deal with Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who'll be making his
first visit to the United States as Israel's new leader in mid-May.
The Obama-Netanyahu meeting promises to be a showdown.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the veteran strategist and hardliner -- who was
Jimmy Carter's national security adviser -- told a conference
yesterday that in the history of US peacemaking in the Middle East,
the United States has never once spelled out its own vision for what a
two-state solution would look like. That, said Brzezinski, is exactly
what President Obama needs to do. And fast.
Brzezinski was speaking at a conference on US-Saudi relations
sponsored by the New America Foundation and Saudi Arabia's Committee
on International Trade. Brzezinski, who advised Obama early in the
presidential campaign, was exiled from Obamaland after his
less-than-devout support for Israel made him a liability.
"The United States has to spell out the minimum parameters of peace,"
said Zbig. Perhaps in deference to the conference's Saudi sponsors,
Brzezinski said that there is an "urgent need for a US-Saudi alliance
for peace in the Middle East." Other speakers on a star-studded
opening panel were Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from
Nebraska and Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served for decades as the
head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service.
Turki, who also served as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United
States, warned Obama to preempt Netanyahu, who intends to tell the
president that there can't be progress in the Israel-Palestine
conflict until the United States solves the problem of Iran's pursuit
of nuclear weapons to Israel's satisfaction. Obama, said Turki, should
tell the Israeli leader: "Mr. Netanyahu, you have to listen to me
first." Rita Hauser, the veteran conservative strategist on the panel,
agreed: "Netanyahu has to learn very quickly that the president means
business."
Hauser, long associated with the RAND Corporation and other
thinktanks, also said bluntly that the United States is going to have
to deal with Hamas, which she called a "central element" of
Palestinian politics. "Hamas will control Gaza," she said. She urged
the administration to take steps to encourage the formation of a
Palestinian unity government, involving Hamas and Fatah, the central
pillar of the old Palestine Liberation Organization.
Obama, said Hauser, will find it politically difficult to talk to
Hamas. (Translated: She means that the Israel lobby and its friends in
Congress would go ballistic.) So she recommends that Washington
encourage the Europeans in their dialogue with Hamas and allow Saudi
Arabia to help broker a deal. (Egypt is already trying to swing a
Fatah-Hamas deal.) The current chaos in Palestinian circles benefits
Israel, she said, and she accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon of deliberately splintering the Palestinians by withdrawing
from Gaza, an action that allowed Gaza to fall to Hamas.
A Hamas-Fatah accord is an important, even crucial, first step in
making any progress toward an Israel-Palestine two-state solution,
which Obama says he supports strongly -- and which Netanyahu opposes.
Getting it done won't be easy, however. At the conference, Turki
pointed out that "the popularity of Hamas skyrocketed" after the
December-January invasion of Gaza by Israel. "In the eyes of the
Palestinians,
might be a lot harder to convince Hamas to make concessions.
But both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, of course, are suspicious of Hamas,
not only because of its radicalism but because of its ties to Iran.
According to the Egyptians, who are sponsoring talks in Cairo between
the two Palestinian factions, Iran is pressing Hamas to resist a deal.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Abdel Monem Said Ali of
Egypt's premier thinktank said:
After the war [in Gaza] ended, Egypt resumed its efforts to reach
a long-term cease-fire. Iran pressured the Hamas leadership to resist.
Cairo's ongoing effort to build a Palestinian unity government, by
bringing together Fatah and Hamas, has also been undermined by intense
Iranian pressure on Hamas.
Obama needs to tell Netanyahu, in public or privately, that he
supports a Hamas-Fatah accord and that the United States will deal
with a Palestinian unity government. He needs to explain to Netanyahu
that he won't be diverted by Israel's alarmist cries about Iran,
instead maintaining the focus on the two-state solution. And, as
Brzezinksi says, Obama needs to outline his vision for a deal. The
world knows what it means: the removal of Israel's illegal settlements
in the West Bank, the withdrawal of Israel to its '67 borders, the
partition of Jerusalem in some fashion to allow the Palestinians to
have their capital in East Jerusalem, and an equitable deal over the
Palestinians right-to-return to the former Palestine, involving a
hefty financial compensation to those who were forced to flee their
homes in 1948 and 1967. The world knows it. Now, Obama has to say it.