This is the second of two articles about the 2010 Churches for Middle East Peace advocacy conference. To read about the denominational leaders’ presentations, please click here.
According to an ecumenical group meeting in Washington, D.C., Israel’s policies are the main obstacle to Middle East peace, and U.S. pressure should be applied to motivate the Middle Eastern democracy. Entitled “Pursuing Peace Together: Working for Reconciliation in the Holy Land,” the Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) advocacy conference was held June 13-15 at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.
Conference speakers were largely in agreement, viewing pressure upon Israel to remove its restrictions on commerce with Gaza and continue an effective freeze on West Bank settlement construction as a key to establishing peace in the entire region. While some speakers expressed frustration with the political disunity of Palestinians, few criticisms or similar demands were made against them or neighboring Arab states.
CMEP represents over 20 church organizations, including mainline and historic peace churches, along with liberal Catholic groups and some Eastern Orthodox churches. The organization favors a “two-state” solution with Palestinians governing the West Bank and Gaza and Israel reduced to its pre-1967 borders.
“There will be considerable short term costs to both sides, in any agreement,” CMEP Executive Director Warren Clark said, looking ahead to a possible resolution of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The retired Foreign Service officer acknowledged “domestic political limits” in how far the Obama administration could go when intervening in the Middle East, but seemed to place much of the burden of action upon the United States to keep Israel from proceeding with new construction at existing settlements on the West Bank.
“If the building freeze is not extended, I’m afraid there is very little chance that further progress is possible,” Clark assessed. “On the other hand, if the freeze is extended, I think the public perceptions will change.”
Regional Perspectives on Peace
Clark’s comments opened a series of two panel discussions entitled “Regional Perspectives on Peace,” that featured liberal foreign policy experts, educators, and a U.S. State department official.
“None of the region’s conflict take place in isolation; they are all interrelated,” said CMEP Board Chair Jim Fine of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker lobbying office in Washington, D.C.
Speaking about Israel’s neighbors, Joel Rubin of the National Security Network offered one of the few criticisms against them voiced at the conference – but the criticism was at least partially due to these Arab governments sometimes cooperating with Israel against extreme Islamists.
“Regional countries did not play the supportive role that they could have,” Rubin said of the peace process, citing Egyptian trepidations about Gaza and Hamas connections to Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood political party. Those apprehensions had led to sealing Egypt’s Gaza border for a number of years. Rubin saw this de-facto backing of Israel’s Gaza policy as problematic.
“Egypt sees itself as a leader of the Arab world and wants to keep that position,” Rubin said, also listing Saudi Arabia as a country that wanted to be seen in the same light, but which did not go far into pressing for bilateral ties with Israel. The tiny Gulf states of Qatar and Bahrain were cited as potentially influential and wanting both strong ties with the United States and peace with Israel.
Rubin joined Brian Katulis of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress in portraying peace between Palestinians and Israelis as part of overall stabilization.
“The Israel-Palestinian conflict is swimming in a broader region which is under incredible transformations,” Katulis said, citing the geopolitics as becoming more “multipolar” and U.S. influence was “not what it used to be.”
Katulis said that the Obama administration had gone into the region with high ideals, but was “running into reality” due to the complications of the region. The think tank analyst advised the administration to stay focused on the broader Middle East picture while pushing for Israel-Palestinian peace, offer proactive instead of reactive and strategic advice, and seek to connect the conflict with the broader national agenda of the United States.
A third panelist, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, criticized U.S. sanctions against Iran. Parsi critiqued the “two-track” approach of the Obama administration in engaging Iran, which he said emphasized the pressure track and deemphasized the diplomatic track, unless the U.S. was using diplomacy to get further sanctions against the rogue state.
The Iranian American interest group leader praised Turkey and Brazil for attempting their own negations with Iran independent of the United States and other Western nations.
“This deal may not have been a perfect deal, but it was an opening,” Parsi said of the Turkish and Brazilian proposal to transfer approximately half of Iran’s refined uranium out of the country. Parsi said that instead of taking up this admittedly flawed deal, the United States had instead gone for further sanctions against Iran, which he said accomplished the smallest increase in four different rounds of sanctions.
