Mitchell revs up mission

It’s been almost three months since, at that January 22 event at the State Department, Sec. Clinton announced the appointment of former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell as “special envoy for Middle East peace”– and Pres. Obama, who was also present, immediately put flesh on that announcement by saying,

Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.
Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.
I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts…

At the time, I commented that the way Mitchell’s appointment was effected indicated that he would be reporting to both the president and the secretary of state. Yesterday I was able to have a good discussion with a couple of (regrettably anonymous) sources in the administration who were able to confirm conclusively that this was the case. “It is very important that there is no daylight between any of the three of them,” one of these people said.
Mitchell has, of course, been on the road again this week, with a heavy schedule of meetings in (thus far) Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.
This is his third visit to the region since his appointment; and he has been more outspoken this time than hitherto in articulating the US’s vision of “two states living side by side in peace and security” both publicly and also, reportedly, in private meetings with leaders in both Israel and Palestine.
Israel new (or recycled) PM Netanyahu and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, are notably sticking to their position of refusing to engage at this time in any discussions about sovereignty issues– that is, about the possibility of a independent Palestinian state.
Haaretz reports today,

In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday, Mitchell stressed Obama’s commitment to the goal of a two-state solution to end the decades-old conflict.
“That is our objective. That is what we will pursue vigorously in the coming months,” Mitchell said.

It thus seems clear that serious confrontation between the two government is getting closer.
In associated news this week, it’s been revealed that Jordan’s King Abdullah II will be the first Middle Eastern head of state to meet Obama in the White House. That’ll happen next Tuesday. And US government sources have said that Obama likely won’t be in DC when Netanyahu comes across in early May for the annual AIPAC conference so won’t be able to receive him then.
This is, of course, an abrupt shift from the extreme lovey-dovey-ness that existed between the US president and successive Israeli PMs right through from January 2003 till January 2009. (In Pres. Clinton’s case he almost hero-worshipped Rabin, in particular.)
Mitchell’s earlier two visits to the region as “peace envoy” were low-key missions, focused on “listening”. During them, he didn’t make any forceful public statement. He didn’t do anything “radical” like visiting Gaza or Syria, or talking to anyone who could even remotely be described as “close to” Hamas. I got pretty worried and impatient, thinking that after the good, activist start Obama and Mitchell got off to in January, the momentum seemed to have fizzled out of their effort.
It also took Mitchell what I thought was an inordinately long time to staff up his peacemaking effort. Friends of mine also started to raise questions as to whether Mitchell, in his mid 70s and recovering from prostate cancer, really still had the physical vigor required to push this peacemaking effort through to conclusion.
Well, now it seems the staffing pieces are starting to fall into place. Mitchell will have, it turns out, four people who will report directly to him. Their exact job titles seem not to be clear– whether they will be “deputies”, or “chief of staff”, or something else…. But the important thing is these four will be expected to coordinate closely with each other and each will report directly to Mitchell.
They are:

Gen. Keith Dayton, the guy who’s been running the fairly controversial (in Palestinian circles) effort to train up a pro-Abbas Palestinian security force. He will apparently carry on doing what he is doing– and presumably will also be heavily involved in discussions on the security regime in the OPTs in the context of further Israeli withdrawals. But from now on, he’ll be part of the Mitchell operation, and reporting to Mitchell.
David Hale, until now a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and formerly I think Ambassador to Jordan. Hale has been traveling with Mitchell this week. I think the expectation will be that he’ll be the person who’ll go to Jerusalem to set up the office the Mitchell operation will be opening there. (Let’s hope it is of considerably more use all round than the ridiculously expensive and under-performing office that Tony Blair has been maintaining in the American Colony Hotel for the past couple of years…. Also, does this mean curtains for Tony? I certainly hope so.)
Fred Hof. Hof is a longtime Middle East expert, whose principal expertise is in the Syrian-Israeli-Lebanese nexus. But he was also chief of staff of the 2000-2001 Mitchell Commission, which reported on the causes of the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and drafted the commission’s April 2001 report. So Hof knows a lot about Palestinian affairs, too. He will be working primarily from Washington, backing up Mitchell’s efforts on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks.
Mara Rudman, who worked in the Clinton-era National Security Council and has until now been the executive secretary of the Obama NSC. She has also been traveling with Mitchell this week. Her responsibility on the team will apparently include managing its efforts to coordinate with all the other arms of the federal government. She’s also pretty well connected to various parts of the US Jewish community.

