A Critique of the 1988 Brookings Report

Abstract

The Brookings Institution has taken what its calls fresh look at the Arab-Israeli peace process. The result is a report intended to enrich the discussion of how the United States can best promote ArabIsraeli peace negotiations. The report does not pretend to be a blueprint for peace in the Middle East, but it aspires to suggest how to get the negotiating process under way and puts forward principles that should inform the efforts of any American president (p. viii). The report, entitled Toward Arab-Israeli Peace, purports to represent the consensus of a diverse group reflecting American, Israeli, and Palestinian views and interests. It summarizes a series of discussions held by the group between May 1987 and February 1988 under the direction of Brookings Institution senior fellow William B. Quandt, former staff member of the National Security Council. The forty-two-page report is not easy to characterize as a whole, because it is a package of assorted ideas of highly varying quality. It contains valuable insights as well as meaningless platitudes; it includes daring concepts as well as unimaginative propositions; and it has well-reasoned arguments as well as dogmatic assertions. Most disconcerting of all, however, is that some of the report's recommendations and conclusions clash with its own explicit assumptions, something which betrays labored compromise rather than a consensus. In fact, claims of broad agreement