Middle East Analysis: Dennis Ross & the Battle Within the Obama Administration

Israeli PM Netanyahu and Dennis RossIn February 2009, we headlined, "Treading Softly on Iran: Dennis Ross Sneaks into the Administration". Our analysis at the time:

He has been brought [into the Administration] with a remit so broad that it threatens to be vague. Now he is not focused on Iran but overlapping with both [Afghanistan-Pakistan envoy Richard] Holbrooke and [Israel-Palestine envoy George] Mitchell. There may be some State Department master-plan setting out how Ross, a forceful personality, will work with those two envoys --- equally forceful personalities --- and how he and his staff will in turn work with permanent State Department desks overseeing the Middle Eastern, Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asian regions.

More than two years later, Holbrooke is dead and Mitchell has resigned in frustration. But Ross is still very much present in the National Security Council. And the operative term is not "work with" other personalities and other departments but "work against".

For months, there has been a media battle between different factions in the Administration --- on Iran, on the Middle East in generally, and especially on Israel-Palestine. A group in the State Department wants genuine negotiations with Tehran on the nuclear issue and on the Israel-Palestine dispute. Ross and his allies see "engagement" as a device to put more economic and diplomatic pressure on the Iranian regime, and they have parallelled the position of the Israeli Government on any talks with the Palestinians.

In the last week, the battle has become a war, with the conjunction of two events: the resignation of Obama envoy Mitchell, who finally admitted defeat after 28 months of futility on the "peace process" and the President's much-trumpeted speech on Thursday about the Arab Spring and on Israel-Palestine.

At the start of the week, the State Department seemed to be getting the upper hand, with stories throughout the US media --- Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post --- putting forth the idea that Israeli-Palestinian talks had to be comprehensive, taking on the issues of border and status of refugees as well as security and economic development. There was even the notion, after the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, might have to deal with the entire Palestinian leadership.

But the Ross side --- working alongside Israeli diplomats, who put in last-minute calls to Obama --- fought back. In the end, the "breakthrough" in the Presidential speech was reduced to the statement that negotiations had to begin on the basis of the 1967 borders, a position which Obama had advocated in his 2008 campaign. (Even this was too much publicly for the Israeli Government, which has said the 1967 borders are "indefensible", but this covered West Jerusalem's satisfaction that Obama had not criticised Israeli settlements in the West Bank, had not raised other issues such as the right of return of refugees and the status of Jerusalem, had pulled back from any thought of Hamas involvement, and had emphasised Israeli security.)

So now the next chapter. In Saturday's New York Times, a supposedly private discussion is the launching pad for those in the State Department --- and possibly the White House --- who want to curb Ross.

Five days ago, during a closed-door meeting with a group of Middle East experts, administration officials, and journalists, King Abdullah II of Jordan gave his assessment of how Arabs view the debate within the Obama administration over how far to push Israel on concessions for peace with the Palestinians.

From the State Department, “we get good responses,” the Jordanian king said, according to several people who were in the room. And from the Pentagon, too. “But not from the White House, and we know the reason why is because of Dennis Ross” — President Obama’s chief Middle East adviser.

Mr. Ross, King Abdullah concluded, “is giving wrong advice to the White House.”

Beyond that dramatic revelation, the Times had to fall back on speculation and the punditry of analysts, but the battle is still re-confirmed:

The White House would not say where Mr. Ross, 62, stood on the president’s announcement on Thursday that Israel’s pre-1967 borders — adjusted to account for Israeli security needs and Jewish settlements in the West Bank — should form the basis for a negotiated settlement. Mr. Ross did not respond to requests for comment for this article. His friends and associates say he has long believed that peace negotiations will succeed only if the United States closely coordinates its efforts with the Israelis.

And if you want a vision of the way forward --- or rather, how there is unlikely to be a way forward, this recent history is invaluable:

Mr. Ross demonstrated his growing influence last October, when the administration was pressing Mr. Netanyahu to agree to a three-month extension of his moratorium on settlement construction. Mr. Netanyahu balked.

So Mr. Ross devised a generous package of incentives for Israel that included 20 American fighter jets, other security guarantees, and an American pledge to oppose United Nations resolutions on Palestinian statehood. Many Middle East analysts expressed surprise that the administration would offer so much to Israel in return for a one-time, 90-day extension of a freeze.

In the end, Mr. Obama abandoned the effort, concluding that even if Mr. Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to go along with the extension, it was unlikely to produce the kind of progress in talks that the United States hoped for. Direct talks between Mr. Netanyahu and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, soon petered out, and Mr. Abbas made plans to go to the United Nations in September for a vote on Palestinian statehood.

In short, the fight within the Administration will guarantee more juicy stories in the US press. But the real significance is that it has probably already condemned Obama's speech, less than 72 hours after it was delivered, to yet another American false start on the issue of Israel and Palestine. And that in turn may turn the rest of the speech ---- on the US position from North Africa through the Middle East through Ross's special area of interest, Iran --- from proposed opportunity into a dead-weight on the Administration.