ONLINE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:
Aaron David Miller
On December 19, 2008, a tenuous six month-old cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas expired. Israel announced its desire to extend the cease-fire but Hamas refused, citing Israel’s failure to lift the blockade of Gaza, which severely limited movement to and from the Strip, including the flow of food and other supplies. During the week following the agreement’s expiration, Hamas fired some 100 rockets into Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces responded on December 27 by launching a series of air strikes, followed by a ground invasion. By the time the war ended on January 18, 2009, two days before Barack Obama’s inauguration, over a thousand Palestinians and 13 Israelis had been killed.
Aaron David Miller has advised six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations and is the author of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. Currently a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Miller spoke with Moment fellow Jeremy Gillick about the war, new Middle East envoy George Mitchell and the recent Israeli elections.—Jeremy Gillick
Is there anything different about this latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza?
It was certainly bloodier than most of the Israeli-Hamas tick-tock over the last several years. It was also inconclusive. There are some acts of violence in Middle Eastern history that create political openings. The 1973 October war led to the disengagement agreements and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The first intifada—1987-1989—led indirectly to Oslo; the first Persian Gulf War—1990-1991—led to Madrid. This is a confrontation, I suspect, that has muddied and brought less clarity to the situation. It’s very hard to see how this could give way to a political breakthrough of any consequence.
What did each side gain and what did each side lose?
Israel damaged Hamas’ military infrastructure and will constrain its rearming in the future. It also bought itself some time. There’s no question that it will be a long while before Hamas decides again to launch that kind of high-trajectory weapon with that sort of frequency against southern Israel. So, there has been a level of deterrence created. On the negative side, Israel’s image has been further damaged. The perceived disproportionality, the loss of life and the destruction have been extremely costly. In asymmetrical wars, the smaller party simply has to survive. Hamas has done two things: It’s created a whole new national mythology and narrative of resistance which will play very well even among a disenchanted population in Gaza and in the Arab world, and it has further revealed the weakness of its competitor, the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people. During this struggle Abbas’ key relationships with Israel and the United States seemed to matter not a whit. He couldn’t use them to constrain the Israelis, he couldn’t use them to protect Palestinians, he couldn’t use them to force America to intercede. What is critical about wars sometimes is not how they’re waged, but how they’re perceived to have ended.
Do you think this war was a defining moment in the conflict or was it just a political maneuver on the part of Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak?
When it comes to foreign policy, everything has a political dimension. I don’t think the Israelis moved into this with political calculations uppermost in their minds. In fact, the Israelis went to great lengths to avoid a ground incursion. But there’s no question that you cannot have a triumvirate of decision makers, one of whom is interested in his legacy, Ehud Olmert, and the other two who are still viable candidates for prime minister.
There’s an emerging consensus that Iran is going to be central to any Middle Eastern peace in the near future. Did Iran gain anything from the war?
I don’t think the Iranians anticipated this massive of an Israeli response. But as opposed to Hezbollah, which inflicted serious damage on the Israeli homefront in 2006 and killed a lot of Israelis, thereby establishing itself as one of the most sophisticated and toughest Iranian clients, Hamas did almost no damage to the Israeli homefront, no damage to the Israeli military, and they were whacked pretty hard. From a military point of view, that must raise questions for the Iranians about the utility of military support for Hamas. Politically, however, I think the Iranians used this very deftly, not only to mobilize some of their own constituents at home, but to create this unmistakable message that even though Hamas and the Palestinians are primarily Sunni, this has to be seen from the vantage point of the weaker underdog against the larger power, which is a trope that is extremely important in Shi’a Islam.
What should people know about President Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell that they don’t already?
George Mitchell is really an extraordinary person. In my judgment, since Jim Baker, he’s the only envoy in the last 15 years who combines political stature—he’s a real pol and knows Washington—with a track record of negotiating success, and who is also perceived to be fair and understanding of the needs of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. It bodes very well for what it says about the Obama administration’s intentions. Whether or not it’s going to lead to a situation in which the Obama administration is actually going to be prepared for the tough decisions is another matter. That’s going to depend on opportunities, on how politics shape up both within Israel and the Palestinian polity and Obama’s priorities. Mitchell, however talented and experienced, is still an instrument of the president. There’s no question that Barack Obama cares about this, that he’s going to be different than his predecessor, but there is a question about how much he is prepared to make Arab-Israeli peace a central priority for foreign policy. That will only be known through his actions and through his willingness to make very tough decisions, and there hasn’t been a need for those yet. They will come.
If there is a right wing government in Israel, are the chances for peace greater, as one could argue based on Camp David and the disengagement from Gaza, or lesser?
If it’s Livni, I think you’ll get a greater emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. If it’s Netanyahu, because of his aversion to touching Jerusalem, I think you’ll get emphasis on Syria. I’m not a part of the conventional wisdom which argues that somehow if Netanyahu is elected that will be the end of the peace process. It won’t be. No Israeli prime minister can be viable without adopting some approach on this issue. You’ll get one whether it’s from Livni or Netanyahu.
