Meanwhile, Jewish former State Dept gang undermine embassy move - by Stephen M. Flatow

...The irony is that pretty much any taxi driver in Tel Aviv understands the Israeli-Palestinian situation far better than the self-crowned experts at Foggy Bottom, present or past. The only thing the State Department's Mideast veterans are really experts at, is getting things wrong.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
25 January '17..

Someday, perhaps, a team of sociologists and psychologists will examine the curious question of why Jewish ex-State Department officials are obsessed with Israel. Until that day comes, though, the rest of us will be stuck having to listen to those officials’ relentless harassment of Israel and promotion of the Palestinian cause.

With the issue of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on the front burner, The New York Times trotted out two former State Department hands, both Jewish, to pour cold water on the embassy relocation idea.

The officials, Aaron David Miller and David Makovsky, now enjoy well-heeled positions at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, respectively. They are benefiting handsomely from the revolving door that shuttles State Department alumni to nearby think tanks, where they can spend their days explaining how they know what’s best for Israel.

In an endless stream of media interviews, op-eds and insufferable policy papers, Miller, Makovsky and the rest never stop reminding us that they know more about Middle East peace than do Israel’s democratically elected leaders or battle-tested generals.

(Continue to Full Article)

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

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Martin Indyk’s latest low by Ruthie Blum

...Mr. Indyk, with all due respect, the “decline of American influence” can be traced to the election of President Barack Obama. To blame Israel for that travesty goes beyond your usual chutzpah. Kudos for letting your immoral compass guide you to new low levels of discourse that, fortunately, most Israelis are no longer listening to.

Ruthie Blum..
Right From Wrong/JPost..
15 November '15..

Just when you thought you'd heard it all from professional peace promoter Martin Indyk, he goes and one-ups himself. The ability to do so when the policies he has espoused over the decades have repeatedly backfired is an accomplishment in and of itself. And it explains why he was appointed twice to serve as US ambassador to Israel and also filled the role of assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.

Indyk, author of Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East, has always held the position that an accord is possible between Israel and the Palestinians – if the “two sides” would only trust one another. This, of course, is why he was a perfect fit for Secretary of State John Kerry, under whom he was dispatched to Israel as an envoy to broker a deal.

Well, that didn’t work out so well, and he quit after nine months to return to his full-time job as director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington.

He, like many peace-processers, feels more at home presenting global strategies in a think tank than confronting the need for actual tanks in the real Middle East the rest of us occupy.

This is not to say that Indyk is uncomfortable in Israel.

On the contrary, he loves visiting the country, where he is treated like a king by the chattering classes, while enjoying a cappuccino or two on balconies overlooking the Mediterranean.

So it was no surprise that he attended the Israel Conference on Peace, hosted by the left-wing daily Haaretz at Tel Aviv’s David Intercontinental Hotel last week, to wow the crowd with regurgitated slogans about why war keeps getting in the way of their aspirations for – you know – peace.

The Real Price of Wasting Time and Energy

...It’s worth asking why this administration – and others before it – wasted so much time and energy for so long on an issue in which, as Indyk acknowledged, America has no “strategic interest.” It’s also worth asking whether, since Indyk is still advising Kerry on the Middle East, his statement means the administration has finally wised up to its mistake, or only that he himself has sobered up. But the most important question is when this realization will finally become accepted foreign-policy wisdom

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
29 August '14..

Martin Indyk’s interview with Foreign Policy this week contained many interesting nuggets, but one statement in particular shocked me: “It’s very hard to make the argument that America now has a strategic interest in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Indyk said. “It’s just one of many conflicts and it’s not the most important and it’s not the most difficult.” What’s shocking about this statement isn’t that it’s false; indeed, it’s admirably clear-eyed. But it bears no relationship to the policy actually followed either by Indyk himself or the administration he served.

Until he resigned this spring, Indyk was Secretary of State John Kerry’s special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian talks. In other words, he spent nine months devoting all his time and energy to a problem he himself says America has no “strategic interest” in solving. Moreover, he wasn’t doing so to free up his boss for more strategically important issues; Kerry also devoted more time and energy to this issue – by a large margin – than to anything else on Washington’s foreign policy agenda.

In fact, President Barack Obama and other administration officials repeatedly cited the issue as a top foreign policy priority. In his address to the UN General Assembly last September, for instance, Obama named the Arab-Israeli conflict as one of “two particular issues” American policy in the Middle East and North Africa would focus on, declaring that while it isn’t “the cause of all the region’s problems,” it has “been a major source of instability for far too long,” and resolving it could “help serve as a foundation for a broader peace.” Back in 2010, he went even further, terming Israeli-Palestinian peace “a vital national security interest of the United States.” Susan Rice, then UN ambassador and now Obama’s national security adviser, also termed Israeli-Palestinian peace “a vital U.S. interest,” while Vice President Joe Biden deemed it “fundamentally in the national security interest of the United States.” Kerry himself hyperbolically declared it the most important issue in the world, asserting that no matter what country he traveled to, it was always the first thing he was asked about.

Such statements were always ludicrous. As I wrote more than a year ago, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict wasn’t even the most important in the Middle East; that title belonged to Syria’s civil war – a fact some Westerners belatedly woke up to after ISIS emerged from Syria to gobble up large swathes of Iraq. Since then, a few other unimportant little conflicts have erupted as well, like Russia’s invasion of Crimea and now, apparently, eastern Ukraine.

Bullying, Temper Tantrum Tactics and the Peace Process by Sarah Honig

...The truth is that neither Abbas, his newfound bedfellows in Gaza nor the masses in both Palestinian Authority halves, remotely desire co-existence side-by-side with a Jewish state. Their aim is the piecemeal Arabization of the de facto entity temporarily called Israel (which is why they won’t concede Jewish-state legitimacy) or its vanquishment as al-Daana anticipates.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
05 June '14..

When preschoolers don’t get their way, they sometimes attempt to intimidate us into giving in. They throw terrifying temper tantrums, some more frequently and frighteningly than others. The rule of thumb is that the more spoiled a kid is, the worse the whining, crying, screaming, kicking, hitting, rolling on the floor and breath-holding.

According to the preeminent Jewish psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut, the tantrum-thrower’s “core is likely to contain a self-centered, grandiose-exhibitionist part,” and the outbursts represent “narcissistic rages at the blow to the inflated self-image.” Therefore, various refusals, “regardless of their justifications, will automatically provoke fury since they offend the child’s sense of omnipotence.”

