The Baker/Hamilton Report

It comes as no surprise that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has again been thrust into the center of how to deal with the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. That is, of course, a central thesis of the wing of Middle Eastern studies associated with the name of Edward Said and completely opposite to the views expressed by Bernard Lewis and his disciples. The problem with the Baker-Hamilton thesis is that the obvious outcome -- a two-state solution, renunciation of the "right of return" by the descendants of the Palestinians who fled in 1948, and adjustments of the 1948 armistice line to reflect changes on the ground -- is unacceptable by the rejectionists, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Jihadists headquartered in Syria. Jimmy Carter has (unfortunately, but not unexpectedly) joined the ranks of those willing to place the blame on Israel. But until the international community is prepared to acknowledge straight-forwardedly and without condition Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, none of this advances the ball one inch. Indeed, it impairs the likelihood of a satisfactory settlement. [For those who came at this this issue without much background, it is necessary to understand that Jimmy Carter's reputation for having engineered the peace treaty between Israel and Eygpt is completely undeserved. The undeniable fact is that Carter and his principal foreign policy aide, Brzezinski, were taken aback by Anwar Sadat's desire for bilateral negotiations with Israel. Carter/Brzezinksi wanted multilateral negotiations (including the Soviets) which would have been a disaster. Once their notion was blasted out of the water by both Sadat and Begin, it's true that Carter played a useful role in mediating between Sadat and Begin during negotiation of final terms on the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt -- but it's important to remember that his initial instinctions (and Brzezinski's) were entirely wrong.] Neither Carter, nor Jim Baker, nor Lee Hamilton fully understands the dynamic of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As a result, their prescriptions are quite wrong -- and dangerously so.