South by Southwest: Middle East peacemakers

The Middle East peace process seems to be interminable. Unfinished accords, agreements, countless fruitless plans for a final solution, and a road map, gather dust while bullets fly and bombs explode. Many non-peaceful and significant events have happened since my post about it in August 2005. The West has had peacemakers working in the region, but the successes have been spotty. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just completed the third leg of her tour there, making very little progress. Israel is still refusing to ease restrictions on Palestine. U.S. efforts appear to be piecemeal, rigid, unsophisticated and scattered. A much more skillful and comprehensive level of diplomacy is called for.

Good ideas - UN Special Envoy for the Middle East, Terje Rod-Larsen spoke about such an approach (audio link) at the Paul Nitze School of International Studies (SAIS) on October 3, 2006. Now President of IPA, the International Peace Association, Rod-Larsen works as a personal representative for the Secretary General of the U.N., focusing his most recent efforts in Lebanon.* What follows is a compilation of my notes and conclusions, as accurate as I can make them, taken from two broadcasts of his speech on C-SPAN, as well as the audio linked above.
A long history of different approaches to making mid-east peace - What I really liked about this man's presentation was his ability to summarize and characterize the history of the long and elusive quest for peace in this most troubled of regions. And his proposals for solutions make the best sense that I have heard in a very long time. Terge Rod-Larsen begins with a history.
Very public, multilateral approach - In 1991 the Madrid multilateral conference negotiations sent huge delegations, led by the U.S. and Russia. According to Rod-Larsen they mostly held press conferences speaking to their own electorates and "the streets", rather than speaking to each other.
Bilateralist/Gradualist approach - In January, 1993 - secret work on what finally became the Oslo accords - a declaration of principles - began. The participants were the PLO, Israel and a small group of facilitators including Rod-Larsen. The approach embodied a necessarily covert set of pre-negotiations that built trust and the belief in a solution. When U. S. diplomats Dennis Ross and Warren Christopher learned of the meetings they both quickly approved. After some hard work, on 9/13/93, the very public signing occurred on the White House lawn. The Oslo agreement was possible because of the psychological change eventuated between the two parties. It was a political revolution. It established PLO/Israel mutual recognition . Final status issues put off, however. The diplomatic process continued until 1996. Economics were good in the region. A number of Israel's succeeding leaders continued the Bilateral/Gradualist process. Paradigm shift to totalism - Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke the pattern, however at the end of the Clinton administration's peace process. The problem, as Barak put it to Rod-Larsen, was "the need to beautify an ugly dog. One chop to remove the dog's tail is what is needed, not slicing it off like salami." Barak proposed Gradualism vs. (the new) Totalism: do everything in one go. The resulting Trilateral approach- U.S./Israel/PLO talks failed miserable on all points in 2000. Camp David collapsed. Rod-Larsen feels that the biggest mistake was that key Arab nations were not brought in to support the agreement and work with Arafat to get his buy-in. The second Intifada with renewed violence broke out.
Unilateralist/militarist approach: "Sharon I" - When Ariel first became Israel's new PM, Rod Larsen met with him as soon as Sharon took office. In a surprising move he suggested Sharon pull out of Gaza, because he came to believe that Sharon was a pragmatist. Sharon shifted the peace process to unilateralism and militarism after his first election.
"Sharon II," more Totalism - Next the Quartet produced the "Road map" (negotiated only by the members of the Quartet) who said to parties, "take it or leave it." This totalist approach, however, was never comprehensive. Sharon II- which broke down Sharon's original Likud ideology with the pull-out from Gaza,"was the radicalization of the Oslo accords," according to Rod-Larsen.
Decay and erosion today - The situation with PLO/Fata/Hamas vs. Israel, if left alone, will continue to deteriorate. Hamas refuses to recognize any of the several agreements upon which their current success stands. And Israel's body politic was weakened as a result of their war in Lebanon.
The reality is - Perceptions drive actions, Rod-Larsen believes. And many actions by the parties in the region rest on the belief that the over-riding conflict is a Persian-Arab one. Thus things have gotten much more complex in recent years. Earlier there was a single center of gravity with the conflict contained mostly within Israel and the Palestinian territories. Over the last 4 to5 years, four conflict-ridden centers of gravity have developed:

Iraq is a perceived "proxy" war between the United States and Iran, in the opinion of many in the region.
Iranian issues focus on nuclear ambitions as well as acting through proxies in a number of the conflicts.
Syria-Lebanon sector conflict: Many of Rod-Larsen's recent activities have been on behalf of the UN Secretary General following the Israeli-Hezbollah war on Lebanese soil. He reports that 8600 Lebanese soldiers are on border with Syria, offering some deterrence to the rearming of Hezbollah; there is international naval presence on the coast near Beirut, and their airport is secured. Damascus "must not destabilize others," says Rod-Larsen.
Palestinian-Israeli conflict goals are containment of violence, securing the borders, and resolving all the remaining issues into a final solution.

What to do now? Gradualism with two steps - This very knowledgeable speaker suggests that peacemakers, "go back to the fundamentals" Using a Gradualism two-step approach and the agreements already established, including the Road map, the parties can proceed step by step. Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the PLO and President of the Palestinian Authority, has the authority to negotiate directly with Israel's PM, Olmert. The phases would be to 1) Negotiate a Palestinian State with proposed state borders. Hold a referendum among the people of Palestine to validate it. Third party peace keeping forces then come in to establish security. (Rod-Larsen gave examples of gaining such general calm: the UN forces both in Golan and in southern Lebanon.) Then hold elections for the leadership of Palestine. And 2) In the package would be a guarantee that final status negotiations would take place as soon as the election is final.

In the Q & A, the speaker stated that he had not yet gotten the opportunity to meet with President Bush on his trip, but said that he had communicated his plan to both Abbas and Olmert. Too bad. The plan makes sense to me.
*References: