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| Volume XVI, Summer 2009, Number 2 |
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| Editor's Note |
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This is issue number 100 of Middle East Policy, a time to reflect for a moment on some
of the events covered in these pages over the last 27 years (I joined the staff in April 1983,
when we were proofreading number 4, and became the editor the next year). On its inaugural
cover in June 1982 appeared a headline that would, sadly, be appropriate today: “The Struggle
for Peace in the Middle East.” The historic accomplishment of the Camp David accords
between Israel and Egypt, brokered in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter and a top-flight team
headed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski,
was still fresh, although Carter had left office in 1981 under the cloud of the Iranian
hostage crisis (see the review of Carter’s We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land, page 166).
The running sore of Palestine — left out at Camp David — is still a basic U.S. foreign-policy
and humanitarian concern (see Myers on Israeli policy in Gaza, page 116). Entwined with it
are the vexed U.S. relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran and “terrorism.” This current
journal includes both the proceedings of our recent Capitol Hill conference on the prospects for
U.S. engagement with Iran and an article analyzing Tehran’s strategic nuclear considerations
(see Pickering et al., page 1, and Entessar, page 26). Back in 1982, Iran and Iraq were mired in
a bitter war that would last six more years and would result in ominous repercussions: instability
in the world’s energy hub and the dominance of Saddam Hussein. The Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan during the 1980s fell a bit outside our purview. We, along with many others, failed
to see Osama bin Laden coming, though now Central and Southwest Asia are at the heart of
America’s Long War to defeat the region’s insurgencies and ensure that energy is freely traded.
It is of some satisfaction that most of the hundreds of writers who have been published
here have advocated different policy paths from those that the last four American administrations
followed. Perhaps you can’t expect intractable problems to be “solved.” However, as
the sage of the University of Pennsylvania, Ian Lustick, said in 1995 at one of our Capitol Hill
conferences, you can trade up for better problems. Even that seems to have been elusive. The
Middle East includes more recalcitrant parties today than ever. It is geographically “greater”
now, extending beyond Central Asia all the way to nuclear-armed Pakistan (see Malik’s take
on the problem of the Pashtuns, page 138).
In our initial issue, American, British, Egyptian and Jordanian diplomats and other analysts
wrote short opinion pieces on every aspect of the Palestine question, from recognition of
the PLO to the special relationship between the United States and Israel to the need to listen
to our Gulf allies. The editor lamented the fact that the Reagan administration had not formulated
a long-range policy for the Middle East “beyond the pursuit of a strategic consensus
designed to prevent the expansion of Soviet infl uence in the area.” There being no Internet
in 1982, documents were reprinted as a reminder of what was expected of the parties to the
confl ict: UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967), 338 and 339 (1973); General Assembly
Resolution 3236 Concerning the Question of Palestine (1974); a Joint Statement issued by
the governments of the United States and the USSR (1977); the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty
(1979); and the comprehensive peace plan proposed by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (1981).
Just days after our pages went to press, the Israel Defense Forces marched into South
Lebanon to deal what they thought would be a death blow to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
(PLO guerrillas had moved into Lebanon after King Hussein had driven them out
of Jordan in 1970, where they had fled following their expulsion from the West Bank/Gaza in
1967.) The IDF went all the way to Beirut (see Flannigan and Abdel-Samad on the consequent
rise of the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah, page 122). This got President Reagan’s
attention, and in September, just after the PLO had been rescued and evacuated to Tunis
under American auspices, he proposed his Fresh Start initiative. TIME Magazine judged it
to be bold and innovative, remarking particularly on his call to “resolve the root causes” of
the conflict. In addition to “Israel’s right to a secure future,” Reagan mentioned the need for
a “just resolution” to the claims of the Palestinians and a “freeze” of Jewish settlements in
occupied territories. The Arab League, led by King Fahd, favored the U.S. proposal with an
immediate positive response. Meeting in Fez, Morocco, the 22 countries agreed on a twostate
solution, radical for that time.
A mere two weeks passed before the massacre by Israel’s Lebanese allies of Palestinians in
Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. This inflamed an already volatile situation and made
peace talks moot. There followed the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, the rebuilding
of the PLO inside and outside the Occupied Territories, the fi rst intifada, the birth of Hamas,
the Iraq war for Kuwait, the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, peace processing (see the
review of Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad, page 164), abortive talks with Syria, the assassination
of Yitzhak Rabin, failure at Camp David II, the Taba talks, the second intifida, 9/11, the
second Iraq war, the second Lebanon war, the latest Arab Peace Initiative, and the war on Gaza
— to mention only selected high and low points. We have analyzed them all and countless topics
more peripheral to U.S. interests. For example, in the fall of 1983, Peter Bechtold wrote an
article on Sudan, Jafar Numeiri’s leadership, and the potential threat from Qadhafi ’s Libya. He
is back, with an analysis of the wildly misunderstood issue of Darfur (see page 149). Some of
the best of our articles are posted on the Council’s website (www.mepc.org), including a dozen
by Israel Shahak on topics such as how the state of Israel “acquires” Palestinian land for settlements.
This information is very difficult to find in the mainstream U.S. media.
Not all the news from the Middle East has been disturbing. This journal has followed
with interest the growth and development of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), whose
inception coincided with our own. Many articles have been published on the economic,
security and political aspects of this effort at Gulf unity, as well as on the individual states
themselves. There are two excellent articles inside this book that examine salient topics on
the Gulf monarchies (see Ulrichsen, page 39, and Davidson, page 59).
It was not obvious in 1982 that we would ever publish number 100. Today, I am pleased to
admit, we have become an institution. It is remarkable for a small organization to have survived
several leadership transitions. Most dissolve when the founder leaves. We have been fortunate
since the 1991 retirement of George Naifeh, a 30-year U.S. Foreign Service officer, to have had
the able leadership of Lieutenant General Charlie Brown, Senator George McGovern and Ambassador
Chas W. Freeman. Special appreciation is owed to the members of the Council’s Board
of Directors, who have given generously of their time and advice over the past three decades.
Their stewardship is essential to our future accomplishments.
Anne Joyce
June 1, 2009
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