Rejectionism:
-"The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab- Israeli peace on all fronts."
Paragraph #19
ISG
rejectionism then:
Noam Chomsky September 8 1991-rejectionism now:
The lack of policy was evident from James Baker's briefing after the coup had collapsed ("Baker's Remarks: Policy on Soviets," NYT, Sept. 5, 1991). The Secretary of State presented a "four-part agenda."
Three parts were the kind of pieties that speech writers produce while dozing: we want democracy, the rule of law, economic reform, settlement of security problems, etc. One part of the agenda did, however, have a modicum of substance, the third item, on "Soviet foreign policy." Here, Baker focused on his "efforts to convene a peace conference to launch direct negotiations and thereby to facilitate a viable peacemaking process in the Middle East."
As Times diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman explains in an accompanying gloss, the Soviet Union should "work together with the United States on foreign policy initiatives like Middle East peace."
What is of interest here is what was missing. "Soviet foreign policy" does indeed have a role in the Bush-Baker Middle East endeavor. The Soviet role is to provide a (very thin) cover for a unilateral U.S. initiative that may at last realize the U.S. demand, stressed by Kissinger years ago, that Europe and Japan be kept out of the diplomacy of the region. Baker's phrase "direct negotiations" is the conventional Orwellian term for the leading principle of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism: the framework of the "peace process" must be restricted to state-to-state negotiations, effectively excluding the indigenous population and any consideration of their national rights and concerns. They offer no services to the U.S. and, accordingly, have no meaningful rights.
That is the core principle of the rigid rejectionism that the U.S. has upheld for 20 years in virtual international isolation (apart from both major political groupings in Israel), and now feels that it may be in a position to impose.
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James A. Baker III September 1994-
The Arabs no longer present as much of a unified front as they used to, for three reasons: the collapse of communism and the end of the East-West conflict; the defeat of Arab rejectionism and radical Palestinian elements in the Gulf War; and the fact that Israel has now reached an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
And you've got Gaza-Jericho first there and - and that deal was made without consultation with - with some of the Arab states. So, the states have less of a reason to condition their positions on whatever will result in the permanent status talks. As a result, they're less committed to the idea of a Palestinian state.
I suppose they will still give lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state, but the Syrians particularly feel free to reach an agreement with Israel on peace without regard to what happens on the Palestinian track.
At least with respect to the countries around Israel, you're not going to get real economic development until there's peace. And when you do get peace, boy, there's going to be tremendous development and economic activity in so many different ways in those countries - in Israel herself and in the countries bordering Israel. And I'm optimistic that you can get peace.
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Noam Chomsky April 12 1991:-
A Security Council resolution in similar terms had been offered by Syria, Jordan, and Egypt as far back as January 1976 with the support of the PLO and indeed initiated by it according to Israel. It was vetoed by the US. Europe, the USSR, the Arab states, and the world generally have been united for years on such a political settlement, but the US will not permit it.
The facts are unacceptable, thus eliminated from history.
For twenty years, the US has backed Israeli rejectionism. For that clear but inexpressible reason, the peace process remains a "hypothetical creature." There is one simple reason why an international conference is "unwieldy": participants will support "the right to self-determination" for the indigenous population.
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MR. BAKER: Well, here's what we thought at the time. We said to ourselves, "Look, we have great credibility now with both sides, as a consequence of having defeated Arab rejectionism in the Gulf." The Gulf War was a defeat of Arab rejectionism that gave us even more credibility than we normally had with Israel, which is a lot, because we had defeated the number one threat to Israel's security. And we had great credibility with the Arab nations, because for many of them we had saved their bacon. So we could go to them and say, "Now, look, now is the time to get serious about peace and to really work at it."-
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The problem is not that the Israelis will not concede to the Palestinians a state. It has been very clear at least since Camp David in 2000 that the Palestinians can have a state in the West Bank and Gaza any time that they are able and willing to offer peace in return.
Current Israeli PM Olmert was elected on a platform of essentially trying to give them that state even in the absence of such a commitment.
Disagreements over scraps of land are not what is holding peace back.
What is holding it back is primarily the perpetuation of Arab rejectionism of Israel in any borders.
Rejectionism is at the moment being strongly promoted - with money, weapons and aggressive propaganda and diplomacy - by the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, which is escalating its bid for regional hegemony while the US is distracted in Iraq. By essentially agreeing with their rhetoric that all the region's problems are connected to Israel, well-intentioned outsiders are making them stronger, which is the last thing anyone who hopes for peace should want to do.
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US President George W. Bush rejected the main recommendations of the Iraq Study Group after holding talks Thursday in Washington with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
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Olmert rejects linking Iraqi and Israeli conflicts:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today said he had no intention of opening peace talks with Syria, despite the recommendations of a US advisory group.
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...irrespective of the ISG's rejection of a timetable, the report's willingness to put the issue forward merits attention: "The question of the future US force presence must be on the table for discussion." This, and another of the report's recommendations, for a more overt US overture toward Iraq's Shi'ite leaders and the appointment of a "high-level American Shi'ite Muslim to serve as an emissary" to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, should be welcomed by Tehran.
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Israel has rejected claims by a team of elder US statesmen that the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved unless the US also tackles the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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The paper highlights comments on the report from Rush Limbaugh ("stupid"), the Wall Street Journal editorial page ("strategic muddle"), and Richard Perle ("absurd"). And, oh yeah, the New York Post, which calls James Baker and Lee Hamilton "surrender monkeys."
On the other end of the debate are Republicans like Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, who says: "The American people are essentially unified in their intense dissatisfaction with the way things have progressed in Iraq." Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol comments that the choice for party members will come down to Baker or John McCain, and the choice will have to be made soon. McCain, of course, has argued for more troops and rejects the ISG report's main recommendations.
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Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, a longtime Washington ally, has angrily rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, warning that any delay in deciding the fate of an oil-rich region claimed by the Kurds would have "grave consequences."
Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver at Foreign Policy in Focus have some clear and sensible things to say about the ISG report
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As does, as always, Helena Cobban:
"From that point of view, it is barely "about" Iraq at all. It is much more "about" this group of senior statespeople trying to grab hold of the wheel of the ship of (the American) state and slowly drag this lumbering great vessel away from a course that has been-- and still is, to this day-- most evidently headed towards a disaster."
