The Christian Science Monitor of Thursday carries my column on what to do about Lebanon (also here.) The editors there titled it For a lasting Middle East peace, look back to 1967 UN plan. That’s not quite how I would have titled it, but I guess it’s okay…
In the most operational part of the column I write:
Israel’s government and people need to find a way other than coercive military force to build a relationship that is sustainable over the long term with these neighbors [i.e., the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples] and thus to enjoy at last the sense of security that they (and all the peoples of the region) so deeply crave. And Americans, who have a long and close relationship with Israel and aspire to have good relations with the Lebanese and Palestinians, should understand that the region’s most urgent needs are to win a complete and fully monitored cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon (and, if possible, between Israel and the militants in Gaza), and to link that cease-fire to an explicit plan to have the United Nations convene an authoritative peace conference within, say, two weeks that aims to find a speedy resolution to all the unresolved strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the draft I sent to my editor there Monday, I had the “plan” part there organized under two separate “bullet points”. But I guess that space considerations prompted her to consolidate the lines of text. So what I would have preferred is this:
the region’s most urgent needs are:
* to win a complete and fully monitored cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon (and, if possible, between Israel and the militants in Gaza), and
* to link that cease-fire to an explicit plan to have the United Nations convene an authoritative peace conference within, say, two weeks that aims to find a speedy resolution to all the unresolved strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Is this pie-in-the-sky? I think not. It strikes me firstly that it would be infinitely preferable to the endless prolongation of the violent conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and the Lebanese, and secondly– as I argue in the column– that nailing down final peace agreements on all three remaining fronts really is quite do-able once you get your head around the possibility.
Think how close the Israelis and Syrians– and therefore also Israel and the Lebanese– came to resolving their conflict back in 1996 or 2000. (You can read my 2000 book about much of that diplomacy, to get all the fascinating details.) Or think how close the Israelis and Palestinians came in late 2000. Nailing down these agreements really is a much closer proposition than it might appear… and nearly everyone realizes what– if they are to be sustainable over the long term– they would look like… That is, very close to a total “land for peace” deal on all fronts. Which, yes, was indeed the content of the security Council’s famous resolution 242 of 1967.
So what I am arguing is Yes, let’s go for the very speedy, very complete ceasefire, as called for in the Siniora plan. But let’s tie that ceasefire not just to a promise to resolve the Lebanon issue– an issue that, quite frankly, is just about impossible to resolve sustainably on its own, given the country’s chronic political fragility… But let’s tie it instead to a firm promise to resolve the Syria-Israel dispute and the Palestine-Israel dispute as well as the Lebanon-Israel dispute. Why not pursue such a bold vision?
What on earth is there to stop all these strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict from being resolved in very short order???
Back in 1991, an earlier round of very committed diplomats and world leaders pledged themselves to just that goal. (And yes, before that, in 1973, as well… though with– on Henry Kissinger’s part– notably less sincerity.) The diplomacy that flowed from the Madrid Peace conference of 1991 did not succeed, it is true, in resolving all outstanding strands of the Arab-Israeli dispute. But it did resolve the Jordanian-Israeli dispute; and, as noted above, the post-Madrid diplomacy laid a considerable amount of the groundwork for a final peace settlement on both the Palestinian and the Syrian fronts, too.
I assure you: If the Syrian-Israeli conflict is resolved and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is resolved, Lebanon will make peace with Israel in a jiffy.
So okay, maybe you have concerns with my approach. You may say, “Wouldn’t it overload the Lebanese ceasefire to have it organically linked (as per my formulation above) to the promise to convene a speedy conference dedicated to negotiating a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace?” Yes, it might– a little. But right now, the ceasefire doesn’t look as though it’s going to be happening terrifically soon, anyway. So as we sit out the agonzing wait for it, why not start planning how it can be tied to an effort to build a really worthwhile regional peace, rather than a Lebanon-only stabilization effort that– especially in the absence of any incentives for the Syrians– is anyway almost certainly doomed to be short-lived?
You may say, “Wouldn’t promising a speedy and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace effort somehow reward the Hizbullah and Hamas militants for their intransigence and use of violence, and reward Syria for having supported them?”
I would say a couple of things to this: First: the real hardliners in Hamas and Hizbullah would certainly not feel “rewarded” by such a peace effort. These are the people who hate the idea of any peace that leaves a thriving Israel in place at all, and would want to fight to the end. But the majority of supporters and fighters within these organizations could be won over to supporting a regional peace effort– provided it were sufficiently balanced to give independent Palestine and independent lebanon a real chance to thrive (alongside the thriving Israel.)
Surely, the idea should be to try to structure the incentives so that as many Palestinians, lebanese, and Syrians as possible want to make peace, rather than to continue to fight??
Secondly, I’d say we have to get completely away from the idea that securing a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace is something that is only in the interests of the Arabs. Of course it is not! It is something that’s in the interests of the vast majority of Israelis, as well. Yes, some proportion of those Israelis who have been living as (illegal) settlers on occupied Arab land, whether in Golan or the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, would have to be prepared to see those homes coming under (or, in the case of Golan, returning to) the soveriengty of an Arab state. The fate of all those settlers would certainly be part of the peace negotiations… But all those issues have already been extensively negotiated before, back in the 1990s… No need to re-invent the wheel there…
Anyway, that’s the big outline of my argument. A few other people– Brent Scowcroft, Jimmy Carter, etc– have already started to argue in the US discourse that this current crisis should prompt the world to renew its search for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. I applaud the boldness of their vision and willingness to speak out and articulate it! I think that what I add to the argument is the idea that the promise of the very rapid convening of the regnional peace conference should be embedded within the ceasefire resolution itself.
Oh, and I also make the point in the column that the US faces quite enough challenges elsewhere in the world right now– including in Iraq and Afghanistan– that surely it should welcome any move that promises the speedy de-escalation of Arab-Israeli tensions… Plus, I draw out an extended comparison of the current crisis, as it faces the US, with the Suez crisis of 1956, as it affected Britain. I don’t recall that either Scowcroft or Jimmy Carter did that…
Anyway, I’m off to California in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Tell me (courteously, as always!) what you think of the column.