by Mitchell Plitnick

With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be called a victory?

Palestine

It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of the physical destruction was borne by the people of Gaza. At this point, the numbers are just horrifyingly grim: 1,968 dead — 1,626 of whom were civilians — and 7,920 wounded. While we don’t have a precise percentage, we do know that there are at least 2,111 children and 1,415 women among the wounded.

The already mangled sole power plant in Gaza was damaged even further, leaving most of the strip without electricity. The United Nations Development Program estimates between 16 and 18,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed and over half a million Gazans (out of a population of roughly 1.8 million) have been internally displaced.

As one report put it, “…almost every piece of critical infrastructure, from electricity to water to sewage, has been seriously compromised by either direct hits from Israeli air strikes and shelling or collateral damage.”

This is clearly the worst hit Gaza has taken, demonstrably more severe than Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). Even so, there seems to be no appetite there for a return to the status quo ante from the mass media, social media or my own interactions; the call for an end to the seven-year Israeli blockade of Gaza as part of a lasting ceasefire persists.

Concomitantly, Hamas, though still facing the same problems as before (an inability to pay civil employees, increasing isolation in the region due to the decline of the Muslim Brotherhood and little leverage of their own to address Gaza’s economic woes) has been strengthened politically by Israel’s onslaught.

Once again, Hamas survived without conceding, and that grants them a considerable boost. It won’t last forever, of course, but they have re-established themselves as the leaders in confronting Israel. The unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah has also apparently survived the fighting, though in practice the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure makes implementation there much more difficult. Palestinian unity was the primary reason that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lied to the Israeli public about the fates of the three murdered Israelis in June — the event that sparked the spiral into this violence. That, too, can be counted as a victory.

The relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is very unclear. It seemed strained in June, as Israel swept through the West Bank under the pretext of looking for the three youths who they knew were already dead. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued his security cooperation with Israel during this time and even prevented demonstrations against Israel’s actions after the fighting started in Gaza.

But as the fighting wore on, Abbas, who at first supported Egypt’s ceasefire proposal that Hamas could not accept, began supporting Hamas’ demands to end the fighting. By the end, Abbas was accusing Israel of war crimes, threatening to sign the Rome Statute and thereby bringing Israel to the International Criminal Court, and calling for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Officially, the PA has not broken the unity agreement — another major victory for Hamas.

Yet Hamas could not have missed the signals of this round. They managed to increase global awareness of the blockade, but found themselves being pressured by the Arab League. Turkey and Qatar remain Hamas’ only allies, but they proved largely ineffectual against the United States, Egypt, and the Saudis (despite the Saudi rhetoric, which was varied and clearly unsympathetic to Hamas but sympathetic to Gazan civilians).

At this point, efforts again appear geared at getting the PA back into the business of controlling Gaza’s borders. For Hamas, that will be a mixed blessing. If it happens with the unity agreement intact, then Hamas will have won itself a clear place in the Palestinian political system, and Israel will have to accept it if they let the PA administer the border crossings. Israel won’t like that at all, but the US, Egypt and the Saudis may push hard for such an arrangement in the interest of stability. This would also be a step toward ending Hamas’ control over the strip, to the extent that there is anything that can legitimately be called Palestinian control in Gaza.

Israel

The Israelis are not buying into Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim of decisive victory in this operation, but they are overwhelmingly supportive of his decisions. In part, this reflects an appreciation of reality — Israel did a lot of damage in Gaza, but didn’t do itself a lot of good. The other part is that most Israelis believe that Netanyahu didn’t really want things to go this far.

Bibi whipped his country into a racist frenzy when those young men were kidnapped. Knowing Israeli sensibilities as he does, Bibi knew that their deaths would end the story, but a kidnapping would continue to enrage hard-line sectors of the Jewish populace. The idea was to drum up popular support for a series of actions against Hamas which, Netanyahu hoped, would shatter the Palestinian unity deal.

But Bibi’s right flank immediately started pressuring for escalation. Bibi didn’t want that, but once Hamas started fighting back in earnest, the political pressure for a broader operation was more than he could resist. The pressure continued, as did Hamas’ firepower, probably more than Bibi expected them to use. As matters escalated, Netanyahu had to keep re-defining the mission’s goals. First it was punishing Hamas for the murders, then it was a “quiet for quiet” arrangement — in other words a straight up ceasefire.

That idea was not met with public approval. By this time, Israelis were considerably frightened. Hamas’ rockets were penetrating much farther into Israel than ever before, and while the Iron Dome defense system limited the actual damage, it did not limit the spread of fear. So, the Israeli goals became diminishing Hamas’ rocket ability and eliminating what Israel called “terror tunnels.”

The tunnels are very frightening to Israelis and Israel appears to have eliminated them. But there are two big problems with this narrative. Firstly, destroying the tunnels was the main focus of the ground operation, but Egypt managed to destroy hundreds of them without a military attack; they simply flooded them from the Egyptian side. The second problem is that, while Israeli fears about the tunnels are understandble, it’s worth noting that Israel has known about them for quite a while and Hamas hadn’t used them until this round of fighting began.

So what, really, did Israel achieve? It caused Hamas to use about two-thirds of its rockets, but those can be replenished, and at the point of the ceasefire, Hamas and other factions were still firing at will. Israel destroyed Hamas’ tunnels, but they had been there for years and were posing only a potential threat. Israel meanwhile failed to destroy the unity agreement, at least for now.

