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Mitchell did not attempt to talk to Hamas or even visit the Gaza Strip during the visit. Like many others in the West and in the Arab world, he appears to believe it is possible to rebuild Gaza yet ignore its Hamas-led government. His itinerary took him to Ramallah, Cairo, Amman and Riyadh - but not to Damascus. He cancelled a visit to Turkey after a high-level Israeli-Turkish clash at the Davos World Economic Forum - as if this somehow rendered Ankara’s own Middle East mediation efforts, past and future, less relevant. A Mitchell visit to Gaza, Damascus or Ankara would not in any way have betrayed Israel or the administration’s basic undertaking regarding Israel’s security. On the contrary, it would have served them. If Obama and his emissary for Arab-Israel affairs intend to represent a new and refreshing departure in America’s approach to the Middle East, Mitchell’s first visit was not characteristic of this approach. It seemed to reflect attitudes regarding the identity of America’s interlocutors that characterized the Bush era. Let’s hope this is not a harbinger of things to come. Yossi Alpher is a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and was a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter publishing contending views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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