Former Sen. Mitchell urges patience in Middle East, active negotiations in Israel-Palestine conflict

Former Senator George Mitchell urged the United States to exercise patience in assessing the results of the Arab Spring revolutions and to actively facilitate negotiations for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a keynote address at the University’s Colloquium on Public and International Affairs last Friday.

Under former President Bill Clinton, Mitchell served as a special envoy for Northern Ireland and played a leading role in peace negotiations there in the late 1990s. Under President Obama, he served as special envoy for Middle East peace from 2009 to 2011.

Mitchell advised Westerners to be cautious in assessing the success of the Arab Spring revolutions, explaining it often takes several years after a revolution to establish a stable, peaceful government.

“When it began, the Arab Spring appeared to represent a highly positive turning point in the history of the Middle East, and it still may be that,” Mitchell said. “But for many people in the region, it has become a winter of discontent and continuing violence. History tells us very clearly that revolutions are unpredictable and often require years, even decades to play up.”

Mitchell reminded the audience that seven years elapsed between the end of the American Revolution and the time the United States was created.

“We in our country, I believe, should be patient and realistic in our expectation, do all we can to support moderates and those who believe in democracy in the region, continue to take a strong stand against the use of terror to advance political agendas, and we must also actively continue our effort to help end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.

Urging a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mitchell said that he believed that such a solution could and needed to be achieved very soon with the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state alongside a secure, recognized Israeli state.

Mitchell urged the two states to agree on an acceptable two-state solution soon, citing statistics that the birth rate among Arabs in the region was much higher than that among Jews, and that the population of Arabs was expected to outpace the population of Jews by 2020. Should the Arab population surpass the Jewish population before a two-state solution is reached, Mitchell said, “Israel will have to choose between being a Jewish state and being a democratic state.”

Mitchell said the partition plans have only become less attractive to both parties since the partition proposal facilitated by the United Nations in 1947. He commended Secretary of State John Kerry for the manner in which he has pursued the achievement of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has included efforts to revive direct peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

“A solution cannot, in my judgment, be imposed externally. The parties themselves must negotiate directly with the active and sustained support of the United States,” Mitchell said, noting that he believed the conflict would end when leaders of the two opposing groups accepted the compromises that would help them avert even greater suffering.

Comparing the emotions of the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to those of parties in the Northern Ireland peace process, Mitchell said that it is normal for both sides to feel that their people have been victimized by the other group.

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“I can tell you from my own experience in Northern Ireland, in these conflict situations both sides are deeply moved and influenced by their sense of victimization, and they both have legitimate histories of victimization, and they tend — it’s human nature — to see only theirs,” Mitchell explained. He said that both sides would have to move past these feelings of victimization to reach a peace settlement.

Mitchell’s lecture was given in McCosh 50. It served as the keynote speech for the Wilson School’s colloquium on “Challenges to U.S. Policy in the Middle East.”