These gains were bought by Israel at the price of Palestinian blood, and a higher domestic death toll than Israel is accustomed to (67, including three civilians). As much as it appears like Tel Aviv doesn’t care about that price, it is clear that Israel’s image took a major hit in this engagement. Formerly sympathetic media showed injured Gazan children and destroyed neighborhoods. Even the United States expressed concern about the disregard for civilian life and called the attack on a United Nations school that was housing refugees “disgraceful.” The UK is now reviewing all military sales to Israel, and Spain has suspended all military sales.

Those things should not be overstated. England and Spain are merely expressing their displeasure at Israel’s total disregard for civilian life in Gaza and will re-commence their sales to Israel in due course. Despite its occasional statements, the US has repeatedly defended Israel throughout this episode and is using the ceasefire to send more supplies to its ally.

Still, Israel has definitely come out of this appearing far more villainous than Hamas. That’s going to make a difference going forward. Israel may no longer be able to bury the issue of the Gaza blockade, a form of collective punishment that has only helped solidify Hamas’ rule in Gaza and has deprived the people while failing to prevent the buildup of Hamas’ rockets. No one bought into the anti-Iran portion of Netanyahu’s rhetoric, another failure for Israel. Even in the US Jewish community, this onslaught shook a lot of pro-Israel faith and sent other Jews out of their living rooms and into the streets.

I see nothing but an illusion of victory here for the Israeli right. And for the rest of the country, the surge in extreme nationalism made Israel look a lot more like a fascist state than the Middle East’s “only democracy.”

The United States

There’s really little to say here. The US will look back at its actions in the Middle East in 2014 as one of the lowest periods in its diplomatic history. Secretary of State John Kerry failed to broker a ceasefire, and when he finally got one, it was broken within two hours. While both sides had different stories about who really broke the ceasefire, the Israeli narrative dominated and allowed Netanyahu to tell the United States not to “second-guess him” about Hamas.

Leaks to Israeli media disparaged both President Barack Obama and Kerry. The US again showed the world that while it does have the power to pressure Israel, it is not going to use it, no matter how bloody Israel’s actions become or how many times it insults its American patron. The US meanwhile stands alone in defending Israel’s actions.

The Obama administration has occasionally had some good ideas about the Middle East, but has repeatedly shown it doesn’t have a clue about how to implement them. It paints itself as an advocate for peace, but shows no willingness to back up its words in the face of Israeli resistance. That’s why it’s more important now than ever for Europe or some other outside party to push its way past the US in dealing with this issue.

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by Mitchell Plitnick

Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since I had to study up a lot of this for my job as the Director of the US Office of B’Tselem, I thought I might set the record straight.

“War crimes”

Various memes make the rounds in discussions of war crimes. One that I found particularly laughable was “Even the UN says Hamas is committing war crimes but they say Israel only might be.” I’ve also seen defenses of Hamas’ firing of missiles at civilian targets in Israel based on Palestinians’ right of self-defense.

Here is the long and short of it: War crimes are defined as “Serious violations of international humanitarian law constitute war crimes.” That’s going to encompass pretty much every violation that might become a public issue in any conflict.

International law recognizes that civilians are going to be hurt, killed and dispossessed in war. The obligation of combatants is to do all they can to minimize the death and destruction if they do need to operate in areas where it is likely that civilians will be hurt.

As a result, when Israel proclaims its innocence of violating these laws, no matter how suspicious we may be, enforcers of international law cannot declare that war crimes have been committed without an investigation. Reasonable people who are not international lawyers can make assumptions, but the investigation needs to happen, and it is always possible, especially when the conflict involves an area as densely populated as Gaza, that it will turn out that the state in question did its best to avoid civilian casualties. High civilian casualty numbers are not proof, but they obviously raise suspicions.

On Hamas’ side, this is true as well, but Hamas makes no secret of its use of weapons which, by their very nature, cannot be used in a manner that can discriminate between civilian and military targets. So, while the UN or other bodies would still investigate and make a case before taking any action, Hamas is committing war crimes. It’s not unfair to say so.

In this case, however, Israel has declared that the homes of leading Hamas activists (and those of other factions) are legitimate targets. They have, in fact, willfully bombed such houses during these engagements as a result. Unlike the 2002 assassination of Salah Shehade, where Israel claimed (falsely, many say) to have believed Shehade to be alone in the building they bombed, Israel has made no such claims this time around. Therefore, it is also not unfair to say that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even before an investigation.

If not for Iron Dome, there would have been many more Israeli casualties

This statement seems to make sense, but the numbers don’t back it up. A study done through July 14, when rocket fire into Israel was at its most intense, showed that the number of rockets being fired from Gaza was fewer than in Operation Cast Lead and the frequency of hits was about the same.

I’m all for Iron Dome. Any defensive system whose purpose is to protect civilians is something I consider an absolute positive, and I only wish more countries would invest in such systems, endeavoring to protect, rather than avenge, their civilians. The concern that iron Dome would make Israel even more reckless and grant it even more impunity does not seem to be borne out by its actions in the current onslaught. Those actions, brutal as they are, are no worse than what Israel did in 2008 and 2012 to Gaza or what it did in 2006 to Lebanon. So, yeah, please let’s see more Iron Domes in the world.

By the same token, however, it doesn’t seem like Iron Dome is actually protecting Israeli civilians nearly as much as the rockets’ lack of any sort of targeting ability.

Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people

Opponents of Israeli policies in the United States and in Israel itself have an uphill battle against an entrenched propagandistic view of the entire conflict. We do ourselves no favors by using bombastic, easily assailable language in making our arguments.

