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Last update - 00:33 10/06/2008 Diplomacy Are you ready to bang heads together? By Ephraim Sneh Tags: Camp David, Aaron Miller  Aaron David Miller, who has seen Mideast leaders bleary-eyed, angry and conciliatory, explains why the U.S. has failed to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller, Bantam, 390 pages, $26 Aaron David Miller's book, "The Much Too Promised Land," tells the whole story of American intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there is no person more fitting than Miller to do so. As a U.S. State Department official over two decades, Miller served in a key position on the team that dealt with the effort to impose peace on Israel and the Palestinians, and from time to time on Israel and Syria as well. Other members of the team included Dennis Ross, Daniel Kurtzer and Martin Indyk. Miller served under four presidents and six secretaries of state. He traveled to the Middle East with them numerous times; he saw all the region's leaders at odd hours of the day and under unusual circumstances. He saw them bleary-eyed, angry, quarrelsome, conciliatory, at moments of crisis and despair. He played tennis with them and had Kiddush at their Shabbat tables. Miller's intimate familiarity with the events and those who shape them -- and the fact that he was present, as a representative of the U.S., almost every place where some element of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict manifested itself -- make the book an irreplaceable historic document. His frankness, his humor and the little stories behind the scenes add some color to the gloomy history of the conflict. However, the book's essence consists of wonderment, disappointment and frustration. Miller covers the policies of U.S. presidents from Nixon to Bush II, and attempts to answer the question that bothers and angers him: How was it that for all its power, the U.S. was unable to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal or force it on both sides? Miller does not cut any of his former employers a break, though he does seem to respect most of them. He expresses admiration for Henry Kissinger's strategic approach, Jimmy Carter's messianic devotion, Warren Christopher's dry and buttoned-up integrity. He holds James Baker, Jr., the secretary of state during the elder Bush's administration, in the highest esteem, praising his firmness and his dedication to advancing an agreement and forcing it on both sides, when they were wallowing in their petty obstinacy. Miller admires Bill Clinton's deep commitment to making peace and his constant readiness to invest time and energy on even the little details, but thinks Clinton lacked Kissinger's cunning, Carter's missionary zeal and Baker's emotionless resolve. The Nixon, Kissinger, Carter charm Miller cites three administrations that brought about real progress in Israel's relations with the Arabs. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger managed to plan the agreements Israel signed with Egypt and Syria, which made the Middle East more stable. Carter brought the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations of 1978-79 to a successful conclusion at Camp David. And George H.W. Bush and Baker brought about the Madrid conference, which paved the way for agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and to peace between Israel and Jordan. What all three administrations had in common, according to Miller, was their willingness to put the American national interest above domestic American politics. This means they were prepared to ignore "Israel's attorneys" in Washington, as well as the Israeli prime minister himself. Miller applies this rule to the Arab side as well. In other words, he sees American willingness to be strict with both sides at the same time as a condition for American success. According to Miller, Clinton failed at Camp David not just because of the intransigence of the parties or a lack of preparedness, but also because he was too sympathetic to them, especially to the Israelis. The reason America must be tough on both sides, he says, is that to reach an agreement and a compromise, each side must be pushed a certain distance beyond what they are ready to concede on their own. This requires some clashing of the wills, which is liable to exact a political toll in domestic American politics. Miller concludes this wide-ranging book, which is full of anecdotes and personal stories, with recommendations for an American administration that really wants to succeed where its predecessors have failed. Addressing the next U.S. president, he writes that if you're not ready to bang both sides' heads together, it's not worth the effort, and if you can't take a lot of criticism from the Arabs, the Israelis and the Jewish community, then you should find another conflict to get involved in. Whoever reads this book, and I recommend it, will not find an iota of anti-Israeli sentiment. The author justifies America's commitment to Israel's security and the special relationship between the two countries, and rejects the prevalent claim that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby have too much power in Washington. But Miller's central argument is that an administration that recognizes how important an end to the conflict is for American interests in the region should give top priority to resolving the conflict and act accordingly. Acting accordingly means acting solely in accordance with the American interest and placing it above what Israeli leaders deem to be Israel's interest. An eye to its own interests As someone who has been involved in the Israeli-Palestinian-American triangle for more than 20 years, I can say that the U.S. does indeed exert pressure only when it decides that its own crucial interest is at stake. The U.S. spoke and acted with insulting outrage toward Israel when we struck two weapons deals with China. After the last crisis, the U.S. dictated to Israel several organizational and legislative steps regarding defense exports, and we punctiliously carried out its demands. When I served as health minister in the Rabin government, we were due to pass a law regarding patent rights for pharmaceuticals. The law was good for our industry, but threatened American drug companies. The U.S. ambassador came to my office and told me quite clearly how passage of the law would cause Israel damage. The administration was friendly to Israel, as was the ambassador, but in the U.S., the welfare of the pharmas is a prime national interest, and the administration acted accordingly. Today the U.S. is not really exerting pressure. The understandings cooked up between Dov Weisglass and Elliott Abrams in the early days of Ariel Sharon's premiership -- that the Israeli prime minister was not to be embarrassed -- are still in effect. Even when there is a great deal of dissatisfaction in Washington over the pace of peace efforts, it is not expressed harshly, and is free of effective pressure. The current push by the Bush administration, which wants to reach an Israeli-Palestinian deal by December, does contain elements of seriousness and determination. When the U.S. insists on something happening, there are indeed results in the field. U.S. security coordinator Lieutenant General Keith Dayton's project of training and deploying effective Palestinian forces that are loyal to their government is an example of this. But the truth is that American pressure is not necessarily needed when both sides have a genuine political will to reach an agreement. The fact is that the three significant breakthroughs between Israel and the Arabs (Egypt, the PLO and Jordan) involved direct, secret talks without third-party involvement. An Israeli-Palestinian agreement is indeed, as Miller puts it, a supreme American interest, but far more than this, it is our own supreme interest. We tend to forget this over here, and see the frequent visits of the secretary of state as a form of pestering. If we recognize that the alternative to a peace deal in 2008 is a binational state, or the acceptance of a Hamas state at our doorstep, we will have a strong enough political will to reach such an agreement. Because in peace, as in war, it's better to rely on ourselves. MK Ephraim Sneh, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has served as deputy defense minister, health minister and transportation minister. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Convicts 4 kneidlach Demand for kosher cuisine swells ranks of Jewish prison chaplains in U.S. All the way to hell Rosner's blog: It's Obama's good intentions that pro-Israel activists fear.

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