Subject: Don't let New York donors push you into doing an Al Gore
From: Anne-Marie Slaughter <[email-masked]>
To: Hillary Clinton <[email-masked]>
Cc: Huma Abedin <[email-masked]>, Jake Sullivan <[email-masked]>, Cheryl Mills <[email-masked]>, Robby Mook <[email-masked]>, John Podesta <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 May 2015 21:10:44 +0000

Hillary,
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since our last foreign policy meeting. I’m worried that the hostility toward Obama among donors who buy Bibi’s line about his commitment to Israel could cause you to run away from his (and your) overall foreign policy record, which would be a big mistake in the same way that it will squeeze you into a corner that you do not need to be in and prevents you from making a bold case for your success as Secretary of State.

Let’s assume a deal with Iran gets done. Then, as I write here, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/obama-foreign-policy-record-by-anne-marie-slaughter-2015-04, Obama will have a foreign policy legacy to be proud of — doing exactly what he said he would do when he came in by opening up relations with Myanmar, Cuba, and Iran and thereby helping to to transform US relations with three distinct regions. These are diplomatic achievements rather than military, and economic as much as political. George W. Bush isolated us in the world; Barack Obama reconnected us in ways that allow us to advance peace and prosperity, etc. There’s still a gaping hole in terms of your kind of leadership, but he kept his eyes on the prize and did things that mattered. And you did one of those with him (Myanmar) and laid the indispensable groundwork for the other two.

Finally, the entire “Obama doesn’t care about Israel” narrative shifts attention from the real issue with Israel, which is that this government is missing one of the greatest opportunities in Israel’s history to move from pariah state to political broker and economic anchor of the Middle East. I made that case in a few short paragraphs in the New York Times Up for Debate (reprinted below) yesterday; Fareed’s column this week makes almost exactly the same case. It’s not even about what is right for the Palestinians; it is about what Israel could be and do if it could just move to the next phase of its history rather than remaining mired in insecurity and hostility of its past.

This didn’t seem like Mother’s Day reading, so wanted to get it off today!
Best,
AM

Israel’s Rightward Shift Helps Make It Its Own Worst Enemy
[Anne-Marie Slaughter]

It is a difficult and immensely frustrating time to be a friend of Israel. Never in Israel’s history would peace with the Palestinians yield such rich and enduring dividends, and never since the peace process began has the Israeli government been so resolutely opposed even to serious negotiations.

Real peace could allow Israel to form political, military and economic alliances to make it a regional power broker and let Palestinians thrive.

The center of the Middle East – Iraq and Syria – is disintegrating, mixing virulent and horrifically violent religious fanaticism with civil war and criminal and corrupt governments. But that conflagration has created a new set of actual and potential alignments. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are openly willing to work closely with Israel – against Assad, and in the Saudi case, against Iran. But Turkey and Iran would be willing to work with Israel – drawing on its superlative intelligence and military capabilities – against ISIS. And Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is once again willing to work with Israel against Hamas.

With a Palestinian peace that included normalizing relations with all Arab countries, as the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and 2007 proposed, Israel could move from pariah state to power broker overnight.

On the economic front, the opportunities are even greater. An Israeli-Palestinian peace would lay the groundwork for Ispajor (an economic union of Israel, Palestine and Jordan), the Middle East equivalent to Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). It’s hard for us to remember now, but Benelux was created as a customs union in 1944, when World War II was still raging and the entire European economy was in a shambles. It became the nucleus for the entire European Union.

Israel and Palestine have the strongest tech economies in the region; a peace that would allow Israeli economic growth to extend to Palestine would then create opportunities for Jordan to join and turn its current divide between Palestinian Jordanians and native Jordanians into an advantage. Investors worldwide would flock to a stable and relatively well-governed bright spot in the region, with oil and gas resources, a port on the Mediterranean and highly educated Israelis and Arabs. It seems like a mirage today, but with an Israeli-Palestinian peace it would become a logical next step.

Abba Eban, the great Israeli diplomat and author with a flair for epigrams, is supposed to have said, after the Geneva Peace Conference in 1973: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Today it is the Israeli government that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

But Eban also said: “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” Let us hope that the current Israeli government is the last alternative Israelis exhaust before they finally realize the tremendous opportunity of peace – if it is not too late.