You gotta give U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry credit for persistence -- or maybe
just perverseness -- in his efforts to restart the Middle East "peace
process." Given the complete failure of
the past two decades of peace-processing, you might also wonder why he's
bothering. My guess is that he does
realize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still a significant problem
for the United States, as well as a source of continued human suffering. The fighting in Syria and the continued
struggles in Iraq, Egypt, and elsewhere may command more attention these days,
but the situation in Israel/Palestine remains a potent source of
anti-Americanism and a constant headache for every president. Plus, Kerry is an ambitious guy, and who
wouldn't like to be the hero who finally managed to put this century-old
conflict to rest?
News reports suggest that Kerry is trying to advance this
goal by employing a time-honored tool of Middle East diplomacy: bribery. No, I don't mean direct under-the-table payoffs
to key leaders (although the United States has done plenty of that in the past and I
wouldn't rule it out here). Instead, I
mean offering the various parties big economic incentives to lure them back to
the table. Back in the 1970s, for
example, Henry Kissinger got Israel to withdraw from the Sinai by promising it
enormous military aid packages and assorted other concessions. Jimmy Carter did the same thing when he
brokered that Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, and U.S. largesse also
greased the subsequent peace deal between Israel and Jordan in 1994. When domestic politics make it impossible
to use sticks, carrots are all you have left.
For the rest of the story: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/28/bribing_our_way_to_peace
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