The latest New York Review of Books reprints a good letter from last January to Obama from a passel of wise men and women in the Establishment. The letter calls for a deal on the 1967 lines with very limited swaps and though it’s a dead letter, it’s significant for a few reasons: 1, you see a bunch of establishment figures from Frank Carlucci to Paul Volcker to James Wolfensohn to Lee Hamilton to Sandra Day O’Connor to Rita Hauser (a prominent Jewish lawyer who helped endow the Edward Said chair at Columbia, which Rashid Khalidi holds). Well here are the names:
David L. Boren, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank C. Carlucci, William J. Fallon, Chuck Hagel, Lee H. Hamilton, Gary Hart, Rita E. Hauser, Carla Hills, Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, Sandra Day O’Connor, Thomas R. Pickering, Paul Volcker, James D. Wolfensohn
The significance of the letter is that the NY Review of Books is platforming it. I always criticize the NYRB for having too many Israeli voices, Jewish voices. Well not here.
Most of them are not Jewish, most are “American interest” types, and they warn about the “vast disparity” of power between Israelis and Palestinians that is prolonging this conflict, they hint that Obama should punish Israel if it fails to crack down to the 1967 borders, they tell him he won’t suffer political repercussions if he explains the situation to the American people, and they evidently see the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation in favorable terms. As they urged in January: “The US will encourage the reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas on terms compatible with these principles and UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.”
Also:
Left to their own devices, it is the vast disparity of power between the two parties rather than international law and fairness that will continue to prevail….
What is widely perceived as a terminal failure of US Middle East peace diplomacy has left a vacuum that threatens to deepen the State of Israel’s isolation, undermine Palestinian moderation, and endanger American interests in the region and beyond. That vacuum is beginning to be filled by new international initiatives that increase Israelis’ sense of existential threat from what they perceive to be a global movement that seeks their country’s delegitimization.
But it is not the State of Israel within its 1967 borders that is being challenged. It is Israel’s occupation, the relentless enlargement of its settlements, its dispossession of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and the humanitarian disaster caused by its blockade of Gaza that are the target of international anger and condemnation.
