2000, that the Palestinians could never allow any Jewish rights in Jerusalem, nor could they compromise on right of return. If that is true, the negotiations were doomed from the start, and likewise the current peace fever has no future either.

Moreover, Morris doesn't examine or even discuss the curious charade of the Sharm al Sheikh meeting in October 2000, in which Arafat and Egyptian President Hosni Moubarak solemnly promised to do everything possible to reign in terror, and following which Moubarak counseled Arafat to continue "resistance" and not to accede to American proposals. That incident most certainly is relevant for assessing whether Arab states can play a positive role in the peace process. Finally, Morris doesn't discuss at all the large number of testimonies from Palestinian officials, including Marwan Barghouti which admit that they orchestrated the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The fact that the second Intifada was made and not born is significant in many ways. It speaks to the intent and veracity of Palestinian leadership and their desire for peace, but it also means, once again, that the enmity and violence are not the blind and inevitable results of preordained conditions. They arise because of things that governments and leaders do, and there things that each side, as well as the United States and the European Union, could do that might have prevented the violence.

Morris's thesis is that the conflict is insoluble. All the solutions, including the one he offered, supposedly cannot work. But the fact is that conflicts do end, either because one side wins and obliterates the other side, or else because the assumptions and causes that motivated them no longer exist or are no longer a major concern. Japan found it can live without colonies in China and South East Asia. Germany found it can get along without colonies, without Alsace and Lorraine, without a big navy and without Lebensraum. It doesn't even rule the borders mentioned in the Deutschlandlied - Meuse and the Memel, the Adige and "belt" are all outside Germany. But Europe is at peace and Japan is at peace.

The "resolution" is not always "just" to any party either. The struggle of the Kurds seems to have just petered out as they were abandoned by everyone and left to be bombed by the Turks and persecuted by the Syrians. Kurds don't have "legitimate rights" and international law and the UN Human Rights Commission cease to be in effect on the borders of Kurdistan.

This conflict can and will end one day. If we want a solution that has at least a semblance of justice, then we must support a two state solution, which provides some, albeit imperfect, satisfaction for the national aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Proposing that the Palestinian Arabs should be part of Jordan, or that the Jews should all move to France, is not going to advance the prospects of peace because such solutions are neither just or realistic. The Jews don't want to go back to Europe and the Europeans don't particularly want us there. The Palestinians do not want to be part of a Jordanian state, and the Jordanians don't want them. Neither will all the problems be solved by waving our arms around and chanting improving slogans about peace and change and brotherly love. If we want the conflict to end sooner rather than later, then we have to look more searchingly at the actions of all parties and see how they contributed it, and try to understand what must be changed. Morris's book does a service in providing a realistic and sobering look at many of the enormous difficulties in the way of solving the conflict, but it tells only a part of the story. The book will do a terrible disservice if it is adopted as a mantra to prove that the conflict is inherently and permanently incapable of solution.

Ami Isseroff

Original text copyright by the author and MidEastWeb for Coexistence, RA. Posted at MidEastWeb Middle East Web Log at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000760.htm where your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Distributed by MEW Newslist. Subscribe by e-mail to mew-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by email with this notice and link to and cite this article. Other uses by permission.

Iranians insist that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be Israel's greatest asset, as his antics served to alienate and isolate Iran from the rest of the world. T The same, in reverse, may be said for Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, and the Israeli government he represents. Lieberman and the government have done just about everything possible to isolate Israel and to make it impossible for Israel to make even the most obvious points in favor of the urgency of dealing with the Iranian threat and the problematic nature of peace negotiations. It got so bad that Arab commentators must spell out the problems for US and explain the dangers of the US policy toward Iran.

Lieberman's came in with two strikes against him for his racist election campaign and threats to bomb the Aswan dam. Fortunately, he was preoccupied with visiting Britain during the pope's visit, so he didn't have a chance to say that the pope can go to hell. But he did manage to say that peace conferences are a waste of time, making him into an Israeli version of a Hamas leader, and he gave the Germans the impression that he thinks they are cowards.

The entire world, and especially the United States, expects Benjamin Netanyahu's government to approve of a two state solution that would allow a Palestinian state. Supposedly, that is the only obstacle in the way of the US administrations' broad Middle East peace initiative. Support for a two-state solution was Israeli policy in the past, and it is hard to see any other solution in the long run. But Netanyahu, while making pacific noises, has carefully shied away from endorsing a two state solution.

It makes no sense. If the Likud and Netanyahu are right, that there is "no partner for peace," then the best way to show that it is so, is to make every effort to accommodate the Arab side, including a settlement freeze and removal of the illegal outposts. If the gesture is met by a total rebuff, nothing was lost. On the other hand, if the new American administration manages to do what nobody has done in over 60 years, to bring peace to the Middle East, it would be a tremendous gain for Israel, for the Americans, for the region, and not least of all for Netanyahu himself.

Instead, Netanyahu's government has, in the eyes of the world, planted itself firmly in the ground as an obstacle to the onrushing tide of peace activity. Every country in the West and the Middle East is engaged in peace initiatives, except for Israel.

Quite a few Israelis and Israel supporters are oblivious to the sorry state of Israeli diplomacy. An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post commented:

To date, Netanyahu has not put a foot wrong

Considering the unrelenting rain of criticism of Israeli policy from every capital, that is quite a statement. It is probably more correct to say that "So far, the Netanyahu government has not managed to take its collective foot out of its mouth." Lieberman and Netanyahu painted a "kick me" target on Israel's behind and world leaders journalists have been lining up to take aim with facile "me too" "analyses" (eg here).

To ensure Israel's total isolation, Lieberman made certain to declare, with impeccable timing, that Israel will never give up the Golan heights. Such declarations in the long run have annoyance value only. We remember when Israel would never give up Sharm al Shaikh and and Israel would never give up the Sinai settlements and we remember when the Gaza settlements were supposed to be like Tel Aviv. The announcement was made seemingly in order to irritate the Americans for no reason.

