Rosner’s Domain Blog

I’ve just received the responses for the last survey of The Israel Factor - a project in which a group of eight Israeli professors and former officials was following the US election and ranking the candidates and their positions. After more than two years since we started the Factor, this will be the last survey before the election, and it included many questions that I will post in the coming days. This first post is dedicated to the question: who’d be a good choice for “special envoy” to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The panel got and ranked a list of names - not all of them are actually candidates to occupy this position. Bottom line: The panel thinks that Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a candidate worthy of serving as such “special envoy”. Condi Rice? not so much.

(For all new Rosner’s Domain readers:
More explanation about this project here.
More about the panelists here.
Previous surveys of The Israel Factor here))

As I’ve noted a long time ago, the chances that the next president will appoint a “special envoy” are very high:

The president must “consider appointing a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace,” the [new Senate] resolution states. This is a diplomatic tool that has become a cliche, an envoy in the guise of a messiah. A senior Israeli diplomatic source suggested this week that “any Democratic administration that is elected in 2008 will appoint a special envoy for the peace process. It has become such an accepted slogan in the party that no Democratic president will be able to avoid it.” It is certainly possible that even a Republican administration will choose to appoint such an envoy, if only to head off criticism about the lack of one.

By the way, the resolution that prompted me to write this paragraph was sponsored by some Senators to which Obama has special affinity: “Senator Diane Feinstein of California and several Senate colleagues, including Democrats such as Christopher Dodd (Connecticut) and Republicans such as Richard Lugar (Indiana) and Chuck Hagel (Nebraska)”. So you see, I think the envoy is already an established reality. The panel tends to agree, as you can see in this table (1 is for “unlikely” to happen, 5 very likely):

The only questions remain are: who’s the man (or woman) and what’s the mandate. So - what do the panel think about the candidates we presented him with? Here’s the table. Panelists were asked to rate candidates on a scale of 1-5. 1 is a sign that the person at hand isn’t a good candidate, 5 is a sign that he is. The number you see is the average rank each of the candidates got from the group:

The funny thing about Richardson being recommended as the best choice (of this group) to be the envoy, is that Richardson himself, when he was still a presidential candidate, got in some trouble as he was recommending Jim Baker for this same position. Baker, as you can see in the table, is not the one this panel would like to see coming back to the Middle East - not that I think there’s any chance this would happen.

But two candidates rank even lower than Baker: one is Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel and an early supporter of Obama’s. Unlike Baker, Kurtzer expects to play a role in the next administration (assuming it’s Obama’s), and judging by this survey it seems that there’s no enthusiasm among Israelis for a Kurtzer comeback (more about Kurtzer’s vies on the peace process here).

And even lower regard was saved for the person now running the peace process - Condoleezza Rice. The view of this panel is quite clear: Those who want a more vigorous process think that she’s just not up for the job, those who think it’s a waste of time will generally consider here to be too much into it. Thus, Rice gets low marks from almost all panelists. And as you can see in the next table, the panel isn’t even sure that Rice’s “Annapolis Process” will survive her term:

More from the Israel Factor panel in the coming days…