https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/a_search_for_common_ground_against_the_odds

Since its inception in 2003, the American Task Force on Palestine, where I am a senior research fellow, has been trying to help lay the groundwork for an American alliance for a two-state solution. Such an alliance would bring Jewish-American supporters of Israel and their allies, and Arab-American supporters of Palestine and their allies, together to pursue the mutual interests of both peoples – and of course of the United States itself – in a stable peace agreement.

This project involves trying to break down decades of mutual suspicion on the basis of support for a common goal, albeit one the two communities may embrace for very different reasons. A great irony of the situation is that a large majority of Israelis and Palestinians say they want a two-state solution, but they also say they believe the other side is lying. This is a key factor in preventing a resolution of the long-standing, dangerous Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Unfortunately, but predictably, this attitude of mutual suspicion also reflects itself in the dynamics between Jewish- and Arab-Americans. They can and should be able to come together on the grounds that peace is vital for the United States, as well as for their friends and relatives in the Middle East. While it is striking how persistent mistrust and rivalries can trump simple logic and clear interests, ATFP welcomed the announcement of the (unfortunately brief) resumption of direct negotiations in early fall with a joint statement with the Jewish Council on Public Affairs (an umbrella group representing a large swathe of Jewish-American organizations).

More work to define this apparently obvious but maddeningly elusive common ground will be required to overcome current differences of opinion and deeply-ingrained suspicions, and bring Jewish- and Arab-Americans together to work toward a goal that most of them profess to passionately believe in.

It was with this agenda in mind that I recently undertook an interesting and fruitful experiment with The Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg, a pro-Israel Jewish-American journalist of note. We wanted to see how much we could agree on, coming from very different perspectives, and understanding that diplomacy is, for now, stalemated. More importantly, cognizant of the political realities and constraints leaders on both sides face, we wanted to see what realistic unilateral gestures we could suggest to the parties.

The result was a lengthy op-ed in The New York Times pushing back against the idea that the peace process is permanently dead and suggesting a number of practicable and some more poetic unilateral gestures that would help improve the atmosphere.

Inevitably, the article produced considerable negative reaction from the pro-Israel far-right and the pro-Palestine ultra-left, both of which seemed to take exception to the very notion of a lengthy article being co-authored by a Jewish-American supporter of Israel and an Arab-American supporter of Palestine. And, of course, the extremes on both sides vehemently rejected much of the content of what we had to say.

It is important to note that since the commentary was jointly authored, its content was negotiated between us. In other words, what we argued was not what either Goldberg or I would have written the same way on our own. Rather, the text was one in which we both had input and were ultimately willing to sign off on together.

This was perhaps the most important virtue of the entire exercise, even though the suggestions we made were serious, and would certainly improve the situation if implemented, even partially. I was optimistic, but not entirely sure, that we would be able to agree to a text that includes so much detail and so many evaluations that were sure to meet with angry rejection from people in our own communities. In the event, it proved surprisingly straightforward.

The essence of a positive unilateral action is that it has a salutary impact on the atmosphere overall, but is also manifestly in the interest of the parties undertaking them. Our suggestion that the Palestinian Authority follow through on Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s declaration last August that the public education system in the West Bank should be used to combat fanaticism – and that the international community help the Palestinians do that – would undoubtedly improve Israeli perceptions of the Palestinian Authority, but would also, and perhaps more significantly, be good for Palestinian society. The same applies to urging Israel to dismantle unauthorized outposts and extremely provocative settlements.

The irony, of course, is that we co-authored and negotiated the text of an article that restricted itself to plausible, unilateral gestures by the two parties in parallel. This was implicit recognition that there is no substitute for the common ground that can be achieved by negotiating –whether a text between two authors or a treaty between two peoples. It makes no sense for Arab- and Jewish-Americans who say they want a two-state solution to maintain each other at arm’s length when they could and should be cooperating to finalize one.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/unreadable_egypt

Any time Robert Gibbs, the spokesman for President Barack Obama, and Mahmoud Zahhar, a key spokesman for Hamas, end up saying almost exactly the same thing about a situation, you have proof positive that that situation is virtually unreadable.