Genocide has a specific meaning in international law. It does not mean large scale killing. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide provides that definition:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of thr group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

There is no evidence that this is what Israel is trying to do. Indeed, the best evidence that Israel is not doing this is the simple fact that the Palestinian population, in both the West Bank and Gaza, continues to grow, despite the occupation and all its concomitant hardships.

Would Israel like to find a way to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and cut off Gaza? Sure, but that is not genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, and frankly, that’s bad enough. Israel has done that very gradually over the years, confiscating more and more land, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller enclaves and turning Gaza into one big open air prison.

Making claims that are contradicted by the facts, especially the weighty accusation of genocide, is irresponsible and self-defeating; it plays right into Israel’s propaganda hands.

Hamas is exercising legitimate self-defense

It is absolutely true that an occupied people has the right to resist its occupiers. It is also true that the unusual nature of Israel’s occupation makes it very difficult for guerrilla groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and others to take any violent action that would conform to international legal standards. As international legal expert Noura Erekat puts it: “Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not contested.”

It is also true that Israel itself does not differentiate between attacks on its civilians and its soldiers. It views them as equally illegitimate and labels it all “terrorism,” even though legally, Israeli soldiers are combatants while on duty. Take, for example, the killing of IDF soldier Natanel Moshiashvili in 2012. The IDF statement about his death plainly states: “The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers, and will operate against anyone who uses terror against the State of Israel.”

Nonetheless, the fact that Palestinians are mostly unable to strike exclusively at Israeli military targets does not mean that it is suddenly legal to use indiscriminate weapons or to target civilians. These are war crimes, and any credible investigation must investigate both sides while also taking into account the massive differences in capabilities and power of the two. Israel must also be scrutinized more closely because it has a far greater ability to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants than Hamas.

Hamas is using human shields

Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true, but it does make a whole lot of people believe it. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu willfully and repeatedly lied to the Israeli public and the world about Hamas’ complicity in the kidnap and murder of the three young Israeli settlers, which sparked this latest round. He kept saying he had proof that he never produced, and now the Israeli police are admitting what everyone who was actually paying attention at the time knew: this was an independent act of violence.

It’s the same with the human shield argument. Like genocide, the term “human shield” has a legal definition. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “… the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.” Again, as Erekat wrote: “International human rights organizations that have investigated these claims have determined that they are not true.” Erekat correctly cites reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which focused on past engagements. There is also doubt being cast by journalists in Gaza today.

In fact, no evidence has ever been presented to support the accusation apart from the high number of civilian casualties and Israel’s word. On the other hand, Israel’s own High Court had to demand that Israel stop using human shields. That happened in 2005, but the practice continued.

In any case, even the presence of human shields does not absolve or mitigate Israel’s responsibility to minimize civilian casualties. Again quoting Erekat: “Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible, humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties…In the over three weeks of its military operation, Israel has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries; injured 4,620; and killed over 700 Palestinians. At plain sight, these numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that amount to war crimes.”

Finally, one last point and one more citation of Noura Erekat. The claim that Israel is merely acting in self-defense fails on a number of counts. As I and others have been saying from the beginning, the Netanyahu government willfully and cynically used the murders of three Israelis as an excuse to provoke Hamas with mass arrests and widespread activities that included the deaths of nine Palestinian civilians before this operation started. That removes the self-defense argument from the start. But more than that, the Gaza Strip, despite it being emptied of settlements and soldiers, remains under Israeli control, and is thus occupied territory, contrary to Israel’s claims. Please check out Erekat’s excellent write-up of what this means for the right of self-defense. And please note, she never denies that Israel has a right to protect its own civilians, but that is not the same thing.

Photo: International and Palestinian volunteers accompanied Civil Defense and other rescue crews, as well as family members, into Shujaya, a neighborhood by the separation barrier in the east of Gaza City, in an attempt to locate survivors of overnight and ongoing shelling by the Israeli army on July 20. Credit: Joe Catron

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The last few months have gone rather well for the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in the sense of advancing its prime objective of indefinitely extending the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by ensuring failure of any diplomatic efforts to end the occupation. Netanyahu’s success in this regard has been [...]]]> by Paul Pillar

The last few months have gone rather well for the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in the sense of advancing its prime objective of indefinitely extending the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by ensuring failure of any diplomatic efforts to end the occupation. Netanyahu’s success in this regard has been due both to his own tactical skill and to the luck of outside events.

Netanyahu achieved failure of the latest U.S. attempt to revive a peace process worthy of that name partly through the preemptory demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” He also successfully used the stratagem of striking a deal with the Palestinian Authority that involved release of Palestinian prisoners, reneging on that deal by construing its meaning differently than originally intended, and then blaming the P.A. for not proceeding anyway with substantive talks as if nothing untoward had happened. The Israelis had to take some mild off-the-record blame for the breakdown from the Americans, but nothing that wasn’t manageable.

More threatening to the Israeli government’s strategy than John Kerry’s diplomatic efforts was the latest effort by Hamas and Fatah to bridge their differences and jointly support a single Palestinian government. These intra-Palestinian acts of reconciliation have always been a problem for Netanyahu’s strategy because they involve creating a negotiating partner that can speak for the great majority of Palestinians and because they belie the Israeli allegation that Hamas wants nothing but the destruction of Israel. The Hamas-Fatah deal and subsequent creation of a cabinet of technocrats clearly involved Hamas moving toward Mahmoud Abbas’s position rather than the other way around. This latest reconciliation appeared even more threatening to Netanyahu’s approach than the previous ones because it showed more sign of sticking. Perhaps most disturbing to Netanyahu is that the Obama administration indicated it was willing to work with any jointly supported Palestinian government that emerged from the deal.