In most individuals such shock and awe antics abate over the years. But not always. When immaturity – irrespective of chronological age – coincides with privilege and a sense of entitlement, it’s liable to produce adult petulance and a proclivity for spiteful rants.

This should sound abundantly familiar to anyone who heard of the “nasty” anti-Israel “tirade” by Martin Indyk, US Secretary of State Kerry’s chief envoy to the misnamed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Indyk lost his cool for a full half-hour at the bar of a Ritz Carlton Hotel shortly after delivering an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Although predictably denied by the State Department, Indyk’s reported tantrum was quite in sync with his boss’s reactions. Kerry’s self-centered, grandiose plans to super-swiftly impose peace on Israel and its genocidal enemies didn’t quite garner him the glory he envisaged. Not only did he fail to engineer in nine mere months – as per his cocky timetable – the miracle solution to a century-old conflict, but the sides couldn’t even agree on talks about the talks.

The bigger Kerry’s initial pretension, the greater was his resultant humiliation.

And Kerry unleashed all his frustration on Israel – like the child who acts out before those most likely to cave in. He threatened us with BDS ostracism, new spates of terror and apartheid-state stigma. No matter how he later attempted to explain away his cantankerous conniptions, he had done us damage; he knows he had and he meant to. Some slung mud always sticks.

Kerry’s crabbiness was equally expressed in his jarring failure to rebuke Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas for scuttling the process by seeking state-status in UN forms, by gumming up the works with nonstarter extortionist demands (not for ending the dispute but for restarting the moribund talks) and, most of all, by aligning himself with the jihadist Hamas - a move the US officially no longer opposes, i.e. it no longer opposes doing business with Hamas.

The subtext is clear – Abbas can do no wrong and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu willfully refuses to do right (by Obama Administration definitions).

And just in case we failed to understand the undertones, an unnamed “highly-placed source” in Kerry’s entourage (perhaps none other than Indyk) blasted Netanyahu, empathized with Abbas and warned that, whether Israel likes it or not, Palestine shall arise – as if this is humanity’s great last hope.

We can safely bet our bottom shekel that neither Kerry nor Indyk would be much perturbed by what the Palestine they so passionately prescribe would be like. If they at all gave a hoot, they might have already noticed a few troubling spoiler alerts.

Ramallah recently announced that if Israel really wants recognition of Jewish-state legitimacy, then it should withdraw not just to the June 4, 1967 lines (which are in fact the 1949 armistice lines) but to the lines drawn by the UN’s Partition Resolution (General Assembly resolution 181, adopted on November 29, 1947). That resolution specifically speaks of a Jewish state.

Ah, but there’s the rub.

When The Rubber Man Meets the Peace Process

...But if the main barrier is Palestinian unwillingness to end their war on Israel, the problem is unsolvable and peace is unachievable. And to most of the world, blaming Israel unjustly is infinitely preferable to acknowledging that unpleasant truth.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
21 May '14..

As I noted yesterday, there’s no lack of evidence that even “moderate” Palestinians aren’t interested in ending their war on Israel. Yet most of the world will go through contortions worthy of the rubber man rather than admit it. A classic example is the interview a “senior American official” (widely reputed to be special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian talks Martin Indyk) gave to Yedioth Ahronoth earlier this month.

The official spent about 3,000 words blaming the talks’ breakdown on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and specifically its authorization of settlement construction during the negotiations. Only then did he describe what actually happened during those crucial final months when Secretary of State John Kerry was trying to broker a framework agreement:

“In February, Abbas arrived at a Paris hotel for a meeting with Kerry … He rejected all of Kerry’s ideas. A month later, in March, he was invited to the White House. Obama presented the American-formulated principles verbally – not in writing. Abbas refused.”

Then, in the very next sentence, came this astonishing defense: “The claim on your side that Abbas was avoiding making decisions is not true. He wasn’t running away.”

So long before the announcement of 700 new housing units that Kerry later termed the “poof” moment when everything blew up, Abbas had rejected all Kerry’s ideas and all President Barack Obama’s ideas. Yet he wasn’t “avoiding making decisions” or “running away”; he was a committed and engaged peace partner. Then who is to blame for his serial rejections? Why, Netanyahu, of course: Those “announcements of new housing tenders in settlements limited Abbas’ ability to show flexibility.”

In other words, if Netanyahu is intransigent, it’s Netanyahu’s fault. And if Abbas is intransigent, it’s also Netanyahu’s fault. Under this administration’s definition of “honest brokerage,” only one side is ever to blame; the Palestinians have no agency of their own.

Indyk’s Appalling Answers

...Abbas bet that an American administration that conducts its foreign policy like a troupe of innocents abroad would once again blame Israel. Indyk’s appalling performance last week demonstrated it was a good bet.

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
14 May '14..

Ambassador Martin Indyk’s address last week to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, castigating Israel for “rampant settlement activity,” featured assertions that, as Elliott Abrams and Tom Wilson have noted, were simply wrong. Settlement activity was not rampant, and almost all of it was in areas Israel would retain under any peace agreement. Indyk nevertheless made it clear he subscribes to the “poof” theory of peace-process failure.

Even more troubling than Indyk’s prepared remarks, however, were his unscripted replies in the Q & A session. By pre-arrangement, he took only three questions–all from the Institute’s executive director, Robert Satloff. In response to the first, about settlements, Indyk said he had no idea what Satloff was talking about. In response to the second, about Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state, Indyk misstated the year Israel first raised the issue–by 14 years. In response to the third, about the U.S. role in the process, Indyk acknowledged that Mahmoud Abbas was “quite content to sit back and enjoy the show” of Israeli-American disharmony, but Indyk said it was a “puzzle” to figure out “what happened” after that.

I think I can help here. I know what Satloff was talking about; I know when recognition of a Jewish state was first raised; and I have a theory about Abbas that might solve the mystery that puzzled Indyk.

In his first question, Satloff noted that an “unnamed American diplomat” (reliably reported to have been Martin Indyk) told the Israeli media that settlements were the reason talks ended, but Satloff informed Indyk that others took a different view, believing Prime Minister Netanyahu, far from authorizing “rampant” settlement activity, in fact limited it, but had failed to “take public credit for how little there was,” lest he isolate the Israeli right. Indyk replied:

I’ve not heard of this second account — it doesn’t make any sense to me — and I honestly don’t understand what it means. Maybe someone else can explain it to me.

