A veteran Mideast diplomat brings his own lens to the ongoing conflict.
By BEN FISHERUpdated: DECEMBER 17, 2016 21:39Then-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell to the State Department in Washington in September 2010(photo credit: REUTERS)
Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) may be better known to sports-inclined readers of The Jerusalem Post as the author of The Mitchell Report, a 2007 exposé on performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball. But two years after the report was released, Mitchell was appointed by US President Barack Obama to a very new and different role – special envoy for Middle East peace.With Alon Sachar, he has written A Path to Peace, a book that recounts the history and failings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, tells of Mitchell’s experiences as a diplomat in the region and lays out what they believe to be the best way forward. Sachar is a former adviser to both Mitchell and US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.The first chapters of the book recount the past 100 years in the region and lay the groundwork for Mitchell’s experiences and the author’s proposals. These chapters can be skipped by those who are familiar with the history and pitfalls of the Israeli/Palestinian peace process.Though they are well-written and remind even aficionados of details of Israeli history, they’re not essential by any means.Mitchell’s position on the conflict is to be expected from a Democratic senator, and while some may agree wholeheartedly, others may not like it. (“Settlements are an obstacle to peace because they are constructed on land that the Palestinians and the international community, including the United States, believe should be reserved for a Palestinian state.”) What is more troublesome than his positions are Mitchell’s factual errors. For instance, he refers to Gilo as a neighborhood in east Jerusalem. While Gilo is indeed over the Green Line, it’s actually located in the southwest corner of the city. When discussing the Clinton parameters, Mitchell writes “The Haram al-Sharif would be Palestine’s and the Temple Mount below it Israel’s, a horizontal split,” apparently unaware that al-Haram al-Sharif is the Arabic name for the Temple Mount, and that the two are not above and below each other but are in fact the same thing. These are mistakes that a US diplomat assigned to work on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process should not be making.At times, the book’s diplomatic storyline mirrors the events portrayed in Michael Oren’s Ally, the MK’s memoir recounting time served as the Israeli ambassador to the US. Although the facts are the same, Mitchell paints the cracks in the US-Israeli relationship as Israel’s doing, and Americans as the ones left feeling victimized.The book gets a good deal more interesting when Mitchell gets into his wheelings and dealings with former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat, MK and then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He recounts tense meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and though he often tells readers which politicians he found personally likable, he also admits to finding the Israeli negotiating process incredibly blunt.Like so many well-meaning diplomats who have failed to bring peace to the region, he recounts the futility he experienced in the Holy Land: “Once again we were faced with a stalemate. On my first visit to the region as the US envoy, Netanyahu was opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state but said he wanted direct negotiations; Abbas’s goal was a Palestinian state, but he had no interest in negotiating with Netanyahu.”In the final chapters, the authors warn against a one-state solution, saying that it will only lead to bloodshed and then, inevitably, partition, which could be reached much more easily through negotiations.Mitchell and Sachar lay out their path to peace in the final chapter, encouraging Obama to set out parameters similar to those set by president Bill Clinton before he leaves office in an effort to start toward an equitable solution for both sides.They end on a positive note, and Mitchell brings his experience as architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland into play: “We believe there is no such thing as a conflict that cannot be ended,” they write.“Conflicts are created and conducted by human beings; they can be ended by human beings.”
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