Netanyahu has given the same vehement and unyielding reaction he has given to the previous efforts at Palestinian reconciliation, such as withholding tax revenue that belongs to the Palestinians. What most enabled him, however, to sustain his strategy in the face of this latest challenge—and here is one place where the luck of events has helped him—was the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu immediately blamed Hamas and repeatedly promised evidence, which still hasn’t been forthcoming, that the group was responsible for the crime. Two men with ties to Hamas have been named as suspects. They are at large but their families’ homes have already been demolished. No proof of guilt was furnished beforehand, but Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank is an everyday occurrence anyway.

The crime provided the occasion for the Israeli government to strike back more broadly and forcefully than that. As Mitchell Plitnick has described it, “Under the cover of searching for the kidnapped youths, Netanyahu launched a massive operation to cripple Hamas in the West Bank, further humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and punish the entire Palestinian population for calling for a halt to the charade of the ‘peace process’ and, worse, moving toward a unified leadership.” This forceful stirring of the pot by Israel, which has involved the detention of hundreds of Palestinians and the death of several of them at the hands of Israeli security forces, helps to put any peace diplomacy even farther out of reach. It enables American supporters of Netanyahu’s government to say for the umpteenth time that the time is not “ripe” for peace negotiations—and the government they support will do what it has to do to ensure that the time will never be ripe.

Netanyahu’s strategy has benefited recently from other distractions, which have diverted any energy and attention that might otherwise be directed toward establishment of a Palestinian state. The principal distraction that Netanyahu has relied on has been, of course, his demonization of Iran. Other events have helped him. The world’s attention was diverted greatly for a time by the crisis in Ukraine. Then came widespread alarm over the Sunni extremist group in Iraq and Syria that now calls itself the Islamic State. The latter scare has been even more useful for Netanyahu, who used it as another excuse to insist that Israeli troops must continue to occupy the Jordan River Valley indefinitely. Never mind that the chief of Mossad dismisses the notion of an Islamic State army marching across Jordan to invade Israel; the excuse still has a crude geographic appeal.

So Netanyahu has peace diplomacy right where he wants it: in the trash bin, but so far without having to shoulder unequivocal international blame for putting it there. His very success over the last few months in this regard, however, may over the next few months lead to reactions that will complicate further execution of his strategy. That the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation has gone as far as it has—farther than previous attempts—may lead many Palestinians to see it as a best shot at a genuinely comprehensive peace, one that would cover Gaza as well as the West Bank. Continued vehement Israeli rejection of this best shot may lead Palestinians to conclude that they have no shot—none, that is, at negotiating a bilateral accord with any Israeli government that looks at all like the current one. One resulting possibility—which the current volatility in the Palestinian territories shows is dangerously close to becoming a probability—is outbreak of a new full-blown intifada, an uprising with widespread violence.

Even without a new intifada, there are two other strategy-complicating possibilities. One is for the Palestinian Authority (presumably in the form of its Hamas-backed but non-party government) to drop its previous restraint in seeking the full involvement of international organizations in helping the Palestinians out of their plight and moving toward real statehood. The other is for the Palestinian Authority to dissolve itself, end the fiction that what exists in the West Bank is anything other than continued Israeli military occupation, and stop being an accessory to that occupation. Netanyahu in effect encourages Palestinians to reach that latter conclusion, and to realize that the P.A. is not really a government at all, when he does things such as disdaining Abbas’s attempts to help in finding the killers of the Israeli teenagers and berating the P.A. even though the crime occurred in a portion of the West Bank where the P.A. has no security functions at all.

But Netanyahu is always focused on the short term, and he probably is not worrying much right now about those possibilities. It also is because he is focused on the short term that success in his strategy in fending off Palestinian statehood is not at all success for Israel. In fact, it is quite contrary to the long term interests of Israel and damaging to its prospects for living as a peaceful, prosperous, liberal state. The Netanyahu strategy fails to recognize that clinging to all the land to the Jordan River makes it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and a democratic state.

The strategy is one that entails unending conflict and animosity. As Israel sinks ever more deeply into hard-core apartheid, a corrosive effect continues to be seen in the public attitudes and morality of many Israelis as well as many Palestinians, an effect that is disturbing to the many other Israelis who are still thoughtful and humane. The phenomenon in question has become increasingly apparent in recent years in an intolerance in Israel that has evolved into overt hatred and prejudice against Arabs, matching anti-Jewish hatred that can be found on the other side. (Anti-Semitism probably is not the appropriate term in this context, only because both Jews and Arabs are Semites.)

In this atmosphere, nonofficial acts of inhumanity and violence become more likely—such as the killing of the three Jewish teenagers and the subsequent killing, possibly after being burned alive, of a Palestinian Arab teenager. The atmosphere also infects official acts. Those acts include much of what happens in the West Bank every week, including all those demolitions of homes. It also has reportedly included in the past few days the brutal beating by Israeli police of another Palestinian teenager—a cousin of the one who was burned and killed.

The victim of the police beating is an American: a high school sophomore from Tampa, Florida who was visiting his relatives. If the reports about his beating are confirmed, this ought to be an occasion for the U.S. to pull its kid gloves off at least a bit more in dealing with Netanyahu’s government. When Israeli police are beating up U.S. citizens, the U.S. government ought to do more to steer the Israeli government off its disastrous path. Call it tough love if you prefer, but the emphasis needs to be on the toughness.

This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.

by Mitchell Plitnick

In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.

The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.

