An International Force in Israel/Palestine? CNAS Goes There . . .

Every now and then it's nice for somebody — preferably other than me — to toss a fox into the henhouse, in order to provoke a lot of discussion and probably a fair amount of apoplexy. The Center for a New American Security, which is sometimes characterized, rightly or wrongly, as the defense think tank of the Obama Administration (at least a lot of its former denizens entered the Administration), has come out with such a provocative study: Security for Peace: Setting the Conditions for a Palestinian State.

The whole report can be found here (PDF). Unless you started studying the Middle East, say, midmorning today, the reasons I call this a fox-in-the-henhouse document will be obvious. Israel's worst nightmare is an "imposed settlement," and an international peacekeeping force sounds like someone other than the IDF is going to be policing the peace. And since it just came out, I've read only the contents and introduction, so don't jump all over me for what I haven't gotten to yet.

Marc Lynch, who wrote one of the chapters, has some background on it. Andrew Exum, who edited it, didn't have anything up as of last night on his Abu Muqawama blog, but I'm sure he will. But the contents are as follows 1) Introduction by Andrew Exum; 2) case study of East Timor by Scott Brady; 3) case study on South Lebanon by Exum and Kyle Flynn; 4) case study on Kosovo by Richard Weiz; 5) military lessons learned by Bob Killebrew; 6) political lessons learned by James Dobbins; and 7) Conclusion by Marc Lynch.

As Lynch's blog notes, they aren't urging creation of such as force, but this will likely cause some Israeli and pro-Israeli elements to go into high-damage mode. Many Israelis will not like seeing their theater compared to East Timor or Kosovo (nor will many Arabs, for that matter).

But, given the fact that current peace process efforts seem pretty stagnant, perhaps it's time for someone to propose some different approaches. CNAS is pretty careful to say it isn't urging an international peacekeeping force; it's just looking at what it might entail if tried.