Summary
Bush’s secretary of state, a longtime close friend and political ally of the president, who in Perceptions of Palestine’s account pursued policies because they would work rather than from any ideological or emotional agenda, was interested in the process of the peace process rather than in peace itself, had little appreciation for the history that animated either Israelis or Palestinians, and — as the first high-level U.S. official in a half century to meet formally with Palestinian representatives — came to some understanding of the Palestinians’ human dimension while forcing Palestinian procedural concessions to secure Israel’s attendance at Madrid (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2470-2481, 2482-2497).
Details
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Baker remarked in his memoirs of January 1989 that the PLO “remained committed to the destruction of Israel” — a period only weeks after the PLO’s formal concessions, which Christison reads as the rote assumption that Palestinians were incapable of compromise (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2488-2489).
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In May 1989 Baker addressed AIPAC and called on Israel to “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel”, cease settlement construction, forswear annexation and reach out to Palestinians “as neighbors who deserve political rights”; the reaction from Israel and its friends was outrage, as much at his tone as his content (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2580-2583).
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Thomas Friedman’s observation, as quoted: the “Baker-Bush peace process was at its root an intense negotiation focused primarily on getting the parties to the table” (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2478-2479).
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Christison part 4: Baker spent a year on Shamir’s elections plan, told Congress to have Israel call the White House when it was serious about peace, leaned hard on Palestinians bound for Madrid (“It’s not my fault you backed the losing side”) while refusing Shamir’s demand that attendees disavow the PLO, came to call the Palestinians’ situation “really quite desperate”, and lost interest once Madrid was convened, accepting loose 1992 loan-guarantee terms with Rabin (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2604-2612, 2684-2692, 2710-2716).
Related pages
George Bush, Dennis Ross, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Hanan Ashrawi, Yitzhak Shamir