Baker's
Cake
By Uri Avnery
16 December, 2006
Gush Shalom
No
one likes to admit a mistake. Me neither. But honesty leaves me no choice.
A few days after the collapse
of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I happened to go on a lecture
tour in the US.
My message was optimistic.
I expected some good to come out of the tragedy. I reasoned that the
atrocity had exposed the intensity of the hatred for the US that is
spreading throughout the world, and especially the Muslim world. It
would be logical not only to fight against the mosquitoes, but to drain
the swamp. Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was one of the breeding
grounds of the hatred - if not the main one - the US would make a major
effort to achieve peace between the two peoples.
That was what cold logic
indicated. But this is not what happened. What happened was the very
opposite.
American policy was not led
by cold logic. Instead of drying one swamp, it created a second swamp.
Instead of pushing the Israelis and Palestinians towards peace, it invaded
Iraq. Not only did the hatred against America not die down, it flared
up even higher. I hoped that this danger would override even the oil
interests and the desire to station an American garrison in the center
of the Middle East.
Thus I committed the very
mistake that I have warned others against many times: to assume that
what is logical will actually happen. A rational person should not ignore
the irrational in politics. In other words, it is irrational to exclude
the irrational.
George W. Bush is an irrational
person, perhaps the very personification of irrationality. Instead of
drawing the logical conclusion from what had happened and acting accordingly,
he set off in the opposite direction. Since then he has just insisted
on "staying the course".
Enter James Baker.
* * *
SINCE I am already in a confessional
mood, I have to admit that I like James Baker.
I know that this will shock
some of my good friends. "Baker?!" they will cry out, "The
consigliere of the Bush family? The man who helped George W steal the
2000 elections? The Rightist?"
Yes, yes, the very same Baker.
I like him for his cold logic, his forthright and blunt style, his habit
of saying what he thinks without embellishment, his courage. I prefer
this style to the sanctimonious hypocrisy of other leaders, who try
to hide their real intentions. I would be happy any time to swap Olmert
for Baker, and throw in Amir Peretz for free.
But that is a matter of taste.
More important is the fact that in all the last 40 years, James Baker
was the only leader in America who had the guts to stand up and act
against Israel's malignant disease: the settlements. When he was the
Secretary of State, he simply informed the Israeli government that he
would deduct the sums expended on the settlements from the money Israel
was getting from the US. Threatened and made good on his threat.
Baker thus confronted the
"pro-Israeli" lobby in the US, both the Jewish and the Christian.
Such courage is rare in the United States, as it is rare in Israel.
* * *
THIS WEEK the Iraq Study
Group, led by Baker, published its report.
It confirms all the bleak
forecasts voiced by many throughout the world - myself included - before
Bush & Co. launched the bloody Iraqi adventure. In his dry and incisive
style, Baker says that the US cannot win there. In so many words he
tells the American public: Let's get out of there, before the last American
soldier has to scramble into the last helicopter from the roof of the
American embassy, as happened in Vietnam.
Baker calls for the end of
the Bush approach and offers a new and thought-out strategy of his own.
Actually, it is an elegant way of extricating America from Iraq, without
it looking like a complete rout. The main proposals: an American dialogue
with Iran and Syria, an international conference, the withdrawal of
the American combat brigades, leaving behind only instructors. The committee
that he headed was bi-partisan, composed half and half of Republicans
and Democrats.
* * *
FOR ISRAELIS, the most interesting
part of the report is, of course, the one that concerns us directly.
It interests me especially - how could it be otherwise? - because it
repeats, almost word for word, the things I said immediately after September
11, both in my articles at home and in my lectures in the US.
True, Baker is saying them
four years later. In these four years, thousands of American soldiers
and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died for nothing. But,
to use the image again, when a giant ship like the United States turns
around, it make a very big circle, and it takes a lot of time. We, in
the small speed-boat called Israel, could do it much quicker - if we
had the good sense to do it.
Baker says simply: In order
to stop the war in Iraq and start a reconciliation with the Arab world,
the US must bring about the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He does not say explicitly that peace must be imposed on Israel, but
that is the obvious implication.
In his own clear words: "The
United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East
unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."
His committee proposes the
immediate start of negotiations between Israel and "President Mahmoud
Abbas", in order to implement the two-state solution. The "sustainable
negotiations" must address the "key final status issues of
borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of
conflict."
