President Bush has finally enunciated his plan for moving forward in the Middle East, though the specifics are far skimpier than the build-up to his address had suggested they would be. According to the president, in the coming months -- contingent upon hasty democratization of the Palestinian Authority -- an interim Palestinian state should be established as a major step in negotiating the thorny issues surrounding Palestinian independence. And with Bush's initiative again placing the United States front and center in the Middle East peace process, we are likely to see the re-emergence of two figures -- one American, one Israeli -- who are far more similar than most people seem to realize.
At first glance, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell seem starkly different, comparable only in that they hold similar jobs within their respective governments. Yet each also serves as his government's most steady proponent of a negotiated, two-state solution in the near future. And for that steady voice, each sometimes faces sharp criticism. The similarities, however, do not end there.
Both Powell and Peres began their careers as soldiers, and both moved from the military hierarchy into the realm of politics and diplomacy. After serving in the Haganah (the precursor to the Israel Defense Forces) during Israel's War of Independence, Peres organized the Israeli navy, then oversaw Israel's program to buy weapons from world powers, and, in the 1950s, modernized the Israeli air force and built the country's nuclear program. By 1959, when Peres moved into politics, he had made significant and lasting contributions to the Israeli military infrastructure. Whereas Peres helped build a defense infrastructure, Powell had the equally daunting task of reinventing one. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell advised two presidents and two secretaries of defense on redesigning the U.S. military for the post-Cold War era.
Both men also possess the ability and vision to work across party lines. Powell served under both George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. His ideological equanimity led to significant speculation as to his own political leanings before he publicly announced his affiliation with the Republican Party. Within the GOP, however, Powell has been a voice of moderation, working to draw women and minorities into George W. Bush's carefully tailored coalition of "compassionate conservatism." Similarly, Peres has served in governments led by his own Labor Party and by the opposition Likud Party. When Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, broke from the Labor Party to head a new faction, Peres followed him; when Ben Gurion's new party failed to attract widespread support, Peres played a key role in negotiating a reconciliation between the Labor Party and those who had splintered off.
None of this is to suggest that either Powell or Peres has always had an easy time working with the opposition, or even with his own party. Cooperation with the opposition has often cast both in an unfavorable light with the party faithful. Some Republicans cast aspersions on Powell's deviance from conservative orthodoxy and viewed passages of his speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention as borderline apostasy. Peres, for his part, frequently finds his role in right-winger Ariel Sharon's government labeled hypocritical; one of his former aides, Gideon Levy, has excoriated him in an open letter published in a leading Israeli newspaper.
Moreover, neither man has helped his own reputation with the party faithful by being an electoral disappointment. Powell has twice dashed hopes for a Republican landslide by opting out of the presidential contest and then removing his name from consideration as a vice presidential possibility. Many hard-core Republicans judged him too moderate to carry the GOP's flag, and Powell further infuriated the rank and file by refusing to say that he would not serve as secretary of state in a Gore administration. Peres, on the other hand, has been an electoral disappointment in a more traditional manner: He has led the Labor Party into elections more than half a dozen times without ever winning the prime minister's office. (Peres has twice served as prime minister -- first when he and Yitzhak Shamir shared power in a unity government in the mid-1980s, and again after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.) And in the most recent, and perhaps most embarrassing, rebuke, right-leaning members of Israel's Knesset voted shortly after the failed talks at Camp David to name a relative unknown to Israel's powerless presidency, denying Peres a largely ceremonial honor he was expected to win.
These days, both men are distrusted by the primary supporters of their respective governments and by those who should be their natural allies. Peres is regarded as a figurehead within the Labor constituency, while the more hawkish Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (defense minister in the current Sharon government) has taken over the reins of party leadership. Powell is an internationalist widely regarded as a check on the defense establishment (Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) within the Bush administration. But while Powell is considered the key voice calling for military restraint within Bush's inner circle, the war on terrorism -- which he supports -- has clearly proceeded outside the boundaries of the Powell Doctrine, the military paradigm that counsels against the use of American troops in limited engagements, without overwhelming force, or outside the direct national interest.
Powell and Peres both buck their parties in speaking about the importance of multilateralism and international cooperation. (In Israel, where events have cast the United Nations and other international organizations in an unflattering light, Peres is far more welcoming, and less circumspect, than other politicians.) And both men, swimming against the grain in their governments and their nations, speak of the underlying economic causes of terrorism. Peres has long advocated a "New Middle East," in which economic cooperation would overwhelm historical grievances and religious enmity. For months, Powell has advocated a proactive American stance that would give the Palestinian people hope for a prosperous, independent future as a necessary condition to stanch the flow of terrorist attacks on Israel.
Of course, both men are also sometimes forced to subjugate their own opinions to their bosses' policies. As a member of a different political party than Sharon's, Peres is expected to differ with the prime minister to a certain extent. Yet Sharon has sometimes kept him on a short leash. Last year, after Peres spoke forcefully about the need for negotiations, Sharon elbowed him into the background, holding him back from representing Israel at a planned meeting with Palestinians. Powell, too, has had moments of conflict and has been forced to backtrack on public statements. Last month, in fact, he had to recant and apologize after saying aloud that the Bush administration would do exactly what it has now done: call for the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state.
Admittedly, Peres and Powell operate within vastly different political realities. Powell may not always be in line with the administration, but when he breaks rank it is to march toward the center of the American political spectrum. Powell is a strong moderate on foreign and domestic affairs; his moderation makes him popular across party lines and allows him to operate from a position of relative strength within the administration. Peres, on the other hand, anchors the far-left flank of a popular center-right unity government. While some would argue that he simply counterbalances the uberhawk Sharon, Israeli public opinion puts Peres outside the mainstream these days. To be sure, there is a leftist fringe outflanking him, but no one has argued more publicly for renewed negotiations with Arafat -- regardless of the frequency or severity of Palestinian terror attacks -- than Peres. As a result, he has become a symbol of both Labor's weakness and the shortcomings of the Oslo process; unlike Powell, he is widely reviled by those outside his party.
Yet Powell and Peres are likely to share an increased relevance in the coming months. While the Bush initiative clearly borrowed Sharon's talking points about a Palestinian leadership change, it also calls for a freeze on Israeli settlements, renewed security cooperation, and a mitigation of Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank. It is on these issues, which are outside Sharon's comfort zone, that Peres has an opportunity to lead and to insert himself anew into the peace process. And while Bush cloaked his plan for a provisional Palestinian state in layer after layer of conditions to mollify the militant wing of his administration, the speech seems to represent a limited victory for Powell -- whose role in advancing the process the president laid out will no doubt be vital.
As President Bush said in his speech, there is undoubtedly more tragic violence to come. But to a large extent, Shimon Peres and Colin Powell, on the edges of their respective parties and not always in line with their governments, will help determine the success of this initiative and the prospects for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. In doing so, they will share more than a job. And if they can succeed where others have failed, shepherding this initiative to fruition, they will deserve far more credit than they will likely receive.