Do you have any advice for either Mitchell or the Obama administration?
I wouldn’t presume to offer George Mitchell any advice. He doesn’t need it. I would offer two pieces of advice to the president, with all due respect. One, see the world the way it is, not the way you want it to be. Some of the greatest mistakes we make as Americans come from our idealized conception of what we think the Arabs and Israelis need or what we think or sense are their requirements to reach a deal. You really have to go to great lengths to be clear and honest and strip away all of the politics to make an honest judgment about what is required to make a deal. Two, borrow the diplomatic equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. Above all, avoid failing, because for the last 16 years we have been failing in this region and we’re not admired, respected or feared in a region of great importance to our national security, so be careful, and don’t do anything damn foolish.
How might the Obama administration respond to a more hard-line Netanyahu-led government?
We’ve seen this movie before at least twice. One in 1977, when a tough-talking Democratic president—Jimmy Carter—committed to Arab-Israeli peace squared off against a very tough Likud PM, Menachem Begin. There were bumpy patches, but it resulted in an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Of course a lot of it had to do with Anwar Sadat. And then we saw the movie again in 1996, when Netanyahu in his first incarnation squared off against Bill Clinton. These were also bumpy times, but we reached two agreements, which essentially preserved the process. Now, you can’t be imprisoned by the past, but I would bet, given Obama’s priorities, which are largely domestic, and the terrible peace-process narrative out there—Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran looking for a nuclear weapon—that the odds of a major rift between Israel and the United States are very small.
Is Netanyahu aware of that? Will that inform his decision-making if he goes about trying to form a coalition?
I think he’s probably like Sharon, who learned two very important things from the early 1980s before he became prime minister again. Number one, never go beyond your domestic political consensus, and number two, try not to alienate the United States. I think Netanyahu will grasp both. I think he wants to avoid a right-wing government, but he will be a prisoner of his constituents.
Most people discount the possibility that a government with Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman could pave the way to a two-state solution. Do you think that’s a possibility?
I don’t. First of all, I think with a centrist government, the odds of a two-state solution that would meet the basic needs of Israelis and Palestinians are extremely difficult to imagine right now. A narrow right-wing government has essentially no chance of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. There’s a slight opportunity—Lieberman is much less enamoured of territory, that’s not one of his major ideological redlines. There’d be a greater chance of some sort of agreement with the Syrians, but even that would be very hard.
Is Lieberman as scary as he’s been made out to be?
Yes. Lieberman’s got an odd marriage of the civil and the secular combined with the anti-democratic. He essentially marries, from his Russian past, the appeal of a strong leader with the demonization of Israeli Arabs. Whether the realities of government could temper his ideology I don’t know. He seems to prefer a broader government with the three major parties, where Netanyahu and Livni would have a rotational arrangement and he would be foreign minister. If that were the case, I would bet that some of his foreign policy objectives would be moderated. He would not pursue his grievances against the Israeli Arabs—either any sort of transfer policy or a loyalty oath.
Could a national-unity government accomplish anything?
I think a national-unity government could produce an Israeli-Syrian agreement, with a determined American president to help.
Which do you think is the best option?
I don’t think there’s any question that for cohesiveness, stability and the prospects of any agreement, either with the Syrians or the Palestinians, a broader-based government will be functional. The history of Arab-Israeli peace-making really is a history of the right and the center-right. It’s a history of doves talking the talk and hawks walking the walk. That’s from Begin to Yitzhak Shamir to even Yitzhak Rabin, in some respects, who became a strategic dove but was very, very tough. From Israel’s side, Israeli-Arab peace-making has always been a preserve of the right. The problem now is that the right is weak and you don’t have a strong, morally authoritative, historically legitimate Israeli leader to make these tough decisions. That’s the problem. It’s not right or left or center; it’s that Israel has politicians who are prisoners of their constituents, not masters of their politics.
Why has the Israeli left fallen apart?
I think it’s a question of the huge credibility gap between what they espouse and what’s realistically possible to produce. The peace process narrative right now is a horror story from almost every conceivable dimension. There’s no validation in the real world for most Israelis in almost anything that the left or the center-left wanted, and I think that’s the real problem. They don’t have partners, and for the last 16 years—eight under Bill Clinton, he was committed but he stumbled, and eight under George W. Bush, who wasn’t committed and still stumbled.
A couple of months ago Martin Indyk [a former ambassador to Israel and adviser to President Clinton on the Middle East] told me it was possible for Obama to secure both Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian deals in his first term. Is that realistic in light of this conflict?
The odds of getting an Israeli-Palestinian settlement in which an Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian president could stand up after signing an agreement and say “all claims have been adjudicated; Jerusalem, borders, refugees and security have all been worked out,” and an Israeli-Syrian settlement, between now and the end of Obama’s first term, are slim to none. If there was a way to express the impossibility of that in a more precise way I would. How about zero? That’ll do it.
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