Daniel Kurtzer is a big deal. He’s an Obama surrogate and a former ambassador to Egypt and Israel under Clinton and Bush II. His new book, written with Scott Lasensky of the U.S. Institute for Peace, is called Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace and is offered as the last best hope for the 2-state solution. A guidebook to future presidents–and surely a job application too–it is extremely diplomatic. I didn’t see my favorite word, neoconservative, in there. Nor the words Israel lobby.
But the disaster of neoconservatism and the power of the Israel lobby are its themes, and just like the announcement of the alternative Jewish lobby 10 days ago, this book is the Jewish left’s answer to Walt and Mearsheimer. The authors are saying, You’re right, there’s a boa constrictor on our politics; now this is how we get past it.
Kurtzer’s central argument is one I read in The Israel Lobby. George H.W. Bush–Bush 41–led the best presidency on Arab/Israel issues in the last 20 years. His standing up to Israel on the settlements in ’91 was a great thing, though "some domestic advocates for Israel were unnecessarily alienated." That’s the Israel lobby. And because Bush folded on this issue, it "had a searing effect that far outlasted the Bush 41 administration, reverberating well into the Clinton and Bush 43 years and causing the next president and his team to overcompensate in ways that created a different set of problems."
What do they mean by overcompensate? Well Bill Clinton did "constant courting of Jewish-American interest groups," giving him enormous political capital that alas he did not spend in trying to make a deal. No, Bill Clinton was on Israel’s side throughout the Camp David process, letting the Israelis see papers and mark them up before they were presented to the Palestinians, keeping the Arab states away from Camp David, and gathering a team "with an absence of Arab expertise." (I.e., they were almost all Jews.) Clinton’s willingness to take daily calls from Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak in 2000 and let him come into his office whenever he liked diminished the power of the U.S. presidency and made the U.S. too deferential to Barak’s domestic political concerns, while Clinton’s chief negotiator Dennis Ross was on Israel’s side at nearly every turn. Then "Clinton acceded to Barak’s request to blame Arafat publicly for the summit’s failure." Shameful.
As for Bush 43, he’s been even worse. As I’ve written on this blog before, Bush 41 has blamed his loss in ’92 on the Israel lobby. The lesson wasn’t lost on his son.
The big claim of this short book is that the Israel lobby can be handled. O.K., it is true that our policy re the Israeli colonies in the West Bank (settlements) has been "preemptively constrained" by the fears over "strong domestic interest groups," but a president has the power to buck these groups. Clinton and Bush 43 both "failed to argue strongly against Israeli policies… such as settlement expansion," but the lesson of Bush 41 is to show "tough love."
The book ends on that muted challenge to defang the lobby. "Israel plays an outsized role in U.S. politics and diplomacy; it is a fact of life…" But the next president must do a better job of having Arabists in high position. "Addressing asymmetries in the peace process–as this book has advocated–does not mean tilting away from Israel." Well actually, it does.
A few comments. 1, This is an important and fair book. It hints at the kind of triangulation that Obama would be likely to perform as president: doing his utmost to keep Jews on his side while also being more evenhanded–taking on the Israel lobby not with fireworks or head-on opposition, but in dulcet tones, and a little Arabism.
2, Liberal Jews are sick of supporting Israel blindly. The book echoes Olmert’s desperation over the two-state solution being now or never. But its overall tone is liberal American outrage at the fact that Palestinian statehood has been so long promised and never delivered. Let’s get this over with, the authors are saying, before the Middle East goes up in flames again. The heroes of the book are George Bush I and James Baker. This represents a staggering shift in liberal establishment Jewish opinion.
3, The book’s attack on the Israel lobby is slowly but surely becoming a conventional wisdom on the center-left of American politics. No you can’t attack the lobby head on, you have to speak in code, as these authors do. But sometimes the anger breaks thru. At one point they say, of Clinton, that his team at Camp David "allowed itself to be manipulated [by the Israelis] and relinquished too much control over U.S. policy."
Horrifying words. They reflect the true crisis that the Israel lobby has produced in the definition of the American interest. Yes, bloody Iraq produced this book. So did the neverending peace process, and the neverending humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories. But Walt and Mearsheimer also laid the ground for this analysis, and they are not given credit. The book offers 150 or so Recommended Readings at the end. Edward Said,
Rashid Khalidi, Robert Malley and Benny Morris are all there. Not Walt
and Mearsheimer. They are beyond the pale, too dangerous even to be cited by anyone who wants a job in the next administration. So the book promotes an anathema on Walt and Mearsheimer, even as it echoes many of their ideas. I’ll take it.
