At the beginning of his talk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on July 10, Middle East negotiator and author Dennis Ross almost could have been reciting the Passover hymn “Dayenu” (“It Would Have Been Enough”).
Only instead of praising the miracles that are supposed to have accompanied the Exodus from Egypt, as the hymn does, Ross was explaining how the Obama administration now confronts an unprecedented inundation of simultaneous Middle East developments.
“If it was only the challenge of Egypt,” where the army recently overthrew an elected Muslim Brotherhood regime, “that would have been enough to take up all the bandwidth of any administration,” Ross told an audience of about 200.
Ditto for the civil war in Syria, the quest of Iran’s religious authoritarians for nuclear weapons, the domestic turmoil in Turkey or Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks, he said.
But today, “all these things are happening at the same time,” Ross said. “None of [President Barack Obama’s] predecessors faced anything like this.”
In such a situation, U.S. policy makers and citizens need to have “a high degree of humility” in their approach, he emphasized.
“Nobody predicted that we were going to see this kind of upheaval,” Ross said. Moreover, “we are not the authors of what is going on” in the region and cannot be expected to solve it alone.
“It is often said that the reason we haven’t achieved peace” in the region “is because the U.S. failed,” Ross said. “Last time I checked, it isn’t the U.S. that has to make peace, it is the parties.”
“The U.S. can help” with this process, and certainly the U.S. has “real interests there,” but when “anybody says they can give you an exact description of what needs to be done, you should be extremely cautious as you listen to them,” Ross said
Ross has served in five U.S. presidential administrations. His achievements include assisting in the 1995 Israel-Palestinian interim agreement, brokering the 1997 Hebron Accord and helping facilitate the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
He is currently a counselor to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In his presentation, Ross analyzed what has been happening in Egypt, Syria, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian stand-off, and offered some specific suggestions for what the U.S. could or should do.
In the last named case, Ross referred to an opinion article he wrote for the New York Times this past March in which he listed 14 things that should be done, some by the Israelis, some by the Palestinians, some by both.
Ironically, Ross said at UWM, the Israel-Palestinian situation is “the one stable front” in the region. The surrounding turmoil has “created a chilling effect” on both the Israelis and Palestinians, but also may create an opportunity for progress, Ross said.
“Everyone around [Israel and the Palestinians] is preoccupied with themselves and will be for some time to come,” Ross said. “There is a political space to try to do something” without outside interference.
The problem with the Israel-Palestine situation is that “each side is governed by disbelief” that the other really desires a two-state solution, Ross said. Therefore, he suggested that both sides take specific steps to reduce the other’s mistrust.
Israel, he said, should do West Bank building “only in the settlement blocs” that already exist, which constitute “less than eight percent” of the West Bank; and Israel should open “Area C” — the 60.1 percent of the West Bank now under Israeli civil and security control — to Palestinian economic activity.
That would show the Palestinians both what parts of the West Bank Israel considers negotiable, and that Israel does not “want to control Palestinians’ lives,” Ross said.
The Palestinians for their part should talk openly about “two states for two peoples” and should put Israel on their maps. “It is hard to convince the Israeli public that you want two states when the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have a map that shows Israel,” Ross said.
As for Iran, Ross said the United States should “test the possibility that there could be a deal” on Iran’s nuclear program with the new Iranian president, Hasan Rouhani, a relative moderate whom Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei allowed to win the recent election.
And this test, said Ross, should be one that “takes away excuses” that Iranian negotiators might have. It should state that Iran will be allowed to have “civil nuclear power” but not nuclear weapons, and that this should be verified by a “very intrusive” process, he said.
Ross emphasized that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. If Iran has them, then Saudi Arabia and then Turkey will obtain them, he said.
That will result in a proliferation of nuclear weapons in a region in which “nobody will feel they can afford to strike second, where everybody will have their finger on the trigger, where conflict is the norm, not the exception,” Ross said. “We will have a nuclear war.”
Ross’s appearance was organized by UWM’s Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies and was co-sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the MJF’s Israel Center and Jewish Community Relations Council.
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