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Featured Commentary

Neglected Diplomacy

By Frederic C. Hof, head of the Sharm el-Sheikh (Mitchell) Fact-Finding Committee's field operation in 2001 & lead drafter of the Committee's report. Original Commentary for Middle East Bulletin.

posted on 05/05/08

The Annapolis initiative rests on an idea whose logic is sound: the connection between indoor peace negotiations and outdoor events is, for better or worse, unbreakable. Annapolis is a structure held aloft by two mutually dependent cross beams: actual implementation of roadmap obligations and good faith negotiations on core issues. These cross beams either hold the edifice up in tandem or bring it down if one gives way. Yet an initiative cannot rest on ideas alone, or in this case, simply on the shoulders of Palestinian and Israeli leaders. For the Annapolis structure to hold, it needs sorely absent heavy-lifting by the United States.

The logic of the cross beam analogy is rooted in political reality. Negotiators ply their trade in Jerusalem and answer to political masters sensitive to public opinion. Thus the tone and substance of talk in the conference room depends on the reality and perception of action on the street. How can negotiators not see and feel rockets falling on Sderot, roadblocks choking the West Bank, Yeshiva students massacred and settlements expanding? For them to agree on refugees, borders and Jerusalem while living and working in an environment where all hell is breaking loose (especially on the Gaza front) is asking a lot.

To be sure, much is required of leaders who wish to achieve the goal of two democratic, independent states living in peace. The problem is that neither of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders betting his political future on the success of Annapolis has the means to do what is required without a lot of help. They both preside over political systems in which dysfunction reigns. Israel’s prime minister finds equal measures of loyalty in opposition and cabinet. The Palestinian Authority president finds Gaza beyond his writ, while on the West Bank disputes between his reforming prime minister and other of his supporters seeing reform as a threat oblige him to bob and weave.

The U.S. response – not just the stance of the Bush administration – is disquieting. Secretary of State Rice rightly lectures the parties about their respective and joint Annapolis undertakings to negotiate and act as partners. Yet surely she sees the dysfunction crippling both sides. Surely she is aware that a Hamas alive and outside the tent has the ability to make things inside the tent terminally unpleasant. Surely she has noticed that the wheels of her airplane barely clear the tarmac at Ben Gurion International when new settlement construction is announced. Surely she wonders who will deliver that which is required when she reads about PLO/Fatah opposition to Prime Minister Fayyad’s reform and state-building agenda and Israel’s Potemkin-like dismantling of West Bank movement obstacles. Surely she sees one and maybe both cross beams buckling.

Lecturing without doing is as useless as trying to negotiate while actions drain every vestige of confidence and good will. What, after all, are the parties really sensing when they see how we have implemented our Annapolis obligation to monitor and judge roadmap compliance? What do they make of our decision to assign this vital task as a part-time job with no on-the-ground presence or dedicated team? Some say that the word “promote” should have been added to “monitor and judge” at Annapolis. Yet one might just as well have said nothing in light of what is actually being done.

The administration is not alone in its reluctance to pair talk with action. One hears from some of its critics that systematic confidence-building between the parties is a bridge too far; that simply getting the policy right in Washington is the thing to do. Americans who have sharply differing policy views about almost everything else in the Israeli-Palestinian context seem to agree on one thing: heavy lifting on the ground to prod the parties into doing things that support successful negotiations is hard, sweaty and labor-intensive work better left to the parties to sort out. We’ll confine our efforts – clean hands, arm’s length good offices – to parlor and paper. Ultimately the paper – in the case of Annapolis the shelf agreement – will (or so we like to think) inspire civil behavior on the ground by marginalizing bad actors through written promises of a better future for all.

Have we lost our appetite for real diplomacy? Why try careful, independent diplomatic due diligence to explore (for example) Hamas’ readiness to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, respect past agreements and abjure violence in return for lifting the siege, restoring a unity government and creating a unified Palestinian negotiating front? Such an effort would be hard, protracted and (in view of the execrable tactics and professed goals of the organization in question) possibly fruitless. So why try to do something that’s really hard and may not work even if violence on the Gaza front threatens to bring the Annapolis structure crashing down? Why try to promote and facilitate roadmap compliance with an on-the-ground U.S. conflict resolution team, an effort requiring sustained heavy lifting, when the toil comes with absolutely no guarantee of success? Why not just remind the parties of their responsibilities and ask our “monitor” to take an occasional meeting in Jerusalem?

We seem to hope the Annapolis process will prop itself up and give birth to two states through some manner of political-diplomatic Immaculate Conception. Why not? As long as we consider diplomacy “soft” power – i.e. something of a lower quality than the exercise of power itself – and as long as we avoid diplomatically the doing of actual things, why not leave the parties to sustain Annapolis on their own and pray for a miracle?