Déjà Vu
Unlearned lessons.

oes this scenario sound familiar? On the heels of a resounding U.S. victory on Muslim soil, Empire Americana turns its attentions to the oldest conflict in the world — the struggle for Jerusalem. Under mounting pressure from the Bush administration, Israel begrudgingly agrees to start land-for-peace negotiations with a man it regards a terrorist. After many more meetings a peace process emerges.

This is, of course, a brief synopsis of what led up to the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference that changed the international calculus for understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But it also describes the dynamics behind Secretary of State Colin Powell's long-anticipated Middle East policy speech for how to handle the current Intifada.

He mentioned Madrid no less than eight times in an address delivered on Monday, as a British-American bombing campaign, supported by an international coalition, drives the Taliban further into retreat.

In that speech Powell promised American aid to rebuild the Palestinian economy and announced that he will send not one but two envoys to the Holy Land to restart failed negotiations. He demanded an end to Israeli settlements and for Arafat "to arrest, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of terrorist acts."

In 1991 President Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, held up Israel's request for loan guarantees to resettle a wave of expected Russian emigrants as a stick to get Jerusalem to participate in the Madrid conference.

The new stick is the specter of international or American monitors to the conflict, a suggestion Israel has long resisted as an affront to its sovereignty.

"The United States remains ready to contribute actively to a third party monitoring and verification mechanism acceptable to both parties," Powell told a packed house at the University of Louisville Monday.

In many ways he is already contributing one of those monitors in the form of his close friend retired General Anthony Zinni, the former chief of Central Command — the theater of operations that includes the Middle East.

Powell told reporters on the airplane home from Kentucky that "Zinni will focus on cease fire and security issues. And he will stay in the region. He will come out from time to time, but I want Tony to stick in the region for a while and get this thing started."

Zinni's job is to actually to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to keep the cease-fire and security agreements they made in June to CIA Director George Tenet. He may not be called an observer, monitor, or "third party verification mechanism" but his job description sure sounds like it.

At the Madrid conference, the Israelis for the first time began negotiating officially with the Palestine Liberation Organization — at the time they were part of Jordan's delegation. "The Madrid talks broke a taboo," Meyrav Wurmser, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Middle East Studies, said in an interview Monday. "They negotiated directly with Syria and with the Palestinians through the Jordanians. Eventually it created a spirit that led towards Oslo. This was the first time the idea was broached that the solution to the conflict was through an international framework."

Sharon has negotiated indirectly with Arafat through his dovish Foreign Minister Shimon Peres throughout the conflict. But for Sharon to drop his demand that there be seven days of no violence in order to begin the negotiations would represent a breaking of a different kind of taboo.

Sharon became his country's leader by campaigning against negotiations with Arafat while he encouraged a campaign of terror against Israeli civilians. Indeed, Arafat, Ehud Barak and President Clinton were in near-constant contact in the twilight of the latter's presidency. For Sharon to abandon his campaign pledge would represent a significant sacrifice for one of Israel's most hawkish figures.

But things are different now. To start, the United States has not yet won the war in Afghanistan, let alone the war on all terrorism. Also it is unclear the president supports the new Powell peace initiative in the same way the first President Bush supported Baker's efforts ten years ago. As Powell has called on the Israelis to move their army from the Palestinian territories and cancel the policy of assassinating suspected terrorists, the president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice has chastised Arafat for saddling up to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But the most glaring difference between now and ten years ago is that there was a peace process. It ended after nearly a month of negotiations on the sticky questions of Jerusalem and refugees at Camp David in July of 2000 produced no agreement. The international community has tried this tack before and it hasn't worked. So it begs the question, Why is pressure for negotiations in the face of violence going to work now when it hasn't worked before?

Powell and his diplomats don't have much of an answer. "Over the past decade, Arabs and Israelis have proven that negotiations can work to achieve results," he said. The secretary referred to the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, perhaps the only tangible diplomatic accomplishment in the Middle East since the Oslo Accords. But Powell also mentioned the 1991 Madrid Talks, the Oslo Accords, and even the last Camp David negotiations — all of which sound good on paper but have fallen apart since last September — as proof that "negotiations" can produce "results."

If results are defined in diplomatic terms, then Powell's plan has a chance. Whether such results add up to peace is another story.