The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply waiting for an opportunity to deliver the most intense and widespread blow to the West Bank. The kidnapping of three young Israelis provided that opportunity and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized it with a vengeance. Under the cover of searching for the kidnapped youths, Netanyahu launched a massive operation to cripple Hamas in the West Bank, further humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and punish the entire Palestinian population for calling for a halt to the charade of the “peace process” and, worse, moving toward a unified leadership.

On the Palestinian side, the fundamental lack of strategy has become ever more apparent. Ditching the US-brokered process has been, for a very long time, the right move, but sloughing it off in a half-hearted way and without a substitute was unconscionably foolish. That’s especially true when you consider how much time there was to devise an alternative strategy to the US-brokered process over so many years. The result is that the Palestinian unity agreement was imperiled before it was signed by the essential incompatibility of the strategies and ideologies of Fatah and Hamas.

This is being played out on a daily basis now: Abbas appears not only weak, but like a traitor as he cooperates with Netanyahu in this massive operation that has yielded nothing with regard to the three kidnapped Israelis but has resulted in hundreds of arrested Palestinians without cause, disruption of work, school and health services throughout the West Bank, hundreds of injuries and, to date, five deaths. Hamas is fanning the flames of anger while denouncing Abbas for his quisling behavior, but it also offers no alternative, unless one foolhardily believes that yet another intifada is going to soften Israeli stances. The last intifada may have shaken up Israelis, and certainly resulted in numerous deaths and injuries in Israel, but it did no harm to Israel’s stability while killing and harming a great many Palestinians. In fact, it only hardened Israel’s positions and worsened conditions for the Palestinians. This suggests that violence, on top of being deplorable, is a foolish course for the Palestinians.

For his part, Netanyahu is playing this to the hilt. It is far from certain that Hamas, as an organization, is responsible for the kidnapping. Right now, it seems much more likely that this was a small group whose members might also have been members of Hamas, but were not acting in concert with the organization. Netanyahu, however, insists he has “unequivocal” proof that Hamas was responsible. The credibility of that claim erodes with each passing day that Bibi refuses to offer evidence for his claim.

Netanyahu’s brand of politics, like most right-wingers, functions best when the country he runs is either angry, scared, or better yet, both. The current situation creates such an atmosphere. The problem will come when and if the tension in the West Bank boils over. And that problem is going to be one that neither the United States nor much of the rest of the world will be able to ignore. They will have to choose a side.

In looking at where we’re headed right now, we must start by understanding that the US is not removed from these events. While the Obama administration has decided to take a “pause” from this conflict and certainly has other matters like Iraq and the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to occupy its time, it is still Israel’s benefactor, providing arms and, quite likely, the omnipresent protective veto in the UN Security Council. So, the US is still there, whether it wants to be or not.

It will also be drawn further in if the Palestinian Authority collapses and violence in the West Bank is renewed. This seems very much to be the direction Israel is pressing matters towards. If that is the case, then it also stands to reason that the Israeli government intends to annex some part of the West Bank, using the violence as a pretext. Israel, especially given its budgetary constraints these days, is certainly not prepared to supplant the Palestinian Authority in administering the West Bank. The remainder of the West Bank would be surrounded by “Israel” and would be easily contained. From there, local councils or some such arrangements are probably what is envisioned for the lands Israel decides to leave to the Palestinians.

Netanyahu and his cohorts like Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya’alon are gambling that the violence of a third intifada will be enough to convince key governments — particularly, the US, UK and Germany — to tolerate the annexation. By “tolerate” I mean that they would object and “refuse to recognize” the action, much as they have with East Jerusalem, but would take no other action.

That is a huge gamble. It is far from certain that even the United States would acquiesce to such actions, and less so that Britain and Germany would. Even if they did, there would surely be a great uproar from other countries, in Europe and throughout the Muslim world, as well as from Russia, France and China. Even governments like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are largely indifferent to the Palestinians’ plight would be unable to stay silent.

But the gambit has a few things working in Bibi’s favor as well. First, as much as the Israeli de facto annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 outraged many, the reality of the whole city functioning as an “undivided” capital, however restlessly, has survived for over three decades since then. And that’s Jerusalem, the hottest of hotspots in this conflict. Netanyahu surely reasons that if Jerusalem didn’t start a war, there’s a good chance that annexing the Jordan Valley in a similar manner won’t either.

Moreover, the timing is very good for the annexationists. Not only are all eyes on Iraq with a few still lingering over Ukraine, but the specter of ISIS has renewed the sense of fright that the West feels toward Arabs. These will combine, Bibi surely hopes, to encourage a similar clucking of tongues while doing nothing that has greeted the excesses, both pre- and post-election, of the al-Sisi government in Egypt. Netanyahu’s assessment that he can take an outrageous step and get away with it is thus not without recent precedent. The annexation vision, if that is what Bibi is pursuing, would require years of violence to set the stage for it, or at least many months of intense fighting and bloodshed on both sides (though, as always, the Palestinians will bleed a lot more than Israel).

Abbas, however unwittingly, is helping that process along by working with Israel. Netanyahu is not allowing the Palestinian forces to do much of anything in the current operation, but Abbas is also doing nothing to support his own people. Hamas’ strategy isn’t entirely clear yet, but its obviously trying to capitalize on the Palestinian rage that fuels its support. In Hamas’ view, escalating violence plays into its basic strategy of confrontation rather than collaboration. But the question of whether or not Hamas actually has some endgame vision of how it can make any headway against the might of Israel’s forces, let alone triumph, remains yet to be answered.

