Middle East Solutionism

Jeffrey Goldberg has written that the American national religion is “solutionism” — a secular faith that “for every intractable problem there is a logical and available answer.”  

Nowhere has solutionism been applied with more fervor and fewer results than the Middle East, with a succession of logical “plans” and “processes” to “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the last 15 years:  the Oslo Process, the Camp David Summit, the Clinton Parameters, the Taba negotiations, the Roadmap, and the Annapolis Process. 

Over at Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH), Josef Joffe suggests that not only is there no current solution, but that neither of the parties to the current “negotiations” wants one:

The Middle East is like Detroit and General Motors:  There is no solution, but any American administration has to act as if there were, as if yet another bout of shuttling or another $25 billion will make GM competitive with Toyota.  And so with the Middle East.

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Moreover, there is no two-state solution at hand because neither party actually wants one.  Why such a counter-intuitive judgment?  Israel has learned that it cannot relinquish strategic control over the West Bank, given the sorry aftermath of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.  It is “never again,” even if a deal could be struck with Mahmoud Abbas, as it could not with Hamas.  No imaginable Palestinian Authority can at this point assure a no-threat West Bank; hence, Israel cannot leave.

Nor does Abu Mazen have an interest in seeing the Israelis leave.  For it is the IDF that guarantees not only his political, but his physical survival.  This is a heartening irony — Israel protecting a Palestinian president.  But there is no Palestinian state in this surprising twist of history.

Recognizing there is no “solution” on the horizon is not necessarily a cause for despair.  It may in fact be the beginning of realism.  Yesterday at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Michael Oren and David Wolpe had an interesting exchange on this issue.  The video below is Oren’s answer to Rabbi Wolpe’s inquiry as to Oren’s “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Oren’s first words are “Remove ‘solution’ from your vocabulary and everything will be fine“):