The Council on Foreign Relations has posted the transcript of its February 1, 2005 session on “Israel, Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process.” It is worth reading.
Once the latest hopeful Middle East peace summit concludes, it will be worth remembering the remarks at the session by Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (and a former senior professional staff member with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations):
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, when we look at it, is always a triumph of hope over reality. The future is always going to be better than the past. And I think we’re at that moment again . . . .
And my rejoinder is that it could be, although I’m not entirely persuaded that it will be. If we look at the situation right now on the ground, what we see is a number of weaknesses . . . [including] in the international approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and that is that we have once again come back to our reliance on personalities.
First, it was Arafat who was going to save us. Now it’s Abu Mazen who is going to save us. . . .
In fact, what happens is this de-emphasizes a reliance on systems, on institutions, and on institution-building that really ought to be at the core of our diplomacy and our international effort.
Edward Abington, U.S. consul general to Jerusalem in 1993-1997, seconded Pletka’s remarks:
You know, what disturbed me about our efforts in the ’90s was the lack of what I thought was a very serious commitment on the part of the Clinton administration to institution-building by the Palestinians.
The message to Arafat was, "Take care of the terrorists. We don’t care what you do — lock them up, throw away the key."
But very seldom did the president or the secretary of state have a very serious conversation with Mr. Arafat about building institutions, accountability, and so forth. I agree with a lot of what Danny [Pletka] said about the need for accountability, [and] the need for institution-building . . . .
Condoleezza Rice has herself emphasized the distinction between personalities and institutions in the past. On June 15, 2002 — a week before George W. Bush’s landmark June 24, 2002 speech, which conditioned a Palestinian state on a "practicing democracy" — Rice gave an extensive interview to the San Jose Mercury News:
Without creating democratic institutions . . . there is not much hope for an eventual peace settlement with Israel, Rice said. "We don’t think of this as reform of the Palestinian Authority," said the president’s top foreign-policy adviser. "We think of this as building the institutions of a state that will be capable of actually moving to statehood."
Rice was emphatic that the Bush administration does not plan to again pursue [a Camp David type] U.S.-brokered peace plan. . . . "We’re not going back down that road," Rice said. "And I would challenge anybody to tell us, ‘Yeah, you ought to go back down that road,’ given where it ended up." . . . .
Instead, the United States will focus on creating democratic institutions in the Palestinian territories, such as a constitution and an independent judiciary. . .
"Everybody focuses too much on the personality. If you build the institutions and they are legitimate reformed institutions, they will serve the Palestinian people better . . .
Such a state "will give the Israelis confidence they’re going to be living next to a state that any of us would actually want to live next to."
A "practicing democracy" as a precondition of a state. It is a plan laid out by Bush and Rice nearly three years ago, and reiterated by them three months ago, after their highly public embrace of Natan Sharansky. Peace requires institutions, not just a personality or a process.
The Palestinians have noted that Rice did not refer to the road map in any of her public statements in the Middle East this past week. Bush and Rice are onto a different road map to peace. It is ironic that neither Sharon nor Peres is there yet.