At historic moment for Netanyahu, peace process, ambassador to talk on Israel | Gil Smart

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu faces indictment at the very moment that the Donald Trump administration releases its plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... Dennis Ross couldn't have picked a better time to visit Stuart.

Ross, a former ambassador who served in a variety of capacities under three presidents, will be the keynote speaker at the Rappaport Center at Temple Beit HaYam in Stuart next Wednesday evening, Jan. 29.

I’ll be moderating the event, titled “Can American & Israeli Leaders Achieve Peace in the Mideast?” Ross, now the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, thinks the answer is “yes.”

If, that is, leaders in both countries wise up and put their national interests above mere politics.

“The minute you demonize your opponent, the moment you stop looking at those you disagree with as potential partners and see them only as adversaries trying to do you in, it becomes very hard to reach an understanding,” said Ross.

Ross’s presentation will draw from his most recent book, “Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny.” Co-authored with David Makovsky, the book looks at four pivotal Israeli figures — David Ben Gurion, Menachim Begin, Yitzak Rabin and Ariel Sharon — who rose to the occasion when the nation needed “extraordinary acts of leadership and strategic judgment to secure its future.”

That involved far more than riling up “the base,” insisting upon your “side’s” moral supremacy and holding fast to ideology. In fact, said Ross in a telephone interview last week, what enabled these Israeli leaders to achieve breakthrough was a willingness to break with their ideology, to reach across political divides and understand that political progress isn’t — can’t be — a zero sum game.

The ultimate lament of the book is that such leaders seem few and far between in Israel these days. That, he fears, could lead to the loss of the “two-state” solution, meaning instead Israel becomes one state with two people — Jews and Palestinians — and loses its character, indeed its reason for being as the homeland of the Jewish people.

But as noted, Israel’s hardly the only country with a surplus of politicians and a lack of statesmen.

Ross, ever the circumspect diplomat, describes President Donald Trump as “not real predictable.” But in a Washington Post op-ed, he argued that the recent killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Trump’s apparent affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Putin’s desire to be seen as a major power broker in the Mideast — could provide an opportunity for all three countries to ease tensions, to strike a deal that all might tout as a breakthrough victory.

Both Trump and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali need an “off-ramp,” wrote Ross: “Trump wants to show he ended our involvement in the ‘endless wars’ and did not launch a new one. Khamenei does not want a shooting war with the United States, and the domestic fervor he is seeking to exploit over the killing of Soleimani won’t alter the grim economic reality in Iran. For his part, Putin does not want the region to explode with Russian forces in it.

So Putin could become the intermediary, brokering a deal that ultimately ratchets back the Iranian nuclear threat.

“What an irony it would be, indeed, if Trump’s attraction to Putin could offer a pathway to defusing the Iranian threat,” Ross wrote.

Could Trump, in fact, become a statesman?

Stop laughing; I’m serious.

The entire point of Ross and Markovsky’s book is that tigers can change their stripes — and the nation can benefit.

Consider Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister from March 2001 until April 2006 and prior to that a soldier, officer, minister of defense and strong proponent of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He’s probably the last guy a casual observer would expect to turn around and disengage from Gaza and kick the settlers out.

“He’d built the settlements, he’s the one who urged people to go to them, and he was the one to dismantle them” in an effort to advance the peace process, said Ross.

Imagine the political will it took to do such a thing. Then try to imagine a similar thing happening in America today.

Right. I can’t, either.

Ross believes that without "leaders who can make fateful choices" the way the Israeli leaders profiled in his book did, neither Israel — nor America — can make any real headway on the biggest problems facing the respective nations.

"It's not too late," said Ross. "But it's getting late"

Gil Smart is a TCPalm columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His columns reflect his opinion. Readers may reach him at gil.smart@tcpalm.com, by phone at 772-223-4741 or via Twitter at @TCPalmGilSmart.