Allow me. When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister in 2009, he sought to correct what he saw as the main error in his first term (1996-99): governing from a narrow political base. In his second term, he formed as wide a coalition as possible to negotiate peace. Ron Dermer, currently Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., described Netanyahu’s approach in 2009. The approach gave Netanyahu support across the Israeli political spectrum, so he could explore a different path to peace than those that had failed. He supported the principle that Jews could build anywhere in their capital or in the disputed territories, while in practice significantly limited actual building. Indyk’s ungracious (not to say undiplomatic) response to Satloff’s question demonstrates that Indyk was oblivious to this.

Indyk’s Amoral Kiss-and-Tell Story by Tom Wilson

...The gap between reality and the picture Indyk and Kerry paint has become so wide that one wonders how it doesn’t simply swallow them both.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
09 May '14..

Since talks collapsed between Israel and the Palestinians, chief U.S. negotiator Martin Indyk has already gone to the press with at least one kiss-and-tell story, about how Israel sabotaged peace through settlement building. But it seems that Indyk intends to extract still more capital from his role in the doomed negotiations. The business of manipulation and self-promotion that now surrounds the negotiation process has virtually become an end in itself, far outstripping the importance of the always-fruitless negotiations themselves. The talks seem to take place so as to allow individuals on each side to come forward with a drip feed of snippets and revelations, promoting the good will of one side, pouring condemnation on the other.

On Thursday evening, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s founders conference, Indyk offered up a serving of platitudes and obvious statements, dressed up with a particularly provocative barb about how Israel’s settlement building is supposedly risking the future of the Jewish state. Among a whole list of predictable observations, Indyk’s remark that if only the U.S. feels a sense of urgency then “the negotiations will not succeed,” seemed particularly unworthy of having been uttered. Indeed, Indyk bemoaned how leaders on both sides “don’t feel the pressing need to make gut-wrenching compromises.” Well, it’s not as if Indyk and Kerry weren’t warned of this fact before they set out on their ill-advised venture. Neither side trusts the other to think that concessions are really warranted, and yet what does Indyk imagine Israel releasing terrorists was if not “gut-wrenching”? If Indyk can be so flippant about the pain caused by these murderers going free then he has either suspended all moral judgment or is completely indifferent to Israeli suffering; perhaps both.

Some recent comments that have been widely attributed to Indyk framed the Israelis for having allegedly wrecked the peace talks through settlement building. In his speech on Thursday evening it was Israeli settlements that Indyk was especially eager to condemn. Settlements, claimed Indyk, will “drive Israel into an irreversible binational reality.”

Kerry’s Debacle and Its Continuing Fallout

...The Israeli leadership’s decision to share that information was apparently made in response to the Palestinians’ attempt to blame Israel for the stalled negotiations. Leaking the letter to the press is also a good way to push back on the craven and self-discrediting efforts by Martin Indyk’s team to blame Israel in order to settle old scores. The blame game is, of course, far better than an intifada, which was Arafat’s answer to an offer of peace and mutual coexistence. But that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
07 May '14..

The violence initiated by Yasser Arafat after his rejection of the Clinton-brokered peace deal was a worst-case scenario not only for those whose lives were now in danger in the Middle East but for Western negotiators and supporters of the peace process. It presented them with the nightmarish lesson that there is risk in negotiating; the failure of talks could mean years of war.

But this year’s failed talks pushed by Secretary of State John Kerry are demonstrating another way peace talks aren’t necessarily risk-free: the deterioration of relations between the PA and Israel. As the talks collapsed, Mahmoud Abbas went ahead with a unity deal with Hamas, which immediately raised questions about Israeli support and the sharing of intel with the previously Hamas-less government. And today Haaretz sheds light on the nasty business of the blame game, with a letter apparently written by Israel’s national security advisor to Western governments:

Attached to the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by Haaretz, is a 65-page document that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat submitted to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on March 9, three weeks before Israel was to release the final batch of Palestinian prisoners. In it, Erekat proposed a strategy for the PA during the final month of negotiations and after April 29, when the talks were originally scheduled to end before their premature collapse.

Erekat recommended applying to join various international conventions, informing the U.S. and Europe that the Palestinians wouldn’t extend the talks beyond April 29, demanding that Israel nevertheless release the final batch of prisoners, intensifying efforts to reconcile with Hamas to thwart what he termed an Israeli effort to sever the West Bank from Gaza politically, and various other diplomatic and public relations moves.

Over the past month, the PA has implemented most of Erekat’s recommendations. This, Cohen wrote in his letter, shows that even while the Palestinians were talking with Washington about the possibility of extending the peace talks, they were actually planning to blow them up, and had been planning to do so even before Abbas met with U.S. President Barack Obama on March 17. …

The document also shows that the Palestinians planned in advance to take unilateral steps in defiance of the commitment they made when the talks were launched in July 2013, he wrote.

The Israeli leadership’s decision to share that information was apparently made in response to the Palestinians’ attempt to blame Israel for the stalled negotiations. Leaking the letter to the press is also a good way to push back on the craven and self-discrediting efforts by Martin Indyk’s team to blame Israel in order to settle old scores. The blame game is, of course, far better than an intifada, which was Arafat’s answer to an offer of peace and mutual coexistence. But that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Any Bets on Another Try for Kerry’s Middle East Fiasco?

...If Indyk is to retire from Kerry’s ill-advised foray into the delights of the Israel-Palestinian impasse, then it remains to be seen as to who will replace him. But no matter who Kerry puts on his team, it won’t change the fact that Abbas has just put Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh on his.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
06 May '14..

Since the collapse of the U.S.-sponsored negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Secretary of State John Kerry has been all dressed up with nowhere to go. But if the administration has anything to do with it, that may be about to change. The State Department is now denying earlier reports that it is dismantling its negotiating team. By all accounts plans are afoot to send them all back again. And if that wasn’t enough, apparently Kerry is still mulling submitting his parameters to the two sides. What on earth for? The last time he came close to doing so PA head Mahmoud Abbas preempted him by issuing his own impossibly outlandish list of red lines.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf denies that there are any plans to dismantle “the team” and simply stated, “We’re going to see where this goes from here and, you know, figure out what makes sense in terms of staffing.” Perhaps what would “make sense in terms of staffing” would be for Kerry to let his chief negotiator Martin Indyk go, which after all seems to be what Indyk wants. Rumor has it that after some off-the-record comments were attributed to Indyk, he is looking to resign and is eager to return to the peace and quiet of the Brookings Institution in Washington, away from all those tiresome Israelis. For the comments widely attributed to Indyk certainly make no secret of the speaker’s feelings toward that quarter.

