February 2009

While Israel officially rolled out the welcome mat for President Barack Obama’s new special envoy to the Middle East, former Sen George J. Mitchell, supporters of Judea and Samaria did not hide their concern.

It was epitomized by former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, who has been extremely critical of the Jewish state and is usually considered one of the State Department’s "Arabists." Mr. Miller saw Mr. Mitchell’s appointment as "a strong suggestion that Obama is going to free himself of the exclusive relationship that the US has had with Israel."

This was underscored by Mr. Obama’s decision to give his first full-length interview to the Arab-Muslim satellite TV station, Al-Arabiya, and his announcement that he will very soon make a major policy speech on the Middle East in an as-yet unidentified Muslim country.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Mitchell’s reappointment to the Israel-Palestinian arena won high praise for Mr. Obama from groups that have historically been most critical of the Jewish State, including the ultra-left wing Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now, and J Street, which sees itself as the far left’s answer to AIPAC.

The Palestinians, too, expressed pleasure with Mr. Obama’s appointment of Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. Mitchell’s last assignment in the region was as chairman of President Bill Clinton’s 2001 Sharm-el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee. Its mission, to investigate the outbreak of the Second Intifada (called by some Israelis "the Oslo War), ended in a document known as The Mitchell Report.

It was designed to be an "even-handed" document which, when it could not ignore Palestinian terrorism and use of civilians as human shields, determined that there had to be a matching "Israeli sin." The document found it in "settlement activity" and demanded a "freeze" in the growth of all communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, including a seeming restriction on the number of babies Jewish women in Yesha could deliver.

Mr. Mitchell’s report called for a condition that had never been mandated in any of the interim stages of the Oslo Accords: a freeze in "natural growth" even in the Jewish communities that already existed in Judea and Samaria.

"What do you want? For a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?" then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, reacted to the demand for a cessation of "natural growth" in the Jewish communities with horror. "Does Mitchell want Jews there to stop having children and not allow grown children to live in the same town as their parents?" he said.

He pointed out that Arabs comprise about 15 percent of Israel’s population. If the Jews in the communities of Judea and Samaria were allowed to stay where they are, even if the land were to become part of a Palestinian state, they would make up no more than ten percent of Palestine’s population.

Thus far, the Palestinians have refused even to consider that possibility, insisting that Israel remove all Jews from land that will be relinquished to the Arabs. The Mitchell Report does not question that demand, but, rather, merely accepts it.

Like Jordan and some other Arab states, the PA has made selling land to Jews a capital offense, another issue untouched by the Mitchell Report.

Mr. Klein said the notion that Palestinians, but not Jews, may live in Judea and Samaria is blatant "racism."

Mr. Mitchell’s critics said his equating Israeli "settlement" building with the Palestinians’ intifada violence, including suicide bombs, and the report’s insistence on a "freeze" which Israel had never agreed to in any negotiations, served only to reward Palestinian terrorism.

According to Lenny Ben-David, who served as deputy chief of mission in Israel’s embassy in Washington, Mr. Mitchell attempted to split the blame for the crisis "even at the risk of straining credibility."

For example, in the report, Mr. Mitchell equated Israeli lack of understanding concerning Palestinian "humiliation and frustration" as "a result of occupation," with Palestinian lack of comprehension concerning "the extent to which terrorism creates fear among the Israeli people and undermines their belief in the possibility of co-existence."

"Humiliation is rarely fatal; terrorism is," said Mr. Ben-David.

The Mitchell Report’s final recommendation was that in exchange for the complete freeze of settlement activity in Yesha, the Palestinians would make "a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations and punish perpetrators."

The lack of symmetry and the large loophole granted to the Arabs to avoid compliance doomed Mr. Mitchell’s report, which quickly joined a long list of other such documents and "peace plans" that are hardly discussed anymore.

However, Mr. Mitchell’s vision of a solution to the Middle East conflict undoubtedly is still intact: "Palestinians will never achieve a state if Israel does not have security. Israel will never get sustainable security if the Palestinians don’t have a state."

Many of his critics do not disagree, but, they say, it is a problem that can be solved only by eliminating the Islamist hope that Israel can be destroyed. Because a great deal of that aspiration is based on religious conviction, many observers say, short of total military victory for Israel, the problem is insoluble.

