Insight on George Mitchell

I had a really informative talk yesterday with Shelley Deane, a prof at Bowdoin College in Maine who’s one of the world’s leading “George Mitchell scholars.” An Irish citizen, Deane wrote her doctoral dissertation at LSE on Mitchell’s role in brokering Northern Ireland’s “Good Friday Agreement.” Right now, she has unique access to all the records of the commission he co-chaired with Warren Rudman, at the invitation of Pres. Clinton, to look into the causes of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Along the way, she has also done a lot of work on the general topic of “Paramilitaries to Parliamentaries” and other issues in complex peacemaking. (Check her publications list at the link above.)
Now, of course, Mitchell is in the hot seat as Barack Obama’s quick-off-the-blocks special envoy to the Middle East. It’s a task to which he brings his long experience as a US Senator (including a stint as Senate Majority Leader), his ultimately successful peace-brokering record in Northern Ireland, and the very granular experience of Israeli-Palestinian issues– and of its interaction with US politics at the highest levels– that he gained during his work on the Mitchell-Rudman Commission.
Deane said she’s identified several key of the personal qualities that have aided Mitchell’s approach to peace-brokering. The main ones are his persistence, his friendly and unflappable temperament, his commitment to building longterm relations of trust, his deep personal decency, and his very strong preference for approaches that inclusive, even-handed, and values-based. (My wording there, not always hers.)
She said that Mitchell’s approach is to create a “hyperbaric chamber– because when you’re in the depths of a conflict you can’t just rise to the surface immediately, or you’d ‘get the bends’. So you have to create this hyperbaric chamber, hopefully including all the relevant parties, as a safe place where relationships of trust can be built over time.”
She noted that he’d experienced many serious setbacks during his efforts in Northern Ireland, but had calmly persisted with the job nonetheless.
She said he places strong emphasis on trust and trustworthiness, and was upset though not thrown off balance by instances of Israeli “spoiler-leaking” that had occurred during Israeli-Palestinian discussions that had been intended to be kept quiet.
She talked quite a bit about the similarities she sees between Hamas and Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein, including the strength of their internal discipline, their lack of corruption, and the fact that both organizations, by design, refused to establish a patronage- and fiefdom-based internal structure. But she also talked about the structural differences between the Northern Ireland situation and that in Israel/Palestine, including the fact that in Northern Ireland both blocs of major protagonists– the “Unionists” and the Sinn Fein/IRA– had important state systems behind them; and the situation there was not exactly one in which one protagonist was running a military occupation over the other. (The role of the British Army in Northern Ireland was much more nuanced than that; and anyway, the major reconciliation that needed to occur was between the opposing local forces, not between the entire indigenous population and a foreign occupation army.)
It strikes me this question of the structural differences between the two situations is one worth quite a lot more study. But I need to run now. (I’m going to a talk Jimmy Carter;s main Middle east person, Bob Paster, is giving about Hamas.)
More on all of this, later. However, the next few days look pretty busy for me…

23 thoughts on “Insight on George Mitchell”

  1. This makes me want to know more about any possible peace process. How will he control so many factors? Please continue to deliver your insights and information.
    I have one other thing that has nothing to do with today’s entry, but I can’t think of a better place to share it.
    No fooling, I just heard this. I was driving down the highway listening to a news interview, and when I tuned in, I heard, “These people think that killing people is a legitimate way to solve their problems.“ Then, he went on and said, “whenever a clinician hears someone talking like that, they should take it very seriously and make sure that the person gets appropriate treatment.”
    He was talking about the mentally ill man in California that killed his family and then killed himself.
    During the first part of his discussion, I thought he was talking about our or others’ government.
    Bob Spencer

  3. Leahy’s statement is impressive in the light of the non stop, “ho hum”/blame Hamas coming out of US government spokespersons — from Obama on down. The spokespersons give minimal lip service to suffering Palestinians and imply a moral equivalence with the death of a few Israelis . . . because, you know, the Hamas shot rockets, first. As if “first” had any meaning in that conflict.
    And these US spokespersons, from Obama, Clinton on down, quite obviously tilt (generous word) towards the Israeli script.
    That Israeli script has resulted in the calls for investigation into war crimes, not surprising when you consider the calls of Israeli rabbis not to show any mercy.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1058758.html
    Show no mercy, as in perhaps the various cults of past destruction cultivated by the Nazis SS or Emperor-crazed Japanese warriors of WWII.

  4. news report:
    The Turkish prime minister has stormed out of a heated debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos over Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip.
    Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked out of the televised debate on Thursday, after the moderator refused to allow him to rebut the Israeli president’s justification about the war that left about 1,300 Gazans dead.
    Before storming out, Erdogan told Shimon Peres, the Israeli president: “You are killing people.”

  6. “the moderator” in question being a columnist for the Washington Post. It really was an astonishing episode. It will be interesting to see how it plays in Turkey-not to mention Cairo and Riyadh.

