There’s a story about a pious Jew who goes daily to the Western Wall in Jerusalem to pray for peace. An American visitor asked him what it feels like to come to Judaism’s holiest site and speak to God.
“It’s like talking to a wall,” he responded.
That must be how U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice felt last weekend when she went to Israel to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. She was praying for peace, but it was like talking to a wall.
And once again, Rice indicated that for the Bush administration, Israeli-Palestinian peace is more wishful thinking than real action.
In unusually strong language, she admonished Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government about its plans to build 1,300 new apartments in Jerusalem’s haredi Orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo as part of a 12-year plan by the municipality for nearly 40,000 new units — all in the eastern part of the city where Palestinians hope to establish their capital.
Rice said the plans are “having a negative effect” on her peacemaking mission and a “violation of the Roadmap.”
As if anyone ever took that five-year-old document seriously — or, for that matter, took the Bush administration’s newfound interest in peacemaking very seriously.
Losing interest
After seven years of not-so-benign neglect, the administration convened a non-conference conference at Annapolis last fall, declaring newfound dedication to fulfilling President Bush’s vision of paternity for Palestine. Many observers attributed the new commitment more to seeking a legacy than a solution to the conflict.
Now it appears Bush himself is again losing interest. While on his farewell tours of Europe and the Middle East this spring, he told a British interviewer, “the dialogue has shifted dramatically” from the Palestinian problem to solving “the Iranian issue” as the key to solving “the problems of the Middle East.”
He still refuses to invest what’s left of his presidential stature in top-level peacemaking.
Israeli leaders are genuinely worried about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the failure of the Europeans to share their sense of impending doom.
But Rice came to talk about the Palestinian issue. Like all of her predecessors, she considers settlements an obstacle to peace, which is what most of their most ardent backers intended.
For an administration that virtually promised to back Israel’s claims to major settlement blocks, why is she getting so upset?
Is it that she feels she’s getting close to an agreement and the construction plans threaten to put the kibosh on it? Or does she know it’s going to fail and it getting a jump on the others in the blame game?
At Annapolis, Bush declared his goal was a peace agreement by the time he leaves office; but that’s been dropped in favor of a vague piece of paper setting forth some broad goals.
Olmert shrugged off Rice’s criticism with the confidence of a man who knows she’s bluffing — and a man who has bigger problems.
This president is not about to begin pressuring Israel to change its settlements policy. He remembers the brouhaha that erupted when his father tried that.
He has no interest in creating a rift that will tarnish his carefully nurtured pro-Israel legacy or that might harm Sen. John McCain’s pursuit of Jewish votes in his presidential bid.
Rice’s own diplomats complain that she is just the front person and Middle East policy is actually being run out of the White House by Elliot Abrams, the hawkish deputy national security advisor. The State Department professionals claim they’ve been marginalized.
For Olmert, agreeing to the new housing mollifies coalition partners who are extorting everything they can as the price for helping the scandal-plagued PM hold his job as long as possible.
The Palestinians may be looking to put their capital in east Jerusalem, but Olmert’s spokesman made it clear Israel intends to hang on to those neighborhoods it is expanding.
Few others in Israel took Rice’s latest demand for a settlement freeze seriously either, judging by the muted response even from the nationalist and settler camps.
This was Rice’s sixth visit this year, and she may have come to bolster the sagging negotiations. But she must have left with a growing realization that any meaningful agreement is unlikely.
The two sides can’t even agree on what they’re talking about. Olmert, to mollify his right wing critics, insists they’re not even talking about Jerusalem and refugees.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says oh, yes we are, because he would lose any support he has if he’d say otherwise.
Olmert, Abbas and Bush insist they want peace, and no doubt they are sincere; but they are lame duck leaders with no followers who are poster children for too little, too late.
Maybe they can come up with a piece of paper expressing their prayers for peace. Then they can fold it up and stick it in a crevice at the Western Wall.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
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