The comments in question were such that they would irreversibly burn any bridges of trust between the Israelis and whoever said them. Would Indyk have intentionally made sure that it became known that the comments had come from him? If so, it would make for a pretty one-directional escape from the sinking ship of Kerry’s hubristic peace mission. Much like President Obama’s now infamous Bloomberg interview, the voice speaking in the Yedioth Aharonoth interview portrays Abbas as a Gandhi-like figure and the Netanyahu government as a cynical pack of colonialists, indifferent to peace, hell-bent on robbing the Palestinians of their land, and outrageously trying to nudge the outcome of the talks in a direction that might protect at least some of Israel’s security concerns.

Whoever made these comments either hasn’t been paying attention or is simply fabricating facts, particularly with their claim that talks collapsed on account of the settlements. Freezing settlement activity was never a predicate for the talks, and even after a dispute over prisoner releases and Palestinian moves at the United Nations the negotiations limped on, only finally and definitively collapsing when the Palestinians stunned Kerry and his team by announcing a Fatah-Hamas unity deal. That was the point at which talks were closed; settlements had nothing to do with it.

Inept U.S. Diplomacy - A Postmortem

...Gilo, a 40-year-old Jewish neighborhood in the capital, would remain inside of Israel even if peace were reached. How, then, could a few more apartments in a place that would never be surrendered by Israel serve as an acceptable rationale for a Palestinian walkout, as Indyk indicates? The answer to that question is that the Americans are so invested in Abbas’s shaky credibility as a peacemaker that they were prepared to swallow any excuse from him.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
05 May '14..

Secretary of State John Kerry’s disastrous attempt to bring peace to the Middle East is not going quietly into the night after its collapse in the last month. Kerry made clear his own prejudices, as well as his misunderstanding about the reality of the conflict, when he told the Trilateral Commission that Israel would become an “apartheid state” if it failed to make peace. Though Kerry had to offer a non-apology apology in which he regretted his choice of words, the slur illustrated his own animus for the Jewish state’s positions. It also was fuel to the fire for the campaign of hatred that is bolstered by such canards. But not satisfied with that shot fired over the bow of the Netanyahu government, the administration doubled down on the “Israel is to blame” argument with an interview given by anonymous “senior American officials” with Yedioth Ahronoth’s Nahum Barnea available here on YNet.com in English.

There is nothing terribly surprising with the postmortem on the talks, the source for which (if you believe Haaretz) is believed to be Kerry’s envoy Martin Indyk. Indyk, who is resigning his post as U.S. negotiator and going back to his Washington sinecure at the Brookings Institution, has a long history of bad blood with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu dating back to his controversial tenure as U.S. ambassador to Israel in the 1990s. But rather than merely file this away as another example of the poisonous personal politics that can intrude into diplomacy, a close yet critical reading of the interview reveals more about why the Obama administration’s peace efforts failed than anything about what the Israelis have done. Like the public statements made by both President Obama and Secretary Kerry in which they praised Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas while trashing Netanyahu, the U.S. has repeated the Clinton administration’s mistake in whitewashing Yasir Arafat in the 1990s. In doing so, they have effectively made the already slim chances for peace even more unlikely.

The details of Indyk’s complaints about Israel aren’t terribly persuasive. Though he attempts to portray Netanyahu as intransigent, even his interviewer is forced to point out that even the prime minister’s rival Tzipi Livni, whom Indyk praises extravagantly as a “heroine,” admitted that in fact it was Netanyahu who had moved off of his previous positions on a possible agreement while Abbas had not moved an inch.

Indyk counters that by trashing Israel’s entirely reasonable demands for security guarantees that would ensure that West Bank territory it gave up would not turn into another version of Gaza after Ariel Sharon’s disastrous 2005 retreat. He also claims that Abbas made great concessions in agreeing to a deal in which Israel would keep Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and 80 percent of West Bank settlements. But having agreed to terms that roughly match what Netanyahu is believed to have offered, Abbas walked away from the talks rather than negotiate their implementation. That isn’t peacemaking. It’s obstruction that allowed him to avoid taking responsibility for making a peace that he fears his people don’t want.

Indyk also tells us a great deal about administration cluelessness when he admits he didn’t understand why Abbas refused to even discuss recognizing Israel as a Jewish state even when the Israelis were preparing versions of a statement that would at the same time recognize “Palestine” as the nation state of Palestinian Arabs.

“We couldn’t understand why it bothered him so much,” the anonymous U.S. official said. Really? Saying those two symbolic words—“Jewish state”—would have gone a long way to convincing the Israeli public that Abbas was sincere about wanting to end the conflict for all time. His refusal signaled that the PA and its new partner Hamas want no part of any treaty that signals the end of their century-old war against Zionism. If Indyk and Kerry didn’t understand the significance of this issue, they are not only demonstrating their unwillingness to hold the Palestinians accountable, they are also showing an alarming lack of diplomatic skill.

Undermining the Peace Process With Prisoner Releases

...The Palestinians have presented Kerry with so many moments when he should have stepped away. This disgraceful refusal to fully condemn the cold-blooded murder of a father of five in front of his family should be the moment when Kerry’s underlying sense of decency kicks in and he washes his hands of Abbas. Yet he can’t and he won’t. He can’t bring himself to walk away from what many have long suspected of being a vanity project.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
18 April '14..

Those seeking to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians might conclude that adding more terrorists into the equation is unlikely to help matters. That much stands to reason for most people. Unfortunately, this simple truth seems to be lost on Secretary of State John Kerry and his assistant in the negotiations, Martin Indyk. They are currently putting pressure on the Israelis to release the next installment of prisoners being demanded by the Palestinians. Supposedly this will help advance the two sides along the path to peace. Caught up in the ludicrous process of negotiating about negotiating, Kerry and Indyk might benefit from taking a step back and asking themselves what kind of partner for peace demands the release of terrorists. Terrorists belong in prison, and no one interested in a just and secure settlement between the two sides would for a moment think otherwise. Yet Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas doesn’t simply demand the release of these murderers; once they are released these individuals and their families are rewarded with fanfare and sizable cash payments.

