On Friday, yet another poll on the Middle East was released. They seem to come in a very steady stream, and once you identify the questions, the results are almost entirely predictable.
But Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, regularly produces polls that are always worth looking at. Unlike most surveys of American views on US policy in the Middle East, Telhami tends to dig deep as opposed to simply establishing general opinions. The poll he released Dec. 5 includes some very interesting developments and reminders as to why things still aren’t changing—in the region or in Washington.
The most stunning development Telhami reported is that support among US citizens for a single-state in Israel and the Occupied Territories—where all would have full and equal rights—increased a whopping ten percentage points in the past year. The 34% who support that outcome now rivals the 39% who support two states, and it represents a jump of ten percentage points from a year ago.
What does this tell us? Most of the leading advocates for a one-state solution have based their advocacy on the idea that a single, secular and democratic state with equal rights for all represents the fairest, most just solution for all parties; that the two-state solution could not possibly fully address the grievances of Palestinian refugees; and that two states would leave most of the best land in the former area of pre-1948 Palestine in Israeli hands. (Two-state advocates have generally argued that partitioning the land was the fairest way to maintain security for Jews, who needed a state, and allow the Palestinians an opportunity to build an independent state of their own.)
Did a whole bunch of two-state advocates suddenly decide that the one-staters were right all along and that the single, democratic state was the more just option? This seems unlikely, especially since the two-state solution has been, and still is seen as the pragmatic choice.
No, that shift is the result of the despair that the collapse of the Oslo process has produced. Those shifting opinions are also coming from a realization that Israel is lurching ever rightward, making a two-state solution less likely in the near term, while settlements expand and make it increasingly difficult to conceive, much less achieve, two states in the longer term.
Of course, a one-state solution was never seen as a viable option among US citizens, much less in Washington. But now it has nearly as much popular support as two states, even while the discourse on Capitol Hill has not changed a bit. One reason for the split between the public and its representatives is included in this poll.
When asked whether the United States should favor one side or the other in the conflict, 64% said the US should favor neither, 31% said the US should favor Israel, and only 4% said it should favor the Palestinians. This is fairly consistent with long-term trends; most US citizens believe their government should be acting as a neutral arbiter in the conflict or not be involved in it at all, and polls have reflected this for a very long time.
But the minuscule figure who believe we should be favoring the Palestinians, as opposed to the significant minority that support favoring Israel, goes a long way toward explaining why policy and the Washington discourse is not following, even in a small way, the national discourse and gradually shifting views among US citizens. The Palestinians are a generally disliked group—essentially seen as “the bad guys.” Even among Democrats, who, for the most part, exclude those who base their support for Israeli policies on the Bible (most of these so-called Christian Zionists are overwhelmingly Republican), only 6% favor siding with the Palestinians, as opposed to 17% who favor siding with Israel.
You’ll be hard pressed to find another issue where public opinion among those who favor some type of intervention is so lopsidedly opposed to helping the downtrodden and dispossessed. For such an entrenched policy, which has the most powerful and active foreign policy special interest lobby pushing to maintain it, this lack of sympathy for the Palestinians is a major obstacle to change, no matter how much the discourse might shift.
That discursive shift has had the effect of seriously diminishing the positive view of Israel in the United States. The Netanyahu government has contributed more than its share to that cause, of course. But so have the efforts of Palestinian activists and other pro-peace groups who have made an issue of Israeli rejectionism and the flaws in US policy.
But none of that has changed the view of the Palestinian cause in the United States. As Telhami’s poll and a long line of polls preceding it imply, most in the US believe that Palestinians’ rights should be respected in the abstract, but Palestinians are still seen as the less sympathetic combatant in this conflict. And Israel’s diminishing image hasn’t changed that.
Nor is there sufficient support for punitive actions against Israel for settlement construction. Sixty-one percent of respondents in this poll said the US should do nothing or just stick to making statements against settlement construction. With a mere 39% supporting more concrete action, Congress will feel very safe in continuing its absolute opposition to any pressure on Israel to desist from this practice.
All of this helps explain why, despite Israel’s reduced appeal in the United States and despite the increasing popularity of a solution that protects democracy rather than Israel’s Jewish character, nothing has changed in Washington. But if the mood among the US public continues in this direction, could that change?
It could, over time, especially considering the profound partisan differences in how Democrats and Republicans view the conflict. That should be a clarion call for those who still want to see a two-state solution emerge. Right now, Israel is pursuing various permutations of a single-state solution, but one where institutionalized discrimination privileging Jews over Arabs is strengthened. The Israeli right can push this agenda in the vacuum created by the apparent death of the two-state solution.
Yet the notion of two states need not die. The Oslo process was flawed from the very beginning. It was born out of documents and agreements that never explicitly stated that a Palestinian state next to Israel was a goal, nor did they offer any sort of human rights guidelines, let alone guarantees. Efforts in Oslo to restrict violence were horribly lopsided, with a laser-like focus on Palestinian violence while virtually ignoring the violence of the occupation itself, as well as that of many of the Jewish settlers. And while the very structure of the occupation provided both Israel and the United States with methods of coercion and pressure against the Palestinians, nothing of the kind was regularly exerted against Israel when it failed to fulfill the letter or spirit of agreements.
Oslo and the two-state solution became synonymous and, as a result, when the process failed, many came to believe that it was the very notion of two states that was fatally flawed. The despair leads more and more to abandon the two-state concept entirely. But that need not be.
It is entirely possible that one state is a better solution, or that Israeli settlement expansion through the West Bank and East Jerusalem already have too much momentum and have gobbled up too much land for a viable two-state solution to be possible. But the failure of Oslo, in and of itself, tells us nothing about whether a two state scenario could work. A two-state model—that includes basic standards of human rights and equal rights (political, civil and national) for all people between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, including Gaza, and includes penalties for both sides for failures of compliance based on a broad but clear, internationally agreed upon vision of the final agreement—could still work.
Undoubtedly, support for a single, secular and democratic state is growing. As people of good will continue to work to resolve this long, bloody and vexing conflict, it is an idea that needs to be considered. It is increasingly popular and based on notions of fairness, and stands against myopic nationalism and ethnocentrism. But it shouldn’t be the only option. A two-state vision, one very different from Oslo, should accompany it. In addition to the conditions I mentioned above, it should also include agreements of cooperation on commerce, economics, resources (especially water) and security. It should not mean Palestine would be de-militarized and eternally vulnerable, enjoying only partial sovereignty. Instead, security for both states would be ensured, and prosperity for both states would be promoted, by interdependency, based on treaties and agreements.
Both two-state and one-state scenarios have weaknesses and inherent flaws that can doom them. Given the hopelessness with which Israelis, Palestinians and all who care about the issue are facing now, we need to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. While those who believe in such scenarios work to promote their one-state visions, two-state supporters need to immediately re-align their vision and reset the two-state idea. What’s needed in Israel and Palestine is not stubborn ideology, but a willingness to accept the best idea for moving forward. And the way to start doing that is by opening minds to new possibilities rising out of the inevitable failure of the process that laid exclusive claim to “peace” for twenty years.
Photo: The Shuafat refugee camp can be seen across the separation wall from the Pisgat Ze’ev Israeli settlement. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Former American diplomat Aaron David Miller is a frequent and worthwhile contributor to US foreign policy discussions in both Washington and the news media. His long career in Middle East diplomacy and strong focus on Israel have enabled him to clarify for the general public the many difficulties that exist under the surface of these issues. Unfortunately, as shown by his recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine, he sometimes obscures them as well.
Miller correctly points out that the Israel-Palestine conflict is not the major source of regional instability and that Secretary of State John Kerry was foolish to imply that the lack of progress on this issue had in some way become a contributing factor to the rise of the group that calls itself the Islamic State. But he also elides the enormous amount of responsibility the United States has and continues to hold not only for the Israel-Palestine conflict itself, but also for the difficulty in making any progress on the issue, let alone resolving it.
Miller states it explicitly: “Washington isn’t responsible for the impasse…The primary responsibility for fixing the problem lies with Israelis and Palestinians, and the lack of resolution is a direct result of their lack of leadership and ownership.”
That is unequivocal nonsense. It adds yet another layer to the enduring myths that surround the long-term lack of progress on this conflict. It is not lack of leadership and ownership that is the problem, it is the massive imbalance of power between the two parties that is the single biggest obstacle to a resolution. And that is an area where the United States is a major factor.
The power imbalance leads to a very simple reality: Israel has very little incentive to compromise. It is a regional superpower militarily, it has by far the most stable government in the Middle East, and it’s a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with a relatively strong economy. Israelis would undoubtedly prefer a cessation to the Palestinian rocket fire that periodically flares up as it did this past summer, and certainly want to stop incidents such as the one on October 22, when a Palestinian drove into a Jerusalem light rail station, killing an infant and wounding seven other people. But these concerns are not nearly enough to sway Israelis into the sort of compromises that would be bare minimums for a deal with the Palestinians.
From Israel’s point of view, the Palestinians’ minimal demands include a free Gaza and West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, a shared Jerusalem and the recognition of Palestinian refugee rights. In each case, there is a huge risk perceived by the Israelis.
Indeed, because most Israelis believe the narrative telling them that when Israel withdrew from Gaza and Southern Lebanon, all it got in return was rocket fire, they see a similar but much graver risk of that repeated outcome in the West Bank. In fact, most Israelis join their prime minister in rejecting the idea of giving up the Jordan Valley, a huge chunk of the occupied West Bank.
Sharing Jerusalem, and particularly the area of the Temple Mount, conjures fears of the years from 1949-67 when Israelis could not visit the holiest site in Judaism. More than that, Israel’s capture of the Old City in 1967 has become a powerful nationalistic symbol—a compromise on this issue strikes at the very heart of Israeli identity, and that arouses passionate responses.
The refugee question, which I explored in depth recently, is also seen by virtually all Israelis as implying the end of the Jewish State, something they desperately want to avoid. Finally, Israelis remain bitterly divided ideologically on many points, and there is a deep fear that making compromises will set off civil disturbances between secular, religious, nationalist and liberal camps within the country. Recent events around the Gaza war, where demonstrators for peace were repeatedly attacked, give credence to this fear.
The point is not to argue about the legitimacy or realism, or absence thereof, behind any of these fears. They are there, and they must be contended with in some fashion. But that involves confronting those fears, which, in turn, implies that Israelis perceive some pressure—be it military, economic or political—that forces them to take risks. The rewards of peace are, at best, uncertain to Israelis who don’t trust Palestinian intentions and perceive rising militancy in the Arab world and therefore an uncertain future no matter what commitments the current Arab regimes may offer. After all, as many contend, these governments may not be around for long.
Due to its position of relative power, the potential incentives for Israel are negative. The Israeli reaction to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which has not yet had any significant economic effect (though it has certainly altered the public discourse), is a testament to how worried Israel is at the prospect of true economic pressure. The Israeli government’s reaction to the EU’s relatively minor moves to adhere to its own laws regarding partnering on projects in the Occupied Territories and labeling products imported from the West Bank is further proof of this trend.
But whenever Europe, which is an even more indispensable trade partner for Israel than the US, has started to move in this direction, the United States has worked hard behind the scenes to change European minds. In a similar, but far more visible and impactful way, the US has used its veto power repeatedly at the UN Security Council to protect Israel from any consequences of its constant violations of international law. And we do this despite Israel’s defiance of stated US policy in the region.
These are the realities that Miller’s viewpoint elides. They have nothing to do with the Islamic State, and Miller is correct to chide Kerry for trying to tie the two together. But this ongoing hand-wringing about how the Israelis and Palestinians can’t be brought together needs to end. Even more, the nonsensical view that this is due to the personal mistrust between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas has to be shunted into the dustbin. Roosevelt and Churchill didn’t trust Stalin at Yalta. Gerry Adams and David Trimble in Northern Ireland didn’t trust each other either, and many of us who were paying attention at the time can remember the constant accusations of bad faith they hurled back and forth, which were very similar to what Netanyahu and Abbas say about each other today. Yet there are also other examples of leaders coming together. It is becoming a cliché, but it is nonetheless true that peace is made between enemies, not between friends, and it is also generally made between parties that neither like nor trust each other.
The reason this is even an issue in the Israel-Palestine conflict is because of the imbalance of power. Because Israel is so powerful and because US policymakers—for reasons that have nothing to do with the Palestinians or the occupation—continue to see Israel as an indispensable ally in security, intelligence and business matters, diplomacy has become ineffective. That’s why we keep hearing excuses for the ongoing failure. Miller makes one of the classic excuses. But it all covers up for US fecklessness and for the fact that, despite the pronouncements, peace between Israel and the Palestinians may be official US policy, but it is not a high priority. Kerry, in a credit to his character and his naiveté, tried to buck this, but found that he didn’t have the diplomatic tools he thought he had.
For all of these reasons, the US bears an enormous responsibility for the ongoing and deepening conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories. And yet, that doesn’t mean the US needs to be doing more to resolve it.
On the contrary, the US needs to do less. The American commitment to Israel’s military superiority is now law, but even without that, the ties between the US and Israeli militaries, intelligence communities and businesses are extremely deep. There is no realistic path to threatening these things.
But that doesn’t mean the United States has to keep acting to thwart European efforts to raise the price of its occupation for Israel. Nor does it mean that the US has to keep running interference for Israel at the Security Council. Most of all, it does not mean the US has to keep insisting on its exclusive role as the mediator of this conflict.
If the United States simply refrains from doing these things, and takes no other action to pressure Israel, the change in the status quo would be enormous. But that would, itself, be a major shift in US policy on the ground. And it is not going to happen as long as we delude ourselves into believing the status quo is not our fault and that we bear no responsibility for changing it.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.
According to a report in Buzzfeed, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.
According to a report in Buzzfeed, AIPAC has been working with congressional staff members for months on the bill, trying to find the formula for success. The bill would “…aim to prevent U.S. companies from participating in the (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) campaign without infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights to political speech. It would also try to make the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the U.S. and E.U. conditional on whether the E.U. takes action to stop BDS.”
And how would they prevent US companies from participating in BDS? By “…authorizing states and local governments to divest from companies deemed to be participating in BDS,” and by denying “…federal contracts to such companies.” This bill should be at the top of the agenda for American activists in the United States who wish to see our country change its policies towards Israel and Palestine.
AIPAC hasn’t been doing very well of late. Their attempt to weasel a provision into another bill that would have allowed Israelis to enter the United States without a visa while Israel refused to make the same arrangement for US citizens raised a lot of hackles on Capitol Hill, even in some offices that are very AIPAC-friendly. The proposed provision was killed. AIPAC was unable to sway the Senate against the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. Nor has it been able to significantly impact the Obama administration’s efforts to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
There have been a lot of failures lately, including the failure to get Congress to push hard for an attack on Syria last year. But this bill, if it ever reaches the floor, could be the biggest bust of all, with some serious ramifications for the powerful lobbying group.
