AGlitteringEye.com proposes new Mideast Peace Incentives

from www.AGlitteringEye.com

For Middle East peace the incentives must change

Aziz over at Dean’s World is attempting to promote a dialogue on potential solutions for the problems surrounding Israel, the current Israel-Hezbollah hostilities being only the most recent instance. First, he proposed the Scowcroft framework which includes provisions for a Palestinian state, renunciation of the right of return, recognition of Israel by the KSA, what are now being called “robust, international” peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and other measures. Then he opened the floor to other alternatives.

He’s not getting much of anywhere.

Most of the commenters rejected the idea of a negotiated settlement outright, believing that military force was the only resolution left at this point. Somewhat to my amazement many seemed to believe that military force alone could be an effective solution for Israel’s problems.

It was noted in the comments that the Scowcroft framework is not unlike the proposal that was rejected by Yasser Arafat in 2000.

In my opinion the more serious problem with the plan is that it fails to take the incentives for all parties (more than merely the Israelis and Palestinians) into account and, indeed, that those incentives are propelling events in the wrong direction. Let’s consider some of the parties, their motivations, and the incentives in place.

The Israelis want to survive as a nation and have a little more peace and security than they currently enjoy. These are goals that I respect and support. If others, including the Europeans and their Arab neighbors also respected and supported those objectives (at least more than merely verbally), there would be no problem. But the Israelis also want to preserve a certain ethnic and cultural character to their state. I think that’s an eminently understandable objective but I honestly do not believe that it’s one that the United States should support.

The approval rating of the Olmert government has risen among Israelis since the beginning of the hostilities in Lebanon. Olmert’s personal popularity has risen to the highest level ever. Despite the rockets falling on them that are reaching ever further into the heart of their territory Israelis remain convinced that these actions will result in more security in the future and, possibly more importantly, that removing their troops from Gaza and southern Lebanon was a mistake. I think they believe that they’re winning.

Given that system of incentives it’s hard to see why the Israelis would stop doing what they’re doing.

Hezbollah clearly wants to destroy the state of Israel. They undoubtedly have Islamist motivations but I also believe that they want increased power within Islam itself. In my view this shouldn’t be viewed solely as a connivance of Iran’s but more in the context of the KSA’s advancing over the years of their own version of Islam.

Hezbollah’s popularity within Lebanon even among Sunni Muslims and Christians has risen since the start of hostilities. Nasrallah’s personal popularity is at an all-time high—he is now a person of international importance. Hezbollah’s popularity among regular Arab people in the Middle East (as opposed to among their governments) has also risen. Hezbollah apparently believes that it’s winning and they have plenty of agreement on that score in the West.

Given that system of incentives it’s hard to see why Hezbollah would stop doing what they’re doing.

Non-Hezbollah Lebanese people in all probability just want to be left alone. In the present hostilities we’re being treated to the surreal spectacle of the Lebanese government declaring themselves non-belligerents in a war going on within their borders.

The prospects for the Lebanese allying themselves with Israel to de-fang Hezbollah which, in my view, actually might have stood a chance of promoting democracy and stability within Lebanon—always a long shot—become fainter with each kilometer farther north the Israelis strike.

Syria clearly does not relish the idea of a military confrontation with Israel but they’re not concerned enough about it to disinvolve themselves with Hezbollah. As I mentioned before I’ve heard outright denials from the Syrians that they’re supplying Hezbollah.

Iran is clearly quite content to let events proceed as they may. It’s hard to see how they can lose. Hezbollah is opposing Israel for them and raising Shi’ite stock in the Muslim world. They have their own missile production facilities and, no doubt from their viewpoint, unlimited resources. Direct military confrontation between Iran and Israel is IMO farfetched and might indeed be the pretext the Iranians are looking for.

I find the motivations of the Europeans extremely puzzling. They clearly have more to lose by instability in the Middle East than anyone except possibly the people who live there. I don’t see how demonizing Israel promotes greater stability in the region unless you believe that it’s possible to completely eradicate the state of Israel. That, IMO, would create more instability in the region than either the European or we could deal with.

Roughly 30% of the founding population of the present state of Israel were Ashkenazic Jews who fled persecution in Europe. They were left with few alternatives. That’s the simplest explanation for where we are right now.

Europe continues to view terrorist groups in the Middle East as fighting a war of national liberation and Israelis as being the vanguard of fascism. I don’t think that’s quite as sophisticated an understanding of affairs as the Europeans themselves do.

Presumably, the Europeans will be happy as long as oil keeps flowing. I don’t see that their present policies faciliitate that objective.

The United States is a big country and significantly more complex than most of the rest of the world likes to believe. Historically, there have been a number of different schools of thought within the United States on our dealings with the rest of the world. I’ve written pretty extensively about them—see this post for the short version with links to other resources.

These schools of thought are still active and influential today. If you’d like a good idea of the Jacksonian view, look at the comments to Aziz’s posts, cited above.

For there to be anything that resembles a durable peace in the Middle East I believe that the incentives noted above need to change. Neither a settlement that will fail from its inception because it ignores the incentives in place or a military solution that is unlikely to succeed without expanding so far that it involves us all are worth considering.

Although I have never been an advocate for it at least the plan to democratize the Middle East, sometimes referred to a “the New Middle East” or “the Neo-Con Plan”, however fanciful it may have been, took incentives into consideration. My own objectiions to it were and have always been that it had little chance of succeeding in a timeframe that was politicallly or strategically acceptable.

So, how can the incentives be changed?