Waging Peace, Pages 61-62

MEI’s Annual Conference Calls for Rewriting Middle East Agenda

Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer calls for a change in Israel’s settlement policy. (Staff photo R. Carroll)

THE MIDDLE EAST Institute held its 63rd annual conference on Nov. 10 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, hosting a series of panels and speakers who discussed possible revisions to the U.S. agenda for the Middle East.

State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs William Burns opened the conference with a thoughtful speech on the lessons he’s learned as a diplomat in the Middle East. “I’ve learned that a little humility goes a long way in the exercise of American power and purpose in the Middle East,” he said. “We come by that humility honestly, through many trials and many errors. Winston Churchill, a life-long admirer of America, once said that the thing he liked most about Americans was that they always did the right thing in the end...they just liked to exhaust all the alternatives first....

“If there’s one issue that should keep us humble,” Burns continued, “it is the elusive quest for Arab-Israeli peace. While not a magic solution to all the many ills of the region, no other issue cuts closer to the core of what drives emotions throughout much of the Middle East.”

Burns concluded by saying he genuinely believes that with sustained and creative American leadership, a willingness from leaders in and outside the region to take responsibility alongside us, and long-term investment in building economic and political hope across the Middle East, the future holds real and enduring promise.

The conference then turned to a series of panels to explore the specific dilemmas in the region, beginning with the “Iranian Nuclear Challenge.” On the future of U.S.-Iranian relations, Karim Sadjadpour, associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, “It is going to be very difficult to reach a nuclear accommodation with a regime which believes it needs us as an enemy.” Referring repeatedly to how massive the opposition to the current Iranian administration has grown since the June presidential elections, he cautioned, “It is going to be a challenge to try to reach that modus vivendi with the government without betraying the will of the many people in Iran who are opposed to the government.”

Former CIA director and prominent neocon James Woolsey concluded the panel’s analysis by suggesting a possible dialogue with Iran, while maintaining its enemy status. “I hold no particular hope for Iran not being in pursuit of a nuclear weapon nor of sanctions of the sort that we have seen so far being likely to have any substantial effect,” he said. “I do believe that there is a perfectly reasonable case to be made for talking with Iran, but one has to ask what leverage one has and whether the talks are likely or indeed have any chance of producing any positive result.”

Other panels discussed Iraq and military security in the region, but the most illuminating panel was the one that closed the conference. Author and former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel Kurtzer; Daniel Levy, senior fellow at the New America Foundation; and director of the Aspen Institute’s Middle East program Toni Verstandig were among the experts assessing the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“I don’t think the Palestinians are going to negotiate their de-occupation with an Israeli side which is at best ambivalent about whether it is actually up for the task of de-occupation,” said Levy, appraising Israeli political realities. Addressing concerns that President Barack Obama might be sidelining efforts to restart peace negotiations, Levy stated, “It’s way too early to give up on this administration, but if we keep going as we are then I will think again about that.”

Ambassador Kurtzer recapped progress made in resolving the Mideast conflict, paying particular attention to the early 1990s, when, he said, “the Arab world understood that the absence of peace and a predisposition to fight a battle of 1948 rather than to deal with the consequences of 1967 was holding back the Arab world from dealing with the upcoming threat of Iran.”

Kurtzer, currently S. Daniel Abraham Chair in Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, also highlighted the importance of stopping Israel’s settlement activity and defining the borders of the state of Israel.

“Any government in Israel that has allowed settlement construction, that has licensed it, that has permitted settlers to build, can also tell settlers that it has changed its policy,” he concluded. For more information or to view podcasts of some of the panels visit : <www.youtube.com/watch?v=v82W__kB9A4>.

—Ryan Carroll