Last week Adam picked up the Landrum Bolling interviews showing that realists are getting impatient with the piecemeal steps in the "peace process" and want a breakthrough by American leadership– talk to Hamas, now. Well this impatience is growing in other camps too. In Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el calls on Obama to come out with a big-picture solution of the conflict, rather than just a settlement freeze, because that’s going to be another dead-end, of endless confidence-building measures. And Dan Fleshler, author of a new book on the Israel lobby and a longtime consultant inside the Jewish peace camp, says leftleaning Jews should also express their impatience with the incrementalism of the Obama administration. Fleshler:
What do these arguments portend for the pro-Israel peace camp in America (J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, etc)? We have focused on justifying the Obama team’s insistence on steps that, in the grand scheme of things, are actually very small. Some very wise men are telling us that we are wasting a lot of energy, much like the Obama administration. It is time to ponder carefully what they are saying, and to evaluate the wisdom of retaining a blind, hopeful faith in this administration’s Middle East policies, and of reflexively supporting whatever it wants us to support
It’s time for the Jimmy Carter/Brzezinski realists and the leftleaning Jews to get together, and make a powerful combination.
