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Why U.S. Diplomacy Can't Fix the Middle East
(Washington Post) Aaron David Miller - For much of my 24-year career as a State Department Middle East analyst, negotiator and adviser, I held out hope that a conflict-ending peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians was possible. I had faith in negotiations as a talking cure and thought the U.S. could arrange a comprehensive solution. I believed in the power of U.S. diplomacy. But by the time I left government in 2003, I was a disillusioned diplomat and peace processor with serious doubts about what the U.S. could accomplish in the Middle East. U.S.-brokered peace in the Middle East is a quixotic quest. And the more we try and fail, the less credibility and leverage we have in the region. I thought if we just kept the process going, if we were committed and creative, we would somehow find our way to agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians on Jerusalem, borders and refugees, along with agreement between the Israelis and the Syrians on the Golan Heights. But we never got there. Process can't substitute for substance. U.S. diplomacy can be effective when all parties feel an urgency to make decisions and when gaps separating the parties can actually be bridged. The writer, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, served in the State Department from 1978 to 2003.