Yesterday afternoon, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a remarkable exchange about Israel-Palestine. It came during a foreign-policy roundtable hosted by Guy Raz and featuring Richard Perle, Jane Harman, and Stephen Walt. The exchange was remarkable for several reasons: In addition to the neoconservative Perle and the rightwing Jane Harman, it included Walt, the realist co-author of The Israel Lobby; and host Guy Raz seemed to bend over backwards to convey Walt’s view. You will see that Walt calls Perle’s view of the peace process “nonsense,” and Perle gets no comeback. Also notice that Jane Harman understands that the Jewish state is at risk. Excerpts:
RAZ: So what can the next president realistically do on the Israel-Palestine front? What do you think they can do and should do?
WALT: It is not a promising time to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace… I don’t think, therefore, you’re likely to see a big push similar to the one that Obama made in the first year. I don’t think that’s going to happen under a Romney administration. And the result of which, the possibility of a two-state solution will recede further and further into the distance, which, I think, threatens Israel’s long-term future, which is deeply tragic…
RAZ: I just read a statistic today that the population – the Israeli population on the West Bank of settlers has grown at a much, much faster rate than the overall Israeli population over the past five years. Jane Harman, did you want to chime in there?
HARMAN: I did. I think there’s an urgency to resolving this problem. I think there’s an urgency for Israel, there’s an urgency for Palestine, there’s an urgency for us. And frankly, as the clock ticks, the ability to protect Israel as a Jewish state declines because of the huge youth bulge in the Arab populations. It’s unsustainable.
And I have been disappointed, frankly, in our administration and in the governments in both sides in the region in not making this a higher priority. They, you know, they always bring the baggage of we will talk, but this, that, and the other thing has to be resolved. I think the moment was better a year ago, perhaps, but it’s good enough now.
And Bibi Netanyahu, if he’s re-elected by a wide margin, which is what most people expect, could form a coalition in his government that would enable him to take some braver steps for peace. And I think the Palestinian leadership has to resolve this issue with Hamas, which is weakened in light of Syria, in particular. And maybe there’s a unity government that could be formed there that would give up its bellicose conversation about Israel and become a partner for peace on that side.
I mean, all the people in the region would win if this could happen. And I do think that Israel’s survival as a Jewish state is very dicey if this doesn’t happen and also because of other challenges from a neighborhood that’s in turmoil.
RAZ: Richard Perle, the clock is ticking down, as Jane Harman said. Why shouldn’t the next president push a settlement, impose a final status agreement on these two sides?
PERLE: Well, I don’t think he would succeed any more than the temptation to do that, which was hedged a bit from time to time as happened over many years. Some problems can’t be solved, or at least they can’t be solved under existing conditions. And the existing condition that seems to be the most important is the unwillingness of the Palestinians, with all the baggage they carry from the rest of the Arab world, to accept the existence of the Jewish state. They’ve never really done so.
And to this day, under the diplomatic surface, there continues a set of attitudes that I believe make peace impossible. For example, just a few days ago, a suicide bomber who had killed 21 people received the highest honor that could be bestowed by the Palestine Committee of Arab Lawyers. That attitude runs very deep, and it runs unopposed, largely. I have not heard this president or, for that matter, his predecessors say much about the chronic celebration of suicide bombers in the Palestinian territories. Until you begin to change the mentality, you’re not going to see much of a change on the diplomatic surface.
RAZ: I want to give Stephen Walt the last word or two on this issue. Do you think that what Richard Perle has just talked about is a serious obstacle to come into a peace agreement?
WALT: Frankly, I think most of what Richard just said is nonsense. There’s certainly attitudes within the Palestinian community that are rejectionist, but the Palestinian authority has said for over a decade now that it is eager to have a two-state solution. The problem is it’s continuing to watch the Israeli government expand settlements throughout the West Bank and essentially gobble up what should be the territory of a Palestinian state in the future.
This is a case where if the United States were able to bring pressure to bear on both sides, not just one, we might have some hope of getting a diplomatic solution. But given that the United States is not willing to do that, I think we’re going to see the situation that Jane Harman, I think, most fears – and correctly fears – namely, a two-state solution disappears as a possibility and Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state is imperiled largely because the United States was unable to act as a good friend to its various friends in the region – Israel, most of all.
