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Myths about the American Peacemaking Role

[Houston Chronicle] Leon Hadar - Washington pundits have an odd way of ridiculing the Bush administration's grandiose plans for remaking Iraq, while at the same time embracing ambitious designs for bringing peace to the Holy Land. These realpoliticos become born-again idealists in insisting that American leaders could and should help resolve the conflict between Arabs and Jews. Since the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel, achieved at Camp David, generations of American officials and experts have been fantasizing about a sequel: Camp David II. In fact, the Egyptian and Israeli leaders agreed to meet at Camp David only after officials from both sides agreed on the diplomatic formula that served as the basis for negotiations there. What both the Israelis and the Egyptians wanted and succeeded in winning at Camp David were American security commitments and economic assistance in exchange for signing a peace accord whose contours had been accepted in advance. The writer is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington.
2007-12-07 01:00:00
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