WASHINGTON – Mitt Romney’s less than optimistic take on Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects drew some media attention but not much noise from centrist Jewish groups.
Only groups on the right and the left ends of the communal spectrum issued statements in response to the revelations of Romney’s remarks, respectively praising and strongly condemning the Republican presidential nominee’s comments suggesting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved at present and the best that could be done was to “kick the ball down the field.”
Romney’s remarks were greeted quietly by the centrist organizations. But some centrist Jewish communal leaders stressed that the pursuit of peace should not be postponed, though they were not inclined to criticize Romney.
“To let it fester is not in the best interests of Israel,” said Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, adding that he believed Romney “meant well” in his remarks at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla.
Israel’s government “wants to pursue peace and they want to believe there is a partner,” Foxman said, citing the little noticed but successful ongoing security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. “It’s not in Israel’s interest to kick it down the road, not only in terms of self-interest but in terms of its relationship to the civilized world.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee declined to comment on Romney’s remarks.
Some have noted that the Republican nominee did not rule out the possibility of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future. The initial portions of Romney’s remarks that were released by Mother Jones magazine, which had obtained the secretly recorded video from the Florida fundraiser, were truncated. The full video was released shortly thereafter and included what could be seen as Romney’s vision of how the U.S. can foster the conditions for an eventual peace by being a resolute ally of Israel.
“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, ‘There’s just no way,’ “ Romney said in the remarks as first released at the $50,000-a-plate dinner.
“And so what you do is you say, ‘You move things along the best way you can,’ “ he continued. “You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
Left out of the original reporting was his conclusion to the thought: “So the only answer is show them strength. American strength, American resolve, and the Palestinians will some day reach the point where they want peace more than we’re trying to force peace on them. Then it’s worth having the discussion. So until then, it’s just wishful thinking.”
Daniel Mariaschin, B’nai B’rith International’s executive vice president, said he understood Romney not to mean that he was abandoning peacemaking, but that he was acknowledging other crises had superseded its importance in the Middle East.
“Events have pushed the issue to the outside,” said Mariaschin, citing Iran’s acceleration of its nuclear program and the unrest in much of the Arab world, particularly Syria. He noted renewed Palestinian plans to push for statehood recognition at the United Nations that have frustrated the Obama administration, as well as Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
Romney’s remarks on the peace process were criticized by Democrats. “This guy wants to be president of the United States?” asked Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Middle East subcommittee who is retiring this year. “There are problems between Jews and Muslims and this Mormon throws a Hail Mary?”
In a series of interviews with media outlets, Dennis Ross, the former Middle East adviser to President Obama and the administration’s most frequent interlocutor with Israel, seemed to suggest that Romney’s remarks were not helpful.
“I’m a big believer in not creating a false set of expectations, but I’m also a believer in that if you think something is stuck, you come up with an approach and try to change the dynamic,” Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Huffington Post. “If you basically just say it’s all hopeless, you just make hopelessness a self-fulfilling prophecy.”