During the 1991 Madrid Conference, Israeli and Arab leaders sat down with American diplomats and hammered out a comprehensive peace initiative that conclusively put an end to all violence in the Holy Land forever.
Nah, just kidding – that didn’t happen.
Nor did it happen during the Oslo Accords of 1993, or 2000’s Camp David Summit, or the Taba Talks or the Beirut Summit.
America is about as good at bringing peace to the Middle East as it is at playing cricket — Americans don’t understand the rules and have no idea what the hell is going on.
It doesn’t help when the Democratic National Convention chooses to reinsert language into its party platform that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an issue made contentious by the fact that East Jerusalem has been lived in and claimed by Palestinians for centuries.
Former President George W. Bush’s “Road Map for Peace” didn’t resolve the crisis and neither did the 2008 Israeli-Hamas ceasefire.
President Barack Obama tried again with his 2010 “direct negotiations,” but millions of Palestinians still languor in refugee camps and ghettos and the average Israeli bus driver still has the life expectancy of a death row inmate.
Why does America suck at this so badly?
The answer is simple: Conflict resolution depends wholly on an impartial mediator, which America is not.
Israel is one of the world’s largest recipients of direct economic and military aid from the United States. It is also one of the largest purchasers of U.S. armaments and munitions, making them a valuable market for our bullets and bombs.
It’s hard to convince a group of people that you’ve got their best interest at heart when you’re selling their primary foe billions of dollars in military hardware a year.
Love them or hate them, peace in the region won’t be achieved until the Palestinians are brought to the table as equal partners with Israel — and that can’t possibly happen until we quit playing favorites.
Our political leader’s decision to constantly back Israel to the hilt has created a false balance of power in the region.
With our support, Israel can effectively ignore the millions of people under its military occupation and get away with breaking international convention, further undermining the peace process and turning places like Gaza into veritable breeding grounds for extremists.
Not only is America’s stance on this issue somewhat hypocritical, it’s also counterintuitive to our greater goals in the region.
Our greatest goal, I assume, is not to start World War III — or at least not to participate in it.
As Israel continues to build illegal settlements in Palestine and conduct foreign policy with American-backed bravado, they drag us closer and closer to a conflict that is not our own.
If the U.S. was to scale back its support for Israel, Israel might have to seriously consider compromising with the Palestinian people in seeking a long term and equitable plan for peace.
Simply by staying home and not getting involved, America could bring about a legitimate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
And peace between those two peoples would go a long way toward easing tensions throughout the region.
America need not abandon Israel; we simply must re-evaluate our relationship and begin treating the tiny Levantine nation like a friend instead of a member of the family.
It’s high time the U.S. quits wasting its efforts on half-hearted peace initiatives and backs away from the powder keg – before Israel drags us someplace we don’t want to go.
