Finding hope in reason, and against awful odds
Gidi Grinstein said he was surprised only by the 
scope, not the fact, of the Hamas victory in last week’s legislative elections.
“We were one of the first organizations to speak about a Hamas victory — since November,” says Grinstein. He ticks off the reasons: One, “a lot of the people were looking at general polls, but we were looking at the electoral system on the Palestinian side.” Two, the Palestinians’ winner-take-all regional voting system awards blocs of voters to slim majorities. And three, Hamas is “awesomely disciplined” and “more logistically capable” than Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, making it inevitable that they would work every street and alley to bring out the vote.
Based on the few times I’ve seen him in action, it seems a typical Grinstein analysis. Unabashedly self-assured. Relentlessly pragmatic. Carefully enumerated. Ask Grinstein a question on the peace process, the strength of Kadima, or the future of Zionism, and you can almost imagine the PowerPoint slides flashing just above his shaved head.
It is an approach that he is taking to Israeli decision-makers as CEO and founder of the Re’ut (“Vision”) Institute, a two-year-old Israeli think-tank. Grinstein and his team of young analysts — most, like him, under 35, and some, also like him, graduates of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government — are trying to change the way Israel tackles its most pressing problems. Re’ut is helping a growing list of government agencies question their basic premises, list the long-term implications of various courses of action, and then move quickly toward decisions that are informed and relevant.
“Quickly” is the key: Grinstein, a captain (Res.) in the Israeli Navy, likens his organization to a “policy SWAT team.” “The specialty of Re’ut is dealing with complex and dynamic environments in moments when there is a rupture that requires reframing a policy of government,” he told me in a telephone interview Monday.
When I first met Grinstein, at a Jewish studies conference last month, the latest rupture was the incapacitation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Grinstein’s audience was anxious about Israel’s future, but he charmed and calmed them by reducing the usual Sturm und Drang of Mideast politics to a series of realistic options and outcomes. He drew variously and fluidly on his poli-sci and economics background, his training as a lawyer, and his own diplomatic experience (he served then Prime Minister Ehud Barak as coordinator of the Israeli delegation to the Camp David talks in July 2000).
Speaking this week about the Palestinian elections, Grinstein offered a similarly measured analysis, especially when compared to the almost gleeful despair of many American-Jewish leaders. In a conference call last week arranged by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, one of the leaders was determined to get two Israeli journalists to acknowledge that the Hamas victory signified that the great majority of Palestinians will never accept the legitimacy of Israel.
The journalists demurred. In our conversation, so did Grinstein. “It’s hard to say what the vote signifies or that you have a very clear message from the Palestinians, especially with this interplay of regional elections with general elections,” he said. “The best quote on the message came from a Palestinian I heard interviewed: ‘The Palestinian public wanted to give Fatah a little bit of a pushback, not kick them out of the room.’”
Many Jewish organizations seem to eliminate any possibility for an Israeli modus vivendi with Hamas. As one group put it, the “Palestinians have ended the charade that there is a partner with the will and with the authority to negotiate a bona fide peace settlement with Israel.”
Grinstein has no illusions about Hamas, but he prefers to examine the “tremendous responsibility and opportunity for Israel.”
He sees Hamas torn between its commitment to its anti-Israel charter and terrorist infrastructure, and the need to deliver on its promises of good government. In the past, Hamas would undermine the Palestinian Authority from the outside and then avoid responsibility for the outcomes. “Hamas is now exposed to direct international pressure for the first time, and it is in a position of inexperience in running a bureaucracy and digesting the entire PA,” Grinstein said. “If Israel and the international community can focus pressure on Hamas, making it increasingly difficult for it to juggle two worlds, they can turn this victory into the first precedent for taming an Islamist movement.”
Israel, said Grinstein, must be “aggressive and smart.” The first step is to demand that Hamas accept the existing agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Until then, he said, Israel should continue to withhold the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the PA and block the movement of goods and services to their markets. “You can’t have the Palestinian Authority rejecting the agreements and expect Israel to comply with its agreements.”
The vaunted discipline of Hamas could also be an opportunity for Israel. Hamas is recognizing a tacit ceasefire for the time being and has the capability to rein in radicals from other groups.
Grinstein acknowledges that “everything is up in the air.” But that’s when, he said, “Re’ut kicks in. We have a unique capacity to do this strategic analysis very quickly.”
Grinstein’s ability to frame Israel’s challenges in the language of policy consulting — “analysis-base,” “infrastructure mode,” “systemic overview” — is both comforting and disarming. Grinstein wows audiences and attracts American donors by offering the hope that there is no problem that cannot be broken down into a series of policy options. Critics may find the approach naïve, even delusional.
And yet, even if Re’ut’s is a language and approach learned at Harvard, it speaks to a certain Jewish capacity for finding hope in reason, and against awful odds.
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