How Shall I Put This Diplomatically

Newsweek's Gregory Levey comes up with the, ahem, boldest foreign policy idea I've seen in a while.

On Sunday, George Mitchell, President Obama's Middle East envoy, arrived in Israel to confer with its leaders. Also visiting this week are Defense Secretary Robert Gates, national-security adviser James Jones, and Gulf States envoy Dennis Ross. It's a full-court press on the Israelis, and the American wish list is long. They want Israel to stop expanding settlements; to stop building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem; and for hawks in the government to chill out while the U.S. is negotiating with Iran. And yet, odds are, they'll come back to Washington empty-handed, for reasons having to do as much with atmospherics as policy: Team Obama just doesn't have Israel's full trust.

But there is someone who does—someone who could use a job, someone who argued straightforwardly for a Palestinian state, and yet someone who has the implicit admiration and regard of Israel. President Obama needs a new envoy to the region who can get results—

A new Middle East envoy? Why, whom in the annals of America's storied history of statemen, diplomats, and great Solomonic figures does Mr. Levey believe has the gravitas to handle the Israel-Palestine issue personally? What powerful figures could Obama tap for their deep wealth of both extended personal knowledge and rich experience in handling the subtle nuances of such a delicate region of the world, ? Why, what name leaps first and foremost into the mind when considering an American icon of diplomacy and Middle East peace?

-- and George W. Bush is his man.

Aha.

I was singularly unaware of the possibility that Gregory Levey is insane. But, humor me. Pray tell, what makes George W. Bush the face people want to associate America's Middle East policy with right now?

Indulge me for a moment. Obama has ruffled feathers in Israel by calling for a halt to settlement growth and talking openly about an equitable fate for East Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital. He has elicited deeply felt unease about how much the American president can be trusted to safeguard Israel's basic security.

Obama claims that the peace process is an essential plank of his program for the region, but it will be impossible to make progress if he can't convince Israel to defer to American leadership. In the history of U.S.-Israel relations, probably no president has earned adoration and unequivocal trust from Israel like Bush. (An Israeli diplomat once told me that the former president gave a speech at the U.N. during his second term that attracted so many adoring Israeli diplomats that even the deputy U.N. ambassador couldn't score a seat.)

During the Bush years, Israelis were consistently among the few foreign populations that gave the American president high approval marks—often in far greater proportion than Americans themselves. Senior officials in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, where I worked, spoke on their cell phones daily with their White House counterparts—circumventing the State Department and the Israeli Foreign Ministry entirely.

That closeness paid off. It's no coincidence that, during the Bush years, Ariel Sharon had political cover to suggest "painful concessions" for peace—a euphemism for withdrawal from territory. The unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip—followed by preparations to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank that were interrupted only by the Hizbullah war of 2006—almost certainly would not have happened with anyone else in the White House less trusted to ensure Israel's safety.

So...even though he describes the basic problem with Obama's policies as...Obama's policies (and not George Mitchell) by including George W. Bush, we'll make Obama's policies more palatable to Israel, which apparently is the only consideration to take into account, Israel being the only side in our diplomatic ventures into Southwest Asia.

Not to mention that diplomatic envoys have to have, well, a reputation for actual diplomacy. this is Bush we're talking about. This is a guy who started wars around here that we're still cleaning up, and this guy thinks Bush would be the face of peace and diplomacy?

The problem here isn't the envoy. The problem is Obama is telling Israel "no." Israel doesn't like hearing the word no from America. Ever. Having Bush around only means Israel will smile before telling us to go to hell. Yes, Israel liking Obama and respecting him is important. No, George W. Bush will not help him achieve that, because the policies are still Obama's. Israel still won't like Obama's policies, but that's Israel's problem, not ours. They don't want to make any sacrifices, period. If they are putting up this much of a fit over settlements and are railing that Obama wants to destroy Israel, that's Israel over-reacting just a touch.

Either way, putting in Bush as envoy is just absurd.