Will Obama Learn From His Middle East Mistakes?

Today's Washington Post article Growing Rifts, Abbas's Crisis Dim Hope for Talks is about how:

A political crisis for the Palestinian Authority and growing doubts about American mediation have deeply undercut chances that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will resume in the near future, according to officials and analysts on both sides.

In Failure Everyone Can Now See, Jennifer Rubin writes that this should be a lesson:

In other words, Obama’s Middle East gambit, apparently inspired by those known Middle East policy wonks Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, has failed. Spectacularly so. Putting daylight between the U.S. and Israel and sneering at the Bush team for being too close to Israel didn’t really get the Obami anywhere, did it? The Post is candid that the fixation on settlements “backfired.” As virtually every pro-Israel conservative commentator predicted, “It raised hopes among Palestinians, who began to demand nothing less than a full freeze, and led to severe tensions in U.S.-Israeli relations.”

And all that ingratiating with the “Muslim World” in Cairo? Not much was gained; in fact, the parties are more estranged than ever. Our relations with Israel have not been this strained since . . . well, ever . . . and the administration’s credibility is arguably worse than any of its recent predecessors.

What can be learned from all this? Sanctimonious speeches and fractured history-telling don’t make for “peace.” Savaging your allies doesn’t get you anywhere. And ignoring hard truths — including the Palestinians’ unsolved internal divisions and refusal to renounce and root out terrorism — also doesn’t get you anywhere. Moreover, Obama’s appearance on the scene doesn’t change any of the fundamental issues; neither does chanting “diplomacy” or “dedication to the peace process.”

This should be a wake-up call for the administration. The Obama team might want to consider letting domestic pols run foreign policy. And they might put away some of their egocentric misconceptions about the power of Obama’s aura.

We have seen other areas in the fight against terrorism that Obama has backtracked and has followed Bush's lead. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration is willing to learn from its mistakes here.

Given his Muslim background, it is more likely that Obama will just see this as a minor setback and forge ahead.

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