Let’s just start with the First Amendment issues this raises. If this bill ever sees the light of day, AIPAC is going to try to convince people that it is similar to the laws passed forty years ago in response to the Arab League’s boycott of Israel. Put simply, it isn’t.
Those laws–the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA)–were drawn up narrowly, to apply only in the case of abetting or cooperating with a boycott directed at Israel by other countries. The mentions of boycott “by a foreign nation” or similar words are so frequent that the meaning cannot be missed. This is no surprise, of course; Congress is loath to dictate to US businesses, and it is especially tricky where a national interest is not clearly and immediately at stake. So these laws were contrived so that they only barred supporting boycotts by foreign countries against Israel.
In the case of BDS, no government is running this program, not even the pseudo-governments of the Palestinian Territories. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has not endorsed boycotts of Israel and is, itself, completely incapable of boycotting Israeli goods and services. It is in most ways a captive market to Israel. Hamas has, frankly, paid little attention to such measures, though they have encouraged them rhetorically from time to time.
There is a call for BDS from Palestinian civil society, but that is not covered by the 1970s laws. Moreover, any law that would target BDS would need to be constructed in such a way so that it would not have made boycotts of Apartheid South Africa illegal. Those boycotts also came in response to a call from the African National Congress. If businesses could not engage in such activities, there would be great outrage.
So the Arab League boycott is moot as a basis for anti-BDS legislation. The right to boycott is also not limited by what the government decides is an acceptable boycott and what is not. People, and businesses, are free to choose with whom they will do business. Congress making such decisions violates the very essence of the First Amendment, and it is highly unlikely that such a law could pass as a result and, if it could, even less likely that it could withstand legal challenges.
The bit about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is even more toxic. The point of TTIP is to make international trade between the United States and European Union easier, to reduce tariffs and lessen bureaucracy. The idea is to significantly improve the speed, and thus the volume and value, of trade between the two economic giants. Adding stipulations like ensuring that EU states are working against BDS is precisely what TTIP is designed to avoid. Whatever my own objections to TTIP (and they are many), it clearly holds great appeal for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is one thing for US citizens with influence in Washington to go along with the powerful lobbying forces defending Israel’s ability to act with impunity in the region; for the most part, that has not had a negative effect on trade. But this would be a very different matter. Now we are talking about AIPAC going up against powerful, domestic business interests. That is a whole new ballgame.
Even bringing the bill to the floor would demonstrate in a clearer way than ever before that AIPAC is willing to compromise US commercial interests and even one of the most cherished and basic freedoms the US prides itself on for the sake of Israeli interests.
Consider also that the overwhelming majority of boycott actions, divestment decisions and even popular proposals for sanctions against Israel have focused squarely on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They have not targeted Israel as a whole, with the exception of some of the attempts at cultural and academic boycott. But these are not major concerns for Israel nor do they have the same impact potential as economic boycotts and divestment. So, the threat to free speech and to international trade that this bill represents would be demonstrably in the service of the settlement enterprise, the siege of Gaza and the occupation regime more generally. The mask would be off.
In reality, I very much doubt any such legislation is ever going to move forward, at least not from AIPAC. They know the problems as well as anyone and, while I don’t doubt that they are working constantly with their closest friends in Congress to see if something could work, I don’t think they’ll be successful. But if you want to see AIPAC suffer major damage, such a bill would do it. I can’t think of a better strategy to oppose AIPAC than to do everything we can to make sure this sort of doomed anti-BDS legislation hits the floor in Congress with a resounding thud.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with the talks to open up to him, anonymously, about what happened.
Barnea says that the version the U.S. officials present “… is fundamentally different to (sic) the one presented by Israeli officials.” The implication from Barnea, and the way most will read the U.S. revelations, is that Israel was the main party at fault. But a more sober and critical reading of what these officials say paints a different picture than the ones that the Israeli government, Barnea, or most of the initial reactions do.
In fact, what comes out is that Israel was not the primary culprit here. As has long been the case, the main reason for the failure of talks was — and is — the United States.
Combining amazing ignorance not only of the Palestinians but also of Israel and its politics, with a hint of anti-Semitism and a contemptuous attitude toward the Palestinians, tossing in some willful blindness to the realities on the ground and in the offices of politicians, the United States initiated a process that put the final nail in the two-state solution as it has been understood for years. Some, myself included, might consider that a good thing, as it enables the re-thinking of all the options, including other ways to conceive of two states (which I favor), as well as one state ideas. But the way this event has evolved has strengthened hard-liners in Israel, made the U.S. Congress even more myopic in its blind support for Israel and made it less likely that there will ever be a negotiated, rather than a violent, resolution to this conflict. In any case, this latest episode has likely kicked any resolution even farther into the future than it already was.
The U.S. failure goes well beyond the usual absurdity of the global superpower pretending to act as an honest broker in a conflict that involves an ally whose relationship with the U.S. is routinely described as “unshakeable” and is a regional superpower involved in a forty-seven year occupation of a completely powerless people. The U.S. culpability for this failure comes through in almost every response the anonymous diplomats make to Barnea’s questions. An examination of those responses and their implications is warranted.
The very first statement, in response to Barnea asking if the talks were doomed from the outset, would be shocking in its implication of incompetence if this wasn’t par for the U.S. course for the past twenty years. One of the anonymous diplomats says: “We didn’t realize Netanyahu was using the announcements of tenders for settlement construction as a way to ensure the survival of his own government. We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.”
How could they not realize this? Not for the last time in this article, one thinks they must be lying about their ignorance, but then, if they were going to lie, why would they make themselves look so stupid? You’d be hard-pressed to find a thoughtful analysis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies that doesn’t touch on this issue. Certainly one cannot read the Israeli press, across the political spectrum, and be unaware that settlement expansion was a key demand from much of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his own party. The idea that the U.S. negotiating team had such a paucity of knowledge, much less understanding, of their ally renders any U.S. involvement moot at best and destructive at worst, given its role as superpower patron and ostensible broker of negotiations. In the best of circumstances, a mediator cannot have a positive effect if she is this ignorant of either party to a dispute, let alone one they are so close to.
It gets better. The diplomats go on to say: “Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that (settlement expansion) is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.” One is tempted to think the diplomat is lying here. It isn’t possible that they could have been unaware of the many statements made by Israeli leaders from Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi and other parties about annexing pieces of land. It is equally hard to believe that the U.S. has been deaf for years to the many cases brought up by oppositional Israeli groups regarding land appropriation.
Many of those groups, such as Peace Now and the human rights group, B’Tselem have a presence in Washington and regularly meet with State Department officials, as I can attest from first-hand experience. There has been no shortage of Israelis telling the U.S. that this was about land expropriation, whether through reports from the peace camp or pronouncements from the right-wing. But then one stops and again, has to ask, if they were lying, why would they make up a lie that shows the U.S. to be this incompetent and ignorant?
When asked why they pushed for these talks, one of the diplomats said, “Kerry thought of the future — he believed, and still does, that if the two sides can’t reach an accord, Israel is going to be in a lot worse shape than it is today.”
