Dennis Ross also lived in Israel:
counterpunch.org
<<< The backgrounds of Ross and Indyk are
relevant to the policy they developed during the Clinton years.
Before entering government, both had been connected with the
pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, a spin-off from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), the principal pro-Israel lobby organization. Ross was
a senior fellow at the institute in the mid-1980s, was an adviser
to the Bush presidential campaign in 1988, and served as James
Baker's senior State Department adviser on both Soviet and Middle
East affairs. He stayed on as principal Middle East negotiator
throughout Clinton's years in office and since then has returned
to the Washington Institute as a senior counselor. Indyk, an
Australian citizen who came to the U.S. in the 1970s and had
worked for AIPAC, was the Washington Institute's director from
its creation in 1984 until he moved into the Clinton administration
in 1993, an appointment that necessitated his rapid acquisition
of U.S. citizenship.
Both men had lived in Israel in the 1970s,
and Indyk has told interviewers that he moved to the United States
after the 1973 war because he came to believe during that war
that the U.S. was the key to Israel's defense, an objective clearly
of surpassing importance to him personally. Although both men
prided themselves on being able as Jews to understand Palestinians
better than most, it was clear that they approached Middle East
policymaking from an Israel-centered focus that did not in fact
permit as clear an understanding of Palestinian concerns as of
Israeli interests. One can get an idea of the perhaps unconsciously
skewed perspective from which they operated by imagining the
policy approach of a chief mediator who was of Palestinian descent,
had lived in the West Bank, and unabashedly proclaimed that his
primary aim in life was to ensure the defense of Palestine. >>> |