Last weekend, Gibbs and Zahhar seemed to echo each other on the developments in Egypt – that it was up to the Egyptians to decide about their own future; or we decline to comment on whether President Hosni Mubarak should stay in office or go, and so on. Both the United States and Hamas, after all, will have to deal with the outcome of the Egyptian uprising, no matter who ends up in power in Cairo; and both have a very limited ability to influence the outcome.

Situations as unstable as this tend to bring out the very worst in political commentary. Under such volatile circumstances, commentators should be extremely careful, even though what most readers, editors and producers are looking for is exactly what commentary should avoid: what purports to be detailed political analysis of an unclear, unstable political reality, or, worse, vapid and indefensible prognostications.

One obvious pitfall to be avoided under such circumstances, both as a writer and as a reader, is a simple recitation of the basic facts already established through reportage. The lightest dusting of opinion on a large pile of virtually universal perception, as in this commentary by the British journalist Robert Fisk, isn’t harmful. But it also isn’t worth reading or writing either.

The situation in Egypt is simply too opaque, at least at the time of writing this article, for anything so glib as predictions, except maybe in the context of Twitter’s 140 character-imposed brevity. Not only is the outcome uncertain, even the political identity of the players is undetermined because the uprising seems to have been so spontaneous, without leadership or a clear ideology. “The People” have shown themselves to be a political force of enormous power, but, absent a political leadership, they are not necessarily political actors as such. In other words, all of the popular momentum ultimately needs to be harnessed in a particular direction before one can clearly discern what political agendas are actually facing down Mubarak and his regime.

The largest and most well-organized opposition party is obviously the Muslim Brotherhood. However, like all other organized or semi-organized political opposition groups in Egypt, it has been playing catch-up with the events as they unfold. There is no basis yet on which to judge the extent to which the Brotherhood might be able to seize the momentum in the coming days, or simply try to be a (not necessarily dominant) presence in an alternative regime or even a reformed system.

That is why analyses that proclaim the Brotherhood to be an intolerable menace, foreclosing any thought of revolt or regime change, as suggested by this Jerusalem Post editorial, are so unhelpful. But they’re not any better than commentaries that dismiss the dangers of an Islamist takeover, like that of Chris Harnisch, a staffer for the former vice president, Dick Cheney. Or, conversely, those suggesting that such a takeover may be inevitable, like the articles of John Bradley, author of “Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution”, or of George Washington University political scientist Marc Lynch.

And then, of course, there are those who merely want to put their own spin on the situation, and play events in Egypt up not as a new development on its own terms, but as a confirmation of their own pre-existing agenda. For example, Republican pollster Dick Morris suggests that it’s all Obama’s fault, very obviously with an eye to the next election, when asking: “Who lost Egypt?” This approach will become a staple of American political discourse in the coming months and years.

Neoconservative columnist John Podhoretz takes what is happening in Egypt as an opportunity to resurrect the straw man that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not necessarily be a panacea to all the ills of the Middle East. Obviously, nobody sensible ever says that, but it probably sounds reassuring to supporters of the Israeli occupation.

A former George W. Bush administration official, Elliott Abrams, quite naturally found the uprising in Egypt to be an opportune moment to point out that the rhetoric (though not the policies) of the Bush administration (in which he played a key role) about a “freedom agenda” in the Middle East looks much better today than it did. This stands in contrast to the Obama administration’s emphasis on stability. Touché!

These last three examples are all deliberately chosen from the right of the American political spectrum, presently in opposition to the administration and gunning for Obama in the next presidential election. All of these arguments are examples of predictable sparring in which political adversaries try to spin events to their own purposes. However, like commentaries that are summaries of what is already known or rushes to judgment on as yet obviously undecidable questions, what they have to offer a sensible reader is very much open to doubt.

There are times when commentary needs to fall silent for a moment and let events sort themselves out, although there are always sensible things that can be said that don’t go very far in any direction. But it is also important to take the opportunity to look inward and take note of what exactly is, and more importantly isn’t, worth reading and writing about such a fascinating, fluid situation as the one playing out in Egypt today.