So, this is what Israel-Palestine looks like without a sham peace process. Does that mean the sham is preferable? Is it better to have a normalized occupation, with all the banality of its entrenched administration and gradual assimilation of more and more Palestinian land into Israel; or is a possibly long period of bloodshed preferable? Only Israelis and Palestinians can answer that question. That said, the shameful behavior of the US, the international community, the Quartet, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian leadership has left few other options.

Israelis can alter this situation, of course, any time they want by electing a government that wants to make a peace deal. Palestinians can also affect change by developing, organizing and executing a strategy that wins them both attention and increased support in the international arena. At this point, however, both sides seem unwilling and unable to take these paths, which increases the odds of Israel-Palestine spiraling back into extreme violence.

This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Photo: Gaza, June 16 — Women rally for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons on the 54th day of a mass hunger strike by the detainees and supporters. Credit: Joe Catron

by Mitchell Plitnick

There is a sure, although contemptible, way to get the attention of virtually the entire state of Israel. That is to kidnap some of its younger citizens. It worked with Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and it seems to be playing well again, this time with civilians (living in the settlements [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

There is a sure, although contemptible, way to get the attention of virtually the entire state of Israel. That is to kidnap some of its younger citizens. It worked with Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and it seems to be playing well again, this time with civilians (living in the settlements does not strip one of their civilian status under international law).

Israel, as a whole, is riveted on the fates of these three young men. There is a national outcry in Israel when kidnappings occur that is even louder than when Israelis, even young Israelis, are killed. There is a sense of urgency; that something must be done to free the captives before a worse fate befalls them. The attention is widespread and constant, in cases like Shalit’s, where the captive is kept alive, and in cases where the captives are believed or known to already be dead. Israelis press hard for a resolution to the situation, and political leaders respond, but sometimes, sadly, in self-serving ways.

Was it Hamas?

The outcry from the people of Israel over the fates of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha’ar, and Naftali Frankel is very real. The bluster and finger-pointing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an insult. Netanyahu immediately laid the blame at Hamas’ feet, absurdly held the Palestinian Authority responsible, demeaned a very strong statement by Mahmoud Abbas denouncing the act and managed to defy all logic by suggesting that this event was the result of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

Beyond the visceral response, however, some perspective is needed. The media seems to have firmly latched on to the idea that Hamas is responsible for this crime. That is certainly possible, but the evidence thus far points away from that direction. Netanyahu has offered no concrete evidence for his statement whatsoever, expecting the world to simply take him at his word despite the obvious benefit for him. The media seems to have done just that, but others are more dubious.

The United States has thus far only conceded that some evidence may point to “Hamas’ involvement.” Hamas has sent out mixed signals, as they always do, but the official line has been that they had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Meanwhile the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai has only said they have “a great deal of information” about the kidnappings, pointedly avoiding naming any group that might be responsible.

But whether it was Hamas or not is not really an issue for Netanyahu. The kidnapping has provided the pretext he needed to attack Hamas in the West Bank, and also hit the Palestinian Authority for their temerity in striking a unity agreement with the Islamist party against Israel’s wishes. Netanyahu quite reasonably believes he can drive a wedge between Hamas and Fatah and hasten the collapse of their unity pact, but if that fails, he very well knows that he can weaken Hamas’ presence in the West Bank through mass arrests and possibly deportations to Gaza. At the same time, he puts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a very difficult position; Abbas cannot be seen by the international community as supporting or being indifferent to the kidnapping, but he also can’t afford to be seen by his own public to be collaborating with Israel.

Palestinian prisoners

The problem for Abbas is deeply connected with the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, an issue that has resurfaced recently as many of them have gone on hunger strike. Israel often holds Palestinians in so-called “administrative detention,” which means they are being held without charge or trial. It is supposed to last no longer than six months, but because the order can be renewed, some Palestinians are imprisoned in this fashion for years.

The other end of that spectrum, of course, is the controversial issue of Palestinian prisoners who have been convicted of violence against Israelis, especially civilians. These prisoners are often seen as heroes by the Palestinians, a source of intense friction for even the most liberal Israelis. The Israeli public, for its part, doesn’t often distinguish much between Palestinian prisoners; they are generally seen as terrorists by most Israelis, although this is not by any means universal. Many of the more liberal Israelis are not entirely comfortable with the practice of extended administrative detention, although most would acknowledge its utility if used sparingly. Most countries, it should be noted, have some system like this one when attempting to prevent violent crimes, and most have been known, on occasion, to abuse the practice; it’s just that democracies, on the whole, do not abuse it to nearly the extent that Israel does.

Currently, about 300 Palestinian prisoners, including both those that have been charged, indicted or convicted, and those who are held in administrative detention, are on a hunger strike. Israel, seeking to avoid the international embarrassment and the potential powder keg in the Occupied Territories that would result from the deaths of the strikers, is attempting to pass legislation to permit forced feeding, widely considered a grave breach of personal privacy and medical ethics.

For many Palestinians, the issues of Palestinian prisoners and Israelis being held illegally by Palestinians are intimately connected. Israel, of course, has reinforced this on several occasions by agreeing to prisoner exchanges, as they did with Gilad Shalit in 2011. So, as Israel cracks down hard on Palestinian prisoners, Palestinians, even if they object to the kidnapping of the three Israelis, are going to be frustrated if they see Abbas putting more energy and resources into finding the Israelis than dealing with the conditions of his own people in Israeli jails, many of whose lives are also currently in jeopardy.

Netanyahu’s agenda

I want to be clear, at this point, that nothing I say here should be construed as suggesting that Netanyahu does not want to find Yifrach, Sha’ar and Frankel; I’m sure he does. But Bibi is nothing if not an opportunist, and he knows from the Shalit experience that it is entirely possible that this could drag on for some time. He is not about to let the mere fact of human suffering get in the way of his political agenda.

