A Republican's Case For Middle East Peace

Marshall Breger is a law professor, an Orthodox Jew, and a Reagan Republican.  During the Reagan administration, he served as he White House liaison to the Jewish community.  In short, he is a lifelong defender of Israel.

And that is precisely why he is speaking up now for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Breger understands that Israel's deadliest enemy is the status quo and that those of its supposed friends who defend it are not friends at all.

Here is Breger's roadmap, enumerated in Moment magazine's 35th anniversary issue.

• Israel cannot be a "warrior state" forever.... A warrior state will almost ineluctably become a "pariah state." And against whom will the warrior defend himself? The Palestinians or the entire Muslim world? A round of the conflict of civilizations is one we Jews must avoid no matter how many neo-cons thirst for the final showdown.
• Peace requires territorial compromise: I know that territorial maximalists like to throw around the mantra, "not land for peace, but peace for peace." But that, of course, is meaningless rhetoric. For the Palestinians, peace without any resolution of their national ambitions is submission. Why does anyone imagine that the Palestinians will be satisfied with non-voting resident alien status in Greater Israel? Would we?
• An Israel at peace will not give up its vigilance... The fact is that any conceivable Palestinian state would be demilitarized, and Israel's communications surveillance and military expenditure would be increased, not decreased. Israel's present peace with Egypt is correct but "cold." But I doubt that Israel has given up its vigilance on the Sinai front, nor should it in any arrangement with the Palestinians.
• You will never get to peace without some kind of compromise on Jerusalem: Jerusalem is both a nationalist issue for Israelis and Palestinians and a religious issue for Jews and Muslims. If we refuse to work out a way to allow Muslims a place in Al Quds, we expand the conflict beyond the Palestinians to all Muslims and we ensure religious conflict with Islam for generations. And don't be so sure that the Christian world will remain quiet on this subject....

So there it is: Some basic truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are true whether you believe that the children of Jacob and of Ishmael are consigned to eternal enmity or not.

Unfortunately, the current Israeli government does not see things the way Breger does.  The Netanyahu crowd believes it can have it all: the West Bank, all of Jerusalem, and a caged Gaza, while still receiving more US aid, by far, than any other country.  And it believes that we will use our power to preserve a Middle East where Israel -- and Israel alone -- has nuclear weapons and the freedom of action that they provide.

Dream on.

Even the United States during the last few years has seen itself losing primacy as a superpower.  A few decades ago, it would have been inconceivable to imagine that the economic stability of the United States would hang on decisions made in Beijing and Tokyo.  Had anyone told Richard Nixon, at the time he opened relations with China in 1972, that less than 40 years later China would hold the upper hand in our relationship, he would have laughed.

No one is laughing now.  The United States now treats Beijing the way renters treat landlords or mortgage holders treat the bank.

Every nation in the world is constrained by reality.  And that includes Israel. 

That is why the Obama administration needs to move quickly from support for step-by-step proximity talks to an aggressive push for a comprehensive final status agreement.

Fortunately, Obama does not need to devise his own plan.

The Arab Initiative, endorsed by every Arab state as well as the Palestinians, offers Israel full peace, recognition, and normalization of relations in exchange for the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Arab Initiative, in itself, is not a full-blown, detailed peace plan. It is an offer to Israel: full peace in exchange for full withdrawal. To get to the offer, negotiations need to first take place between Israel and the Palestinians.

Once they reach agreement, the rest of the initiative comes into play. In the words of the Saudi government, "If Israel and the Palestinians can find a peaceful territorial compromise along the lines of UN Resolutions 242 and 338, under which Israel would withdraw from the lands it occupied in the 1967 War, including East Jerusalem, and make peace with a Palestinian state, then the Arab world would not only accept Israel's existence, but have normal relations with it."

In other words, it's up to the Israelis and Palestinians to come to a deal. Once they do, the Saudi offer takes effect.

That is why it is silly to argue about the exact language of the initiative itself. It is not a peace treaty. Its terms, in the initiative's own words, must be "agreed upon," which means that Israelis who complain about the language on refugees have erected a straw man. If the provisions on refugees need to be accepted by Israel, as the initiative states, then what is there for Israel to worry about?

Nothing.

President Obama should unequivocally endorse the Arab Initiative as the rubric under which negotiations should begin.  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not like it. But so what? Netanyahu will never agree to anything unless pressured hard.

Even after relations with the United States practically ruptured over the issue of settlement expansion in Jerusalem, Netanyahu keeps emphasizing that nothing, absolutely nothing, will stop him from building settlements and evacuating Palestinians from their homes whenever his rightwing coalition partners ask him to.

Sweet-talking Netanyahu won't work.  Only pressure will.  So apply it -- but not just over settlements -- over borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood, the Gaza blockade, all of it.

That is the only way to achieve an agreement.  And it is the only way to save Israel from the zealots who, left to their own devices, will destroy a 1,900-year dream. It is your call, Mr. President.  Not Netanyahu's.

Friends do not let friends drive drunk. And no friend would let Israel continue to ignore an offer from the Arab League that addresses every legitimate Israeli concern but also will expire soon if not seized.

No wonder they say that the Israeli right never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.