On the face of it, this policy is suicidal. Israel has pressed the suicide button on its alliance with the United States and on European support. Instead of a state, Bibi may offer to renew food shipments to Gaza and improve the Palestinian economy. He cannot be serious can he? Next week, President Obama will press Israel to allow the Palestinians a state, and instead Bibi will over them half a cheese sandwich each!

How far will Netanyahu carry his resistance, and how far will the United States push for their policy? Is there any coverage behind Israel's defiant attitude? Is the Israeli government willing to endure an end to US military aid, or even hold-ups in military spare parts? UN sanctions directed at Israel rather than Iran? It might well come to that as well.

Dare we hope that Israel's leaders cannot possibly be so stupid, and that behind this unfathomable policy that is losing friends for Israel all over the world, there is a well thought out strategy that will bring peace? For the United States, peace, or at least "movement" regarding the Israeli-Palestinian question is a must, and they have harnessed the entire U.S. apparatus of state to try to get this problem off the table. It is obvious to everyone that the dangerous situation in Gaza cannot continue, and that the Palestinian problem presents a made to order issue for exploitation by extremists.

The U.S. approach leaves many question marks as well. It is hard to see the logic of linking action on Iran to solution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The idea seems to be that it will make it easier for "the Arab world" to support US action on Iran. In other words, if Israel doesn't allow the Palestinians to have a state, the United States will help the Arab cause by allowing the Persian Gulf to become a Persian satrapy??!! The Iranians and Al Qaeda are not likely to be impressed by any American sponsored peace and will do their best to sabotage it, so they must be neutralized in any case if peace is to have a hope. The US in fact, doesn't have a solution for Iran, and never did. That was true under the Bush administration and it still seems to be true. The US will not invade Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons any more than it would invade North Korea. Stricter sanctions are unlikely to work and could not be enforced anyhow.

The Arab states do not want linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian issue and have made that clear. Only people like Rahm Emanuel think it is a good idea or feasible. It is doubtful in fact, that Arab states want a Palestinian state, since they have never really wanted one since 1948, but must say that they do. This point is never understood by American diplomacy, though it was always clear to the French and British.

A key part of the American strategy is that the Arabs change the Arab peace initiative to make it palatable to Israel. Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak and others stated in no uncertain terms that this is not going to happen. Likewise, the US must either neutralize Hamas or get it to back a two state solution. Hamas indicated yet again that they do not accept a two state solution.

So the US has nothing to trade for Israeli concessions. Both America and Israel are playing with empty hands and counterfeit money against each other. The United States also has nothing to hold over Iran, and only has things it needs desperately from Iran: cooperation in Lebanon, cooperation in Iraq, cooperation against Al-Qaeda. "Cooperation" means Iran not sending weapons and money to Hezbollah and Iraqi insurgents. In Afghanistan, Iran would probably be prepared to be more helpful, but Afghanistan might be turned into a satellite of Iran.

Again it all seems so stupid that you get the feeling there must be something more here than meets the eye. We can still hope that Mr Obama can really use his incredible prestige and the good will he is building up to work some miracles in the Middle East, but it does not seem realistic, and it is not happening so far.

According to Economist, Israel and the United States are "laying the ground" for the upcoming meeting of Netanyahu and Obama. In fact they are only preparing sparring positions from all appearances. In preliminary skirmishes, they are telling each other in the nicest language, to go to hell. When they meet, there could be a head on collision, spun by some press releases in the best case. It can't be good for the United States to have to strand a major Middle East ally, and it certainly can't be good for Israel. If Americans think that Middle East allies and client states will be overjoyed to see the US abandon an ally that has gotten such steadfast US support, they had better think again. Every such dependent state is always watching for signs of perfidy in its patron, and is always mindful that it could suffer the same fate.

Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman should know by now that it never pays to tell the other guy to go to hell, as it just creates bad vibes, and he is not going to do it anyhow.

The entire drama is pointless and harmful to both Israel and the United States. If the Palestinians are really serious about peace and can deliver a government that will keep to agreements, Netanyahu will have no choice other than to allow a Palestinian state. The United States has no choice other than to try to stop Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, though that seems to be an impossible task. In any case, it is an interest of the United States and the Arabs and it would be so even if Israel did not exist.

We can only hope that the underlying reality is much better than it looks from the outside, and that someone has a realistic and workable plan.

Ami Isseroff

As the situation in Iraq disintegrated following the U.S. invasion, Bush administration officials famously remained in a "state of denial," insisting that everything was just fine as hundreds of people were bombed into oblivion, aid money disappeared and Iraq sank farther and farther into the mire.

For a brief time, it looked as though the "surge" had really put an end to violence. But a series of horrendous bombings in recent months, activity that seems to increase systematically as U.S. forces are withdrawn, should have served as a wakeup call. In 2008 there were at least 115 suicide bombings (not every bombing is a suicide bombing and Wikipedia has not counted all the bombings) and just about every one was reported with a reminder that the situation is much better than it was previously. But you don't need a lot of bombings to terrorize a population and destabilize a situation, especially if they are concentrated in a few key urban areas. At least 11 of the 2008 suicide bombings occurred in December. If you think the most recent bombings on April 23 and 24 are isolated instances, think again. A perspicacious analyst noted that April was a "bad month" even before those bombings, and raised the specter of Iraqi civil war. But March, February and January were not such good months either. Here is a partial listing of Iraq bombings in 2009:

• January 4:Baghdad bomb kills 35 Shia pilgrims including 16 Iranians.
  

• Janyary 21: A bomb attached to a vehicle in the convoy of a Baghdad University dean, Ziyad al-Ani, killed four people and wounded 10 others in north Baghdad's Adhamiya district; A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed five policemen and wounded three in Dour, near the city of Tikrit.
  

