It is increasingly apparent that our secretary of state is better equipped to be secretary of war in some faraway land in some faraway time when war was not the dangerous threat to world peace that it is today. Frankly, President Barack Obama had better choices to serve as his secretary of state, for instance, the more experienced Biden. Truth be known, Secretary Clinton has heated up hostilities elsewhere during her short tenure.
When she was recently in Argentina -- either from ignorance or after being manipulated by the Argentine president, Cristina Kirchner -- Clinton used the Argentines' name, "Malvinas," for the contested islands our British allies call "the Falklands," leaving the impression at a news conference that the United States is neutral in this dispute, a dispute that has cost nearly a thousand lives. The British press was furious. Honduran friends of the United States were equally furious when Hillary took the side of Hugo Chavez's stooge, deposed President Manuel Zelaya, in the controversy he created by illegally attempting to remain in office.
As for the controversy over those 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem, the fundamental problem is not Jewish settlements. Two Israeli prime ministers have offered comprehensive plans that would give the Palestinians virtually all of the West Bank and a division of Jerusalem, with an international jurisdiction governing the Jerusalem sites held holy by Christians, Jews and Muslims. The real problems are 1) acceptance of a Jewish state by the Palestinians and 2) resettlement of Palestinian refugees who have been abandoned by fellow Arabs since they lost their first war with the Jews in 1948.
Ironically, over the weekend, while Clinton was driving up tensions, a retired American investor, Michael Steinhardt, with vast experience in the region, published an imaginative plan in The Wall Street Journal for resettling the Palestinian refugees. It would involve an international coalition with the usual Western powers, along with China, Russia and prosperous Arab countries. They would establish a fund to create new communities on the West Bank and in Gaza, providing infrastructure and means of employment.
Members of the coalition would take in those refugees unable to be settled in Palestine. Some of this already has been done in North America and Europe. The Israelis would be asked, as Steinhardt wrote, "to take some (Palestinians), too -- giving priority to those seeking to reunite with family left behind." Moreover, "the Islamic nations would each be asked to take in small but significant populations of Palestinians, their co-religionists." Finally, Israel would offer an apology, "taking its share of responsibility for these people's displacement and hardship. And it would back up that apology by offering substantial, direct compensation to individuals for homes and land that have been lost."
I am sure Steinhardt would be happy to explain the whole plan to both Clinton and Netanyahu -- but no shouting.