Lately this site picked up a letter in the New York Review of Books from establishment types including Lee Hamilton, Thomas Pickering and Sandra Day O’Connor urging a return to the 1967 lines as the basis for making a viable Palestinian state. Well, Elliott Abrams doesn’t like it and responds in the Weekly Standard, in which this penultimate paragraph is most significant and goes along with what I and others have been saying for years.
The analysis and the proposals made in this letter reveal that many of America’s most experienced former senior officials now blame Israel alone for the freeze in Middle East peace negotiations. And they believe that Israel should be forced into compromises and sacrifices under enormous American pressure, even if the vast majority of Israelis oppose them and view them as dangerous. This is, to use State Department terminology, “deeply disturbing,” even if the likelihood that any president would accept this advice is small.
Notice, there is no wondering why these individuals who he admits are experienced would take this position. Since former Congressman Lee Hamilton, a veteran of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, submitted this letter, it should be recalled what the Washington Jewish Week said of him in 1993: “While he considers himself a strong supporter of US-Israel relations, Hamilton also ads: ‘I retain the right to make some independent judgments from time to time.’” (Washington Jewish Week, Feb. 18, 1993)
It looks like he just made one.