Now, granted, this was an interview with an Israeli reporter, but this sort of remark is still indicative of the U.S. bias. All this time the Palestinians have been living under occupation, without civil rights, seeing homes demolished, water taken, enduring settler attacks, and all the other inevitable hardships of military occupation. While one can understand the political necessity of doing this “for Israel,” the real imperative here is that millions of people under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live without the basic rights most of us in the West take for granted. If remedying that, whether Israel likes it or not, doesn’t underlie your efforts, at least behind closed doors, you will inevitably fail. When there is no credible military threat in the region — and there has not been for many years despite Netanyahu’s frequent histrionics — the incentive for Israel to reach an agreement simply can’t be as great as it is for the Palestinians.
I mentioned above that the anonymous diplomats hinted at some anti-Semitism as well as contempt for Palestinians. The contempt for Palestinians has been evident throughout the process. The United States has long ignored the very significant concessions Palestinians have made over the years, and President Barack Obama and Kerry have been no different. On top of acknowledging that Israel would have control of 78% of what had been Palestine under the British Mandate before 1948 and repeatedly recognizing Israel without any reciprocal recognition by Israel (in Oslo, Israel merely recognized the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people), one of the interviewees noted:
[The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Mahmoud Abbas] agreed to a demilitarized state; he agreed to the border outline so 80 percent of settlers would continue living in Israeli territory; he agreed for Israel to keep security sensitive areas for five years, and then the United States would take over. He also agreed that the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and agreed that the return of Palestinians to Israel would depend on Israeli willingness. ‘Israel won’t be flooded with refugees,’ he promised. He told us: ‘Tell me if there’s another Arab leader that would have agreed to what I agreed to.’
And then there’s the attitude the U.S. officials anonymously express toward Jews: “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”
I see! We Jews are smart and stubborn. So Israel has acted this way because it has a Jewish-majority population and is run almost entirely by Jews and, well, we Jews just can’t help ourselves because the stubbornness of ours stomps outdoes our superior intelligence. With this sort of thinking, is it any wonder the U.S. can’t grasp the basics of Israeli or Palestinian politics let alone their intricacies?
There’s also a scary bit of ignorance evident in the statement that “The Oslo Accords were Netanyahu’s creation.” Whatever else might be said about how Netanyahu gamed the Oslo Accords, he certainly didn’t create them. Indeed, he was so vocal in his opposition to them that many still hold him partially responsible for inciting the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who did, actually, sign the Accords.
But ignorance of history is not nearly as bad as complete cluelessness about the present. Barnea asked his interlocutors about Abbas’ stance in the latter stages of the process, and they said he had named three conditions absolutely required for continuing talks: Israel must agree to the outlining of borders as the first topic of discussion within a three-month deadline; Israel must agree to establish a timeline for evacuation of whatever settlers need to be evacuated; and East Jerusalem, whatever its borders, must be the capital of Palestine. All of those are necessary pieces of a framework for talks, but Israel flatly refused all of them.
When Barnea pointed out that agreeing to any of these would have meant the collapse of the Netanyahu government, here is how the U.S. officials responded: “We couldn’t confront the two sides with the painful solutions that were required of them. The Israelis didn’t have to face the possibility of splitting Jerusalem into two capitals; they didn’t have to deal with the meaning of a full withdrawal and the end of the occupation.” So then, can someone explain just what this was all about? If the U.S. is too timid to even broach with Israel the topics of sharing Jerusalem and ending the occupation, what is there to talk about?
More to the point, writers in newspapers all around the world, including many who clearly sided with Israel, have speculated on the inevitability of Netanyahu’s government falling if he reached an agreement with the Palestinians. Indeed, since 2011, both leaders of the Labor Party, the Israeli opposition’s largest party, Shelly Yachimovich and Isaac Herzog, have openly declared that they would join Netanyahu’s government to save his premiership for the sake of a peace agreement, as has the Meretz Party. One can speculate about whether that would have sufficed to save Bibi, or discuss how uninterested Netanyahu has always seemed to be in such an option. But, apparently, the U.S. delegation was not even aware of these considerations. It never occurred to Barnea’s interlocutors to discuss what could have kept a peace deal afloat and Netanyahu in office, even though such thinking appeared in countless media pieces in Israel, the U.S. and Europe. The only reasonable conclusion is that this entire line of thought never came up in State Department planning. If so, how could these talks have possibly succeeded, without some plan to save Netanyahu if they could get him to sign on the dotted line?
All of this begins to build the case that it is Israel that is acting according to its own interests as perceived by its leaders, while the U.S. is screwing up what diplomacy can possibly take hold here through its fecklessness, ignorance and simple incompetence. In part two of this piece, I will sum up this case and explain why Obama’s “time out” will not change the situation or exonerate the United States.
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
Ariel Sharon, the former Defense and Prime Minister of Israel, who died last week, was one of the most controversial leaders in Israeli history. I met him several times, including when I was the White House representative on the US negotiating team for the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy talks [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
Ariel Sharon, the former Defense and Prime Minister of Israel, who died last week, was one of the most controversial leaders in Israeli history. I met him several times, including when I was the White House representative on the US negotiating team for the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy talks (1979-1981). I can’t say I knew him well; but well enough to know two things: his fundamental commitment was to Israel’s security as a military man, not as an ideologue, and he was immensely complex.
We all speculate about the “what might have beens” of history, and I am no exception. In fact, I will go far out on a limb and argue that tragedy took from Israel the two Prime Ministers who might have done the most to help it move beyond the decade’s long stasis in its relations with the Palestinians. This was so in major part because both men came out of the military and neither could be considered “soft” on security. Both were seeking to create change in Israeli-Palestinian relations. In November 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing fanatic; Ariel Sharon suffered an incapacitating stroke in January 2006, 4 months after Israel completed its Sharon-inspired withdrawal from Gaza. The work of both men in trying to build peace with security for Israel was thus cut off in mid-flight.
Let us consider Gaza. Israel’s withdrawal left a political vacuum. But it is not at all obvious that this vacuum had to be filled by Hamas, the movement that then and since refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to seek compromises to bring about some reasonable relationship with the Jewish state — not to say that Israel was prepared to reciprocate had there been such a Hamas initiative, much less to take the initiative itself.
In January 2006, at the annual gathering of the West’s leading defense personalities, in and out of government — the Munich Security Conference — I made a proposal during a session on the Middle East. I suggested that Ariel Sharon’s courage in withdrawing from Gaza be honored by a bold step to try creating there a chance for positive developments, beginning with a massive infusion of aid and investment to provide the people of Gaza with some hope and promise in their lives and, not incidentally, to help the relative moderates under Mahmoud Abbas, then and now President of the Palestinian National Authority, gain political traction in Gaza and against Hamas. I pulled a figure out of the air and proposed a $6 billion plan: $2 billion from the US; $2 billion from the EU; and $2 billion from the Arab states — the last-named, I thought, a challenge to those rich Arabs who have profited politically from keeping the Palestinian issue alive to “put up or shut up.”
I was surprised when my proposal was not simply ignored. Indeed, the chairman of the panel immediately endorsed the idea and said that he had his $2 billion to commit, provided that the other two parties I had named would do likewise. That person was Javier Solana, whose set of titles boiled down to his being in effect the Foreign Minister of the European Union. We were “off to the races.”
