US, Middle East, & Iran Feature: RIP, Dennis Ross

See also Treading Softly on Iran: Dennis Ross Sneaks into the Administration
US-Israel: The Big Fight Within Obama Administration --- Ross v. Mitchell, NSC v. State Department
Middle East Analysis: Dennis Ross & the Battle Within the Obama Administration

Benjamin Netanyahu & Dennis RossTwo years ago, the departure of Dennis Ross from the Obama Administration would have been immediate, front-page news for EA. Throughout 2009, we ran a series of features on the advisor, who was first in the State Department and then the National Security Council, and the ways he tried to shape Amercian policy towards Iran and the Middle East. It is a sign of the intensity of the every-day developments in the region, and of the shift in our focus, that we are only now getting to last week's confirmation of Ross's departure. 

Still, we should not fail to say good-bye, given Ross' significance within the Administration. That significance lay in an aggressive, all-means-necessary approach to take down enemies abroad and next door --- almost literally in the case of Obama envoy George Mitchell, whose efforts at an Israel-Palestine settlement were quickly challenged by Ross's manoeuvres.

Ross was shuttled to the National Security Council, in part to get him away from Mitchell, but this did not stem his efforts. Bluntly summarised, those were to bully a perceived adversary into negotiations. Israel would only face meaningful talks once the Palestinian Authority had accepted a series of demands; the "international community" would only move to agreement with Iran once Tehran had made the substantial concessions.

It was an approach guaranteed to fail, and it did. Mitchell persisted but finally gave up. There is no foreseeable prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which explains why the Palestinians made their move in September for recognition by the United Nations. The window for a resolution with Iran on the nuclear issue closed in November 2009 --- to be fair to Ross, more because of internal politics in Tehran than his politics within the Obama Administration --- and it has never re-opened. With that closure, Ross' vision --- sanctions, more sanctions, and the threat of even tougher action to force Iran to its knees has triumphed over the following two years.

Over to Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University, writing for The Hill, to offer an eulogy:

Ross's Departure
Rashid Khalidi 

Dennis Ross has finally left the building. Since the Carter administration, Ross has played a crucial role in crafting Middle East policies that have prolonged and exacerbated the more than six-decade conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. His efforts contributed significantly to the growth in the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories from well under 200,000 in the 1980s to nearly 600,000 today. It is in no small measure due to him that the two-state solution is all but dead.

Ross’s tenure during the administrations of five presidents over parts of five decades was marked by a litany of failures. And yet he went from success to bureaucratic success in Washington. His ability to flourish despite these failures reflects the degree to which obsequious support for Israel has become the norm in American politics, even when it contradicts U.S. national interests.

My most telling memory of Ross came in 1993 when, during an impasse between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, he offered an American "bridging proposal." When we read it, members of the Palestinian delegation (to which I was an advisor) were shocked: in important respects, it represented a harder line than the Israeli position. 

Ross’s obvious lack of impartiality revealed that this was not an honest broker, but a man who was more Israeli than the Israelis themselves. Throughout, Ross imperiously claimed that his own (highly flawed) estimate of what was acceptable to Israel was the absolute ceiling of U.S. policy, rather than standards based in established U.S. policy, or international law, or Palestinian legal and human rights.

This is just one example of why his former colleague, Aaron David Miller, wrote that American negotiators often act like "Israel's lawyer.”  Ross's actions should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career. Prior to joining the first George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations, Ross was co-founder, along with Martin Indyk, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank established by the Israeli lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is now reportedly returning to WINEP, where at least he does not have to maintain any pretence to impartiality. 

Ross’s approach to making peace – appeasing Israel while pressuring the Palestinians, the weaker party, to acquiesce to Israeli demands – was doomed to failure from the start. The notion that Israel’s leaders will be willing to make the painful "concessions" necessary for peace if given enough money, weapons, and diplomatic cover has repeatedly proven itself bankrupt. 

Today, almost 20 years after the beginning of negotiations at Madrid, thanks in large measure to this approach, the realization of a truly independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories is more distant than ever, and the reality of the apartheid regime Israel has created there is ever clearer.

An egregious example of the failure of Ross’s tactics was the Obama administration’s attempt to get Israel to agree to a partial freeze on settlement growth in November 2010. In exchange for a commitment to limit some settlement construction (which is illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention) for a mere 90 days, the administration reportedly offered the Israelis 20 F-35 fighter jets worth $3 billion, a promise that the U.S. would veto any UN Security Council resolution critical of Israeli policies, and – remarkably – a promise not to ask for another freeze after the three months expired. Taken at face value, this last clause would mean that the United States would no longer ask Israel to abide by international law and what has been official American policy since 1967.

Even many of Israel’s American supporters were shocked.  Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer slammed the offer as a "reward for Israel's bad behavior" and "a very bad idea." In the end, it was all for naught, as members of Netanyahu´s extremist coalition government turned down the offer.

Over 20-plus years of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations Ross's presence in some capacity or another, inside or outside of government, was a near constant, as was the continuous frustration of Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and an end to over 44 years of military occupation and colonization. Now that Ross is no longer at the center of power, those aspirations may stand a better chance of someday being fulfilled.