Perhaps being a “light unto the nations” is easier in exile, or perhaps the meaning of the phrase “light unto the nations” is more enigmatic than our sages let on. It is no secret that many Jews in Israel and in America feel anxious and torn about the de facto segregation of the Israeli and Palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza which is backed by the full force of the IDF, by extrajudicial measures like targeted killings, and by a full range of security measures like fences and passes and bypass roads which can appear to be physically indistinguishable from the landscape of apartheid in South Africa. There are good reasons to believe that many of these measures are necessary to protect the lives of Israeli citizens and that much criticism of Israeli behavior is historically ignorant and morally obtuse. But the reality – however necessary – still makes many Jews wince.
At the same time, it is also important to remember that Condoleezza Rice is not a talk show host but the U.S. secretary of state – which is not a job that leaves very much room for personal moments. Her private rhetoric (if “off the record” conversations with foreign politicians and journalists can even remotely be considered private) is simply rhetoric – that is to say, words intended for a purpose. Every word she speaks embodies the political will of the most powerful nation in the history of the planet – a nation currently having a bit of trouble in the Middle East.
Rice is a skilled political tactician who is fantastically loyal to President Bush, who has repeatedly declared his intention to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza before he leaves office. It seems wise to take the president at his word, not because he will succeed but because he has laid down a marker that a future U.S. president will be obliged to pay off. If playing the race card makes Palestinians feel loved, Israelis feel guilty, and American Jews feel that their own moral purity is being endangered by Israel – so be it.
The amount of leverage Rice can gain by a few well-placed whispers is obvious. Secretary Rice rarely hesitates to use her personal biography to her political advantage in a refined but very effective way. While the intent of Aluf Benn’s “guesses” about Rice’s innermost feelings about the Palestinian cause is clearly incendiary, I have little doubt the secretary and her aides have whispered sweet nothings into the ears of Israeli and Palestinian politicians and even to Aluf Benn himself, suggesting that she can empathize with the Palestinian sufferings under Israeli occupation by virtue of having been born black in Alabama. Benn’s dramatic embellishments should not diminish the fact that empathizing with Palestinian suffering is a minimum requirement for having a political conversation that involves Palestinians as well as Israelis.
At the same time, it seems highly unlikely that Secretary Rice’s sudden empathy for the Palestinian cause is anything more than a tactical maneuver in the service of her forthcoming peace conference at Annapolis, which itself is a tactic to help ensure Arab support for an orderly American withdrawal from Iraq and a future attack on Iran. After all, neither Mahmoud Abbas nor Ehud Olmert can command the loyalty of more than a small fraction of his own electorate. Neither man has the slightest amount of room for maneuver in negotiations, or the slightest ability to compel his political opponents to accept an agreement. A comprehensive peace agreement signed by Abbas and Olmert would have only slightly more significance than the same agreement signed by Bishop Tutu and the King of Thailand – who, as far as I know, couldn’t care less.
Based on my own interviews with Rice, and my analysis of what she has said about the conflict over a long period of time, I have concluded that Rice is an agnostic on the subject of Israeli-Palestinian peace – but she believes very strongly that the appearance of an active effort to cut a deal is important to America’s interests in the Middle East.
The paradox of Rice’s conduct is that she is taking the role of an activist secretary of state while believing very strongly on an intellectual level that events are driven by underlying historical circumstances and currents on which our actions and desires can have only a very limited effect. She has repeatedly stated that the deal that was cut between East and West Germany and the Soviet Union to end the Cold War would have been impossible even a few years earlier. She told me more than once that it seemed quite possible that historical circumstances may not be ripe for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.