• January 24: Five policemen killed in Iraq bombing north of Baghdad. 5 other police and 9 civilians were wounded in a separate attack in Garma.
  

• February 3: Six people were wounded by two roadside bomb attacks in different parts of Baquba; Four people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded targeting a U.S. military patrol in eastern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad; Roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two civilians in a town near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad.
  

• February 8 Roadside IED kills two Shi'ite pilgrims in northern Baghdad.
  

• February 9 4 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Mosul suicide car bomb attack. "Suicide Attack In Mosul The Deadliest Against American Forces In Over Nine Months."
  

• February 13: 40 dead, 80 wounded in Mussayib suicide bombing.
  

• February 15: A U.S. soldier was killed by an IED southern Iraq, the U.S. military said; Gunmen shot and killed an off-duty Iraqi soldier in western Mosul and killed another man in Western Mosul;A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded six others in Sadr City. Several civilians and a policeman were wounded in Mosul in different attacks.
  

• February 28: A roadside bomb wounded two civilians when it exploded as a police patrol was passing in Baghdad`s southern district of Doura.
  

• March 5: 13 killed in Hillah livestock market car bombing.
  

• March 8: Baghdad police recruitment center bombing: suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up as he entered a crowd of people outside a police recruitment center killing 28.
  

• March 10: Suicide car bomb went off outside a national reconciliation conference in Baghdad, killing at least 33 and wounding 46.
  

• March 16: A roadside bomb struck a U.S.-backed neighbourhood patrol, wounding three people, including a local Sahwa fighter, in the Doura district of southern Baghdad, police said; A grenade exploded prematurely, killing a gunman and wounding three civilians in the Mansour district of central Baghdad.
  

• March 23: Funeral bombing kills 14 in Jalawla
  

• March 26: Car bombing kills 26 in Baghdad.
  

• April 2: A parked car bomb killed a civilian and wounded another and two policemen when it exploded as police tried to defuse it in Tel Keif, on the outskirts of Mosul; A roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi soldiers when it struck their vehicle in northern Mosul; A roadside bomb wounded five policemen and a civilian near a police checkpoint in central Mosul; A bomb placed on a wooden cart wounded four people in southern Mosul on Wednesday; A parked car bomb wounded nine people in northern Kirkuk.
  

• April 5: Gunmen killed a policeman and wounded another four when they opened fire at a moving police car in central Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad, police said.
  

• April 6: A spate of bombings in the same day kills 32 and injures another 124 more.
  

• April 10: 5 US soldiers killed, 22 Iraqis and Americans wounded in Mosul suicide bombing.
  

• April 13:US soldier killed by roadside (IED) bomb in Salaheddin province
  

• April 12: At least 9 killed in suicide bombing in Babil province.
  

• April 15:Car bomb in Kirkuk kills at least 10, including American troops.
  

• April 20: 8 U.S. soldiers wounded by Iraq suicide bomber in Baqouba.
  

• April 22:- A suicide bomber killed at least five people inside a mosque in Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad, also wounding 15 people,
  

• April 23: Two suicide bombings kill at least 75 in Baghdad and Muqdadiya, including many Iranian pilgrims.
  

• April 24: A least 60 killed in twin suicide bombings at the Shia shrine of Qaddumiyah, including 20 Iranian pilgrims.

I do not guarantee that I found every single bombing, or even all fatal ones. Hopefully, you got the idea. If Iraq was your country, would think it was "pacified?" Do you see a justification for U.S. withdrawal?

Just about every day there seem to be a few IEDs going off somewhere in Iraq. Almost every bombing report is accompanied by a fixed refrain like this:

Despite the recent bombings, U.S. military spokesman Army Maj. Gen. David Perkins told reporters Wednesday that violence in Iraq was at its lowest levels since the early months after the invasion.

"The situation is under control. Nothing can go wrong," Stop and think. Iran is a majority Shiite country, ruled by a majority Shiite government, with a majority Shiite army. Isn't it strange that so many Shiite civilians and particularly pilgrims get killed. Isn't it strange that so many bombings are done in mosques, on Friday? What organization would deliberately outrage Muslim public opinion by killing civilians worshiping in mosques?

U.S. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton explained away the last few bombings as follows:

"I think that these suicide bombings ... are unfortunately, in a tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction," Clinton told reporters traveling aboard her plane ahead of her unannounced visit to Baghdad.

One wonders what Hillary Clinton thinks the right direction might be. Her American audience may not know what is happening in Iraq, but Iraqis do, and the Mukhabarat of every country in the Middle East knows as well. Later, Clinton more realistically "reassured" Iraqis that America would not abandon them. After all, the United States didn't abandon South Vietnam, did it? The same AP article told us once again:

Violence is at its lowest since the months following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion...

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered a military task force to investigate the attacks as well as shortcomings that allowed the assailants to slip through...

U.S. officials say they remain committed to a June 30 deadline to move all forces outside major cities, including Baghdad.

Over the past few months there were dozens of incidents, as we saw, in which one or two people were killed or wounded. These little murders do not count, and do not trigger any military investigative task forces. Of course, the little murders are the parents of the big ones. Each "success" helps to recruit new enthusiasts. And each bombing of one sect, triggers slightly more than one retaliation bombing attempts, The effect is something like a combination of a fusion and fission reaction. The hotter it gets, the hotter it can get, and each incident tends to fuel another and another. That's the wonderful about starting a civil war in someone else's country. It costs only a few dollars in explosives and none of your own soldiers. Iran and Syria, the main players in Iraq know this quite well. Lebanon was just practice for Iraq. Iraq will be practice for Saudi Arabia or Turkey. If you take the moderator rods out of the reactor, which the US is in the process of doing now, then each incident may trigger two or even three retaliatory incidents, and you have a fine bit of mayhem going. Every batch of U.S. soldiers that leaves Iraq is going to be marked by an increase in violence, because the Iraqi security forces are not ready to take over security, and at this rate they never well be, and because Iran and others are going to make sure that accidents keep happening. It seems rather convenient that each outrage against Shiites, and particularly Iranians, helps to lay the groundwork for the self-righteous and outraged intervention of Iran in Iraq. It is not entirely farfetched to see an Iranian hand in these provocations.