Unfortunately, the beginning was also the end. The rich Arab states did not respond. Israel opposed any such aid and investment plan and, not surprisingly, the US Congress thus only responded with what could be called “chump change.” The moment — and the opportunity — was lost; the chance, however slim, was never tested to see whether helping to improve the lives of people in Gaza could have provided political strength to the PNA as opposed to Hamas which, as has often happened with radical groups elsewhere (e.g., Fidel Castro’s “barefoot doctors” in Central America), was acting as the provider of social benefits, food, etc. to the trapped people of Gaza.
Thus it was not surprising that Hamas subsequently won the March 2006 parliamentary elections in Gaza. As I argued at the time, the failure of outsiders even to give Abbas and his people a chance to compete was a mistake that would never have been made by Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago or Karl Rove on the Republican side. Abbas would have had at least what is called, in ward-heeler politics, “walking around money.”
Notably, President George W. Bush at first endorsed the results of the Gaza elections; but a day later changed his pitch to oppose the accession of Hamas to power. Even then, it was arguably not too late. Gaza under Hamas was declared off limits and was effectively blockaded economically — political punishment, but, as so often in the imposition of sanctions, a political gift to Hamas. It would face no challenge to its rule, especially in deciding how what meager economic benefits came to Gaza would be distributed. And the rest is history.
WWSHD? That is, “What would Sharon have done?” We can’t know, any more than we can know what Rabin would have done, or have been able to do — though we do know the inclinations of both men at the moments in time when they were each struck down. Nor can we know whether, had Sharon followed through on his decision to withdraw from Gaza with the approach I proposed in January 2006, there would have been an adequate response from non-radical Palestinians; nor whether, had my proposal (or others like it) been followed, Hamas would have been weakened sufficiently to keep it from power.
But it all does make one think; especially to think about yet another missed opportunity — however “untested and untestable in retrospect” — in Arab-Israeli relations, missed opportunities by both sides, with which the history of that conflict has been littered.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
In recent weeks, Israel and especially advocates for its right-wing in the United States have been scrambling to lash back at a boycott resolution passed by the American Studies Association (ASA). This was an initiative of an academic group in the United States directed at all of Israel [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In recent weeks, Israel and especially advocates for its right-wing in the United States have been scrambling to lash back at a boycott resolution passed by the American Studies Association (ASA). This was an initiative of an academic group in the United States directed at all of Israel in support of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. But all of this activity against the ASA has overlooked a much more important act of economic pressure against Israel — this one from Europe.
The ASA boycott has divided peace activists, some of whom support economic actions against settlements and the occupation but not against Israel as a whole. Others have been reluctant to support the ASA action because they support certain actions against Israel but not an academic boycott. While there has been a good deal of support for the ASA action from the broader BDS movement, these questions have left the ASA action more open to attack from those who oppose any sort of action that might compel Israel to change its policies.
And such groups have moved swiftly. Many universities have disavowed the ASA action, a few even going so far as to withdraw from membership in the association. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations has led a charge among well-heeled Jewish groups to push for further actions against the ASA, with some gearing up to file a legal challenge to the ASA’s tax-exempt status (a challenge that would certainly fail, but is the sort of tactic a small academic association is threatened by just because of the cost of defending themselves).
All of this commotion has occurred over a resolution that will have very little material impact in and of itself on Israel. American Studies programs are not among the leading ones that interact with Israeli academic institutions to begin with. The boycott does not stop individual academics from working together, either from the US or Israel; it merely prohibits interaction with academics acting not as scholars but as “ambassadors of their institutions”.
It is of symbolic significance, to be sure. The ASA resolution opens the door for other academic boycotts, and if these should ever extend into physical science research or other technical fields where US-Israeli academic cooperation is financially, technologically or militarily significant (and there are many of those) it could be a much bigger deal. And, of course, it increases the general sense of isolation that is slowly but surely increasing in Israel over its policies.
But in fact, there have been significant developments with a European country that present a much more concrete and impactful problem for Israel. The Netherlands has seen a number of its companies terminate cooperation with Israeli companies over Israel’s ongoing occupation. The latest is PGGM, the largest Dutch pension management fund. PGGM made the decision to divest all its funds from Israel’s five largest banks because all of them are involved in some way in the settlements. The amount of money is not huge, estimated at several tens of millions of euros, but Israel is concerned that other financial institutions may follow suit and that, despite its official stance, the Netherlands government is creating an atmosphere which encourages boycotts and divestment from Israel.
There’s reason to believe that such an atmosphere exists and is growing in the Netherlands. PGGM’s decision is the latest in a series of Dutch businesses cutting ties with any Israeli venture that is connected to the settlements. Last month, a Dutch water company cut ties with Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, because of its operations in the settlements. In September, a major Dutch engineering firm canceled a contract to work on a sewage treatment plant because the project was located in East Jerusalem, beyond the Green Line (the border of Israel before it captured the West Bank in 1967). That cancellation was said to have been pushed for by the Netherlands’ government.
The Dutch government’s stance is that it “opposes any boycott of Israeli companies or institutions, in line with its standing policy.” Yet it has also warned companies that it might decide to enter into contracts that entail operations in or could fund the settlements to carefully examine the potential legal ramifications of such agreements.
Unlike the ASA boycott, the Dutch trend has specifically targeted the settlements, scrupulously avoiding a broad boycott of Israel, and the companies have cited their own ethical concerns rather than solidarity with Palestinian civil society as the impetus for their decisions. But these actions show the inherent complications of aiming a boycott only at the settlement and infrastructure that supports them.
PGGM’s divestment targets Israel’s five largest banks. Those banks could not, even if they wished to, do business exclusively within Israel’s 1967 borders. The connection between Israel and the settlements is much too complete for that, even if it would be legal for the banks to act in such a manner under Israeli law (it isn’t). Similarly, Mekorot is Israel’s national water company and must, therefore, operate in the West Bank. It’s just not possible to significantly target the settlements only in a way that Israel proper would not feel.
What Israel sees, therefore, in these kinds of economic actions is the very real possibility that the whole country will begin to feel the sting of global disapproval of its nearly 48-year old occupation, its settlement enterprise, its ongoing denial of Palestinian rights, and its intransigence in negotiations. A warning similar to the one the Netherlands issued to its businesses was circulated in England as well. If that trend grows, Israel has reason to fear significant economic backlash.
The Netherlands may be particularly inclined to encourage such actions, even if they don’t technically change their official policy. In Early December, just as their Prime Minister was coming to Israel for an official visit, Israel pulled the plug at the last minute on a Dutch scanner which would have allowed Palestinians from Gaza to export a great deal more goods through the Kerem Shalom crossing than they currently do. The scanner would have detected any illicit material in the exports, and Israel agrees it would work. But just before it was to be installed, Israel balked because the Netherlands insisted that it be used to increase exports from Gaza.
This sort of behavior certainly seems likely to encourage the Netherlands to clamp down harder on even the most indirect contribution to the occupation. And it may send a similar message to the rest of Europe, where Israel conducts the bulk of its trade. That is a lot more significant than a 400-member academic society boycotting Israel. But since the little academics are the ones the fanatical supporters of Israel can lash back at, that’s who is targeted.
That’s good news for those who believe that economic pressure is the only thing that will get Israel to change its stances regarding the Palestinians. We may be seeing the initial stages of that idea being put to the test.
Photo: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte receives Israeli President Shimon Peres on September 29, 2013
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
In a debate recorded by the Institute for Palestine Studies, human rights lawyer Noura Erekat squares off with Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, about the current peace talks and the prospects of a two-state [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In a debate recorded by the Institute for Palestine Studies, human rights lawyer Noura Erekat squares off with Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, about the current peace talks and the prospects of a two-state solution. There was a lot in the exchange that was interesting, and it’s worth your viewing. But one point in particular caught my attention.