And Netanyahu certainly has an agenda here; what he lacks, as always, is an endgame. His aim is to use the crackdown, legitimized at least for the Israeli public by the kidnapping, to punish Abbas for dropping out of the sham talks that John Kerry was piloting, and for finally coming together with Hamas to agree on a technocratic government charged with paving the way for Palestine’s first national election since 2006. Anticipating that Hamas will gain support in the West Bank, Netanyahu is also using this opportunity to weaken its infrastructure and leadership through mass arrests.

But where does he go from there? His actions will further weaken Abbas, who is already teetering on the edge of oblivion in the West Bank. And, while Hamas may be somewhat less powerful in the short-term, these actions are not going to do long-term damage.

Part of Netanyahu’s strategy here is also to try to make the case that this is the result of the Palestinian unity agreement and that the world needs to stand by Israel and, in essence, against the entire Palestinian body politic. The hope, for Bibi, is that international pressure can be brought down on Abbas to get him to agree to a deal that would appeal to Bibi’s coalition. Such a deal would include a non-contiguous Palestinian pseudo-state with virtually no Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, a continued Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, Israeli control of Palestinian airspace… in short, the deal Bibi and Kerry were trying to force on Abbas before the talks broke down.

But it doesn’t seem to be working. The United States has dutifully expressed its outrage, but in tepid terms. The European Union took five days before condemning the kidnapping. The message to Netanyahu is that the world is indeed outraged by this act, but they don’t see it as fundamentally changing anything.

The media campaign the Israeli government orchestrated worked well within Israel, but less so outside. The attempt by the Israel Defense Forces to get a Twitter campaign going by grossly playing off the crimes of Boko Haram in Nigeria in abducting hundreds of girls to be sold into sexual or other kinds of slavery was rightly greeted outside of Israel as cheap and insulting. It was turned around by pro-Palestinian social media activists to reflect the large numbers of Palestinians held by Israel. And the timing of the whole campaign is poor, as attention is focused now on Iraq, among other, ongoing areas of tension.

That is not to say the world is unsympathetic. These are, according to all reports, three innocent young men, whose only crime was living and studying in a school in occupied territory. But that does not justify violence against them. They are certainly victims, and they are rightly seen that way in most of the world.

Sadly, the Netanyahu government cannot let such a plight speak for itself. Instead they must polish it and present it in a propaganda package that is more about demonizing all Palestinians than it is about finding the victims. The repeated references to “our boys” and calling the abductees “children” might later resonate in a way Israel doesn’t like. The young men are 19, 16, and 16 years of age, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find instances where Israel treats Palestinian youths of those ages like “children.”

The occupation does not justify an attack on civilians, not even on settlers, if they are not threatening anyone. But like every other occupation in history, it does inevitably lead to it, especially if the occupying power is putting civilians illegally into occupied territory. Such acts are criminal, but inevitable. This did not happen because Palestinians hate Jews, nor because Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement. It happened because of the occupation. When millions of people are treated unjustly, some number of them will act unjustly in response.

If people are truly concerned about young Jews like Eyal, Gilad and Naftali, they must stop playing petty politics, trumpeting extreme nationalism and valuing force over law. The only way to effectively prevent crimes like this in the future is to end the situation where millions of people are living their entire lives without rights…or hope.

This article was published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission.

by Mitchell Plitnick

You have to admire the tenacity of J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group. Or maybe it’s the desperation born of running out of options. In any case, if there is to be any hope for a negotiated resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, J Street, however well-intentioned, [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

You have to admire the tenacity of J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group. Or maybe it’s the desperation born of running out of options. In any case, if there is to be any hope for a negotiated resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, J Street, however well-intentioned, is demonstrating precisely what we must not do.

Just days after the Obama Administration announced it was taking a “pause” in its efforts to broker an agreement, J Street sent out a message trying to rally the troops. In that message, they said that this moment “…is an opportunity to take stock and ask some tough questions.” Unfortunately, they make clear in the very same message that they are doing neither.

Here is what J Street refers to as “our plan”:

• First, we’re going to urge President Obama and Secretary Kerry to stay engaged and not to walk away. Resolving this conflict remains an American and Israeli interest.
• Second, to move forward, the Administration should put forward an American framework for a final status deal, build international support for it, and go to the parties and tell them the time has come to say yes or no to a reasonable plan for ending the conflict. So we’ll be calling for stronger American leadership, not less engagement.
• Third, we’ll be speaking out even more strongly about the direction in which Israel is headed. Those on the farthest right of Israel’s politics have formed a “one-state caucus.” They are willing to forsake Israel’s democratic character for unending settlement expansion throughout the West Bank. That’s a choice that most of the world’s Jews disagree with and it runs counter to the values and interests of both Israel and the United States.

This plan reflects a sense of futility. There is nothing here that raises the question of why almost every round of talks for the past twenty years has ended in failure. The closest thing the U.S. can point to as a success during that period is the Wye River Agreement in 1998, when President Bill Clinton exerted personal pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, for his troubles, got Netanyahu to implement a redeployment that had already been agreed upon. Not a lot to show for over twenty years of work.

Yet J Street, in essence, advocates more of the same. The “toughest question,” and the one they don’t want to ask comes down to the internal paradox that J Street faces. On one hand, they are always advocating “robust diplomacy” on the part of the United States. On the other, J Street has consistently opposed any sort of material pressure on Israel, whether economically or diplomatically, to get them to change their policies. That they continue to hold this position goes a long way toward explaining why nothing, especially the results of Israeli-Palestinian talks, ever changes.