The best moment in this exchange is when Harman says that the future of the Jewish state is “dicey.” She packages her concern in the usual racist language — talk about an Arab youth bulge, as if describing an Arab woman’s pregnant belly — but notice that she is saying we are losing our ability to protect Israel from that future. I.e., the lobby can’t do this heavy lifting much longer. She’s a realist at heart. She is hinting that when push comes to shove, even the liberal American Zionists are going to have to side with democracy.
Though they won’t give up without a fight. And the fascination of the exchange is just what I have always predicted: that the lib/center Zionists need a coalition with realists to make anything happen: J Street needs Scowcroft, Harman needs Walt. Which means that if Obama wins, they are going to mount a last-gasp two state solution push, which will fail, partly because so many realists have stopped believing in it.
Lastly, let me note that three out of the four participants in this exchange are Jewish–another sign of the prominence we have in the Establishment. We are not outsiders.
Re “Deeply tragic”, how about this?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/aug/16/cauldron/?page=1
“Through centuries of exclusion and persecution, diaspora Jews had learned the survival value of what Hilberg called the “alleviation-compliance response,” which proved not only ineffective but insidiously self-destructive when faced with the unprecedented Nazi assault, for which no past experience could prepare them.2 In the heat of the moment, one key difference between Arendt and Hilberg was entirely ignored. For Arendt, the behavior of the Jewish leaders, who allegedly “enjoyed” the “enormous power” with which the Nazis temporarily vested them, constituted a colossal moral failure. For Hilberg, it was a systemic and perceptual failure of a leadership that sought to save its people but, “caught in the straitjacket of their own history,” could not understand and adjust to the incomprehensible assault quickly enough.”
The answer to the Shoah was the cult of Zionism which tortured the alleviation-compliance response to death in front of its parents ..but that now seems incapable of leading anywhere other than Masada… the history is so heavy …the assault of justice is incomprehensible
So far no jail for Congresswoman Harman for sharing US secrets with Israel.
i heard the exchange on the way back from a CT/NYC visit. my wife started laughing when walt threw perle’s asinine commentary back in his face. it was quite a pleasure for me as well. my greatest discomfort with the whole exchange, however, (and frankly weiss’s omission of the problematic phraseology from his post) is the continued use of the term ‘jewish and democratic’ in reference to israel, even by walt. he remarked (twice, i think) about the threat to israel’s character as a ‘jewish and democratic state’, the threat coming from israeli intransigence. can we please get rid of that oxymoronic ‘nonsense’?
Think Ms. Harman would get away with warning about the ‘youth bulge’ of blacks and browns in America?
That she isn’t challenged by this language by the moderator is pretty telling by how far the racist language of Zionism has been accepted in mainstream American journalism.
It’s also a reminder that so many so-called ‘liberal’ Zionists are just as motivated(but less vulgar about it) with racist fears as their more right-wing brethren.
There can be no meaningful alliance for peace in the Palestine-Israel conflict and, therefore, in the Middle East.
The charter of the Likud party of Israel, whose leader is the incumbent prime minister, Binyam Netanyahu, categorically states that its goal is a ‘Greater Israel’ with all Muslims, Arabs and Christians ‘transferred’ to neighboring states. ‘Transfer’ in this context is a pseudonym for ethnic cleansing. That has been the accepted right-wing agenda for many years. It has never been repudiated either by Netanyahu or anyone else.
When the above is fully appreciated, the strategy of ‘facts on the ground’ makes sense as a deliberate policy to thwart the wishes of the United Nations and the international community. As Netanyahu’s government continues its land grab on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and as the so-called ‘pricetag’ terrorists continue to burn down Arab olive groves in the West Bank with impunity, it becomes clear that Israel under this government does not want peace. Apparently, they want war in order to secure their illegal expropriation of occupied Arab land in pursuance of their aims.
They have the ability to do this for two reasons: 1. the US government under the influence of the AIPAC lobby supports them and 2. the EU unwittingly gives them the funds to implement their illegal policies by the proceeds of bilateral trade with Europe.
This is the tragedy funded by America and the EU.