Both of them were asked this question: given the fact that the U.S.-brokered peace process has dragged on for twenty years with no end in sight, is it time to consider alternatives to the two-state solution? Each interlocutor answered according to their general bent, with Ibish stubbornly clinging to the two-state solution and Erekat advocating the consideration of a single, democratic state. Though the exchange was somewhat testy, it also proved interesting, and an important one to have, though I think the place it leads is not entirely satisfying to hardcore advocates of either position: a re-evaluation of solutions without being wedded to either one- or two-state formulations.
Ibish dismisses the notion of any alternative to the current process. For him, any alternative exists in a “counter-factual” world. There’s certainly plenty of substantiation for this view. Ibish is quite correct in saying that there is a global consensus around the current two-state formulation, and it would, at best, take years to develop an alternative solution. Indeed, any alternative is likely to be bitterly opposed by Israel, and the United States would very likely back that opposition, making Europe and the Arab League very reluctant to go in the other direction, even if they wanted to.
But Ibish’s blanket dismissal is, itself, counter-factual. At one time, the notion of a two-state solution was as unthinkable as a single democratic state is today. Further, as Ibish himself acknowledges, twenty years of efforts under the Oslo process have yielded precious little for the Palestinians (many, myself included, would contend the Palestinians are worse off today than they were twenty years ago), the United States is not capable of being an even-handed broker, settlement construction has only accelerated over the years and the disparity of power between the parties remains an enormous obstacle to peace. His only response to this is that two-states is the only option before us and anything else is “counter-factual,” which is only a barely diplomatic way of calling it naïve fantasy. That’s dismissive, it’s not a good argument.
Erekat, for her part, looks at the same factors and suggests that a different approach is needed. Whereas Ibish’s adherence to the current formulation is akin to that of a zealot, Erekat is open to alternatives. She considers the reasons Ibish cites in support of the two-state solution as proof of why this approach has failed. After all, she argues, considering all the international consensus and politics around this notion, if there has been no progress toward this goal for twenty years, what is there to do but consider alternatives?
Yet as glib as Ibish is in dismissing out of hand the idea that a new approach might be necessary, Erekat seems also to blithely dismiss the existing international consensus and how difficult it would be to reorient the global political sphere to a whole new solution, one which Israel would bitterly oppose. What emerges from the conversation is a disconnect with real politics in both directions.
The feeling was similar at J Street’s recent conference. There was an undeniable sense that the flagship two-state lobbying group has arrived in a big way. Joe Biden, Martin Indyk, Nancy Pelosi, and Tzipi Livni headed what was by far the organization’s most impressive list of speakers in its five-year history of national conferences. There were many other members of Congress who also spoke or attended the conference’s various functions. The organization has clearly acquired the clout it wanted, and the refrain at the conference that, as Ibish contended, the two-state solution is the only solution was repeated over and over to raucous cheers.
Yet the repetition itself suggested some level of desperation. There was also a palpable sense that the two-state solution is in dire jeopardy.
J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami pointed out that under the current formulation, Palestinians would have to allow an international force to defend the fledgling state’s borders. As Erekat notes, this is a severe infringement on perhaps the most basic tenet of sovereignty, the right to self-defense. Ben-Ami also flatly stated that the Palestinians would have to accept the fact that no refugees would return within Israel’s finally established borders.
When I asked Ben-Ami if he was concerned that these might be terms Palestinians could not accept, he responded: “I think the ultimate deal will involve sacrifices and compromises. I don’t know what they will be but they will be hard to sell and all of us will have a tough selling job to do and we have to be ready to do that.” On the other hand, Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the Jersualem Fund told me: “As far as Palestinians are concerned, the right of return is a human right. In my view, human rights are not negotiable.” Munayyer’s view echoes that of most Palestinians from across the political spectrum. Many (though far from all) are willing to negotiate on implementation, but there seems to be an universal agreement among Palestinians that the right of return must be fully recognized. This issue is being unwisely glossed over by supporters of the current process.
Ibish also stated that he saw little downside to the current talks “unless they completely collapse.” I actually see a very different danger. Collapse would not be so bad. Unlike in 2000, when the Camp David II talks collapsed, there are few who expect these talks to succeed, and the agreement to bring any deal to a public referendum alleviates concerns that the leaders will give away too much. These were the factors that had the Palestinian Territories at the boiling point thirteen years ago. Collapse today will not bring about a strong response, it will merely bring the situation back to where it was before John Kerry put so much effort into restarting the talks.
No, the danger here is that an agreement will be struck between the parties that will pass in an Israeli referendum but will fail in a Palestinian one, a concern I explained in detail recently. Such an outcome will allow the Palestinian public to be painted as rejectionists, which will likely make even the meager pressures on Israel from Europe and the even thinner ones from the United States disappear completely, making any process, be it geared toward one state or two, impossible to move forward for years to come.
What’s needed now is a reassessment. The terms of the current two-state process will not work. Palestine is expected to become a state with Israeli enclaves carved deep into it, in the settlements of Ma’ale Adumin and Ariel; it is expected to sacrifice its right of self-defense; and it is expected to give up on what is perhaps its most emotionally meaningful national tenet: the refugees. I can’t imagine a serious observer of the Palestinian public considering this acceptable, and ramming such an arrangement down the throats of either side is a recipe for disaster, not peace.
But that shouldn’t mean that the two-state solution must be abandoned, nor that a one-state formulation needs to remain off the diplomatic table. The issue is not one or two states, but a formulation where two nations can co-exist. We need to reject the notion that the Palestinians can accept less than full sovereignty and a substantive redress of refugee rights. We also have to accept that Israeli Jews are not going to be prepared to become a minority again, and that neither Zionism nor Palestinian nationalism are going to simply be eliminated or fade away in a sea of pragmatism.
In 1993, intrepid Israeli and Palestinian leaders really did produce an unprecedented breakthrough that resulted in the Oslo Accords. Politics and the disparity of power turned the deal sour. That can be done differently today. Hanging on to twenty years of failure is unworkable, but change for the sake of change is not a game that can be played in Palestine-Israel. One-staters and two-staters have been at odds for too long. If people of good will on both sides can come together, that can create an international political and diplomatic momentum to reframe a solution that can actually work.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The tentative outreach from Washington toward Tehran has spurred speculation about a wide variety of connected issues. The desperation with which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s so-called “charm offensive” adds fuel to Israel’s part in those rumors. Certainly, it is clear [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The tentative outreach from Washington toward Tehran has spurred speculation about a wide variety of connected issues. The desperation with which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s so-called “charm offensive” adds fuel to Israel’s part in those rumors. Certainly, it is clear that Netanyahu is worried about something.
The Israeli journalist Ben Caspit speculated last week on a U.S. plan to facilitate a (rather favorable for Israel) two-state deal between Israel and the Palestinians, while compensating Israel with the carrot of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. Caspit’s view was broadly echoed in Ha’aretz by Barak Ravid after Rouhani’s speech at the United Nations.