There is not the slightest sign that the security situation is really under control. If it were, there would be a growing number of attacks that were prevented and suicide bombers caught before they exploded, as happened in Israel. In Iraq, almost every bomber aiming for paradise gets to his or her destination. Iraq is not on the right road. If you travel on the wrong road for a long time, you get to a very wrong place, and that is where Iraq is going. Iran, naturally, blames Israel and the United States for the violence. Some of the latest incidents involved Tunisians. Who let them in to Iraq? Was it the United States or Israel?

Everything, however, is relative. Compared to Afghanistan/Pakistan, the situation in Iraq doesn't look nearly half as bad. In Lebanon, an upcoming election is probably going to propel Hezbollah into national political leadership. An Islamic Republic will be established on the doorstep of Turkey and Israel. That cannot be good for the United States. The United States doesn't even show signs it is aware that there is a problem in Lebanon. Compared to Pakistan, Lebanon is small potatoes.

If America wants to have a position left in the Middle East, it will have to make some hard decisions. Fine statements are not enough. Middle East states and operators are all either wolves or lambs. The lambs must find a sheep dog to protect them if the old one has lost his teeth and has let the wolves into the fold. The wolves are not going to become vegetarians.

Ami Isseroff

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's entry into the world of diplomacy proved what many of us long suspected: He is disastrously unsuited for the post of Foreign Minister. A competent diplomat can pass off inanities as good news, and a skilled one can pass off outrageous policy as acceptable and even desirable.Avigdor Lieberman stated facts that everyone agrees are true, but managed to do it in such a way that the entire world is mad at Israel

Lieberman's speech was careless about language and aggressive. He referred to "Annapolis documents" and at another point he referred to "Annapolis." To make matters worse, a creative translator in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs added the word "accord" to "Annapolis," evidently thinking it would "sound better." There was never any Annapolis Accord, and therefore Israel could not abrogate any such accord, but that is what the headlines in the newspapers said.

When Lieberman said that the Annapolis talks had reached a dead end, he was only stating a fact, one which the Palestinians have themselves stated on several occasions. He could have left it at that, and gently noted that "under the circumstances," Israel does not see any point to continuing in this frameworkd.

Is there anyone who honestly believes that there has been any forward movement in the Annapolis peace talks or that there is any possibility that they will end, as was their goal, in an agreement for a Palestinian State in 2008? As it is now April 2009, it is manifest that the talks have failed. Moreover, it seems that in a hundred more years of negotiations in the current track, none of the following will happen:

• No Israeli government will allow right of return to Israel for Palestinian refugees, and no Palestinian leadership will concede this point.

• No Israeli government will give up all Israeli claims in East Jerusalem, and no Palestinian leadership will allow any Israeli claims at all in East Jerusalem.

• No Palestinian leadership will affirm that it recognizes the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, and no Israeli government can sign a peace treaty without that affirmation.

And even should anyone reach an agreement on all the above points, Hamas is still there in Gaza, and Hamas "will never recognize Israel, Period". If anything, there has been regression rather than progress. It is not just Hamas that will not recognize Israel. Mohamed Dahlan has helpfully pointed out that Fatah never recognized Israel, either. We have to deal with reality as it is, and not as we would like it to be.

The most that could be expected in the circumstances, is that Israel would remove illegal outposts and announce a settlement freeze. Even that was not offered and not done by the supposedly more dovish government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni

As portrayed by the Likud government, the Annapolis process was a means of bypassing the Road map for peace, because it skipped all the intermediary implementation phases and jumped to the final status negotiations, ignoring the stipulations of the road map. On that interpretation, the Road Map and Annapolis are mutually exclusive processes. Therefore it makes no sense for U.S. President Barack Obama to announce that the United States is committed to the Annapolis process and the Road Map. On a more charitable interpretation, the Annapolis framework provides a method of showing both sides the peace agreement that will be implemented when the rest of the road map has been completed. In either case, it is not working.

If the United States pressures Israel and the Palestinians to continue with the Annapolis talks, then certainly the talks will continue. There will be photo-ops and announcements and everything that all those State Department people who love process will demand. What there will not be is a peace agreement or peace. A real peace agreement has to reflect a reality where both sides are willing to coexist, and that reality is absent. The United States will have to work on changing the reality rather than trying to obtain a scrap of paper.

Ami Isseroff

Last week I wrote about a joyous event that could give us hope midst the misery of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Amid the gloom of Israeli-Arab strife, someone are finding ways to light candles instead of cursing the darkness. Young Palestinian musicians from the Jenin refugee camp gave a concert for Israeli Holocaust survivors.

But someone just had to stomp out the candle as soon as it was lit.

The story is like some sort of sick humor anecdote from the Stalin era of the USSR. Politruks and agitprops of the Palestinian Authority first agitated "opinion" of parents in the refugee camp, and then closed down the orchestra because it was "political."

The Palestinian kids confessed that in all their years of fine Palestinian education they had somehow never learned before that there had been a Holocaust. So the Palestinian kids learned something. They also learned that Jews, Israelis, "Yahud" And the Holocaust survivors and the Israeli public learned that Palestinians are humans. Dialogue is a learning opportunity. When it works, it can be beautiful. But it seems it cannot be allowed to work.

Now we can learn something less edifying. The Palestinians shut down the orchestra on the excuse that the dialogue is "political." That should teach us a great deal about the peaceful intentions of the Palestinian Authority, the same Palestinian Authority that continues to exist thanks to the generosity of US and European tax payers. The same Palestinian Authority that is considered a "partner for peace."

