world-myself included-before Bush & Co. launched the bloody Iraqi adventure. In his dry and incisive style, Baker says that the United States cannot win there. In so many words he tells the American public: Let's get out of there, before the last American soldier has to scramble into the last helicopter from the roof of the American embassy, as happened in Vietnam.
Baker calls for the end of the Bush approach and offers a new and thought-out strategy of his own. Actually, it is an elegant way of extricating America from Iraq, without it looking like a complete rout. The main proposals: an American dialogue with Iran and Syria, an international conference, the withdrawal of the American combat brigades, leaving behind only instructors. The committee that he headed was bi-partisan, composed half and half of Republicans and Democrats.
For Israelis, the most interesting part of the report is, of course, the one that concerns us directly. It interests me especially-how could it be otherwise?-because it repeats, almost word for word, the things I said immediately after September 11, both in my articles at home and in my lectures in the United States.
True, Baker is saying them four years later. In these four years, thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died for nothing. But, to use the image again, when a giant ship like the United States turns around, it makes a very big circle, and it takes a lot of time. We, in the small speedboat called Israel, could do it much quicker-if we had the good sense to do it.
Baker says simply: In order to stop the war in Iraq and start a reconciliation with the Arab world, the United States must bring about the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He does not say explicitly that peace must be imposed on Israel, but that is the obvious implication.
In his own clear words: "The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."
His committee proposes the immediate start of negotiations
between Israel and "President Mahmoud Abbas," in order to implement the two-state solution. The "sustainable negotiations" must address the "key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of conflict."
The use of the title "President" for Abu Mazen and, even more so, the use of the term "right of return" have alarmed the whole political class in Israel. Even in the Oslo agreement, the section dealing with the "final status" issues mentions only "refugees." Baker, as is his wont, called the spade a spade.