"Mitchell has called on both Israel and the PA to halt the violence, to protect human rights, to condemn and discourage incitement, to show restraint, and to protect holy places. The Palestinians have refused to pursue these actions—not the Israelis. Mitchell ignores the fact that the Israelis have made major concessions while the Palestinians have made virtually none," said Mr. Klein, adding that the Israeli concessions "were not taken as positive signs by the Palestinians, but as an indication that Israel is weak and ready to cave in to more demands."

He also accused Mr. Mitchell of misunderstanding the Palestinians’ "true goals." At a conference held this past December, Mr. Mitchell said the Palestinians’ "overriding objective" was an independent state.

"If this were true, why, in 2000, did they reject the offer of statehood by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak? Instead they launched a terror war against Israel," said Mr. Klein.

According to a poll conducted by An Najah University, 58 percent of Palestinians still reject the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, while 70 percent are in favor of the so-called "one-state solution," in which Arabs take over all of Israel, ending its existence as a Jewish state.

Mr. Klein pointed out that even if the Americans pressure Israel to accept a Palestinian state, the result will not necessarily bring peace to the region. "Syria, Iran, and North Korean are all independent states. Are they lovely, peace-loving countries?" said Mr. Klein.

Mr. Mitchell earned his reputation as a peace negotiator in Northern Ireland, where he is credited with achieving the 2003 "Good Friday" agreement between Catholics and Protestants, who, for 700 years, had engaged in fighting and sporadic terrorism. His philosophy, which he repeated when Mr. Obama announced his appointment once again to the Middle East, is: "There is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended."

Middle East expert Dr. Daniel Pipes did not disagree, but he seemed to call into question whether Mr. Mitchell was the man for the job. In 2001, Dr. Pipes called the Mitchell Report "a great disappointment" in that it depicted "the would-be peacemaker’s typical unwillingness to judge right and wrong."

Thus, he said, the document created "an illusionary balance of blame that makes it impossible to distinguish between aggressor and victim, between right and wrong."

Dr. Pipes found Mr. Mitchell and his committee "myopically unaware" of the real issue at hand, which is, he said not violence, Jewish settlements, or Jerusalem.

"It is, rather, the enduring Arab reluctance to accept the existence of a sovereign Jewish state," he said, suggesting that the real solution "lies not in getting the parties back to diplomacy as fast as possible, but in instilling in the Palestinians an awareness of the futility of their use of violence against the Jewish state."

Mr. Klein suggested that could happen if the US, instead of pressuring Israel, would make clear that "unless the Palestinians transform their culture, policies, goals, and actions, they will not be able to get any more concessions or US funding."

Another of Mr. Mitchell’s critics suggested the problem is his determination to view terrorism as falling under the purview of law enforcement rather than the military.

Col (res) Daniel Reisner, former director of the IDF Legal Division’s International Law Branch, said that, in April 2001, he tried to explain to Mr. Mitchell that war on terror, "above a certain level," calls for a military response and not law enforcement.

The Mitchell Committee rejected that position and, in its report, called on Israel to abandon the term "armed conflict," even though that was how the Palestinians themselves described the Intifada.

US policy, if not Mr. Mitchell’s opinion, changed on 9-11.

"It took four months and four jets to change the opinion of the US on the matter, and if not for the four jets, I am not certain that we could have developed the concept of the ‘war on terror’ to the magnitude that we have developed today," said Mr. Reisner.

In Israel, candidates from the nationalist parties that expect to be included in any government formed by front-runner Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud, said Mr. Mitchell was indicative of the potential problem the Jewish state will face from the Obama administration.

"Experience teaches us that Bibi will not be able to withstand the pressure exerted upon him by the Obama administration," said National Union leader Ya’akov "Ketzaleh" Katz, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. "Unless Bibi is strengthened from the nationalist camp, he will fall into the arms of the Left again."

Asked about this assessment, Mr. Netanyahu said that, as prime minister, he would have no intention of building new settlements in Judea and Samaria.

However, he told Tony Blair, the envoy of the so-called Quartet which devised its own "peace plan" called the Road Map, that he would not freeze "natural growth."

