Israel's Friends in America

Middle Eastern politics are famously fluid. Alliances shift, friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and it's all so quick and confusing that I have a certain amount of sympathy for Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, who has clearly forgotten who his friends are. Yesterday, Ambassador Dan Gillerman called Jimmy Carter, the former president and Nobel Prize winner, "a bigot" for meeting Hamas leaders in Syria. Gillerman said that Carter (the man who has done more to legitimize Israel's place in the world than any other person alive) has done "some good things" in the past, but now has "blood on his hands." This because Carter asked Hamas to make peace with Israel and release a captured Israeli soldier.

Gillerman's attack on Carter also rings hollow because it is probably only a matter of time before his Israeli colleagues begin dealing with Hamas themselves. The militant Islamic group is the only Palestinian party capable of making a lasting peace with Israel, if for no other reason than Hamas is one of Israeli's most formidable foes. Do I really need to repeat the truism? You make peace with your enemies not your friends.

Israeli leaders have shown such pragmatism elsewhere. This week, we learned that Israel and Syria (Hamas' main state sponsor) have been talking through Turkish interlocutors about a peace deal. So it's ok for Israelis to deal with those who fund and train Hamas, but if a former American president talks to Hamas directly, he's a bigot?

Not that dealing with the Syrians and Hamas are going to be easy. These are dangerous people, and it's far from clear whether they actually want peace. Even though Hamas told Carter that they would be wiling to accept a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, they could just be trying to end the siege of Gaza and re-arm.

But it would be a whole lot easier to negotiate from a position of strength if Israel had better friends in the current White House. The Bush administration has given the Israeli government free reign for all kinds of self-defeating policies, from expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, to invading Lebanon, to avoiding serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians. And when Israel tries something that might free them from the cycle of Middle East violence, like re-enageing Syria, the Bush administration pulls on the brakes.

Which could be one reason why yesterday the White House released files purporting to show that Syria was building a nuclear reactor with assistance from North Korea. Naturally, after the Iraq debacle we should be more skeptical about the Bush Administration's intelligence on WMD. But we should also wonder about the timing of this release -- long after the Israeli air force bombed the alleged nuclear site in September last year. The Israelis have kept mum on the subject ever since, possibly not to further alienate the Syrian Assad regime, which most Israelis recognize is better than whatever crazy radicals might rise up in its place. So why would the White House keep picking this scab? To keep Israel and Syria from getting too cozy? With friends like the Bushies, one is never short of enemies.

Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut