From Condoleeza Rice’s December 21 press conference:
QUESTION: . . . there is some smart money that holds that basically, the President and the Secretary of State are going to countenance the declaration of some kind of Palestinian state before they leave office just as something they can hang their legacy hat on and if it looks very much like the Palestinian state that we have right now, that's for their successors to deal with. Can you disabuse us of that?
SECRETARY RICE: Jim, as I've said, there are a lot easier ways to build a legacy than to try to solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue.
Notice that Rice’s answer (quoted above in its entirety) did not take the opportunity to disabuse the smart money prediction.
Instead, the answer was another of Rice’s increasingly self-congratulatory assertions that the process in which she is currently engaged -- leaning on the weakest leaders in Israeli history -- is just so darn hard.
Here is a list of significantly tougher legacy-building issues that Rice is shortchanging in her hellbent rush to get a Palestinian state declared before the clock runs out:
(1) organizing an international coalition to disarm Iran, (2) stopping the genocide in Sudan, (3) dismantling the North Korean nuclear program, (4) removing Syria and Hezbollah from Lebanon, (5) standing up to an increasingly aggressive Russia, (6) confronting rampant abuses at the UN, and (7) informing the Palestinians that, if they cannot pledge recognition of a Jewish state, there is no point in further discussions (or further funds).
Any of those issues (except number seven) would be tough. She gets no “degree of difficulty” points for pressuring the inexperienced and overmatched Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni to waive conditions for final status negotiations promised to Ariel Sharon in the U.S. letter of April 14, 2004.
How hellbent is Rice to create a Palestinian state? This hellbent (from her October 15 press conference):
I think that it's important that a variety of people in Israel hear first hand from the United States, from me representing the President, how important we see the establishment of a Palestinian state to be, how important we see it to be because frankly it's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state . . . . It's time for Palestinians to have their own state. We've -- everybody's waited a long time and so the United States feels strongly that this is the time to make a very big effort.
It’s important, important, important, because it’s time. It’s time because everybody’s waited a long time. The U.S. feels -- strongly -- that this is the time.
As an explication of American foreign policy, this is not just absurd but embarrassing.
Interesting that she started to say "WE've waited a long time," and then changed her mind to say "everyone." So who's the WE?
Posted by: Yael | December 24, 2007 at 03:49 PM
Add this to the list of issues getting short-changed by Rice in her rush to give birth to a premature Palestinan state: She still hasn't submitted the report to Congress required by HR 2293. Nor has she yet even responded to the Sept. 6 letter from Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ).
Readers will refer to your 10/15/07 post on "an unresolved event in Gaza."
http://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2007/10/october-15-2003.html
Posted by: Yael | December 25, 2007 at 08:48 AM