John Kerry’s appointment as secretary of state was the best possible news for anyone who hoped to extract the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations from their current deadlock. Kerry is the right man in the right place. It’s only too bad that we can’t add “at the right time,” too, but in the Middle East, it’s never the right time. It’s always too early or too late. There’s always one side that isn’t prepared, ready, or primed to make the changes, gestures, or concessions necessary in order to get somewhere, or at least to start trying to get there. As for the other side, it’s always too late. It always happens after the peace camp has disintegrated, after any trust was shattered, after their proposals were rejected and the right wing parties have come to power.
Kerry’s biggest problem is that he believes he can actually “make history” by solving this conflict. If the talks he has held with senior Israeli officials until now teach us anything, it is that the man is an optimist. He thinks that a permanent agreement is possible. He believes in the feasibility of a solution and contends that it is doubtful whether we will ever have the same opportunity again, so we have to take advantage of it now. By the time Kerry realizes that there is no solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict so it simply has to be managed instead, it will already be too late. The diplomatic graveyards in the region are packed with the bodies of Kerry’s predecessors. The one corpse that is still somewhat warm belongs to former US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, who arrived here with the exact same energy exactly four years ago. He had the backing of President Barack Obama, who was just starting his presidency and who gave Mitchell complete authority to do what he thought was necessary. He received an open ticket, and he built a second American embassy here, with means and emissaries and research and budgets. And yet, he also ended up in that vast, icy wasteland, where generations of peace proponents eventually end up, not before causing enormous damage to the already rickety relationship between the parties.