Guest Blog: Obama, far-sighted peacemaker or naive meddler?

President Barack Obama is getting set for some military arm-twisting against Iran spearheaded by Israel. One day the US threatens Israel with sanctions for threatening to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. One week later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warns that "it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons." Adding muscle to the threat, Defense Secretary Gates arrives in Israel to discuss military options. What's real and what's not in reporting regarding the US-Israel relationship? When Israel threatens to attack Iran, is the threat substantive and imminent or theatre; the Israeli bad cop playing to Obama's good cop? When Clinton demands a complete halt to settlement construction across the Green Line, is that really US policy or is it just a bone to the Arab street? And when news media warn of a crisis in Israel-US relations, is the whispered information feeding those reports accurate or slanted to create an impression serving a hidden diplomatic purpose?

The US and most of the world have long tired of the Israel-Palestine issue, and are anxious for a quick fix. If one accepts the Arab assertion that Palestine is the reason for all that ails the Middle East, not the corruption and police-state controls feeding unrest at home, the simple answer is for powerful Israel to bend and grant the Palestinians a state. Except that, since the introduction of the Saudi Plan, and for decades prior to it, the Palestinians have never fielded leadership capable of defining and achieving that goal. And today the Palestinian leadership, such as it is, is more divided than ever, both politically and geographically, with Hamas and Fatah engaged in a cold civil war. In short, unless and until the Palestinians can achieve a level of political and social maturity and competence it makes no sense to expect an ersatz Palestine to even manage the complexity of everyday affairs of self-governance.

So why does Obama make a Palestinian state the lynchpin of his Middle East diplomacy? Is it possible that the administration is really as committed to the primacy of Palestinian statehood as they appear? I, for one, prefer to believe that Obama, Mitchell and Ross are more rational and realistic than their public diplomacy describes.

The Saudis, too, set creation of a Palestinian state as precondition for Israel-Arab peace at the time the Plan was introduced. But in the intervening years conditions on the ground have significantly changed. Not only are the Palestinians farther from that goal but, more importantly, there is the rapid growth of the Iranian threat in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq. While Ahmadinejad describes Iranian ambitions as anti-Israel, and not a threat to the Arab world, Arab states from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic know that Iran's ambitions are more dangerous to themselves than to Israel.

The Saudis, for example, following the Israeli example, are building a wall entirely surrounding the kingdom, coast through desert, protection against Iran. They are also reported to have "quietly" informed Israel that the IAF could use Saudi airspace should the decision to attack the Islamic Republic be finalized. Then there is the transit of an Israeli submarine and other warships through the Suez Canal, in support of an assumed future decision to attack Iran. Iranian ambitions and the nuclear threat have stripped the fig leaf from the already existing Arab-Israel military alliance.

If the Saudis feel the need, for domestic consumption, to demand a conciliatory gesture from Israel to allow them to "come out of the closet" regarding their involvement with Israel, then the precondition definitely should not depend on an improbable Palestinian renaissance involving political and social maturity.

I began this article suggesting that President Obama and his highly experienced staff of advisers and emissaries in matters Middle East might not be so naïve and unrealistic as America's public diplomatic posture suggests. Enter the US outreach to Syria. As prime minister, Ehud Barak and Hafez al-Assad were reportedly within meters of signing an accord. That agreement, including the legendary Rabin "pocket," secret promises presumably involving the return of the Golan should Syria meet certain conditions, already exists. Unlike the highly unstable and politically immature Palestinians, for better or worse Syria is relatively stable and mature. In fact, Israeli military and intelligence experts describe Syria as assiduously adhering to all agreements between the two adversaries since the end of the 1967 war.

Obama is returning a US ambassador to Syria, and special Middle East envoy Mitchell declared following his recent meeting with Assad that Syria is an important player in regional stability, a moderating influence over Hamas, etc. If Israel is to expend time and effort anyway, doing so with a more responsible governing authority holds more promise of success than doing so with an ungoverned and ungovernable entity. In previous negotiations the Syrians proved to be shrewd and tenacious. If past experience serves, they will be no easier to deal with today. But at least Israel would be dealing with an entity offering the possibility of serious negotiations, if not necessarily assuring its success.

But whether or not Palestinians are ever capable of assuming the responsibilities of self-governance; whether or not Israel and Syria actually manage to sign an agreement this time around, the main problem facing Israel and the Arab states is the Iranian threat, and an open and formal alliance between Israel and the Arabs is the most effective way to contain that threat.  

If containing Iran  is the real diplomatic agenda of the Obama administration, camouflaged with the chimera of an Israel-Palestine "road map," then this president may prove to be the most diplomatically far-sighted and effective since the 1940's. If not, if this initiative turns out to be exactly what it appears to be, then the "Obama Initiative" will go down as just another naïve American misadventure in the quagmire of Middle East politics. And Obama and his experts will simply add one more chapter to a very long tradition of US bungling in the Middle East.