The Importance of Being Earnest
“I believe there is not a single issue — not the most complex, not the most sensitive, that cannot be resolved. It can be done and it should be done, now… define in words and deeds how the 100 year conflict will end, and it must happen soon.” National Security Council Advisor Samuel Berger in Tel Aviv
“I believe there is not a single issue — not the most complex, not the most sensitive, that cannot be resolved. It can be done and it should be done, now… define in words and deeds how the 100 year conflict will end, and it must happen soon.” National Security Council Advisor Samuel Berger in Tel Aviv
(Successful negotiations take) “Both sides looking at the other as a serious partner having serious needs, taking each other seriously. It takes both sides understanding that no one gets 100 percent…. What’s needed now is earnestness and a profoundly serious approach because we have a hundred years of conflict to resolve and it’s no easy matter… there is an historic moment now and to lose it will impose a very heavy responsibility on everybody. Now, we all have a heavy responsibility to try to seize this moment and ensure that in fact we do forge an agreement that ends the conflict, at least between Israelis and Palestinians. And that is possible.” Ambassador Dennis Ross at the AIPAC conference
It is generally a good thing that people who are transparently American in attitude represent America in international negotiations. Mr. Berger and Ambassador Ross are the soul of “can do” American optimism with their belief that all conflicts yield to their idea of negotiated settlement based on compromise. All we have to do is be “earnest and profoundly serious” and decide that now is the moment.
No doubt the two of them are profoundly earnest, they are also profoundly wrong.
Have all the governments of Israel since it’s founding been insufficiently earnest in their quest for security for their people and the recognized boundaries that are the right of every sovereign country? Was Menachem Begin insufficiently earnest when he tore down Yamit and returned the Sinai with its oil assets to Egypt?
And why is this moment historic? Because Mssrs. Berger and Ross are here? Well, not exactly, but according to Amb. Ross, his tenure has been most important. “It took Oslo… because Oslo took the core of the conflict – that between Israelis and Palestinians – and it transformed it because Israel and the PLO recognized each other.”
Excuse us. The core of the conflict is Arab refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel (recognizing the fact of Israel as a fait accomplis is not enough). And the core of the Palestinian tragedy is the refusal of the Arabs in 1948 to establish the Arab Palestinian State that the UN Partition Plan envisioned alongside the Jewish Palestinian State that was declared as Israel.
There have been many fine moments for the Arabs to accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism — any old day of any old week since about 1880 would have been OK. The moment will be historic when the step is taken — Anwar Sadat knew that. And our American optimism leads us to say with some certainty that whenever Arabs decide to do it “with earnestness and a serious approach,” Israelis of similar earnestness will meet them.