The 1980s: No Longer the Heroic Age of Arab-Israeli Diplomacy

by Daniel Pipes
Foreign Policy Research Institute
January 8, 1990

https://www.danielpipes.org/19314/1980s-no-longer-heroic-age

Translations of this item:

Italian

Already in 1980, it was clear that the era of heroic American achievements in the Arab-Israeli conflict had come to an end.

No doubt, American officials engaged in the current round of Arab-Israeli diplomacy look back to the 1970s with wistfulness and a touch of envy. For sure, that was a difficult time, what with two oil embargoes, overbearing oil potentates, and a dramatic sense of declining American strength. But it was also an epic age, heady years when Americans achieved their greatest diplomatic successes in two centuries.

The golden era began mere days after the conclusion of the October 1973 war; at its peak it starred Henry Kissinger shuttling between Jerusalem, Cairo, and Damascus, then Jimmy Carter holed up in the Maryland woods with the leaders of two Middle East belligerents; and it ended in March 1979, almost as abruptly as it began, with the signing of an Egypt-Israel peace treaty on the lawn of the White House.

The final year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, 1980, saw the president and his aides increasingly sour on the Camp David Accords and their legacy. Subsequent American efforts came to naught. Ronald Reagan's administration began with high hopes but by the time of the Reagan Plan in September 1982 (an effort to link up the Palestinians with Jordan), nothing came of it. If further confirmation were needed, it arrived a few months later, when Secretary of State George P. Shultz spent two (now long-forgotten) weeks shuttling between Middle East capitals in an effort that rivaled any of Kissinger's. He did broker a Lebanese-Israeli accord, but it was immediately abrogated and ended up barely worth the paper it was written on. In the phrasing of the time, Shultz had been "burned." In my phrasing, the undertaking took on a quality of opera bouffe.

This double failure of the administration's Middle East ambitions had major implications for the years to come; by early 1984 the American secretary of state had gained a healthy respect for the complexities of the area – and kept largely and benignly away. Ironically, the next four years were some of the best ever for the United States government in the Middle East. Arguably, at no time in the forty-five years since Washington became a major player had its policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict been as stable and successful.

Finally, it seemed, Washington had realized that its strength lay in alliances with the democratic states of the region, Turkey and Israel in particular, and not with the exotic range of presidents, kings, and emirs who ruled despotically. For once, the ever-volatile relationship with Israel attained maturity; no longer did the usual problems cause crises. Gone were the years of "reassessment" and contentiousness. Better yet, American officials had finally learned that the Arab-Israeli conflict was not the only problem in the Middle East, nor even the largest or most pressing.

Alas, this era of stability and vision came to an end in mid-1988, due to a combination of the Palestinian intifada starting in December 1987 and King Hussein of Jordan's renunciation of claims to the West Bank in July 1988. These precipitated a sequence of actions by the Reagan administration that culminated five months later in the opening of a dialogue with Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

In response Shultz made four trips to the Middle East. Again, the secretary had nothing to show but failure. Then, in the final half-year of his tenure, Shultz tried an entirely new tack; rather than deal with the states, as he had in all three of his previous efforts, he would deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the actor widely considered on the Arab side to be at the heart of the matter. Several months of negotiations preceded the formal opening of a U.S. dialogue with the PLO in December 1988.

Shultz left office in January 1989, but he bequeathed the nascent U.S.-PLO dialogue to his successor, James Baker III, who followed not Shultz's prior wise path but the new direction of his final months. Indeed, trying to bring the PLO into a working relationship with Israel became the primary focus of Washington's diplomacy in the Middle East. It defined the George Bush administration's efforts to getting diplomacy moving again. Unfortunately, this marked a reversion to the old-style tension with Israel and the old illusions about what the Arab governments can do for the United States.

Such are the hopes. In fact, the "process" is so completely stalled that Yasir Arafat even threatens to break off talks with Washington – a startling thought, given how long and hard he worked to get them going. To the immense frustration of everyone hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough, the peace process risks becoming an irrelevant stripped-pants talkathon. The main action increasingly appears to be on the ground -- the battles taking place in Lebanon, the quiet murder of "collaborators" on the West Bank, and the evident ability of Israelis to live with the intifada for years.

Looking ahead, there is every reason to expect the American government's frustrations to continue. The reason is simple: President Bush and Secretary of State Baker are acting on the basis of two dubious, if not downright false notions. When it comes to means, Washington assumes that the Palestinian-Israeli dimension is the key to the conflict; on the matter of ends, it assumes that a compromise between Israelis and Palestinians is possible. So long as the administration begins with these notions, its diplomacy is unlikely to go anywhere. But should it go beyond them, the United States again has an important role to play in Middle East.

Thus did the 1980s end with U.S.-Israel relations mired in roughly the same impasse where they started.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Related Topics: Arab-Israeli debate in the U.S., US policy

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