RSSObama to Unveil ‘Roadmapolis’
If you’re getting a little uneasy about President Obama reprising Bush Administration policies with new gloss — my personal favorite being his decision to continue the policy of ‘rendition’, under which terror suspects are sent to third countries where the rules governing interrogation are more permissive, but Obama promises to do it “with greater oversight” — his Middle East peace plan is unlikely to make you feel much better.
As I wrote here, Obama’s Mideast peace plan appears to be a hybrid between President Bush’s “roadmap” and his “Annpolis” initiative — Roadmapolis, if you like.
President Bush’s “road map” first emerged as the US began preparing to invade Iraq. Key Arab regimes had long made clear to Washington that the price of even tacit support for the war was American willingness to address a conflict that generated immense hostility towards the US on the Arab street. The “road map” read like a crack of the whip, outlining a timetable that promised a provisional Palestinian state by the end of 2003 and a resolution of all final status issues by the beginning of 2005. But the Bush administration gave the Israelis and Palestinians no reason to take it seriously; its purely symbolic purpose was plain to see.
The Bush administration made a second high-profile stab at the peace process in the form of the Annapolis Conference held in November 2007, which drew in not only the Israelis and Palestinians, but also a range of Arab states – in what it portrayed as a symbolic affirmation of the administration’s policy of building an alliance of Arab moderates with the US and Israel against the region’s radicals, namely Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran. Again, there was little reason for the Israelis or Palestinians to take the process seriously. Annapolis simply invited them to talk among themselves about what a peace agreement could look like. The conversation went nowhere, of course, but the fact that it was happening at all was the point for the Bush administration, whose new priority had become rallying Arab support against Iran and its allies.
Despite the Israelis giving him a no-but answer on his demand for a settlement freeze, Obama will soon unveil a plan for a resumption of final-status talks between the two sides, on a two-year time frame. The initiative will be launched with a high-profile summit.
As jaded as this may seem, it’s hard not to label the new process “roadmapolis”. While it would mimic the high-profile launch of Annapolis, it will avoid the mistakes of leaving them to talk among themselves by putting US officials in the room. And like the road map, it will provide a strict timeline and a detailed set of benchmarks. The US is unlikely at this stage to outline proposals of its own for resolving final status issues.
But the roadmap set strict timelines, which were ignored — and the Israelis are already making clear that they plan to ignore much of what Obama is demanding of them — and Annapolis actually proved the futility of relying on bilateral talks to resolve a conflict in which the balance of power between the adversaries is so hopelessly unequal.
In the best-case scenario, Obama is kicking the can down the road. A gloomier explanation might hold that like Bush before him, he’s simply going through the motions in the hope of rallying Arab support against Iran.
The Latest
Guest Columns
How I Overcame My Jewish-Evangelical Upbringing and Learned to Love Christmas, Anyway
Guest Column: Gavin Evans Back in the day, when Gavin and I were young activists trying to change the world, the doorbell rang at our Observatory student house. I opened it to see a tall and handsome man in the silky purple shirt and dog collar of an Anglican Bishop. "You must be Tony," said Bis...Featured Analysis
Does Obama Have a Mideast Plan B?
It's hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night on Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Middle East peace process. The Israeli leader's refu...Unholy War
Who Lost Fatah?
‘Who lost China?” was the battle cry of a witch-hunt conducted in the US State Department following the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists. The department’s “China hands”, critics charged, had been woefully ignorant of the dynamics at work on the ground in China after the Second W...A Skeptical Read
More Iran Hysteria from the NY Times
The surest sign that another neocon bill of goods is being hawked in respect of the Iran "nuclear peril" is the revival of Rumsfeld-esque "unknowable unknowns", a la Iraq WMD panic circa late 2002. In the real world, of course, solid progress is being made towards a plausible diplomatic deal to ...99c Blogging
The 'Metrics' of Obama's Vietnam
Why is the Administration conducting a "test run" for its metrics of success in Afghanistan? Because the metrics used will be those that provide the desired verdictHear! Hear!
Helena Cobban Explains FatahIf I Was a Blogger...
More Dennis Ross Dissembling
Obama's Iran point man can't seem to get his head around the reasons for Israeli emigrationA Wondering Jew
Obama, Foxman and Israel's Purpose
Having spent decades drumming home the idea that Israel is rooted squarely in the Holocaust experience, and should be viewed by the world as the state of the survivors, Israelis and some of their most fervent backers in the U.S. are suddenly insisting that this is a misleading, even hostile idea.Glancing Headers
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...Annals of Globalization
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...The Whole World's Africa
Congo's Not Africa's WWI, It's Worse Than That
If there is a European analogy to be applied in the Congo, it would be the brutal Thirty Year War in Germany that ended in 1648Shameless Cronyism
Embedded with the Jihadis
My crazy friend Nir Rosen goes on embed with the Taliban, and finds out just why the U.S. can't win in AfghanistanRebellion Into Money
Why Joe Strummer Was a Socialist
Hint: It had nothing to do with bailing out banksCould Die Laughing
Whatever Became of that Nice Mr. Blair...
The problem with a global conversation between Muslims and Christians refereed by Tony Blair? Two words: Tony Blair.The 51st State
A Teachable Moment in Basra
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended -- strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater in...Futures Market
Will Russia Partition Kosovo?
Why my tea-leaf reading suggests that Moscow has a nasty surprise in store for Washington in the BalkansCuisine
Yummy yummy Umami
Why a leftover lamb bone turned a bean stew into an ecstatic eventHousekeeping
'Lost' Entries on Rootless Cosmopolitan
Previous entries that now register as "not available" are ones that got left behind in a server migration. We're working on retrieving themNew York Moments
The Debka Made ‘Em Do ItFrom Tony's Archive
A Playground Lesson for Bush
How a spontaneous alliance of jocks, do-gooders and lesser bullies against the biggest bully at the school changed the balance of power at Milnerton Primary
4 Responses to “Obama to Unveil ‘Roadmapolis’”
As someone who has worked on Palestinian-Israeli issues on and off for almost forty years, I believe there is no way to move towards an agreement without a major confrontation with Israel over settlement policy. And there are no signs Obama is willing to do that. The Netanyahu government is playing the new administration for a sucker and Washington is too timid to fight it. I’ve traveled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1972. Israel’s not leaving and a settlement based on a politically viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state is no longer possible.
Yep, the only challenge US policy is rising to is how to pretend they’re doing something when they’re doing nothing.
We hear that Bibi is no friend of Obama. That’s a real pity because — ask Van Jones — Obama only gets tough with his friends.
Hate to say “I told you so” but…. I told you so. Obama has never had the slightest intention of making any genuine change to US policy towards Israel. His policy of talks about talks about talks - because that has been so succesful in the past (not!) - is proof of that. If he really wants to make progress, he is going to have to make substantial threats to Israel, by, for example, saying that US charity to Israel will henceforth depend on them dismantling (not just halting growth) in the settlements and absolutely NOT using US weaponry against civilians.
But pigs will fly before Obama does anything like this. I don’t claim any particular prescience, but this was abundantly clear to me from the day Obama announced his candidacy, if not before.
It’s simply impossible to make peace when inhabitants of the region are so thirsty for war. But that’s the situation in the MIddle East right now, and current trends suggest it will get worse before it gets better.
Leave a Reply