"Like all governments in Israel until now, I will have to meet the needs of natural growth in the population. I will not be able to choke the settlements," he said,

Mr. Netanyahu’s plan is to try to advance negotiations with the Palestinians and to focus on economic development, an area not discussed by Mr. Mitchell, but one which seemed to be on Mr. Obama’s mind when he spoke to Al-Arabiya television.

The issue of Mr. Obama’s rush to appoint Mr. Mitchell was the subject of some debate in Israel. The new President said he did it in order to fulfill a campaign promise to begin working immediately on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But more than one Israeli politician suggested he appointed Mr. Mitchell and then dispatched him to the Middle East more rapidly than had been expected because he hoped his new negotiator might be able to influence the outcome of the Israeli elections, scheduled for Feb. 10^th.

A senior Israeli diplomatic official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press told Arutz Sheva that Mr. Obama had timed Mr. Mitchell’s trip to underscore the new President’s intention to be personally involved in the Middle East from the beginning of his tenure and take a very hands-on approach.

"That is the only way to explain why he would send him here now, when he doesn’t know if the person he is meeting as foreign minister and defense minister will be in those jobs a month from now," the official added.

The diplomatic official said Mr. Obama’s reasoning might not even have anything to do with Mr. Mitchell’s eventual success or failure. While Mr. Obama will find a great deal of domestic and foreign opposition on most of the items on his agenda, such as the US economic crisis and how to deal with Iraq and Iran, most US allies agree with him that the solution to the Middle East crisis is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Even if the effort fails, Mr. Obama will probably get points in foreign capitals for trying. "If Obama takes on this issue right away, he will not get into any confrontations with US allies," said the official.

The left-wing candidates for prime minister, Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, the current foreign minister, and Labor’s Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, have signaled that they are prepared to relinquish virtually all of Judea and Samaria as well as parts of Jerusalem in exchange for a peace deal with the Palestinians. Mr. Netanyahu has stated that while he is prepared to negotiate with the Palestinians, he will not relinquish all of Judea and Samaria and will not divide Jerusalem.

While former President Bill Clinton envisioned the division of Jerusalem to mean that Israel would retain Jewish neighborhoods while the Palestinians would receive the Arab ones, the Palestinians have repeatedly made clear that, in any settlement, they expect the entire eastern half of the city, everything that was won by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, including the Jewish neighborhoods and holy sites.

At the Jerusalem Conference last month, Mr. Netanyahu emphasized his Likud Party’s commitment to "a complete, undivided Jerusalem" under Israel sovereignty.

He questioned what would have happened to the city had Israel not built all the Jewish neighborhoods surrounding the capital in the years following 1967.

"Jerusalem would have been choked," he said, stressing that transferring sovereignty over those areas to the Palestinians is not an option. "Everyone knows what will happen if we were to leave those areas and divide Jerusalem. Someone will enter, and that someone will be Hamas."

At the conference, Mr. Netanyahu warned that, should the left be re-elected on February 10, its leaders would cooperate with the Obama administration to internationalize the holy sites in the city.

"Some politicians are trying to blur the importance of the Temple Mount to the Jewish people by referring to it as the ‘Holy Basin.’ We, as Jews, know who built the Temple Mount," he said.

"Holy Basin" has come to mean the area of the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion, and a variety of Christian holy sites. Mr. Clinton recommended that these areas be turned over to an international body, although it was not clear if that would also mean removing from the Temple Mount from the Waqf Islamic Authority which currently controls the site, albeit under Israeli sovereignty.

Mr. Netanyahu argued that the three major religions that revere Jerusalem have all been allowed access to their holy sites "only because Jerusalem is united and under Israeli rule." When Jordan controlled the city, Jews were forbidden even to enter the Old City of Jerusalem.

If elected, Mr. Netanyahu said he intends to establish a broad-based coalition consisting of as many Zionist parties as possible—"blue" ones (the color traditionally associated with Zionism, representing groups open to relinquishing "land for peace") and "orange" factions (the color associated with the religious Zionist goal of retaining all of Judea and Samaria).

Mr. Katz, who represents the "orange" sector, said Mr. Obama needed to be reminded that "Israel is not an American colony or the 51^st state." He said it was "chutzpah" for the US administration not to respect the Israeli public.

