Reading Natan Sharansky’s relatively short book after reading Dennis Ross’s monumental volume on the Middle East peace negotiations puts Ross’s monumental efforts in a new perspective — something that Victor Davis Hanson captures in his review of Ross’s book in the current issue of Policy Review:
There is a depressing monotony to Ross’s pilgrimages to the Middle East.
With his hard work, undeniable diplomatic talents, and canny reading of the role of pride, envy, and honor in the region, he sets up a series of what seem to be reasonable plans of mutual concessions.
Thus, in 1993, 1998, and 2000-01 we hear of the accustomed roadmaps, quartets, back, front, and side channels, secret Swiss meetings, working points, the Mitchell Plan, the Saudi Plan, the Zinni missions, UN mandates and resolutions . . .
So his memoir by needs is replete with unintended humor — full of miffs and scowls like “Enough was enough, Asad had to learn that the process would stop.” “This was bullshit.” “I was furious and wanted everyone to know it.” “I refused to take the call.” “I was angry.” “I was ready to have us walk away.” “I was stunned.” . . . .
All this angst is punctuated at last on page 756 with “Alas, Arafat was not up to peacemaking.”
Should we laugh or cry? . . . . The author of The Missing Peace seems to be waking up to relearn the ways of the world each morning, as if for all his intellect and erudition Ross cannot quite accept the asymmetry of it all. . .
Ross concludes with all sorts of fair and judicious outlines for a comprehensive settlement based on the premise of land for peace, something akin to the 95 percent or so of the West Bank offered up at Camp David.
But the data supplied by his comprehensive narrative often refute his own conclusions and hopes — and de facto argue for an alternative roadmap more attuned to the lessons of history than the social science of conflict resolution theory. Peace comes, whether in Germany, Japan, Vietnam, or the Falklands, when victory and defeat adjudicate the issues at hand. Thus, there will be no settlement in the Middle East until the Palestinians accept that the effort to destroy Israel leads not to political advantage but to their own destruction, a realization that might just discredit the corrupt tribal apparatus of the Palestinian Authority. . .
While George W. Bush gets few high marks from Dennis Ross for his relative distance from the minutiae that comprise this 800-page book, his larger post-9/11 vision of democratizing the Middle East may do what thousands of shuttle missions by the dutiful and honest Ross could not . . . .
After all, the real problem in the Middle East has never been just a few thousand acres of disputed land.
Like virtually everything VDH writes, this essay is worth reading in its entirety.