Martin Indyk, who was President Clinton’s ambassador to Israel and was intimately involved in the administration’s last-ditch effort in 2000 for a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, injects some much-needed reality into the current American diplomatic initiative:

“To try to push to a [full] agreement in the final year of the administration is precisely what George Bush criticized Clinton for doing. It would be ironic indeed if Bush wound up doing it himself.”

The piece is a teaser for a full interview with Indyk that will appear in the Jerusalem Post next week. Indyk favors a large international force in the West Bank that would train Palestinian security forces, build Palestinian institutions, and demonstrate to the Israelis that terrorists would not be able to fill the vacuum created by their withdrawal. “You must have third party involvement,” Indyk says, because “the Palestinians can’t build up their security capabilities and reform Fatah in reasonable time. That’s the gap. If it’s not filled, the whole structure will collapse like a house of cards.” It is good that a figure such as Indyk is emphasizing the political reality that Israel will not remove its security presence from the West Bank until there are genuinely competent Palestinian government and security institutions in place that are willing and able to prevent terrorist attacks and internal instability; but it is probably bad that the proposed solution involves a template — an international force — that has been a comprehensive failure almost everywhere it has been tried.