Danny Dayan, the head of the Yesha Council, called Mr. Mitchell’s appointment "disturbing."

"Soon we will have to ask Obama for permission to have babies," he said, referring to Mr. Mitchell’s position on "natural growth."

In a briefing paper prepared for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Mr. Ben-David suggested Mr. Mitchell’s "tactics of ‘symmetrical negotiations,’" which worked between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, would not be successful in "asymmetrical conflicts," such as the one between Israel and the Arabs.

"The parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict bear little resemblance to the antagonists he dealt with in Northern Ireland," said Mr. Ben-David.

Some observers have suggested that Mr. Mitchell’s success in Northern Ireland had more to do with the parties’ general disinterest in religion than it did with anything the negotiators did or did not do. According to this theory, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, mirroring the attitude of most native Europeans, consider themselves "post-Christian," and, therefore, were generally disinclined to continue a war with neighbors with whom they generally share culture, if not familial religious affiliation.

According to these observers, there are more Muslims who regularly attend mosques in Ireland than there are Christians who regularly attend church there.

While it is hard to gauge exact numbers, about half of Israeli Jews consider themselves religious or "traditional," while, according to some reports, some 90 percent of PA Muslims consider themselves religious. For these groups, issues such as holy sites, to say nothing of Muslim religious directives to assume control of all of the land, are important.

Devotion to religion is not the only difference between Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine. Mr. Ben-David pointed out that the initial Mitchell Report was issued several years before Hamas assumed control of Gaza. With its open fealty to Iran and alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas remains dedicated to Israel’s destruction and is an enemy of moderate Arab regimes, such as Egypt and Jordan.

As such, Mr. Ben-David said, Hamas cannot be compared to the Catholic Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.

"The IRA wanted to throw the British out of Northern Ireland, but had no aspirations to capture London. Moreover, while the IRA had limited international contacts, it was not a part of a European-wide network and was not backed by a petrodollar-rich, oil-producing country like Iran, which was also on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and thereby emboldening its regional surrogates," said Mr. Ben-David.

Mr. Mitchell will have one other problem if he tries to resurrect his 2001 plan: In April 2004, President George Bush assured Mr. Sharon that Israel will not be required to relinquish all of Judea and Samaria in any peace plan.

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," wrote Mr. Bush.

According to Mr. Ben-David, the virtually universal interpretation of Mr. Bush’s letter is that settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria will remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Like other critics of Mr. Mitchell’s approach in 2001, Dr. Pipes wondered, "How can one take seriously yet another diplomatic initiative?"

Since President Bush made his 2002 Rose Garden speech, announcing, for the first time, that US policy included the creation of a Palestinian state, there have been at least a dozen diplomatic initiatives, in addition to the Mitchell Report. All of them, from the Geneva Accords to the Roadmap, from the Tenet Understandings to the Zinni, Wolfensohn, and Dayton Missions, and even the Annapolis Plan and the Arab Peace Plan devised by Saudi King Abdullah via New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, call for an end to Palestinian violence (or at least the appearance of the Palestinian Authority to make efforts to stop it) coupled by the end of any Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, including the entire Old City of Jerusalem.

The lack of success, thus far, was not lost on the Palestinians either. After listening to Mr. Obama repeat his demand that Hamas in Gaza must end its rocket fire on Israel and that the US and other Western countries were prepared to supervise the Gaza-Egyptian border to eliminate smuggling so that Hamas cannot rearm, Ghaith al-Omari, a former advisor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said dismissively that, despite Mr. Barak’s "early engagement and energetic approach," his policies were the same as those of Mr. Bush.

In Beirut, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told Al-Jazeera television that the Obama government will fail in the Middle East if it does not change American policies.

Mr. Mitchell’s critics recall that Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"Could someone explain to me how that definition does not apply to this newest attempt by Mitchell? Does anyone wish to wager on its chances for success?" said Dr. Pipes.

Mr. Ben-David would probably not accept the bet. Noting that Mr. Mitchell will be conducting diplomacy under completely different strategic circumstances than the ones he last saw in the region in the 1990s, Mr. Ben-Davis said, "Hamas may prove to be the fatal flaw to Mitchell’s axiom that ‘there is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended.’"

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