According to Caspit, U.S. President Barack Obama was pressing Netanyahu to accede to his outline for a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In exchange for that acquiescence, Obama would, in this scenario, offer Netanyahu his personal pledge that he would prevent Iran from “acquiring nuclear capability.” That phrase is important, but it’s not entirely clear that Caspit, a native Hebrew speaker, included it intentionally. Indeed, “nuclear capability” is very possibly a threshold Iran has already passed, perhaps even a good number of years ago. Caspit may have meant that Obama would roll that ability back (though the fruits of research cannot be reversed, Iran’s uranium stockpiles and its refinement capabilities could, theoretically, be severely diminished or removed). Or he may have meant what he said.
In any case, Caspit posits that the deal Obama wants Israel and the Palestinians to accept is as follows:
If this looks to you like the Oslo Accords reborn, you’re right. But it is also true that Israel’s current government will balk even at this, and it is almost certainly the best deal the Palestinians are likely to get as long as Netanyahu is in office. That alone makes it credible that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would agree to such a deal, even though it is highly unlikely to be met with the approval of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Caspit reports that many members of Netanyahu’s party and other right-wing politicians and leaders of the settler collective are already mobilizing to thwart this idea. I have no reason to doubt that part of Caspit’s story. He is generally pretty good at getting the inside scoop in Israeli political maneuverings. And, some of my own contacts in Israel have been telling me that the right is very concerned about Netanyahu accepting some U.S. ideas about an agreement.
But Caspit has always seemed to me to be less solid on international matters. The Iran part of his story sounds pretty fishy. If Obama has any hope of lowering the temperature with Iran, something he seems committed to doing, he will have to find a way to live with Iran having enrichment capabilities on its own soil. Iran, as Obama well knows, will not agree to give that up, though they might consent to close monitoring of the process by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As far as obtaining a pledge from Obama in this regard, that seems like a rather meager payment for Netanyahu. Congressional hawks have already gotten U.S. commitments to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon, and should we discover that Iran has resumed a pursuit of such weapons, there would be plenty of time to mount a military operation. The U.S. has already taken these stances. Obama’s pledge would add little, even if Netanyahu is concerned about a repeat of the backing off from an attack on Syria. If similar opposition to an attack on Iran materialized, a pledge would hardly be sufficient to overcome it, and Congress is unlikely in any case to oppose a strike on Iran the way it did the one on Syria.
No, I don’t think Caspit has the Iran part correct. Its purpose in the narrative is to give Obama something that is both carrot for Bibi and stick, but it would be neither. The value of that part is already in Bibi’s pocket.
But Caspit is very likely correct about that which is concerning the Israeli right. Any deal that is more forthcoming to the Palestinians than the one he describes would never pass Israel’s government, and the U.S. Congress would back the Israeli position to the hilt, mooting the already essentially non-existent hope of genuine U.S. pressure on Israel. But this one could win enough of Bibi’s current government so that Labor and perhaps another small party or two would be able to seal the deal. It would be met with Israeli approval, which means it will also be met with sufficient approval in Congress as well.
The Palestinians would very correctly reject such a deal. It clearly promises a renewal of Oslo, allowing Israel to escape any serious pressure for at least several years to come, with plenty of time for political realities, whether between Israel and the Palestinians or simply significant advancement of the already considerable regional turmoil, to give Israel what it needs to further delay the implementation of further phases. The lives of Palestinians in the West Bank would get even worse, as their cantons would “enjoy” the same independence Gaza currently does. We’ve seen how that goes.
If Caspit is correct, the fact that Abbas renewed his commitment to the U.S.-sponsored peace process on Wednesday is a chilling development. It certainly fits well with Caspit’s narrative. A weak and desperate PA acquiescing to such an awful deal makes some sense. Abbas would know as well as Bibi and Obama that this was the best deal he could possibly get in this process and from this Israeli government. The U.S.’ pledge for “increased involvement” is likely a way to push Bibi, who would still be reluctant to take this deal despite its obvious gains for and bias toward Israel, to accept the deal and to ensure that Abbas also knows that this is the best the U.S. is going to offer him.
Now, while I feel pretty certain that Caspit is right that this is what the Israeli right believes is happening, whether it really is coming about is another matter. He is correct in saying that it is unlikely Bibi would agree to a deal that was significantly better than this one, but that doesn’t mean the Palestinians would take it. There can be no doubt that such a deal would never come close to passing a Palestinian referendum, and, while one might think that this would mean Bibi would accept it easily, he still would be very reluctant to sign off on it, as it would cost him a lot of his political support at home and financial support abroad. The fact that such a peace wouldn’t even materialize would also mean he wouldn’t recoup those losses from more centrist quarters.
So, while it is far from certain that Caspit’s scenario is correct, it is also very possible that it is. It is certain that many in the Israeli right believe it. And it is even more certain that if the United States is pushing such a deal, it would be a disaster. A peace proposal accepted by Abbas and Bibi but rejected overwhelmingly by the Palestinians public would lock the current system in for the foreseeable future.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
If John Kerry wants to find a silver lining in the heavy criticism US foreign policy has faced due to the events in both Egypt and Syria, he might find it in, of all places, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The secretary of state embarked on the talks by saying there [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
If John Kerry wants to find a silver lining in the heavy criticism US foreign policy has faced due to the events in both Egypt and Syria, he might find it in, of all places, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The secretary of state embarked on the talks by saying there would be no discussion of them in the media; that any reliable information about them would only come from him; and that he would not talk about them. Given the history of leaks in such talks and the widespread coverage generated by any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, this seemed like a very ambitious promise. But amid an imminent attack on Syria after the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and the controversial, tacit US support for a coup in Egypt that turned out to be a lot more bloody than Washington probably expected, attention has been completely drawn away from the Israel-Palestine conflict.
That must have come as a relief this week for Kerry. Things were difficult enough, with Israel having announced major new settlement projects soon after the rekindled talks began. For the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) negotiators, who certainly knew that some sort of Israeli construction would continue during the talks, it was the size and locations of the planned settlement projects that caused the problems. It was not easy for them to credibly continue on with the talks, but they did.
Then, on Monday, Israeli forces went into the Palestinian town of Qalandiya, located in the “Greater Jerusalem” area, which is under full Israeli control, in an attempt to arrest a Palestinian for allegedly dealing weapons. The raid, which started off as just another one out of about 500 such operations that Israel performs in the West Bank every month, ended in blood, with three Palestinians dead, one of whom was apparently an employee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA).
In response, the Palestinians announced that a negotiating session with Israel, scheduled to take place that day in Jericho, had been cancelled. Israeli media claimed that the meeting took place, and the US denied that the meeting had been cancelled. But the Israeli government itself was silent on the point, and the PA never retracted the statement of cancellation. So, who knows?
What we do know is that the violence in Qalandiya is just another example of how difficult it is to hold negotiations during Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It’s true that most of the time, raids like the one undertaken on Monday are executed at night, precisely to avoid confrontation with the people living in the town being targeted. For whatever reason, this one was carried out in the morning, just as people were going out to pursue their daily activities. But that also is not entirely unusual — it’s not the norm, but of the hundreds of such operations that take place each month, some number happen when others are around.
Thus, confrontation is inevitable, from time to time. But under these circumstances or others, confrontation cannot be avoided under the umbrella of occupation. And, while incidents that result in fatalities have been rarer in recent months, that has yet to become the norm.
Had the Qalandiya clash occurred when people outside the West Bank were paying attention rather than looking at Syria and Egypt, it may well have jeopardized talks beyond the point where the PA could continue. It would have come on top of the settlement expansion controversy and the (also largely under the radar) Palestinian complaint that the US, which the Palestinians are counting on with astonishing naïveté to help push Israel into an agreement, is not taking an active role in the talks. Israel, for its part, is insisting that greater US involvement would be an impediment. The surrealism of that debate cannot be overstated.
