It looks like former Senator George Mitchell will have something a bit more substantial than investigating steroids in Major League Baseball on his plate within the first few days of the obama administration, if this report by the New York Times is correct:
People close to Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that George J. Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader and the chairman of a Middle East peace commission in 2001, was a leading candidate to be the Obama administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.
The appointment of Mr. Mitchell, a seasoned and well-regarded negotiator, would signal that President-elect Barack Obama was attaching a high priority to the Middle East and the current Gaza crisis from his first days in office. Obama transition officials declined to comment on Mr. Mitchell, but David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, told CNN on Sunday that Mr. Obama would move quickly to address the instability in the Middle East and hoped that the new cease-fires in Gaza would last.
Mitchell is an experienced and well respected peace negotiator, with former experience as President Clinton’s special envoy to Northern Ireland where he played a significant role in bringing about a peace settlement. He was also the chairman of a Middle East Peace commission appointed by President Clinton which issued it’s bipartisan report in May, 2001 (one whose recommendations were promptly ignored by the Bush administration who as we now know all too well didn’t do diplomacy). Being the son of a Lebanese immigrant (his mother) gives him a personal tie to the region. The fact that he is a former politician well versed in the ways of Washington, and an experienced diplomat has to help. The fact that unlike most of Bush’s special representatives he’s not a former military leader also sends a significant message that the policy of the United States will not look to military solutions or secretive plots to promote internecine violence as its primary option for influencing events “over there.”
I wish George Mitchell luck. The situation in the Middle East is in much worse shape now than when President Clinton’s 2000 peace initiative failed, and a significant risk exists that it could worsen further if Israel invades Lebanon again or decides to unilaterally attack Iran or Syria. The Bush administration, through its pursuit of spreading war and chaos throughout the region has poisoned relations between the United States and most of Israel’s Arab neighbors to an extent I wouldn’t have believed possible if I hadn’t witnessed them myself over the past eight years. Mitchell performed miracles in Northern Ireland, but if he can simply lower tensions in the Mideast to below the boiling point he will have made significant progress in this, far more difficult assignment.
Cynicism is no way to start a new American project to bring peace to the Middle East, to stop Israel’s colonialism and reengage the two state solution.
But, I’m afraid, this: “if he can simply lower tensions in the Mideast to below the boiling point he will have make significant progress,” is about all he will ever achieve.
The right wing is dominant in Israel and real progress from their perspective is the eventual annexation of the Palestinian territories, sans Gaza, into Israel. Like the frustrated Zinnis and Wolfensons before him, he will eventually resign on the low key message that will hardly make national news, that Israel’s worry about its security and Hamas makes its impossible to conclude a peace agreement. So what’s new.
Soap opera reruns are probably the most boring. So what ever did happen to Paris Hilton?
What? No mention of the other part of the equation? As long as Palestinian organizations have dreams of retaking Palestine there will be war.
Having a few eighteen year-olds shoot Qassam rockets over the border into Israel just strengthens the reactionaries in Israel. Imagine how the illegal alien haters would be if Qassam rockets had been coming into San Diego for eight years. Don’t you think that people would be calling for the Marines from El Toro to clean out Tijuana with little concern for collateral damage?
Israel is militarily light-years ahead of all Arab nations, with a nuclear stash that could flatten the capitol of every Muslim nation in the world. They will never be defeated militarily in our lives.
The problem is that it is easier to shoot bottle rockets into Israel than it is to run a Gaza with working sewers and water systems and school systems and an economic structure that serves its constituents. Making martyrs is a better organizational strategy than making a failed state work. In the current situation everything can be blamed on Israel. If Gaza were at peace with Israel and things were normalized who gets blamed when the power goes out? When the sewers don’t work? When there isn’t enough vaccines for the kids? When people are hungry?
No, Hamas, or whoever comes after Hamas, needs that enemy that is Israel to create anger and fear and hate in its population. Otherwise, it owns what it is.
Well, we’ll never know what would happen to Gaza in terms of its infrastructure and the ability of its political establishment to provide for its people until Israel and the West lift the economic embargo.
Israel’s intention is to never allow Hamas to govern, preferring stooges like Abbas and his willingness to accept a rump Palestinian bantustan.
As far as the analogy of Gaza with Tijuana. If the US had Mexico under a military occupation, and had Tijuana under an economic blockade, and the American public supported those policies, then I suppose the residents of San Diego to be as crazy as the Israelis in their support for sending in the Marines.
We don’t control Mexican airspace, Mexican waters, and all food and consumer supplies going in and out of Mexico. Which we dole out so minimally that Mexicans end up eating grass. Nor do we forcibly remove Mexican citizens from their property so our citizens can move in. I don’t think they believe they are going to retake Israel. That is ridiculous.
Wisdom.
nice, but I don’t see how it relates.
If Hamas needs Israel as an enemy so does Israel need Hamas; especially, as elections draw near.
Try supporting your claims with data. The problem is not the Palestinians, but Israeli intransigence concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the obvious intent to annex them.
These are the results of the latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 13 and 15 March 2008.
Peace Process:
* 66% support and 32% oppose the Saudi initiative which calls for Arab recognition of and normalization of relations with Israel after it ends its occupation to Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
* 55% support and 44% oppose mutual recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state for the Palestinian people as part of a permanent status agreement.
* But 80% believe that the negotiations launched by the Annapolis conference will fail while 14% believe it will succeed.
* Moreover, 68% believe that the chances for the establishment of a Palestinian state during the next five years are non-existent or weak and 30% believe chances are fair or high.
* 75% believe that the meetings between Mahmud Abbas and Ehud Olmert are not beneficial and should be stopped while only 21% believe they are beneficial and should be continued.
* 64% support and 33% oppose launching rockets from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon.
* An overwhelming majority of 84% support and 13% oppose the bombing attack that took place in a religious school in West Jerusalem. Support for this attack increases in the Gaza Strip (91%) compared to the West Bank (79%).
http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2008/p27e1.html#main
PS: Another survey about party affiliation showed that only 16% of Palestinians belong to Hamas. Hamas is just a red herring being used by Israel to avoid peace initiatives, and it has refused everyone since 2000. It prefers Zionist nationalism, which the source of everything bad, including Israeli insecurity, in the region.
Shergald I am convinced, this is the test Biden was talking about. They knew Israel was on the warpath.
And after watching several programs on TV last few days on MLK, I am convinced that the the right move for Palestinians is to DEMAND voting rights in the territories.
Just like the slaves did in our own history.
Some Arabs are second class citizens (3/5 human) and the rest are slaves. Time for them to fight for full citizenship in this so called “democracy”!!
Hope it is tried and succeeds.
We have no one with a better track record. This is the right choice.
I agree and may God go with him in his mission as a peace keeper.
Could someone explain to me why this is a good choice. I am so new to politics I really don’t know.
How can Israel…. or we, with providing bombs not expect blowback??