On November 13, Patrick Doherty and the American Strategy Program hosted the Hon. Gary Hart and Daniel Levy in the third of a series of briefings on the run-up to the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, MD. Gary Hart represented Colorado in the United States Senate from 1975 to 1987, where he served on the Armed Services Committee and specialized in nuclear arms control, among many other topics. Sen. Hart is a distinguished fellow at the New America Foundation, and the author of sixteen books, plus one forthcoming entitled “Under the Eagle’s Wing: a National Security Strategy for the United States: 2009.” He is also the chairman of the Council for a Livable World and an endowed professor at the University of Colorado-Denver. Daniel Levy is the director of the Middle East Policy Initiative at New America and publisher of www.ProspectsForPeace.com. He has been intensively involved with Israeli/Palestinian negotiations for many years.

Sen. Hart opened by vehemently questioning the unspoken assumption that there is unlimited time to reach a final settlement between Israel and Palestine. “The amount of time to play a broker’s role is finite,” Sen. Hart said of the United States’ position in negotiations. He noted the Bush administration has neglected the situation for seven years and is lucky that there have been no major conflagrations or massive destabilization in Israel/Palestine conditions.

After recounting some of his time in Jordan, Egypt and Israel in the 1980s, Sen. Hart observed, “This situation of neglect is exacerbated by the war currently going on in Iraq.” Sen. Hart also expressed his concern over growing uncertainty in Iran’s nuclear program. The combination of little time, the Iraq war, and the potential for a regional conflict make it “difficult if not impossible to make any real progress at Annapolis,” Sen. Hart predicted.

The senator also pointed out several other factors that contribute to his belief that Annapolis will not be particularly productive: the American public’s decreasing patience for resolving the situation and the growing appeal of a more isolationist position with respect to Israel and Palestine; the erosion of U.S. moral authority in the world; and U.S. dependence on oil in the Persian Gulf. Sen. Hart worried that the loss to American standing worldwide is non-recoverable, even after President Bush is no longer in office; people could view the United States as “the great hypocrite of the world,” he stated.

Sen. Hart encouraged economic cooperation between Israel and Palestine in the hopes that increased communication and transportation between the regions will allow younger generations of Israelis and Palestinians to work together to move past old feuds.

Daniel Levy then thanked Sen. Hart for reminding everyone of the ‘big picture,’ which can get lost in day-to-day negotiations and details. Mr. Levy shared Sen. Hart’s concern that seven years of neglect by the Bush administration has done little to stabilize the region or protect American or Israeli interests. He hoped that negotiations will not be “spooked” by domestic Israeli politics this time around and warned that Annapolis could play a negative role in moving negotiations forward because it could “feed into domestic frustration” of a why-bother sentiment. “You can’t fix anything in the region now unless you fix everything,” Mr. Levy concluded, with his belief that the U.S. needs to engage Syria, Iran, and Hamas in negotiations.

Patrick Doherty moderated the following question and answer session, and the panel discussed the efficacy of American mediation given decreased standing in the world, the possibility of another party acting as peace broker, and the next administration’s agenda in the Middle East.

-Katherine Tiedemann, Research Associate for the Fellows Program