Astonishingly, the Israeli government has already surrendered to pressure from the Obama administration and reluctantly capitulated to these outrageous demands. As David Horovitz recently wrote, in jeopardizing its most basic obligation to uphold the safety of its citizenry, Prime Minister Netanyahu undermines the legitimacy of his government. Up until now that government had continued to support Netanyahu in his policy of American-imposed appeasement of the Palestinians. However, following the recent terrorist attack on an Israeli family visiting Hebron for the Passover holiday, many of Netanyahu’s Cabinet members have insisted they will not go along with this policy any further until Abbas issues a full public condemnation.

No one who is both honest and informed about the Palestinians will be at all surprised to learn that Abbas has failed to supply any kind of meaningful condemnation of this murderous attack. The best that the Palestinian president could muster were some words against the attack offered behind closed doors to a group of Israeli politicians visiting Ramallah earlier in the week. Yet Abbas steadfastly refused to come outside and publicly condemn the attacks to the waiting press. The Palestinians have presented Kerry with so many moments when he should have stepped away. This disgraceful refusal to fully condemn the cold-blooded murder of a father of five in front of his family should be the moment when Kerry’s underlying sense of decency kicks in and he washes his hands of Abbas. Yet he can’t and he won’t. He can’t bring himself to walk away from what many have long suspected of being a vanity project.

Farce, negotiations and the nefarious pharaohs of our time

...After two millennia of exile, we have finally merited to be, in the words of “Hatikva,” a “free nation in our land,” and with that freedom also comes the heavy burden of sovereign responsibility. But we can do it! Passover, which is all about hope and new beginnings, empowers us to rise up against the slavery of bad ideas and their Pharaoh-purveyors. This Passover, after the failure of yet another round of negotiations, and before the onset of yet another one, let us proclaim loudly: “Let my people go!” Go forward, that is.

Yishai Fleisher..
Eye on Zion/JPost..
17 April '14..

This latest round of so-called “peace negotiations” has been one giant farce. Every one of the actors is just going through the motions. As though anyone thought Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was going to give up more than former prime minister Ehud Olmert was willing to. As though Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was going to recognize a Jewish state. As though US Secretary of State John Kerry was going to come up with a maverick idea to end the conflict. The whole thing was hopeless and stank from the onset.

So why enter into this pointless cycle yet again? Maybe the festival of Passover can shed some light on the conundrum. Passover is the holiday of national liberation from Egyptian bondage.

Yet slavery back then was not only physical, it was also psychological. After hundreds of years of servitude and oppression, the Jews had a hard time accepting the grand idea of liberty when the opportunity presented itself. According to lore, many Jews chose to stay behind in Egypt precisely because they weren’t ready to leave.

Indeed, being locked into any paradigm, even when it is harmful, is a very human trait.

Therefore, the exodus was not only the physical emergence of the Children of Israel from under the hand of Pharaoh – that part was easy.

Rather, it was also a long process of weaning the Jews off of a slave mentality which was drilled into them over time.

Every generation has its Pharaoh. In our time, we have been told over and over again that there is only one way to move past the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is, of course, the two-state solution.

Like a mantra, it has been repeated relentlessly by world leaders, professors and in the press. The two-state mantra has now become our mental bondage, our Pharaoh, and we keep returning to our two-state Pharaoh when our slavish minds refuse to come up with an alternative formula to the one to which we have been conditioned.

By following the suggestions of the stubborn two-state Pharaoh, we have felt the brunt of the Ten Plagues on our own flesh: the plague of the second intifada; the plague of Hamas in Gaza due to the disengagement; the plague of neo-Nazi education of Palestinian children; and the Plague of the creation of a Palestinian narrative in which Israel, the most bona fide of states in the region, is actually the only country challenged as to its very legitimacy.

These plagues are the direct offspring of the stubborn two-state Pharaoh who refused to reverse course even as evidence poured in that the Oslo Accords had created a Palestinian Authority which was a repressive regime to its own people and certainly hostile to Israel.

But the shackles of our bondage are beginning to loosen.

The Obama Administration’s Tangled Web on Jerusalem

...Anyway, in the framework that now never existed, we were told that the aspect relating to Jerusalem would be vague, but that the Palestinians were going to have part of Jerusalem for a capital, although by all accounts not enough of it for Abbas’s liking. So it seems that Kerry has been sent back to the drawing board to come up with something better on that. Meanwhile the State Department would appear to be trying to create a smokescreen and a distraction by condemning Israeli building in Israeli neighborhoods that even the Palestinians say will remain part of Israel.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
06 February '14..

The State Department has condemned plans by the Jerusalem municipality to issue building permits for 558 new homes in Jewish neighborhoods of the city. This reaction only highlights the administration’s confused and messy policy on Jerusalem, which has become a tangled web of inconsistencies, inaccuracies, double standards, and even outright hostility to Jewish rights in Jerusalem, or indeed such basic things as Israel’s right to enforce the law in its own capital.

State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said of the building plans, “Our position on Jerusalem is clear. We oppose any unilateral actions by either party that attempt to prejudge final status issues, including the status of Jerusalem.” This of course is untrue, both in regards to the claim that the administration opposes equally moves by “either party” and in relation to the suggestion that these building plans somehow pertain to an attempt to “prejudge final status issues.”

Firstly, it’s far from true that the State Department opposes unilateral moves by both sides. When it comes to claims in Jerusalem, they only condemn one side, the Jewish side. The municipality issues housing permits in east Jerusalem all the time, for both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. Yet, it is only the permits for the Jewish neighborhoods that provoke any kind of reaction from the Obama administration. Furthermore, illegal Arab building is rife throughout many parts of Jerusalem. As in any municipality, the law must be upheld and construction without planning permission cannot go on unabated. Yet, in the past when the law has been enforced and illegal structures have been demolished, the State Department has protested Israel’s right to uphold the law. In this way the same State Department that claims to oppose unilateral actions by both sides has actively supported unilateral building by the Arab side, while opposing building homes for Jews–in Jerusalem.

Martin Indyk, a Very Snappy Dresser vs. Moshe Ya’alon

...Indyk’s effort is part of a co-ordinated campaign to sideline Israel’s defense minister, by a peace processor whose past policy prescriptions for Israel’s security have been consistently wrong, but who–one must hasten to add–is a very snappy dresser.

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
17 January '14..

Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon violated the first rule of diplomacy–always compliment the emperor on his wardrobe, and limit your comments to concerns about his well-intentioned but possibly counterproductive wardrobe policy. But as Seth Mandel noted, Ya’alon is not alone in his concerns, and the private expression of them has had no effect on the Obama administration–other than to lead it to attack Ya’alon. Israeli columnist Ron Ben-Yishai writes that Ya’alon’s comments were a long time coming:

Ya’alon is mainly against the security aspect [of the framework agreement], and [Kerry and his team] are presenting him as the chief party pooper in briefings they are giving politicians and former senior Israeli military officials. Kerry’s personal emissary, former Ambassador Martin Indyk, has not been shy about his opinion on Ya’alon either, and this has all reached the 14th floor at the Defense Ministry building. Ya’alon didn’t like the defamation and the brawl broke out after bubbling for quite a long time in utmost discretion.

In 2009, Martin Indyk wrote that Israel’s insistence that the Palestinians “allow Israel the means to defend itself” sounded “like a new precondition”–a “well-practiced Netanyahu negotiating tactic.” In 2010, Indyk took to the New York Times op-ed page to castigate Israel for approving Jewish housing in a longstanding Jewish area of the capital of the Jewish state. He considered it a “strategic setback” that required reversal as “the litmus test of Netanyahu’s commitment to the common cause of curbing Iran’s nuclear enthusiasm.” In the same op-ed, he concluded that “nothing could better help Obama to isolate Iran than for Netanyahu to offer to cede the Golan” to Syria. Later, Indyk urged Israel to jump out a window for peace.

Indyk’s self-defenestration suggestion was contained in another 2010 New York Times op-ed, entitled “For Once, Hope in the Middle East,” where Indyk also wrote that:

Security arrangements were all but settled in 2000 at Camp David before the talks collapsed. The increased threat of rocket attacks since then, among other developments, require the two sides to agree on stricter border controls and a robust third-party force in the Jordan Valley.

In other words, he belatedly conceded that the “all but settled” security arrangements of 2000 would not have been effective against the “increased threat of rocket attacks” and the “other developments” that occurred thereafter, and he agreed that something more was necessary. So he revised his position to endorse a “robust” international force in the Jordan Valley.

Thanks for the revelations. We have indeed come a long way – backwards.

...Have we anything to show for decades of regression? Not much if we judge by the revelations from Ramallah. Yet they are among the few things these days we can be thankful for.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
27 September '13..

With the Syrian thriller and its spin-off machinations keeping us at the edge of our seats, who had time to at all notice much less care about the volubility of Ramallah’s honchos?

Too much distracting din made it difficult to pay much mind to Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority cronies. But this didn’t keep them from babbling and what they revealed deserved our attention – even if the utterances in question weren’t the sort that the more politically correct in our midst prefer we dwell on.

The Palestinian al-Hayat al-Jadida daily quoted Abbas as bluntly issuing the following ultimatum when addressing a visiting Arab athletic delegation: “We told the present Israeli negotiators that if you want to go back on what was agreed with [former Israeli premier Ehud] Olmert, we will go back on our agreement for a land swap and so we will ask for all of the 1967 land as is.”

Elaborating further, Abbas claimed that Olmert at the time asked for territorial exchanges amounting to 6% of Judea and Samaria while the Palestinians wouldn’t go beyond 1.9%.

According to another PA daily, Al-Quds, Abbas asserted that the current American-sponsored negotiations revolve around fixing borders and that “the Palestinian position is based on the understandings reached with Olmert. However, the Israelis now want to scrap the understandings reached on borders with Olmert.” He threatened to resume unilateral initiatives at the UN.

Abbas was echoed by senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath, who told Ma’an News Agency that “Israel has not proposed anything so far. Since the talks resumed, Israel had showed no flexibility, with some Israeli negotiators even suggesting talks begin from scratch. The Israeli side does not recognize any of the agreements signed previously including Oslo and the Road Map plan which the Palestinian side has fully implemented.”

He added: “Israel wants the US to remain as its ally and not as a mediator in talks, which is why Israel opposes the presence of US envoy Martin Indyk during sessions.”

The Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, contributed his two cents during an interview to the Voice of Palestine: “until now there has been no progress. Without American pressure on Israel no breakthrough will be achieved.”

Israel was also upbraided for seeking to derail the talks by raising security issues and for having allegedly proposed a Palestinian state within temporary borders on roughly 60% of the territory Ramallah demands. This was summarily rejected because “the principle of a Palestinian state on the entire disputed territory must be accepted first.”

And, not to forget, numerous PA mouthpieces insist that the phased release of 104 convicted murderers (which Abbas secured for his consent to at all parley) must continue no matter how negotiations turn out. And there’s more: the PA now wants 250 others sprung.

All this chatter led Jerusalem to lodge a stiff complaint with Washington over the incessant leaks from Palestinian interlocutors. The talks were launched under the understanding that nothing would be divulged about what was being deliberated – not even technical details – and that only the US could brief the media.

So in a way, we need to be grateful for this Arab gabbiness, skewed and tendentious though it is. Ramallah’s breach of secrecy puts us on alert, which is better than being kept entirely in the dark. The above jibber-jabber happens to be instructive. Here are its essential points:

Martin Indyk's prior efforts ultimately successful in advancing his career

...Give him his due: His shameless positioning and audacious reversals have been successful where they were intended to count – not in making “the cause of peace his life mission,” as Kerry said about him yesterday, but in advancing his career.

Noah Pollak..
The Weekly Standard..
30 July '13..

Secretary of State John Kerry added to the already ample fanfare surrounding the launch of talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators by holding a press conference yesterday to introduce his new special envoy to the peace process, Martin Indyk.

Indyk, unlike his predecessor George Mitchell, has made a career out of the peace process – first as an active participant in the negotiations during the Clinton administration, where he was a National Security Council official and then as ambassador to Israel, and more recently at the Brookings Institution, where he has written, lectured, advised, and founded the Saban Forum, an annual Brookings conference on the peace process.

Kerry gave a simple reason for selecting Indyk: “He knows what has worked and he knows what hasn’t worked, and he knows how important it is to get this right.” Indyk indeed has cultivated the perception that he has not emerged from decades in the Middle East business empty-handed – itself a shrewd way of transforming his involvement in repeated failure into a story of hard-earned wisdom. In Indyk’s (and Kerry’s) telling, twenty years of trafficking in bad ideas and marching down dead-ends have forged a wise elder statesman, a hard-bitten veteran who won’t make rookie mistakes. Indyk’s memoir of his involvement in the peace process, published in 2009, is self-deprecatingly titled Innocent Abroad.

