Two experts on Israel and Middle East politics took a dim view of prospects for the peace process at a panel last week in Berkeley.
“I’m not the biggest optimist, and in the aftermath of the Gaza war, I’m even less of an optimist,” said Janine Zacharia, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post and now a lecturer at Stanford who has reported extensively on the conflict.
Zacharia spoke on the panel with Abraham Sofaer, the George P. Shultz senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a former legal adviser to the State Department.
Held at the Bancroft Hotel and attended by 150 people, the Oct. 21 panel was hosted by the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Mark Yudof, former U.C. president, moderated the conversation.
Sofaer called the Gaza war a strategic “disaster” but placed the blame for the conflict and civilian casualties squarely on Hamas.
“Hamas does not accept Israel and, very determinedly, exposes its own children to defensive actions,” Sofaer said.
But Sofaer pulled no punches in criticizing Israeli leadership, saying Israel should have escalated the war more quickly by directly attacking Hamas leaders immediately after Hamas began firing rockets into Israel. Such an approach, Sofaer said, would have resulted in fewer civilian casualties.
The way Israel waged the Gaza war “is a continuation of indecisive and unpopular actions by Israel,” Sofaer said. “Israeli leadership is too weak, not too strong.”
Zacharia called the war an improvised operation that killed thousands of Palestinians without leaving Israel with much of a tactical advantage. Though the military may have destroyed rockets and tunnels into Israel, Zacharia said, “there are still thousands of rockets; there are still tunnels.” What’s more, she added, the war has contributed to tension between U.S. and Israeli leaders.
Zacharia defended U.S. diplomatic efforts in the region, including by Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped negotiate a temporary cease-fire at one point during the summer.
But Sofaer slammed Kerry for what he called an ineffectual approach to the peace process. Kerry called for renewed peace talks earlier this month, though he angered some in the Israeli government when he indicated a connection between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the rise of ISIS. Sofaer said Kerry’s approach to negotiation relies too much on pursing a sweeping agreement when in fact each detail in contention should be hammered out one by one.
Zacharia disagreed: “If you can’t get peace, at least you need a process,” she said. “You need something, some framework. That’s why I don’t like everybody mocking John Kerry.”
But regional instability overshadows movement toward a peace process.
“When you want to know what [President Barack] Obama and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu are really fighting about, it’s Iran,” Zacharia said. Netanyahu has criticized Obama’s approach in trying to reach a deal with Iran about its nuclear program that would potentially suspend some sanctions.
“The only way a radical regime agrees to give up something is because it has to,” Sofaer said. “You won’t ever be able to make a deal unless the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is diminished.”
Sofaer said the key to making progress with Iran is to show strength while also engaging in strong diplomatic efforts. He likened the situation to the U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when he worked at the State Department, where the strategy was always to continue talks even when the Soviets did something the U.S. didn’t like.
Sofaer and Zacharia found common ground when it came to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“Abbas is an important partner, and he’s framed as a monster often in Israeli press,” Zacharia said.
“There’s an opportunity to work with Abbas to replace Hamas,” Sofaer said. “Abbas is running the Palestinian Authority in a better way in terms of Israel’s security. It’s hard to think of a better time since 1967.”