  7. “Hamas shot rockets, first.”
    Except they didn’t. They didn’t shoot any rockets for 4.5 months until Israel committed serious violations of the ceasefire.
    Oh yes, and then there was the little fact that the attack on Gaza was planned months in advance, including the timing.

  8. To Helena’s original post, a veteran observer was telling me yesterday of his impressions of Mitchell — and how remarkable that he was able to get the British to back down from so many red lines that they had swore they would never cross…. (e.g., freeing all prisoners, etc) And Britain was far, far less beholden to America than Israel.
    But in the case of Israel, does the tail still wag the dog?
    Thanks DonS for posting that Ha’aretz story about the military rabbis…. suggesting further (with Pat Lang) that there indeed IS something fundamentally “different” between US and Israeli military cultures….
    War may be a “racket” — but some cultures play by different rules.

  9. ” “Hamas shot rockets, first.”
    ” Except they didn’t. ”
    Details, details. Don’t you yet realize that in the US ‘diplomatic’ and MSM response, the Palestinians always provoke, and the Israelis always retaliate?

  10. Concerning the WEF (world Economic Forum) in Davos : and guess who was the moderator of this special panel on helping Gaza : no less than David Ignatius.
    Concerning the incident which was largely reported in the news here : there were first interventions by Ban Kee Moon (the general secretary of the UN) who made “unusually harsh” comments against the Israelian attack (he went on the spot and could see by himself the bombed UN building where civilians were refuged, I guess that getting internal reports from his employees and seeing the ruins, helped him formulate this strong condemnation); then the president of the Arab League Amr Moussa also condemned the bombings. In the end, Ignatius gave the last word to SHimon Peres who was the only one to defend the case of Israel.. We all know what kind of PR relations the Israeli are doing : Perez asked Erdogan what he would do supposing that Istambul was bombed… The panels at the WEF are strictly limited to one hour (at least we were told so). Perez was given the last word and spoke for 25 minutes. Before Erdogan had spoken for 12 minutes. The incident took place because Erdogan who was red of anger after Perez spoke wanted to answer him, but was prevented to do so by Ignatius. All the other orators strongly condemned the Israelians.. so Ignatius thought it would be balanced to grant Perez half of the speaking time !!
    I can’t believe that they chose someone like David Ignatius to moderate such a debate : he is not a moderate and of course not impartial at all, as the repartition of the talking time between the different orators shows.
    I’m really wondering why the organisators didn’t chose a more neutral persons, a journalist from the EU, like Robert Fisk ? or an EU academician or a former UN diplomate to moderate such a controversed panel ?
    It really ended in a severed diplomatic incident between Perez and Erdogan. Following that, Mitchell the US envoy in ME who was expected in IStambul cancelled the travel… They say the decision was already taken before the incident because they were over occupied.. I guess Mitchell realised it was not the best moment to go to ME..

  11. War may be a “racket” — but some cultures play by different rules.
    Smedley Butler: “So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side…it is His will that the Germans be killed.
    “And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies…to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.”

  12. news report:
    United States Mideast envoy George Mitchell said on Friday the new U.S. administration’s push for Israeli-Palestinian peace after the war in the Gaza Strip faced substantial hurdles, and he predicted further setbacks.
    As I indicated before, it’s: “We tried but we failed.”
    But of course to really try for settlement there must be talk of borders and UN 242, but there won’t be because Israel would object. So much for change. Even George Bush talked about borders.

  13. Sinn Feins’s Gerry Adams on the need to include Hamas on any real peace negotiations:
    “It (a peace process) means engaging in real conversations and seeking real solutions. It means accepting that dialogue is crucial and that means recognising the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own leaders, their own representatives. The Israeli government and other governments have to talk to Hamas.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/middleeast-gerryadams-georgemitchell

  14. Thanks for that more detailed account, Christiane!
    It seems that Israel is losing many important friends over this incident. Good.
    I wonder if there is anything at all that would induce the U.S. and its puppets to turn their backs on Israel.

  15. Nobody’s asking the US to turn its back on Israel. The simple fact, as AJ Rosenberg and others have repeatedly promoted, is that a genuine two-state peace settlement would be in the best interest of the Israeli people.
    The Zionist idea that Israel can occupy/control all of Judea in an apartheid-like repression while suppressing the Palestinians with force is working in the short range but it is probably doomed to failure in the long range for various reasons, including demographics.
    Currently the US and its Arab allies in the area, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are obviously not in favor of any change in the status quo no matter how much listening George Mitchell does.

  16. “Nobody’s asking the US to turn its back on Israel. The simple fact, as AJ Rosenberg and others have repeatedly promoted, is that a genuine two-state peace settlement would be in the best interest of the Israeli people.”
    I was born and live in a multi-ethnic nation. A nation founded on ethnicity before law can not be a democracy. I will not defend the moral logic of a nation invented out of a fantasy of the past and built on stolen land. I will not grant it special privileges. I will do no more than acquiesce to its existence. Israel was founded on the logic of a Jewish National Front. It exists as Saudi Arabia Lite
    M.J. Rosenberg defends it as such.
    Israel is not a modern country any more than Iran was under the Shah. Having a little white homeland is not in the best interests of the Israeli people. Better for them just to grow up.