Unfortunately, this humble and attractive story simply isn’t true. Indyk’s record during the Obama era isn’t one of speaking tough truths earned from years of experience in the field. It is a typical Washington story, that of a careerist trying to advance his prospects with the incumbent administration, navigating toward the hoped-for moment when he will be invited back into a position of power and acclaim. For Indyk, this job has been particularly challenging: In 2008, he supported Hillary Clinton, while his colleague Dennis Ross backed Obama. Ross got an administration job; Indyk stayed at Brookings.

Thus Indyk became a cheerleader for nearly every first-term mistake Obama made in the peace process, right until the moment it became safe to criticize those mistakes. Kerry was famously for the Iraq war before he was against it; Indyk was for the administration’s policies before he was against them, which was before he took a job in the administration so that he could be for them again.

Consider some examples of Indyk’s having it opposite ways:

At yesterday’s press conference, he quoted from Obama’s recent speech in Jerusalem that “peace is necessary, peace is just, and peace is possible” – and added, “I couldn’t agree more with President Obama. It’s been my conviction for 40 years that peace is possible.” Yet in an interview just last year on Israeli radio, Indyk was asked whether peace was possible. “I'm not particularly optimistic because I think that the heart of the matter is that the maximum concessions that this government of Israel would be prepared to make fall far short of the minimum requirements that Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] will insist on,” he replied. “So it may be possible to keep the talks going, which is a good thing but I find it very hard to believe that they will reach an agreement.”

The single most astonishing example of Indyk’s opportunism is the settlement freeze that Obama demanded of Israel as a precondition for talks, today widely acknowledged – including by Obama and Indyk – as having been counterproductive. In 2009, Indyk endorsed Obama’s demand for the freeze as the only way to get the Palestinians into talks:

Martin Indyk? A trial balloon for a disastrous choice for mediator

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem..
26 July '13..

The US State Department has floated a trial balloon to test the idea of former US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, serving as mediator in the forthcoming peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It is not surprising that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has signaled his approval. What is incomprehensible is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has done likewise.

Unfortunately the prospect of genuine progress in the negotiations is extraordinarily slim. There is no evidence that the Palestinian Authority will compromise on a single issue. In the unlikely event that the weak, corrupt President Abbas does make even a single concession, his Fatah supporters will immediately topple him.

Nonetheless, an “honest broker” is essential to the process. However, Martin Indyk is not that broker. His track record in presiding over previous peace negotiations indicates that if re-appointed, he will, in all probability, direct negotiations in a manner to ensure that Israel will be blamed for their failure.

Indyk has had an impressive political career. Educated in Australia, he moved to the US where he joined AIPAC and subsequently held executive positions at prestigious Washington, DC think-tanks (Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution). He also has assumed key political positions (Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs in the Clinton administration). After becoming a naturalized US citizen, President Clinton appointed him US Ambassador to Israel – the first foreign born and first Jew to hold the position. He served two terms, from April 1995 to September 1997 and from January 2000 to July 2001.

Indyk’s rise in the political arena has been ascribed to his talent of adjusting to the prevailing political climate of the Democratic leadership. When President Obama was elected, Indyk aligned himself with the new leader, and enthusiastically participated in Obama’s Israel-bashing and Netanyahu-snubbing. He was unsparing and, at times, vicious in his criticism of our Prime Minister, and laid the bulk of the blame on Netanyahu for the breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

He has moved further and further to the left as his career unfolded. He served as International Chair of the New Israel Fund, an organization that has repeatedly been castigated for funding rabid anti-Zionist and anti-Israel NGOs, including several organizations that compiled distorted and false information for the notorious Goldstone Report accusing the IDF of engaging in war crimes.

Why Repeat Clinton’s Middle East Mistakes?

...The notion that a kleptocracy that based its legitimacy on a notion of Palestinian nationalism that rejected true peace with Israel could ever be persuaded or bribed to do so was a myth. Most Israelis absorbed this lesson as they coped with the after-shocks of the Oslo-era fiasco. But it was one that Kerry and some of the professional peace processors like Indyk seem never to have learned.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 July '13..

If there weren’t already enough reasons to be wary of John Kerry’s efforts to convene new Middle East peace process talks this week in Washington, the New York Times just gave us another. Now that his task of pushing parties who already know there’s no chance of an actual agreement being reached into a new round of negotiation has been accomplished, Kerry is prepared to delegate the supervision of this disaster-in-the-making to a subordinate, and his choice is one of the key players in the Clinton administration’s Middle East peace process team. If the job qualifications for the position required experience in presiding over failed peace talks and stoking unreasonable expectations about the Palestinians’ desire for peace while pressuring Israel to make concessions, Martin Indyk is the perfect candidate.

Indyk served as assistant secretary of state and had two separate terms as U.S. ambassador to Israel. As former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold told the New York Times, Indyk certainly has an institutional memory of past efforts and knows the players involved well, though, tellingly, the Times noted that Indyk has “maintained a good rapport with Mr. Abbas, and has also conferred with Mr. Netanyahu.” But Kerry’s selection of one of the grizzled veterans of the crew that piloted the peace process ship and has shown few signs of understanding or even acknowledging all of the mistakes that were made during that time is a sign that Washington is set to be put on course for a repeat of what has already occurred. If Kerry is intent on getting the old band back together that orchestrated the post-Oslo euphoria of the 1990s that culminated in the crackup of the 2000 Camp David summit, he may be setting in motion a chain of events in which that tragedy will be repeated.

It’s useful to think back to the era when Indyk and the rest of his old pals were pursuing peace in the 1990s. The Clinton White House and State Department may not have conceived the Oslo Accords, but they were determined to see them implemented in such a way as to create the “New Middle East” that Shimon Peres wrote about at the time. Many Americans and Israelis shared the optimism that Yasir Arafat’s handshake with Yitzhak Rabin on the White House Lawn had engendered. But that optimism was slowly worn down in the following years as the newly created Palestinian Authority repeatedly demonstrated that it was primarily interested in amassing power and money for the Fatah elites that run it. Indyk and his colleagues steadfastly ignored Arafat’s double game whereby he talked peace to the West and war to his own people. The U.S. position was to treat the PA’s fomenting of hatred for Jews and Israelis and connections with terrorism as irrelevant to the goal of brokering peace agreements. They believed if Israel made enough concessions, and if enough foreign aid were funneled into PA coffers, the result would inevitably bring peace to the region and glory to all those involved.

