May 19, 2021 | Newsweek
America’s Foreign Policy ‘Experts’ Are Projecting Their Own Failures Onto Jared Kushner
May 19, 2021 | Newsweek
America’s Foreign Policy ‘Experts’ Are Projecting Their Own Failures Onto Jared Kushner
For the past four years, there was no greater laughingstock in the American foreign policy cognoscenti than Jared Kushner. A full-on consensus reigned that cast the previous administration’s Middle East policies as hopelessly ignorant and one-sided, a view that went unchallenged in the smart set’s Op-Ed pages. There was no easier laugh to be had, no quicker way to pull a nodding agreement, than to mock the intelligence and good will of the former president’s son-in-law, charged with crafting an American peace plan, and obviously in way over his head.
But the Young Pretender in charge of the Mideast portfolio is gone, and the mommies and daddies are back in charge, their think tanks falling over each other producing glossy full-color booklets promoting policies that would bring to bear the priorities of people who actually understood a thing or two about Israelis, Palestinians, international law, justice, and most importantly, American strategic interests.
And four months into the methodical implementation of all the bright ideas reflecting off those glossy booklets, the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has taken a dramatic turn for the worst.
Though Kushner is long gone, this latest conflagration has been laid at his feet. His name trended on Twitter for days as hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated. “They really put Jared Kushner, the slumlord millionaire who couldn’t properly fill out security clearance forms, in charge of Peace in the Middle East. Failure was inevitable,” read one viral tweet. “Kushner’s Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed” blared the headline to Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column.
They really put Jared Kushner, the slumlord millionaire who couldn’t properly fill out security clearance forms, in charge of Peace in the Middle East.
Failure was inevitable.
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) May 17, 2021
This is not just wrong; it’s complete projection. Kushner-era policies—on Jerusalem, UNRWA, and regional diplomacy—were promised again and again to lead to an “explosion,” but didn’t. The return of the experts was supposed to improve lives and prospects for Israelis and Palestinians alike, but hasn’t. In fact, it was the foreign policy intelligentsia’s values and vision that have led to disaster.
Back in March, mere weeks into the new Biden administration, a leaked internal State Department memo outlined the contours of a new direction on American policy toward the Palestinian issue. The document called for renewed diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, restoring aid that had been cut, renewing American contributions to UNRWA, putting pressure on Israel for moves in Jerusalem that would make a new Palestinian Authority election possible, and pursuing a two-state arrangement based roughly on the pre-1967 lines.
These were all priorities of the smart set miffed by a previous administration that was too close to Israel for their tastes. But they were also terrible ideas. Take the renewal of UNRWA funding. UNRWA is the U.N. agency dedicated to perpetuating, rather than solving, the Palestinian refugee problem. By cultivating the myth of a non-existent “right of return” rather than rehabilitating displaced persons and their descendants, UNRWA ensures that a negotiated two-state deal cannot be reached.
What possible U.S. interest is served by rescuing an institution that actively works against U.S. policies and interests?
But it was the election issue that ended up being the most fateful, and it was another huge smart set mistake to include it on the leaked wish list. Elections have not been held in the Palestinian Territories since 2006, and for good reason: Involving Hamas in the election would risk handing control of the West Bank to the terrorist group that already rules Gaza. Banning them from the election would risk undermining the process. And cancelling the election promised to invite a violent provocation from Hamas to assert its primacy in Palestinian politics.
That is exactly what happened in the end; we’re seeing that violence unfold right now. Who could have foreseen this eventuality? Anyone, actually, with any understanding of the region. So why weren’t these scenarios carefully considered before any of this disaster started to unfold?
If the leak of the memo is to be believed, the issue that concerned the State Department was pushing Israel to allow voting in East Jerusalem along the lines of previous elections. And it revealed how ridiculous the mindset that authored it is.