The sum total of all of this is that the talks, barely a few weeks old, are off to a terrible start, from what we can see of them. And it is hard to imagine what we might not be seeing that could substantially change that assessment.
On top of these issues, today there was a report in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting increasingly mistrustful of his Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is also the leading government representative for peace negotiations. Livni was widely viewed as a fig leaf (and a fairly weak one, being a decidedly conservative figure herself, her clear support for a two-state solution notwithstanding) when she joined Netanyahu’s government, but she’s not exactly on the same page with Bibi on peace talks.
The Ma’ariv report indicated that Netanyahu was dismayed that Livni had offered too many “concessions,” particularly on the matter of territory and in even broaching the topic of Jerusalem. Netanyahu obviously knows these things need to be discussed, but he doesn’t want to do so too quickly. So much for the mantra that “everything is on the table”, which has been repeated by Israel for months.
Livni also has to contend with working hand in hand with Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s closest confidante and his frequent messenger to the US, Palestinians and other foreign leaders.
The denials of any friction that came from both Livni’s and the Prime Minister’s office were pro forma statements and rang extremely hollow. Ma’ariv claims that Molcho believes that the goal of these talks should not be a permanent and comprehensive agreement, but an “agreement in principle,” the details of which would be worked out later. It is overwhelmingly likely that this is Netanyahu’s view, and Livni’s attempts to follow through with what the US has stated as a goal of these talks, a full and final agreement, which the Palestinians have embraced, is what is causing the tension.
Such a provisional agreement would almost certainly be a non-starter for the Palestinian leadership because it would be a repeat of the Oslo Accords of 1993, which, twenty years later, have not brought greater Palestinian freedom. What’s forming is a very grim picture that’s seemingly implying that even the most pessimistic predictions for this round of talks might not have been pessimistic enough.
At some point in the near future, attention will not be as absolutely diverted toward Syria and Egypt as it is today. Until then, any political fallout in Israel, the West bank and the US can be forestalled. But once eyes are back on these peace talks, the political piper will demand his payment. If this is still what peace talks look like by then, Kerry may have to re-examine his strategy of silence. He may need to figure out some way to throw people a bone of hope to counter what has been, to date, almost uniformly negative messages about the talks. The silver lining of distraction is a transitory gift at best.
]]>Russia is not staying silent as the US appears to be positioning itself for an attack on the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Defending its last key ally in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West against intervention. Western nations [...]]]>
Russia is not staying silent as the US appears to be positioning itself for an attack on the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Defending its last key ally in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West against intervention. Western nations should avoid repeating “past mistakes,” said Lavrov.
More importantly, Lavrov illustrates just how broken and vaporous the system of “international law” is when it comes to conflict and protecting civilians. “The use of force without the approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is a very grave violation of international law,” he said. And there is no question that he is correct.
An intervention in Syria requires the approval of the Security Council in order to be comply with international law. Such authorizations are, quite naturally, exceedingly rare. Not only does it require a majority vote in the Council, but, more importantly, all five permanent members of the Council (the US, Russia, China, Great Britain and France) must also agree. Any one of those countries can exercise its right to veto any resolution before the Council.
The idea, in 1945, made some sense. In the post-World War II era, there was still some question as to whether the US and USSR would perhaps build on their wartime alliance and find a way to work together, but it seemed unlikely. An incentive to maintain some sense of order in the world by working together on such matters and being able to block one-sided moves might have seemed sensible. It’s even worked out that way from time to time. But for the most part, it’s been a recipe for paralysis and a means to prevent action on matters of global concern, rather than to promote it.
The most obvious example of this is the matter on which there has been, by far, more Security Council vetoes than any other: Israel’s occupation of territories captured in the 1967 war. From 1946-1971, the USSR was the overwhelming leader in Security Council vetoes; no other country was even close. These were, of course, mostly Cold War-related resolutions that directly or indirectly took aim at Soviet actions and policies in various parts of the world. Since then, the overwhelming leader has been the United States, with the clear majority of those vetoes being made on behalf of Israel, protecting its occupation and concomitant violence and settlement expansion.
Indeed, in recent years, the problem has gotten so bad that most resolutions regarding Israel-Palestine have been withdrawn in advance, knowing the US will veto as a matter of course. The matter reached its ultimate absurdity in 2011, when the Obama administration vetoed a UNSC resolution that stated nothing at all that was not already official US policy. But the veto was expected and required. The fact that it was such a moderate resolution raised fears among AIPAC and its various fellow travellers in the Israel lobby, and there was a lot of public pressure on Obama to veto. But there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t have done so anyway.
Politics and power, not international law, govern international matters. The fact is that legality will have no bearing on the US decision to attack Syria or refrain from taking action. The decision will be based on strategy and politics.
The system of international law is irreparably broken. Ultimately, any system of law depends entirely on the ability of the judicial body to enact penalties and sanctions on lawbreakers. Such penalties don’t exist for the United States, nor for Russia or China or the other members of the Security Council. Britain and France are more compliant with international law than the others, but this is due not to fear of censure but because their own situations (including widespread European support for abiding by international law, as well as the experience of the two World Wars and the end of colonialism, the latter having removed a lot of European disincentives toward international law) push them in that direction.
Indeed, it is worth asking this question: if one believes that intervention in Syria is needed to stop what is already a humanitarian disaster from getting much worse, should international law be ignored in doing so? It seems inescapable that the answer to that question is yes, and one is then left with only the question of whether military intervention will help or hurt the millions of Syrians in the crossfire.
But at what point can we claim with reasonable certainty that the moral imperative trumps the law? Particularly in a hypothetical world where the law actually matters, where should that line be drawn? In point of fact, few people are so naïve as to believe that military intervention ever occurs for purely humanitarian reasons. It is generally done in order to pursue the invading country’s interests, and if some humanitarian good is done on the way, well that is just fine. And most of the time, the humanitarian interests are only a cover for other goals; the situation is often oversimplified so the public will support the intervention, which is sometimes vastly distorted.
In this instance, it is Russia warning the United States against violating international law, but the US has played the same game on many occasions — the 2003 push for a UN imprimatur for the invasion of Iraq being perhaps the most prominent and revolting instance.
The alternative to a world governed by international law is a world where might makes right. That is, indeed, the world in which we live. The point here is not that international law should be done away with. On the contrary, it must be strengthened exponentially. A legal system that can enjoy at least some insulation from the whims of politics, both domestic and international, is crucial, and the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice have at least some of that. But more importantly, there must be a mechanism where even the most powerful country can be held accountable for violating the law.
Such a system will never be perfect, of course. Even in the realm of domestic law, we regularly see differences in how it is applied and defied by the rich and the poor. But even the wealthiest individuals have to at least consider their actions when breaking the law. Some system where powerful actors are treated the same as everyone else must be put into place. The answer to how that can be achieved is for better minds than mine, but asking the question is the first step.
Other aspects need revision or at least revisiting as well. Sovereignty is a crucial principle, without a doubt, but it is also used by tyrants to shield themselves from, for example, reprisals under international human rights law. The debate over intervening in Syria following alleged chemical weapons use by the Syrian government is inherently related to the current system of international law, which is broken far beyond the point of having any effectiveness. In many ways, it is an obstacle. It needs to be rebuilt, before more Syrias confront us.
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