The use of the title "President"
for Abu Mazen and, even more so, the use of the term "right of
return" has alarmed the whole political class in Israel. Even in
the Oslo agreement, the section dealing with the "final status"
issues mentions only "refugees". Baker, as is his wont, called
the spade a spade.
At the same time, he proposes
a stick and carrot approach to achieve peace between Israel and Syria.
The US needs this peace in order to draw Syria into its camp. The stick,
from the Israeli point of view, would be the return of the Golan Heights.
The carrot would be the stationing of American soldiers on the border,
so that Israel's security would be guaranteed by the US. In return,
he demands that Syria stop, inter alia, its aid to Hizbullah.
After Gulf War I, Baker -
the same Baker - got all the parties to the conflict to come to an international
conference in Madrid. For that purpose, he twisted the arm of then Prime
Minister Itzhak Shamir, whose entire philosophy consisted of two letters
and one exclamation mark: "No!" and whose slogan was: "The
Arabs are the same Arabs, and the sea is the same sea" - alluding
to the popular Israeli conviction that the Arabs all want to throw Israel
into the sea.
Baker brought Shamir to Madrid,
his arms and legs in irons, and made sure he did not escape. Shamir
was compelled to sit at the table with representatives of the Palestinian
people, who had never been allowed to attend an international conference
before. The conference itself had no tangible results, but there is
no doubt that it was a vital step in the process that brought about
the Oslo agreement and, more difficult than anything else, the mutual
recognition of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.
Now Baker is suggesting something
similar. He proposes an international conference, and cites Madrid as
a model. The conclusion is clear.
* * *
HOWEVER, THIS baker can only
offer a recipe for the cake. The question is whether President Bush
will use the recipe and bake the cake.
Since 1967 and the beginning
of the occupation, several American Secretaries of State have submitted
plans to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All these plans met the
same fate: they were torn up and thrown in the trash.
The same sequence of events
has been repeated time after time: In Jerusalem, hysteria sets in. The
Foreign Office stands up on its hind legs and swears to defeat the evil
design. The media unanimously condemns the wicked plot. The Secretary
of State of the day is pilloried as an anti-Semite. The Israeli lobby
in Washington mobilizes for total war.
For example: the Rogers Plan
of Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. In the
early 70s he submitted a detailed peace plan, the principal point of
which was the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders,
with, at most, "insubstantial alterations".
What happened to the plan?
In face of the onslaught
of "the Friends of Israel" in Washington, Nixon buckled under,
as have all presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of principle
who did not need the Jewish votes. No president will quarrel with the
government of Israel if he wants to be re-elected, or - like Bush now
- to end his term in office with dignity and pass the presidency to
another member of his party. Any senator or congressman who takes a
stand that the Israeli embassy does not like, is committing Harakiri,
Washington-style.
The fate of the peace plans
of successive Secretaries of State confirms, on the face of it, the
thesis of the two professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, that
caused a great stir earlier this year. According to them, whenever there
is a clash in Washington between the national interests of the United
States and the national interests of Israel, it is the Israeli interests
which win.
* * *
WILL THIS happen this time,
too?
Baker has presented his plan
at a time when the US is facing disaster in Iraq. President Bush is
bankrupt, his party has lost control of Congress and may soon lose the
White House. The neo-conservatives, most of them Jews and all of them
supporters of the Israeli extreme Right, who were in control of American
foreign policy, are being removed one by one, and this week yet another,
the American ambassador to the United Nations, was kicked out. Therefore,
it is possible that this time the President may listen to expert advice.
But that is in serious doubt.
The Democratic Party is subject to the "pro-Israeli" lobby
no less than the Republican Party, and perhaps even more. The new congress
was indeed elected under the banner of opposition to the continuation
of the war in Iraq, but its members are not jihadi suicide bombers.
They depend on the "pro-Israeli" lobby. To paraphrase Shamir:
"The plan is the same plan, and the trash bin is the same trash
bin."
In Jerusalem, the first reaction
to the report was total rejection, expressing a complete confidence
in the ability of the lobby to choke it at birth. "Nothing has
changed," Olmert declared. "There is no one to talk with,"
- immediately echoed by the mouth and pen brigade in the media. "We
cannot talk with them as long as the terrorism goes on," a famous
expert declared on TV. That's like saying: "One cannot talk about
ending the war as long as the enemy is shooting at our troops."
On the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis
I wrote that "the dog is wagging the tail and the tail is wagging
the dog." It will be interesting to see which will wag which this
time: the dog its tail or the tail its dog.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.
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