DAVID ISAAC:America’s ‘Peace Process’ Playbook
www.shmuelkatz.com
With U.S.-brokered, Arab-Israeli talks in process, it’s helpful to become familiar with U.S. tactics, which follow a continuity little changed. This isn’t surprising given the American objective is to force Israel to make concessions which it shouldn’t, but always does. The State Department knows better than to mess with success.
The first tactic is unrelenting pressure. This was most recently demonstrated by Secretary of State John Kerry’s mad-dashing shuttle diplomacy to the Middle East until he wore down both Israelis and Arabs, neither of whom wanted to go to the negotiating table.
Recently, pundits on Mabat, the main news show of Israel’s Channel One, stumbled on American tactic No. 2: Negotiations proceed one issue at a time. To Channel One’s pundits, this is a good thing, demonstrating the age-old wisdom of not biting off more than you can chew. To Shmuel Katz, who was genuinely wise, this is America practicing salami tactics, whereby Israel is forced to swallow one concession at a time until it is in turn swallowed by its enemies.
In his Jerusalem Post op-ed, “No End to the Salami Tactics” (October 20, 1978), Shmuel offers a glimpse of America’s ‘honest brokering’ in action courtesy of then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Harold Saunders.
“Saunders has treated us to a revealing lesson on Washington’s methods in the [Camp David] negotiations (so self-evident, yet so obscured from the gaze of the Israeli negotiators).
“‘The art in this process,’ he said ‘is to put the issues in sequence, so that one decision leads to another … An example of how this works is found in the decision by the Israeli Government to remove the settlers from Sinai. A few weeks ago that decision by the Israeli Government would not have been possible. But when the issue became the last remaining issue between Israel and the peace agreement with Egypt, then the Israeli people made the judgment that that issue should be resolved. I think it’s possible in dealing with the many complicated issues that concern the Palestinians to see a similar sequence of issues that could be resolved…'”
When the first step in the “sequence of events” is the release of terrorist murderers, and the last step is the establishment of an irredentist terror state on its borders, Israel would do well to stay away. The last step is described euphemistically by Kerry as “two states living side by side in peace and security.”
This fictionalizing was on display at the State Department press conference on July 30 announcing the resumption of talks, with Kerry talking about how “Palestinians can finally realize their aspirations for a flourishing state of their own.”
A fictional narrative is required in America’s approach to the conflict, where Palestinian Arabs are remade into something they’re not, that is to say, a peaceful nation merely seeking self-determination. It’s been shown ad nauseam that this is not the case. Anti-Semitism oozes from its every Arab pore. The Palestinian Authority names streets after murderers. It erases Israel from textbooks. And its current leader (described as “moderate” by America) wrote a dissertation denying the Holocaust. Repeating these truths, which the Arabs themselves don’t bother to hide, is tedious. What is interesting is the lengths American leaders will go to ignore it.
In “Reagan — More of the Same,” (The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 6, 1981), Shmuel described then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s reaction when an unpleasant truth was thrust in front of his nose.
“The Paris L’Express recently published an interview with . He was there confronted with a statement by Saudi Prince Fahd that ‘only a holy war can resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. Peace with Israel is only a myth.’ To this Mr. Haig replied: ‘I am confident that Saudi Arabia will continue, as in the past, to play a constructive role.’ Period.”
Like much of what Shmuel wrote, the following from his op-ed “Salami Tactics” (The Jerusalem Post, November 1, 1991) could be written today:
“The extreme danger into which Israel has maneuvered itself should now surely be obvious to the architects of its policy. … The first is that in Washington we are faced by a malevolent administration with far-reaching plans for redrawing the map of the Middle East — according to Arab prescription — which would reduce Israel to a rump mini-state.
“Before deciding on the essential new political and economic strategy, the Israel government must rid itself of, and free the minds of the people from, the fatuous and dangerous notion that the U.S. administration is, or can be, an ‘honest broker.'”
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