It seems that letting young people find out that the other side is human is "political." The cretinous excuses given for this barbaric move are not convincing either. Supposedly "parents" (after being duly coached no doubt) "spontaneously" objected to the "political" excursion of the orchestra, following the usual Hamas line. An educated guess is that the odious Norwegian supported extremist Badil organization was behind the agitation. Badil was created to use the refugee problem in order to perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prevent a solution with the "Zionist enemy."

Making peace is "political." But it is the right kind of politics. Seeing the "enemy" as human helps to put extremist groups like Badil out of business,

A similar hopeful project - a great peace happening organized by Onevoice, was similarly torpedoed. (see Drowning out one Million Voices: The enemies of peace). At least, in that instance, the Palestinian authority condemned the terrorists who had sabotaged the effort.

The heartbroken leader of the youth orchestra, Younes said, camp officials closed the ensemble so they could take over its funds.

"They want to destroy this group,.. It's a shame, it's a tragedy. What did these poor, elderly people do wrong? What did these children do wrong?"

What can we say to Younes and to her young pupils? Can we say "Summud" - steadfastness? Is help on the way? Will someone raise their voice against this cynical sort of evil and greed? Or will it be excused like so much of the atrocious behavior of Palestinian Authority officials? If nothing is done, it seems the money will be stolen by Fatah officials for propaganda or for their own personal use.

It is hopeless to attempt dialogue when even an event as innocent as this orchestra cannot be allowed by the powers that be. Even in the heyday of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, the Palestinian Authority manipulated the dialogue encounters cynically, sending only "trusted" people and making sure that the events were turned into propaganda fests as much as possible. Public school children of the Palestinian authority were never allowed to engage in dialogue.

It is time to stop making excuses for the Palestinian Authority. It is time to stop trying to bury the problems. Didn't we all know, since 1995, that the Palestinian Authority was hopelessly corrupt? And didn't we try very hard to bury this fact? And what was the result in the end? Didn't the Palestinians get sick of the Fatah corruption and throw them out?

It is time for the Palestinian Authority to benefit from some tough love, from those who have the best interests of the Palestinian people at heart. Those who have the ear of the Palestinian authority, if there is anyone there who is listening, should be made to understand that this sort of behavior, and the cynical excuses used to justify it, is totally unacceptable.

Ami Isseroff

Amid the gloom of Israeli-Arab strife, someone are finding ways to light candles instead of cursing the darkness. Young Palestinian musicians from the Jenin refugee camp gave a concert for Israeli Holocaust survivors. One would think that if such events are so rare -- a dog bites man story -- they would get top billing in media reports. But any routine Qassam rocket launching or Israeli reprisal will always get more notice. For reaching media audiences, shooting is much better than talking or playing music.

The event was a learning experience for both sides:

"I feel sympathy for them," said Ali Zeid, an 18-year-old keyboard player, who added that he was shocked by what he learned about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in their campaign to wipe out European Jewry.

"Only people who have been through suffering understand each other," said Zeid, who said his grandparents were Palestinian refugees forced to flee the northern city of Haifa during the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948.

The 13 musicians, aged 11 to 18, belong to Strings of Freedom, a modest orchestra from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the scene of a deadly 2002 battle between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers.

The event, held at the Holocaust Survivors Center in this tree-lined central Israeli town, was part of Good Deeds Day, an annual event run by an organization connected to billionaire Shari Arison, Israel's richest woman...

Younis, from the Arab village of Ara in Israel, then explained in fluent Hebrew that the youths would sing for peace, prompting the audience to burst into applause.

"Inshallah," said Sarah Glickman, 68, using the Arabic term for God willing.

Thank you Shari Arison. Can we find a few more Middle East billionaires who will finance peace instead of war? Inshallah.

Ami Isseroff

Numerous myths have been generated about the recent Israeli elections. The first myth that is repeated very often is that the rise of the right was due to the recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and the international reaction to it (see here). There is not much truth in this.

Almost every opinion poll over the last year or so showed approximately the same results as were obtained in the election. No less than seven polls taken in the week before Operation Cast Lead forecast victory for the Likud and the right, giving the Likud 29-36 mandates versus 23-30 for the Kadima party and 9-14 for the Israel Labor party. Not one poll showed the Kadima party getting more votes than the Likud. In the last weeks of the election, Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party gained voters at the expense of the Likud and Kadima party. The parties of the so-called "right wing bloc" had the same majority of 65 mandates approximately as they got in the actual election. The only difference was that that there were a few more mandates for Lieberman and a few less for Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud.

What soured Israelis on the peace process was the collapse of the disengagement program of Kadima, and the concurrent lack of progress in the peace talks. The Hamas is openly out to destroy Israel. This was true before Operation Cast Lead and remains true today. At the same time, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have not budged a millimeter in over a year of negotiations. From time to time, they announce proudly that Israel made concessions, but that these do not meet Palestinian demands. For example, as late as November, Abbas announced that Israel had made concessions on Jerusalem, but that these had been rejected, because the Palestinians could never concede any Jewish rights in East Jerusalem whatever. These periodic announcements are in themselves an act of bad faith, since the content of the talks is supposed to be secret. The announcements undermine and embarrass the Israeli government, which pledged that it would not discuss Jerusalem to the Shas party. The Hamas campaigned for the Likud with rockets. The Palestinians campaigned for the right with its stubborn stance and leaks of concessions. Now both complain that Israel elected a right wing government.

Israeli coalition maneuvers after the elections may seem complex, especially to those who do not live under a proportional representation parliamentary system of democracy like Israel's political system. Even to the leading protagonists, the election results were confusing. Tzipi Livni's Kadima party got the most votes, so she thought she was going to form the coalition, and that is what she had announced immediately after the elections. She was disabused of this notion, when 65 MKs recommended to President Shimon Peres that Benjamin Netanyahu form the next government. This past Friday evening, Israel TV Channel 1 delighted in playing the footage of Livni announcing her "victory."

