Monday's "Diplomacy 101" editorial in the New York Times breaks old ground in media obtuseness:
We were thrilled when President Obama decided to plunge fully into the Middle East peace effort. He appointed a skilled special envoy, George Mitchell, and demanded that Israel freeze settlements, Palestinians crack down on anti-Israel violence and Arab leaders demonstrate their readiness to reach out to Israel.
Nine months later, the president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled.
The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything.
Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever.
Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
One source of the Gray Lady's confusion is identified by David Phillips in a Commentary article explaining why the widespread assertion that Israeli settlements are illegal is a myth. In truth, nearly everything written and said about the Palestinians is a fictive product of twentieth century Mideast politics;. Every state or peoples have their founding myths, but there is a kernel of truth in such historical narratives. What makes the Palestinian saga unique is that it is entirely based upon historical myth. Of such myths are bad diplomacy--and bad policy--born.
Bottom Line. What the Gray Lady misses is this: There was simply no way that Israel would allow itself to be pushed into more unilateral concessions--on an absurdly peripheral issue at that, settlements within the Green Line--at a time when Palestinian aggression had started the Gaza War just prior to President Obama's taking office. No wonder 44 is at 4 percent popularity in Israel. Diplomacy 101 would have had Team Obama focusing on Iran, not the umpteenth round of futile high-profile efforts to "solve" once and for all the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which will under any plausible scenario last at least another generation, probably more. Any solution must come from the ground up, step by step below the radar screen, and not via grand bargains in high-visibility diplomacy.
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