Scowcroft and Brzezinski to Obama: put this dress on, and jump through these hoops

Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski advise Barack Obama to reinvigorate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. I agree with their analysis, and in principle with their prescriptions, but what good does it do the United States to get the President involved in a problem he probably can’t solve? Scowcroft and Brzezinski write:

Resolution of the Palestinian issue would have a positive impact on the region. It would liberate Arab governments to support U.S. leadership in dealing with regional problems, as they did before the Iraq invasion. It would dissipate much of the appeal of Hezbollah and Hamas, dependent as it is on the Palestinians’ plight. It would change the region’s psychological climate, putting Iran back on the defensive and putting a stop to its swagger.

The major elements of an agreement are well known. A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be. These should contain four principal elements: 1967 borders, with minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications; compensation in lieu of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as real home to two capitals; and a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.

Something more might be needed to deal with Israeli security concerns about turning over territory to a Palestinian government incapable of securing Israel against terrorist activity. That could be dealt with by deploying an international peacekeeping force, such as one from NATO, which could not only replace Israeli security but train Palestinian troops to become effective.

Fine, but last time I checked, Fatah couldn’t make a deal, and Hamas didn’t want to. Haven’t we been here before? It seems like the Israelis are the only one of these groups we can ever really force to make concessions (and even them not as reliably as we’d like). I’m all for a deal along the lines Scowcroft and Brzezinski are suggesting. With the exception of Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and the new Palestinian state, even most neoconservatives probably agree with them — but that doesn’t get us from here to there. How many times are we gonna jump through the same hoops? We need to find a way to change the game.

The one point the authors could have made, that they almost surely agree with but don’t really go into, is that for any solution to work, it’ll require the implicit consent of Iran.