Benjamin Netanyahu, who gloated about his 65 vote "right wing bloc" on election night and elected himself Prime Minster, was also on somewhat shaky ground. The "right wing bloc" is a mythical creation of Likud and rightist propaganda. The "right wing bloc" includes 11 mandates of the ultraorthodox Shas party and 5 votes of the United Torah Judaism party. In the past, these parties have been quite happy to join coalitions of any political stripe, provided they were given sufficient funds for their religious institutions and guaranteed support of religious coercion laws and what can be called kosher "pork barrel" legislation: cheap housing for ultraorthodox, more Yeshivot and the like. They participated in Ehud Barak's last government for example, and they participated in the last Kadima government. They are not Zionist parties. One of the leaders of the United Torah Judaism party constituent Agudat Yisrael once announced in the Knesset, "Herzl should turn over in his grave." These parties support "united Jerusalem" and oppose peace concessions primarily for religious reasons. At one time, Shas was not opposed to the peace process.

It is fallacious to claim that "democracy" has spoken and dictates a right wing coalition in Israel. The real democratic nature of representative parliamentary government is that it requires a compromise coalition government that represents the views of all the constituents of the coalition. Unless one party gets a majority, it is not a "winner take all" system like the one in the USA. Each of the so-called "right wing" parties has a somewhat different program. Otherwise, there would be no need for more than one party of course. A coalition must somehow reconcile all the platforms of the different parties. A leader building a coalition starts with a large number of square pegs, all of which must be forced into a round hole using a large hammer and a lot of elbow grease. Because there is no really large party after these elections, it is especially difficult to form a coalition. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party wants to institute civil marriages and simplify conversion procedures to help its large constituency of Russian immigrants, many of whom are not Jews according to Halachic law and not entitled to orthodox Jewish marriage. The ultraorthodox Shas party will never agree to any such laws. Its spiritual leader, the venerable Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, expressed the opinion that Mr. Lieberman is Satan. They both agree on hatred of Arabs, but Ovadia Yosef objects to Lieberman's secular program. To have a right wing coalition, Mr. Netanyahu needs to formulate a platform that allows civil marriages and conversions and at the same time rules them out. As this is the Middle East, that is not impossible.

Not surprisingly therefore, Netanyahu announced that he would try to form a unity government with Tzipi Livni's Kadima party. The square peg there is the requirement of Tzipi Livni that the government declare its support for continuing the Annapolis process. The round hole is that neither the right wing of Netanyahu's own Likud party, nor his other right wing coalition partners, would agree to such a condition. Avigdor Lieberman left the Kadima coalition for that reason. Of course, the objection to having the Annapolis process as part of the government platform is not quite rational. The Annapolis negotiations are a demand of the United States and an expectation of the European Union. It is difficult to see how any Israeli government could avoid them. But rationality and party politics do not mix.

The Likud, Kadima and the Israel Labor party could form a coalition on the basis of continuing the Annapolis process. This would also provide a secular government that could change the voting system as many demand so as to reduce coalition chaos. It could institute civil marriage and thereby rob Avigdor Lieberman of a legitimate issue. It could trim the kosher pork barrel projects. It could make conversions to Judaism easier. With Ehud Barak as Defense Minister. it would probably give Israelis the most confidence that someone competent and reasonable is there to handle the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. It would give the world hope that Israel is not abandoning the peace process and turning to right wing extremism. But as that outcome is fairly rational and probably the most representative of the actual spectrum of Israeli public opinion, that probably won't happen. Democracy or not, this is the Middle East, after all.

Ami Isseroff

Remember that you read it here. Rarely is it possible to see almost certain disaster looming so clearly and brightly ahead. In a decade, the bit of news to be discussed here may be considered the most important foreign policy blunder of the Obama administration and perhaps the most important blunder of the United States in the first decade of the new century, outclassing the Iraq war in every way. it is reasonably US President Barack Obama is evidently in earnest about his campaign pledge to focus on Afghanistan. The US is probably going to be sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the US total to 55,000 and the grand total with non-US troops to 87,000.

The United States is thereby committing itself to a war that is almost certainly unwinable, especially not on the terms set by the United States. Consider each of the points against this war.

The Soviet experience:The USSR sent over 115,000 troops to Afghanistan reinforcing what was originally an almost equal number of government troops. The USSR was defeated. A 1982 US intelligence report concluded that the Soviets would need to double their forces (apparently to 200,000) in order to win. A 50,000 troop increase would produce only a temporary improvement if they are concentrated in a given area. Once the troops moved on, the insurgents would return, concluded the report

The Soviet People are not known to be squeamish about casualties. In the Second World War they absorbed fatalities of close to 50% - nearly 11 million military deaths between 1941 and 1945. Nor was the Soviet Union a free society that welcomed debate about casualties. Nor was Russia or the Soviet Union ever limited in the numbers of men it would commit to a war. Yet public pressure in the USSR forced them to abandon their commitment in Afghanistan. .

Officially, there were about 14,000 or 15,000 Soviet dead. So get out the body bags folks. Oh yes. I forget to mention that the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan is credited as a major factor in the collapse of the USSR. Are you sure you want to be doing this?

US experience in Afghanistan : Ill considered US intervention in Afghanistan helped to bring about the end of the Soviet involvement there. It also helped to create the al-Qaeda extremists who perpetrated the bombings of 9-11 and the entire radical community in the Pakistan border areas, which now serves as a fanatic factory. Further American meddling in the region has not succeeded in containing the problem, which now has destabilized Pakistan, a nuclear power. A nuclear al-Qaeda state would hardly be a desirable development. Handling this situation requires regional expertise, deep local knowledge, superb human intelligence and covert operations capabilities, deft diplomacy and genius, No US administration has a good record for any of these qualities in east Asia or the Middle East.