My sources told me they expect Mitchell to run parallel efforts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace and to secure peace in the Israel-Syria-Lebanon nexus, but with the latter effort most likely somewhat subordinated to the former. There seems to be a fairly clear understanding that Netanyahu might try to push for a big peacemaking breakthrough on the Syrian track as a way of staving off US pressure to engage seriously on the Palestinian track– and that this needs to be resisted. But, as one of my sources said, “We are firmly convinced a person can walk and chew gum at the same time. Activity on the Syrian track should not preclude activity on the Palestinian track.” Indeed, this person indicated that the “comprehensive” (Palestinian track, plus Syrian track, plus Lebanese track) peacemaking approach, as advocated in the Arab peace initiative, has some non-trivial advantages including from the perspective of Israel’s citizens.
Though Mitchell will reportedly be working on both the principal tracks at once, he has no immediate plans to visit Damascus (or Beirut.) Someone remarked that this seemed unlikely before the holding of elections in Lebanon in early June.
Well, anyway, I am happy that Mitchell’s operation is finally getting up and running. I’ve been reading the slightly theoretical study of his previous peacemaking efforts in both Northern Ireland and Palestine/Israel that Shelley Deane has in the latest (March 2009) issue of something called the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. Shelley was also looking at the more recent “Helsinki process” undertaken with reps of many political trends in Iraq, which tried explicitly to use the peace-mediation approach summed up in the “Mitchell principles.”
Mitchell’s 2000-2001 effort in Palestine resulted in a report and a set of recommendation that went absolutely nowhere. In part that was because of the limited mandate of the Mitchell Commission, which was not itself given the task of mediating a final peace agreement, but only of making recommendations as to how the existing peace “process” could be gotten back on track. In part it was because of the lack of commitment and support the Commission received from both Pres. Bush and also– to some extent– from secretary of state Colin Powell.
The Mitchell Commission report was commissioned, remember, by Clinton, in early October 2000, in response to a resolution from the UN Security Council calling for a “speedy and objective inquiry” into the causes of the escalation of violence in Palestine. Clinton “captured” that process from the UNSC; but since he, his veep, and his wife were all heavily focused on the imminent elections, he didn’t too much to activate the Commission with any great speed…. And then, after Bush because president, it was to Bush that the Commission submitted its final report… That, after all kinds of shenanigans involving disruptive Israeli leaks, the Israelis attempting end-runs around Mitchell by getting Scooter Libby to go bat for them, etc.
Anyway, Bush was deeply uninterested in doing anything on the Israel-Palestine front. Thus, the report sank like a stone into a very deep ocean.
This time, we have a different president. And we have a Sen. Mitchell– along with some of his staff members– who have long experience of the kinds of tricks balky Israeli governments can get up to.
I was just now having lunch with an English friend who’s also deeply interested in these issues. He asked whether I thought Obama and Mitchell were wise to the kinds of tricks Netanyahu might get up to. I said yes.
An attempt to activate the pro-Israeli lobby in this country in defense of the Netanyahu government’s positions is completely predictable.
(That is another reason why the Delahunt resolution,a House of Representatives resolution that congratulates Sen. Mitchell on his appointment as peace envoy and applauds the effort to establish a Palestinian state, is so important. This resolution now has 101 sponsors, including five or six republicans. If you go to this web-page, you can find out if your representative has signed on as a sponsor. If so, express your appreciation. If not, lobby her or him to urge her to do so.)