In 2012, longtime peace processor Aaron David Miller used the phrase “too big to fail” to characterize the two-state solution. He explained to listeners on National Public Radio:
I think the idea of Palestinian statehood though is simply too compelling still. In a way, it’s too big to fail.
Then in 2013, he said the U.S. friendship with Israel was “too big to fail.” He wrote at Politico:
Unlike Lehman Brothers, the U.S.-Israeli relationship is too big to fail; but until it’s clear where this interim agreement [with Iran] is headed, this relationship will be rocky.
Well, times change, but Aaron David Miller isn’t going anywhere. He served in several American administrations, and has become the go-to center-right expert on the conflict; so with the failure of John Kerry’s peace negotiations, he was back on National Public Radio yesterday, and asked how bad a blow this is to the peace process. Sound-bite:
MILLER: Is it fatal? No, because the reality is, like rock ‘n’ roll, the peace process is never really going to die and it’s not going to die and Kerry will be back to it because Israelis and Palestinians have a proximity problem. They’re literally living on top of one another and there’s no status quo.
I guess we should call that progress?
P.S. Michele Kelemen quoted no Palestinians on that NPR report, while allowing Miller to dismiss the idea that Palestinians are or will ever be living under apartheid. Mustafa Barghouthi and Ali Abunimah and Raji Sourani and Ahmed Moor don’t agree.
P.P.S. In fairness to the peace process, I’d note that Miller also used the “too big to fail” line about the US relationship with Saudi Arabia and with Syria’s Assad.
I disagree. There is a status quo. And I see nothing current that will change it. That’s exactly the problem. So what is the point of your article here, Phil Weiss? That the AIPAC is too big to fail? I concede, if so, you have a major point there. This does nothing but frustrate non-Jewish Americans like myself. Is there a just, humanist, American path you suggest? If there, is what it it? I don’t get your point.
Talking about Rock and Roll…I always liked Pink Floyd. Now two members are calling on the Rolling Stones to NOT play in Israel. Thank you, that’s another” brick in the wall” that will help BDS cement their campaign.
“Pink Floyd calls on Rolling Stones to boycott Israel
‘Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid,’ writes Roger Waters. – Haaretz
If the “peace process” never dies, that means there will never be peace…because if the goal of the process is met, the process won’t have a reason to exist. Without realizing it, Miller admitted the truth-the goal of the process is not to finally have real peace, but to go on forever with these endless negotiations and diplomacy.
“because Israelis and Palestinians have a proximity problem.”
Indeed, as the whites and blacks in the Jim Crow South and in Apartheid South Africa had a “proximity ‘problem'”. Saying “like rock ‘n’ roll, the peace process is never really going to die” — when it is properly understood that the “peace process” is really a euphamism for continued Israeli agression and oppression of the Palestinians — sounds a lot like predicting “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”
Araon David Miller should simply say that Israel can continue to grow its illegal colonies in the West Bank but the growth of the illegal colonies of Jews in the WB will not change Israel’s borders. “Should” is the operative word here.