Arlene Kushner From Israel - A Bit More Clarity

Arlene Kushner..
22 July '13..

There is bad news, my friends, and good news. I am going to start with the bad because it is imperative that it be noted. I don't want to leave this to the end of my posting:

There are reports -- as yet unconfirmed by the Obama administration or Kerry specifically -- that Martin Indyk will be playing a "key role" in Israeli-Palestinian Arab negotiations.

And THAT is very bad news.

Today's JPost alluded to a tweet he put out:

"So Kerry did it. By George he did it! Negotiations will resume forthwith. Now watch the naysayers declare there'll never be an agreement."

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Basis-for-resumption-of-talks-still-shrouded-in-fog-320602

One gets the sense of what this man is like from these few words. His political view lacks reality. There is not a scintilla of humility regarding the difficulties of achieving peace or the huge gaps between the parties that would need to be bridged. No subtlety -- just "charge forward" arrogance. An arrogance that would be/has been the underpinning for pressure on Israel without compunction.

~~~~~~~~~~

Elsewhere in the JPost today, I read reference to a comment made by Dennis Ross, who had been Clinton's special envoy to the Middle East, and had observed that Arafat said "no" at Camp David, "because fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict. We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that clause was, this is the end of the conflict. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open...For him to end the conflict was to end himself."

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Analysis-Wanting-it-more-than-the-parties-themselves-320614

The point of the author of this article was that Abbas may be like Arafat, and indeed this is most probably the case. But I would make a different point here. Dennis Ross, as that special envoy years ago, put enormous pressure on Israel to make concessions. Once Ross left his position and began to write about how he had seen Arafat as someone who would never make peace, he earned my eternal enmity. To serve his goal -- making his boss happy, advancing his own career, whatever it was -- he was ready to pressure Israel into untenable positions.

And I firmly believe that Martin Indyk is cut from precisely the same cloth. This spells Danger, with a capital "D." Indyk's goal would be pleasing Kerry and Obama, showing the world that an "agreement" is possible. (This is clear from that tweet.) Israel's rights? Israel's security? Mere trifling matters.

The ‘peace process’ delusion: Have another meeting!

Jennifer Rubin
Right Turn
Washington Post
10 June '11

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-peace-process-delusion-have-another-meeting/2011/03/29/AGlg6uOH_blog.html#pagebreak

Former U.S. ambassador to Martin Indyk is sadly representative of the cult of peace processors. His penchant for moral relativism (with the mandatory trumped-up criticism of Israel) and selective memory has in the Obama administration been coupled with cheering the White House’s more hostile stance toward the Jewish state. We might suspect the latter has something to do with ambitions to replace George Mitchell. His latest missive in the Financial Times personifies the intellectual cul-de-sac into which the non-peace. non-process has led us.

As a preliminary matter, he does not seem to understand the rules at the U.N. He declares: “The UN General Assembly is in September likely to pass a resolution recognising a Palestinian state. That will ensure its speedy conversion into a Security Council resolution to declare Israel the occupying power of a UN member state.” This is nonsense. An experienced Middle East hand points out, “The UN General Assemply CANNOT recognize and admit a Palestinian state, as long as we veto in the UN Security Council. . . It just cannot happen. The worst we will see is a hortatory UN General Assembly resolution, and it can be bad and make trouble-- but cannot do what he says it can, i.e., lead to a UN Security Council resolution calling Israel the occupying power of an independent state.”

But that’s just the beginning of the poppycock. Indyk writes:

Mr Obama’s [Arab Spring] speech provides the starting point. He should take the principles he enunciated on borders and security and convert them into terms of reference for a new negotiation.

Another negotiation is all it takes? (Proverbial smack to the forehead.) Who knew it could be so easy?

He proclaims, “Mr Obama should announce during the summer that he is inviting them to resume the negotiations on the basis of these terms of reference with a timeline for an agreement by the September 2012 UNGA meeting.” Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies e-mails me, “Indyk apparently thinks that Obama can slap together a serious diplomatic summit in a few weeks and then hammer out an agreement (which has eluded us for a century) before September. For those counting, that’s three months from now.”

Those in the reality-based community also have a problem with Indyk’s pronouncement that “Issuing these invitations will need to trigger a clear message from the European Union and Russia to Mr. Abbas that if he does not accept, they will oppose the General Assembly resolution recognizing Palestine (Mr Abbas will not want to go ahead with that vote if the other main powers do not back him).” But will it? It seems that the Europeans, not to mention the Russians, believe only U.N. recognition can spur “real” talks on issues such as final borders. And what about Hamas in this equation? Are we to invite that half of the unity government also, or just pretend there is no relationship between the terrorist group and Abbas and, therefore, no need to demand that Hamas agree to the Quartet pre-conditions before beginning talks?

Next on his list of wishes is this: “The Arab League will need to be mobilised to support a Palestinian decision to resume talks.” How do we do this and why in the world would the Arab League support talks rather than a trip to the U,N,? (Schanzer dubs this “a long throw from third.”)

Then Indyk suggests that Obama go to Israel and tell the Israelis that, sure, he “cares so much about the future of their children that he is determined to help the Jewish state achieve a secure peace.” Thunk. Obama’s not going to Israel for obvious reasons — he’d be booed or jeered. And there is a reason he would: Only a tiny percentage of Israelis think he’s in their corner.

Indyk then repeats the inanity that Obama labored under: “If Hamas opposes resuming talks because the terms of reference provide for land swaps and recognition of Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish homeland, it will have isolated itself and given Mr Abbas reason to abrogate the unity agreement.” But what if Abbas doesn’t want to abrogate the agreement Israel is supposed to negotiate with a unity government in which both halves don’t agree to the Quartet conditions?

His additional suggestion that the “Turkish prime minister, as Muslim Brotherhood compatriot, might be utilised to good effect” is the cherry on the fantasy sundae.

To paraphrase the old economists’ joke, Indyk demands that we “assume a peace partner.” Israel doesn't have one, or we would not all be in this fix now. Israel faces a Palestinian Authority that has chosen unilateralism over bilateral negotiations and a deal with Hamas over the difficult business of making the concessions (e.g. the right of return) that are essential for a deal. This, alas, is what passes for “smart” diplomacy these days.

I have a better suggestion: Assume a different president.

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