Mitchell's Objective: Results, Not Frequent Flyer Miles

Having worked on the Arab-Israeli negotiations for a number of years, I don't envy President Obama's Middle East envoy Senator George Mitchell. He's clearly the right man for the job--the first serious American envoy since James Baker, who combines the requisite political stature, negotiating skills, and fairness to even stand a chance of getting the job done. It's not the man but the job I'm worried about.

The Senator deeply believes that all conflicts created by men and women can be resolved by men and women. Whether the President actually believes this is another matter. In any event, it's an arguable proposition, particularly when you add the notion that these are conflicts made by men and women who are invoking both God's name and their own physical and political survival to define the stakes. It's really not Northern Ireland, even with all the similarities, precisely because existential questions hang over the negotiations and cloud the minds of Palestinians and Israelis like some nefarious black cloud. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is set within a broader confrontation between Israel and the Arab world, and possibly a conflict with Iran as well.

Senator Mitchell, talented as he is, may yet find a way forward. But it's useful as he heads off on his third trip to the region in as many months (a problem I will discuss below) to take a look back at what was required to create past breakthroughs. History is instructive here, not in an effort to create a prison and to prevent action. But rather as a cautionary tale of prudence which speaks volumes of what has and what has not worked in the past.

Each breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli arena from the disengagement diplomacy in the 1970s to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty to Madrid and through Oslo to the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty has required at least three elements;

First is leadership. Statesmen/politicians willing and able to risk their political futures, indeed their lives, were necessary. These leaders needed to be more masters than prisoners of their own politics-from Begin to Sadat to Rabin to Hussein even to Arafat until 2000. And yes, even Yitzhak Shamir, who was dragged to the Madrid peace conference, but was able to drag a right-wing Israeli government with him.

Second is urgency. Each breakthrough was accompanied by both the presence of pain and the prospects of gain, which were sufficiently consequential to impel the parties to act.

And finally, a third party who was determined and committed, for its own interests, to see the job through to the end, whatever the endgame happened to be.

Clearly, the first two ingredients do not exist now in sufficient quantities on their own to impel Arabs and Israelis to act. What concerns me is the third element-- America's role. I don't doubt the commitment, but commitment without a strategy and a purpose and a requisite toughness and reassurance that need to accompany it won't lead anywhere, and in fact in the end will make America look bad. It's still early, but bad habits, as I know from our mistakes in the past, start early. The envoy can visit frequently, but it must be part of a broader plan to which the parties themselves are genuinely committed and working towards. Even then, the envoy must maintain a detachment and a distance so that the locals don't see his or her (in the case of the new Secretary of State) visits as a take-me-for-granted, regular occurrence. I'm told that a new Hebrew word entered the lexicon to mark the frequent flyer diplomacy of the last Secretary of State: to be Condilized in transliteration. You get the point.

Listening and assessing works only up to a point. And it doesn't work at all if one or both of the parties aren't signed up to the basic rules of the road that give the negotiations a chance to actually succeed. That means making clear to the Israelis and the Palestinians that no process is better than a dishonest one. A serious two-state solution must be the endgame. And it means making clear to the Palestinians that any agreement requires a unified Palestinian house willing to negotiate with Israel on terms that are of this world and without the use of terror and violence.

Neither of these conditions are now in place, which is why the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement are slim. The Obama administration might move more profitably to explore the possibility of an Israeli-Syrian deal, although even this will be an all-consuming enterprise. But whatever it does, the administration needs to avoid setting a pattern in which it is being taken for granted, viewed as part of the political furniture, and used as cover for Arabs and Israelis who aren't really interested in doing what's required to make the negotiations succeed. Nothing personal, you understand, but if you aren't ready to pay the price to reach the endgame, then we're simply going to withdraw our support and involvement in the process of peace-making and call it as we see it, complete with identifying the responsibility for the impasse.

The last thing this administration needs is another Hebrew or Arabic word to describe a superpower wandering around in the Middle East like some modern-day Gulliver, tied up into knots by small tribes who push America around without cost or consequence. Or an envoy who comes and goes and whose footprints every time he does are washed away in the sand on a Tel Aviv beach.

Aaron David Miller is the author of The Much Too Promised Land, and is currently working on a book on Presidential greatness.