The shocking exclusion of Arab-Americans

The unexpected, if not surprising, appointment of David Makovsky as a senior member of the State Department’s Palestinian-Israeli peace team, led by former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has triggered a wide-ranging discussion on the internet as a consequence of the inexplicable failure of the State Department to issue an official announcement about the appointment in the first few days of this week.

Arab-Americans were privately shocked that no attempt had been made by leading members of the Barack Obama administration to engage Arab-Americans — be they politicians, academicians, journalists or members of various think-tanks for this all-important undertaking. On the other hand, many American-Jewish personalities have held several important positions to help tackle this crucial issue that has been troubling all US administrations since the middle of the last century. Among the previous officials were Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller, Eliot Cohen, Paul Wolfowitz and Gary Schmitt. Interestingly, Makovsky’s brother, Michael, is the chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, where he is said to have been “a leading proponent of hawkish US policies on Iran”.

The State Department has yet to issue an official announcement that Makovsky is now a senior member of the Indyk team which, to date, reportedly includes eight others. A former journalist, Makovsky has worked here and in Israel, where he was editor of the Jerusalem Post. His most important position lately has been as senior member of The Washington Institute for Near East Report (WINEP) — a spin-off of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), considered a core member of the “Israel lobby” — where he worked closely with Denis Ross, a onetime White House staffer during the first term of President Obama.

Noam Sheizof of “+972”, an independent blog, reports that Makovsky’s “signature work in the last couple of years is a set of two-state maps that would allow Israel to annex most of the West Bank (illegal) colonies, along with ‘fingers’ leading them at the heart of the (projected) Palestinian state, in exchange for desert land that would be handed to the Palestinians at a 1:1 ratio”.

She adds: “It is very likely that those maps are what got Makovsky into Indyk’s team,” since the Israeli media has recently reported that the American negotiators are preparing to present their own two-state maps. However, she insists, that his maps are a non-starter for any “credible” Palestinian leader.

On the other hand, The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based multi-issue think tank, credits Makovsky, who until his State Department appointment had directed the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at WINEP, for having “charted a relatively moderate course on Israel-Palestine” despite having been previously critical of Palestinian leaders. It claimed that “Makovsky supports a two-state solution and has cautioned against activities that could threaten it, including (illegal) Israeli settlement [colonies] building in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

In turn, William Quandt, a professor at the University of Virginia and a former staff member of the National Security Council in the 1970s, who played a role in negotiating the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, expressed confidence last Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry will also have an active role in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. He told a large audience at the Washington-based Palestine Centre: “I can’t imagine that Secretary [of State John] Kerry has invested as much time and energy as he has unless he has in the back of his mind that at some point in the near future, the United States will put forward some kind of bridging proposals.”

Ali Abu Nimah, a co-founder of the online popular journal Electronic Intifada, underlined that “for the Palestinians, no deal with Israel is better than a bad deal, because a bad deal would irrevocably cancel Palestinian rights. And now, the only thing protecting Palestinians from a bad deal is Israel’s intransigence”.

Both the Iranian negotiations with the so-called “P5+1” group of nations (US, Britain, France, Russia, China + Germany) over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the lethargic Palestinian-Israeli peace talks coincidentally face the same deadline: April 2014.

If neither can come to a satisfactory solution, it is time for some serious arm-twisting by the major powers.

George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com