The local regime - Afghan President Hamid Karzai was hailed as the U.S. installed leader who would bring democracy and good government to Afghanistan. It hasn't worked out like that. The principle industry of Afghanistan, if it isn't arms trade, is growing and exporting opium. Hamid's brother Ahmad is reportedly a prominent entrepreneur in this booming industry. The Karzai family has not delivered on good government or democracy. Conditions of economic well being and human rights in Afghanistan make the Gaza strip look like utopia. They aren't the Taleban, but they might be the next worst thing. In 2006, only insistent foreign intervention saved one Abdul Rahman from execution for the crime of conversion to Christianity. Amnesty international protested systematic persecution and murder of journalists by Afghan warlords:

Ms. Zakia Zaki, a radio station owner and critic, was the victim of an apparently politically motivated murder in June 2007; an investigation by authorities into her killing seems to have stalled. Ms. Nilofar Habibi, a Heart TV presenter, was stabbed in May 2008; several of her colleagues resigned out of fear, and Ms. Habibi was forced into hiding. Mr. Abdul Samad Rohani, was abducted on June 7, 2008, and subsequently killed in Lashkar Gah, possibly in response to his investigation of the narcotics trade; he had worked for the BBC. Mr. Mohammad Nasir Fayyaz, presenter of the TV program "The Truth," was detained repeatedly by National Directorate of Security personnel in June 2008 for "mispresenting" government officials.

Are you sure this regime could muster the solid support of the Afghan people? It might, if that's the way they do things there. But how long will the US public agree to send their sons and daughters to die in order to save that regime? And remember, changing the regime in Afghanistan, judging from past history, will only make things worse.

US Administration of the war - US administration of the war in Afghanistan seems to be about what you would expect. The US pours billions of dollar into armaments for the Afghan army, and can't figure out why that army can't fight anything. One reason might be that the chief supplier arms to the Afghan army is (or war?) a small company that supplied piles of defective and obsolete Soviet ammunition to the Afghans. The company is run by a 22 year old, and one of the vice presidents is a licensed masseur.

Pakistan - The Pakistani government faithfully followed the will and requests of the US for many years in many ways. It helped set up the al-Qaeda enclave that the US needed to supply Afghani insurgents, and in consequence it finds itself on the brink of disintegration and ruin, to which its own officials have no doubt contributed. The situation took a great turn for the worse some time in 2006, when Osama Bin Laden reportedly mapped out a plan for turning Northern Pakistan in an Al-Qaeda - Taleban basing area. Pakistan, complains one critic, has no coherent policy toward the Taleban. It fights them, makes peace with them, supports them and tries to buy them out, sometimes all at the same time. In consequence, all of northeast Pakistan is now in danger of falling to the Taleban. US raids on the Pakistani border area further destabilized the government, which is now trying to negotiate a truce with the terrorists, in which they give up their arms in return for freedom to run their region as an Islamist state within a state. The new U.S. administration, which is so enthusiastic about negotiating with Iran, and favors a truce between Israel and the Hamas is not quite as happy about this deal. but it is more or less helpless to do anything about it.

The Afghan war may make the Vietnam and Iraq wars look good.

The US Public - We can anticipate the reaction of the US public to casualty rates that stopped the Soviets. There is no way to win such a war or even to come close without committing troops to the field, and as the body bags mount up in Arlington cemetery there is sure to be a reaction. "Black Hawk Down" will be happening every day and CNN will be there to report it live. The biggest achievement of Barack Obama in his presidency may be to make Americans adore the memory of George W. Bush and laud his judgment in avoiding a war that can't be won.

Proven Failure History has shown that one of the best ways to lose a military campaign is to gradually build up forces against a determined enemy, allowing that enemy to marshal its own forces, improve its defense and learn your tactics and weaknesses. The secret is to always add just enough troops to lose the next battle, so that at each confrontation you have enough troops to win the battle you just lost. Especially when fighting an insurgent war, always be fair and leave the enemy enough time to recover while your forces undergo attrition and demoralization and the war loses political support at home. This method was used with brilliant success by Great Britain to lose the Gallipoli campaign, and it was proven again by the United States in Vietnam.

It works every time, it seems. Now the US is doing the same thing in Afghanistan. On the other hand, there is no point in committing large numbers of troops when the plan of action is uncertain, there are not enough military and political staff who know the local territory and speak the language, there are no combat troops available and the US has no money and no political backing for yet another war.

The US doesn't have a lot of wonderful options in Afghanistan. Doing nothing is one option. While it might be better in the immediate future than the prospect of losing a long and expensive war and incurring thousands of casualties, in the longer term the consequences might be disastrous. doing nothing, or doing the wrong thing, as the US is doing, will probably result in loss of both Pakistan and Afghanistan to al-Qaeda Islamists and possibly an India-Pakistan war, as well as further attacks on US cities by al-Qaeda, on a larger scale.

Getting help would be a good idea. The Russians have a lot of experience in Afghanistan, and while they are probably not stupid enough to contribute troops, they might be willing to supply a lot of advice based on hard-earned experience, linguists, intelligence assets and other aid, beyond allowing transport of military materiel through their territory. The Iranians are, or were, discreet and passive allies of the US in Afghanistan, but they are there to serve their own agenda. Admittedly, the situation may become so bad that an Iranian takeover of Afghanistan and Pakistan, with all that it implies, may be the least bad alternative. The US must evaluate the option of Iranian cooperation very carefully.