“It was an erroneous choice” to pursue further sanctions against Iran, according to Parsi, who argued that the United States should instead have aimed to create “political space” which the Iranian government could have more comfortably operated in.
Conference attendees also heard from Todd Holmstrom, acting director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Holmstrom presented a positive view of the Middle East, listing developments that he cited as progress towards peace.
“[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu was elected on a platform of opposing the two-state solution and [for] continuing [West Bank settler] housing construction,” Homstrom said. “Since, they have endorsed the two-state solution and effectively freezed new construction.” The official also noted the Arab League’s endorsement of talks between the parties.
“We believe through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed [land] swaps, and Israel’s goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized territory,” Holmstrom asserted.
Holmstrom said that the U.S. relationship with Israel is a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the region and will continue for the foreseeable future.
Conferees seemed unimpressed – Holmstrom’s talk was met with silence from the audience, which closed out his presentation with polite applause that was over quickly.
Asked if the President would be traveling to the Middle East to talk about the issue, Holmstrom said “The moment the President links himself publically to this issue, there’s a political cost to that.”
Muslim Views of Obama
On the second panel, Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, discussed the views of the Arab and Israeli public towards America and U.S. President Barack Obama. According to Telhami, in a Zogby international poll taken before the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a plurality of the Arab public believed it wouldn’t make a difference to the peace process who the U.S. President was. When asked an open-ended question, “Who do you love?” Arab respondents first listed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. No one listed Obama in this category, but when asked specifically about him, a majority had a favorable view, which Telhami noted was a “big reversal” from the standing of former president George W. Bush.
The Maryland professor said Arab respondents generally liked Obama for three reasons: first, he wanted the United States to exit Iraq; second, he wanted to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility; and third, he considered the Arab-Israeli conflict to be important.
Telhami contrasted these results with those of polled Israelis. Among those, Obama was considered the worst U.S. presidential candidate for Israel – unlike former Democratic nominees Al Gore and Bill Clinton, who were popular in Israel. Arabs had previously been receptive to George W. Bush, since his father’s policies were well liked, but this changed quickly after he entered office.
“No president has ever been popular with both [Arabs and Israelis],” Telhami said, calling it a “zero-sum game.”
“There is nothing the administration can do. The president can run to Jerusalem and smile, give a nice speech and I think it might make a difference for about three days – and then come back to square one with the real issues that are before them. I don’t think the issue is that [Obama] is not smiling enough, not speaking enough to Israelis, I think it is about issues.”
Telhami said there is “no avoiding that it is about the conflict.” In the end, the absence of peace between Arabs and Israelis was a threat to America’s interest.
“The administration should worry a lot less about what in the short term Arabs and Israelis think, or trying to please both at the same time, because they will come around when we deliver the goods,” Telhami said. “I say, therefore, build the peace, and they will come.”
The University of Maryland professor was followed by Dr. Gershow Baskin, CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information in Jerusalem.
Baskin voiced dissatisfaction with several Obama decisions, among them a rocket defense system to protect Israel against attacks from Gaza. Baskin said the system was cost-prohibitive. The Israeli also expressed frustration, saying that Obama’s first year in office had been “wasted” as far as Middle East peace was concerned, as too much was on the new President’s plate.
“There are difficult decisions that will have to be made,” Baskin said. “Somewhere between 3 and 4 percent of the West Bank will be annexed into Israel in exchange for land of similar size and quality from Israel. Baskin said this would politically bring most settlers back into Israel. Those who were not part of the land transfer could either physically move to Israel proper, re-settle into the newly annexed parts of the West Bank, or remain in the new Palestine as law-abiding citizens. A fourth option, Baskin said, was that they would have to be physically removed from their homes. Baskin suggested that financial compensation for settlers could be placed on a time scale, where those that left quickly would be more heavily compensated than those who waited.
“If the parties have to want it more than us, then we’re impotent to do anything,” Baskin said, asserting that the parties “no longer have veto” on resolution of conflict.
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