Palestine: Peace for a Change?

Steve Clemons writing at The Washington Note argues that with American soft power abroad “severely diminished” in recent years, the U.S. finds itself at a moment of “‘historical discontinuity’ when doing tomorrow mostly what the nation did yesterday is recognized as a recipe for disaster and failure rather than success.” Clemons proposes that the Obama administration must engage in “a combination of brilliant leadership and well orchestrated ‘strategic leaps’” in order to reestablish the U.S. role as a global leader, focusing on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as “the strategic leap that the world most needs to see at this moment.” He explains that the current situation poses increasing security risks to the U.S., particularly in regard to the need for a regional containment strategy on Iran. Clemons also suggests that since “the Palestinian mess is for many of these people [in the Arab and Muslim worlds] the packaged microcosm of their anger about exploitation and humiliation by the West and by their own governments,” achieving a two-state solution may create an “echo effect” that “will knock down many walls in these societies that have been resisting change.” Clemons also says that without a solution in place, any semblance of support for Israel could cause their Arab regimes’ populations to revolt and overthrow their governments. He argues against allowing such a scenario to occur, commenting, “Perhaps that is part of the plan that neoconservatives and others hope for. But that would be disastrous for the United States and most likely create conditions for a terrorist super highway up to the edge of Israel with few control valves.”