  18. Well said, Seth!
    Small quibble:
    “Israel…exists as Saudi Arabia Lite.”
    At least Saudi Arabia was not created as an ethnocracy on land stolen from its indigenous inhabitants by colonists from another continent. At least the population of Saudi Arabia was left in place and not ethnically cleansed so that the colonists could have lebensraum.

  19. Israel was founded on the logic of a Jewish National Front. It exists as Saudi Arabia Lite
    It’s all Rubbish.
    It’s a dream 2000 years old used for political/ personal interests by Theodor Hirtzel to create his Zionist movement. The laughing matter here he offered two places to create his Kingdome Uganda, and Palestine!!! He did choose the first one but somehow changed to Palestine for good reasons.
    The fundamental interest of Israel will remain the search for legitimate status for the existence of Zionist entity by holding to the illusion and delusions, and fabrication of “facts” and “incidents” that may wedge same bases for it.
    Israel tries for .vague to prove the existence of the alleged Old Testament scriptures in old historic sites. Despite digging and destructing excavations, which began in 1948, and widely expanded in 1967, Israel could not find convincing evidence for any profounder historical ties with Palestine, as depicted in the Torah. The Zionist Haarits newspaper on 28/10/1999, stressed the fact that the search for the Torah facts is but an illusion. The newspaper article stated: “after seventy years of concentrated excavations in Palestine, not one evidence was found to prove the stories of the Old Testament. Following seventy years of intensive excavation efforts, a stark result was obtained, namely that the Torah era has never occurred.
    In same talken, those who used 2000 years old dream we are no longer living as same as this world. If each ethnic/religious groups claims their state and their Kingdome accordingly.
    On Sunday, January 25, CBS 60 Minutes aired an amazing segment exposing Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians. The piece is by Senior CBS Foreign Correspondent Bob Simon, who is Jewish living outside Tel-Aviv and produced by Robert G, Anderson.
    TAKE ACTION:
    1. Watch this video
    2. Send a thank you note to 60 Minutes, Bob Simon and Robert Anderson, using the below form
    3. Urge & Invite everyone you know to watch the video and send a thank you note

  20. This should be quote:

    The fundamental interest of Israel will remain the search for legitimate status for the existence of Zionist entity by holding to the illusion and delusions, and fabrication of “facts” and “incidents” that may wedge same bases for it.

    Israel tries for .vague to prove the existence of the alleged Old Testament scriptures in old historic sites. Despite digging and destructing excavations, which began in 1948, and widely expanded in 1967, Israel could not find convincing evidence for any profounder historical ties with Palestine, as depicted in the Torah. The Zionist Haarits newspaper on 28/10/1999, stressed the fact that the search for the Torah facts is but an illusion. The newspaper article stated: “after seventy years of concentrated excavations in Palestine, not one evidence was found to prove the stories of the Old Testament. Following seventy years of intensive excavation efforts, a stark result was obtained, namely that the Torah era has never occurred.

    also the here link to CBS program:
    http://action.gazajustice.org/t/4436/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=963

  21. Factual corrections:
    The full hour of the Davos debate is available on YouTube for all to see, along with the time-elapsed code.
    Prime Minister Ergoden spoke for 16 minutes.
    Abu Moussa spoke for 13 minutes.
    President Peres spoke for 21 minutes.
    Erdogen and Peres each went over their allotted time by one minute. Amr Moussa spoke for 3 minutes over his allotted time.
    The times and the order of the debate would have been agreed to by the participants before the debate.
    Peres’ impassioned defence of Israel appeared to transfix the audience and I think this is what upset PM Erdogen who had spoken in a very measured and dispassionate way.

  23. I know Helena has had a lot of detractors for her enthusiasm with the new Administration and sometimes it is disheartening to read what is coming out of Obama and Mitchell’s mouth. But they at least have hinted at Palestinian suffering (more or less on a humanitarian issue rather than one created by Israel itself) which is a little more (and I emphasise on little) than what we have seen the past eight years. In fact, it has been because of the irresponsibility of the last Administration that this is looking good but everyone should not hold their breath.
    What does give one reason to have a little faith is that this is perhaps the seventh day with Mitchell and though things looked unchanged, we have to really look at this at a realpolitik point of view. They’re not going to do the complete 180 here. Be realistic. It’s going to be a rather slow process and Mitchell’s breakthrough on the Good Friday Pact did not happen as soon as he entered Northern Ireland nor did it seem like something was going to emerge from it. But Mitchell worked hard at it and I have no doubt he wants results here (and so does Obama).
    We should hold on to our skepticism but there’s at least approximately 1445 days to go in Obama’s four years. Keep chipping away.

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