The Economist is holding a debate about the peace process this week featuring Daniel Levy and David Makovsky. I am told that Makovsky, who blithely calls for the use of “biometrics” at Israeli checkpoints, has Israeli nationality (though his WINEP profile doesn’t say so). Levy has British-Israeli nationality. And I admire Levy. He demonstrated his nobility when he said that we have to begin to think about one state at J Street earlier this year. But Issandr El-Amrani gets at the larger issue, of Arab voices in the discourse:
On one side of the debate is David Makovsky, an Israeli-American and a major figure of the Israel lobby writ large in Washington and director of the leading Zionist think tank WINEP.
On the other side is Daniel Levy, who is Israeli-British, the co-director of the left-leaning New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force, and former peace-processor in the government of Ehud Barak. Levy has written some great things generally and is taking the lead on skepticism about resuming negotiations now.
Two Israelis. Two commonly seen talking heads about the nitty-gritty of the 20-year peace process. I like Daniel Levy and his work, so at least there is a real difference between the sides, but still: there are so much fewer opportunities for Palestinian (or other Arab) analysts to put their views on this topic to a public of the kind The Economist can muster…
why restrain the debate to being about the modalities, rather than the very relevance, of the two-state solution? Perhaps they should correct this by making a future debate involving mostly Palestinians about some other aspect of the conflict, such as what should be done about settlers, or perhaps the viability of the one-state solution. After all, why air the same stale ideas all the time?
Levy is one of the more sane and reasonable of the Israel advocates.
I use to read his blog…I need to check and see if he is still maintaining it.
Makovsky, #27: The Quartet has put forward a reasonable proposal. Mr Abbas should say yes. He has little to lose and much to gain.
What a level. This man telling others what’s good for them? Recycling the same garbage we already heard for dozens of years elsewhere? The Economist should keep doing what they are about: predicting the financial crisis. Oh wait.
i heard about this last night while reading helena cobban’s twitter feed. the economist was trying to get her to participate and her response was so appropriate i had to RT it:
helenacobban Helena Cobban
. @glichfield, I put my views on negns here on Twittr. Have expressed them in writing a lot. Y shd I join yr flaky, near-racist ‘debate’?
16 hours ago