The most important help however, may be help in a concerted effort to choke off the sources of money and arms that enable the Taleban to keep up the fight in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. So little work has been done in this direction that it is not even certain what those sources are - Wahhabi donors in the Arabian peninsula, drug money, corrupt or sympathetic Pakistani officials, charity donations from Europe. Pakistanis contemplate the probability of Taleban takeover either with apathy or frustration, blaming all of the above as well as what they claim are duplicitous US officials. One warlord, who heads a group of 20,000 terrorists, spends $45 million on arms and supplies each year, and he is only one of about half a dozen or more in Northeast Pakistan.

But these are matters of tactics. The essentials to success in Afghanistan are all commonsense precautions and preparations needed for any undertaking by any government or organization:

* To understand the situation and the possible consequences of different actions.

* To understand what it is possible to achieve, what it is essential to achieve and to realistically assess the resources needed to achieve it.

* To gather the needed resources - not only money, troops and materiel, but also information and local knowledge.

* To ensure you can remain committed to a course of action and see it through, rather than finding that the public is tired of the whole affair and more interested in the Super Bowl.

* To have a rational decision making process, that responds to emergencies and unexpected setbacks by making constructive changes, a process that is not marred by inter-agency rivalry and bureaucratic games or subject to the "state of denial" and inertia that characterized the decision making of the Vietnam war and much of the Iraq war, as well as the Afghanistan war.

Every one of the above seems, by every indication, to be completely absent from USA policy-making in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1979. It is true that the situation could have deteriorated to this extent without US intervention, but the US seems to had a big hand in creating its own nightmare. The Obama administration seems to be dooming itself to play the final act in an epic disaster that has been in the making for 30 years.

Ami Isseroff

Benjamin Netanyahu is almost certainly the next Prime Minister of Israel. In common with both other leaders to emerge from the last election, Avigdor Lieberman and Tzipi Livni, he has vowed to eliminate the Hamas regime in Gaza. But it is unlikely that he, or any other Israeli leader can do so. Here's why.

Operation Cast Lead demonstrated two points. The first is that at present, at least, Hamas is far weaker than was previously thought, and that from the classical military point of view, there is no obstacle to destroying Hamas and retaking Gaza if that is what Israel decides to do. Three Israeli divisions with air support could achieve strategic control in a day or two and full deployment in a week. The cost however would probably be well over 100 Israeli dead and perhaps 5,000 - 10,000 Palestinian dead. From the international reaction to Operation Cast Lead we know that this huge casualty rate among Palestinians would be totally unacceptable to the international community. As in Operation Cast Lead, the entire world will be convinced that every one of the Palestinian victims was a small child deliberately executed by Israeli soldiers, precisely as related in absurd atrocity propaganda disseminated in major media outlets such as Time magazine and the New York Times. The world is fully prepared to believe, it seems, that the rockets coming out of Gaza operate themselves, and that Gaza contains only civilians. This presents an insurmountable obstacle to elimination of Hamas by military means.

A government headed by the late Yitzhak Rabin or by Shimon Peres might conceivably have been able to carry out the reconquest of Gaza. These leaders, and the tradition they represented, had sufficient credit in the west as men of peace and moderation. Benjamin Netanyahu however, is ineradicably identified with the occupation and with Israeli inflexibility in peace negotiations. Even Tzipi Livni is tarred at least lightly with the lack of progress in the Annapolis negotiations, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Avigdor Lieberman doesn't need others to vilify him. He deliberately pains himself as a monster and racist, making outrageous statements in order to attract attention and win support among his right wing followers. He might really believe only half the things he says, though even that would be bad enough. He is a ready-made Zionist bogie man. Like Ariel Sharon before them, they would inevitably appear in European cartoons cast as baby-eating Jews. The United Nations would force a quick Israeli withdrawal. Iran would quickly make good the losses of the Hamas, and Israel would have sacrificed a large number of soldiers for absolutely no reason.

Until recently, it was far more probable that an Israeli incursion into Gaza would result in a scenario similar to the above, but with replacement of the Hamas by the Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. That would have paved the way to a return of the peace process. But that option is receding. The Bush administration is gone, and in its waning days it was doing even less than it had done previously in the Middle East. The Obama administration, for all its fanfare about foreign policy changes, has yet to show much movement in any direction regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue. By design or through neglect, and partly through its own actions, the regime of Mahmoud Abbas has become very nearly irrelevant.

That brings us to the other reason why Benjamin Netanyahu is not going to out the Hamas. The only way to get international support for ousting Hamas by either diplomatic or military means, is to agree that the goal of the ouster is to restore the Hamas by the Fatah rule in Gaza. With the Hamas out of the way, Netanyahu would be faced with enormous international pressure to conclude a peace agreement with the Fatah and allow creation of a Palestinian state. Israel would have to agree to the peace solution that all the conventional wisdom holds is so obvious - something along the lines of the Geneva Accord or the Clinton Bridging Proposals or Israel's own Taba proposals. This would mean that Israel would have to declare readiness to withdraw from most of the West Bank and to compromise on Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority would not agree to these proposals, because Mahmoud Abbas continues to insist on Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in every statement made on the issue, and continues to deny that Israel has any national rights in the old city of Jerusalem. However, that does not matter. Netanyahu cannot propose Israeli withdrawal from Hebron or, for example, giving up the Har Homa settlement that his previous government initiated. Recall that the Shas party vetoed any mention at all of Jerusalem in the Annapolis negotiations with the Palestinians. If Netanyahu made any such concessions, even in principle, not only would his coalition fall apart, but the Likud party itself, would split. Netanyahu would find himself, like his predecessor Sharon, in a new party - the "in between Likud and Kadima party." Unlike Sharon, Bibi would not be able to must a majority to support his new position. The continuation of the Hamas government and its legitimation, the goal for which so many "progressive" groups in the United States are working as well, is the best guarantee for Netanyahu that the peace process will remain dead and that he will never have to face the problem of "painful concessions."

Hamas is consequently protected from extinction not by Israeli weakness, but by the nature of the right wing coalition that is going to govern Israel for at least the near future.

Ami Isseroff