Unending Crisis: National Security Policy After 911 by Thomas Graham Jr

Author:Thomas Graham Jr. [Graham, Thomas Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Military, Arms Control, Political Science, Political Process, History, General
ISBN: 9780295991702
Google: Xuw1aM3GsrQC
Goodreads: 13356000
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2012-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

Palestine

IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST, THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT IS THE original conflict. It is the grandfather of all the international wars in the region, and in one way or another, the peaceful resolution of the crises in the area described in this book depends on its solution. General David Petraeus, in March 2010, while still the chief of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the entire Middle East and Central and South Asia, testified before the U.S. Congress that failure to bring the conflict in Palestine to an end was frustrating the objectives of U.S. troops in the region. Al Qaeda and many other terrorist organizations use this conflict as a recruiting tool and, to a degree, as their entire reason for being.

President Clinton strove mightily to resolve this issue. The high point of the peace process was September 28, 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, came to the White House for the second time in two years and signed the Oslo II Accord (Oslo I had been signed in 1993). Oslo II provided for Palestinian rule to replace the rule of the Israeli Army in the West Bank. It was a time for rejoicing, but five weeks later, Yitzhak Rabin lay dead in the emergency room of a hospital in Tel Aviv. This assassination set Israelis and Palestinians on a course that, over time, would destroy the entire peace process. President Clinton tried his best, but with Rabin gone, he was unable to save the process, although he did come close near the end of his term in 2000.1

In an op-ed published in the New York Times in 2010, President Clinton wrote, “A decade and a half after his death I continue to believe that had he lived, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To be sure the enemies of peace would have tried to undermine it, but with Rabin's leadership, I am confident a new era of enduring partnership and economic prosperity would have emerged.”2 Truly sad words indeed.

It would prove to be a great tragedy, the proportions of which are still being defined, that Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, “judged it better not to try at all than to try and fail, but he drew the wrong conclusion. The problem was not in daring to make peace; it was in how Clinton chose to do it and with whom he had to work.”3

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been a touchstone for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It began before World War I, with the initial Zionist migrations to Palestine to establish a homeland for the Jews and the first takeovers of Arab lands from a people that had been living there for 1,200 years. It has spanned World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the worldwide struggle against terrorism and has continued unabated up to the present day. Perhaps more than any other

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