In 1998, Bill Clinton was able to put public pressure on Netanyahu, without having to resort to threatening U.S. military aid to Israel or really much else in the way of material pressure. But that was a different time. The reason Clinton was successful was because the specter of an Israeli Prime Minister alienating a U.S. President was a significant political problem in Israel. Indeed, it contributed significantly to Netanyahu’s defeat shortly thereafter by Ehud Barak (although, paradoxically, the right wing’s sense that Netanyahu had sold them out at Wye was at least as big a factor). In today’s Israel, as long as the people know the military relationship is intact, defying the U.S. can be a political plus, and Netanyahu has since proven that he can insult, humiliate, even spit in the proverbial face of a U.S. President without real consequence.

That’s why J Street’s prescription is so badly out of date. The rightward shift of the Israeli public since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, along with the increasing clarity in recent years of the strength of virtually unconditional Congressional support for a wide array of Israeli policies, have emboldened Israeli prime ministers. They know that the United States will not exact any penalty for Israeli defiance on matters related to the Occupation (wider regional matters may be different). If further proof were needed, the opposition from within his own party to Barack Obama’s call for an Israeli settlement freeze in 2009 provided that. It is no longer sufficient for a U.S. President to make his wishes clear; Israel will not move on the ever-deepening occupation without significant, tangible pressure. But J Street opposes any such pressure.

The “tough questions” that J Street, and other groups seeking a reasonable and non-violent end to this conflict need to answer don’t stop there. The failure of not only the latest attempt by John Kerry, but of the entire process over twenty-plus years now raises a much bigger question.

To date, there has only been one path to that sort of a solution, the two-state version as envisaged by the Oslo Accords and the subsequent evolution of events. It hasn’t worked. After twenty years, the occupation is far more entrenched; the settler population has exploded and its growth will continue to accelerate; the PLO has fallen into disarray and has lost a lot of support, but no clear alternative has presented itself; the Israeli electorate has moved sharply to the right; and Washington’s ability to pressure Israel has grown weaker with each successive president since 1992.

The byword about this process has been that there is no other choice, but this is nonsense. Not long ago, Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Officer for the CIA suggested on this site that the two-state option was dead and new ideas, essentially variations on a one-state formula, would have to be devised.

I agree that those formulations need to be considered anew. I still don’t believe a single state will really work, but the moment demands that anyone who can make a case for any solution must be heard and taken seriously. What is most dangerous right now is falling into the comfortable trap of trying the same thing that has failed for twenty years. The only formulation that has ever been attempted was the Oslo formulation and it has failed. There is always another option. We need to find one that will work, not stubbornly cling to a fatally flawed plan that has finally died and pretend there is still even the remotest possibility that it will work.

It is precisely for this reason that I have been picking on J Street in this article: because I still believe that a two-state formulation must be found. I have nothing against a one-state outcome in principle; as long as that one state guarantees it will always offer safe sanctuary to Jews fleeing persecution– the kind that didn’t exist in World War II — I’m perfectly comfortable with it. But I have no faith that it can work, as we see all around the world the collapse of and/or violent conflicts within multi-ethnic or -confessional states (Iraq, Yugoslavia, and most recently Syria, South Sudan and Ukraine, just to name a few). Given that level of doubt, and the fact that there is currently no groundswell of political support anywhere for a one-state outcome, I cannot see how it would work. But I remain open to someone showing me how the difficulties could be dealt with, as we all must consider new options in the wake of Oslo’s death.

But a new two-state concept doesn’t really have the full advantage over one state that some may contend, if they base that contention on the idea that a two-state formulation has global acceptance. That’s because any two-state formulation must scrap Oslo and start from scratch, so it would have to be sold anew. In my view, in order to succeed, a two-state formula must include the following elements, few of which were characteristic of the Oslo Process:

• It must be based fundamentally not on Israeli security or even Palestinian freedom, but on fully equal rights – civil, human and, crucially, national – of all the people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
• It must be based on international law, including UN Security Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions, and all other relevant international treaties.
• It must be based on open borders and deep cooperation between the two states, rather than as much separation as possible.
• It must not treat as legitimate “changes on the ground” that Israel has intentionally brought about to block a realistic two-state outcome, but it must also seek a path to minimize the upheaval of mass relocation of either settlers or Palestinians. An open-border system may help facilitate this.
• It must acknowledge and respect the Palestinian refugees’ claim for return and find a way to accommodate it in a reasonable fashion that neither undermines prospects for peace nor treats the right of return as anything less than that—a right.
• Both states must be required to produce a constitution that guarantees full and equal rights to all minorities within its borders, no matter how the state chooses to characterize itself. Such a constitution also needs to guarantee that Jews and Palestinians around the world are guaranteed that the respective states will offer them safe haven in the case of persecution.
• Any deal will have to be enforced by the international community. Israel will hate that, and many Palestinians will see that as limiting their hard-win sovereignty. But it is extremely unlikely that these arrangements will work just because of good intentions, as Oslo proved conclusively.

That’s a basic framework that I see as workable for an equitable two-state solution. Lots of compromise on both sides, but also a practical approach that allows both Palestinians and Israelis to maintain their national identities.

Of course, I don’t expect a politically centrist, Washington-centric group like J Street to accept such a formulation. But I do expect that, if they are serious about wanting A two-state solution rather than stubbornly sticking to the failed experiment that has been referred to as THE two-state solution, they will start talking and thinking of new ideas about what such a solution will look like.

There are one-staters who advocate a secular-democratic single state. There are right-wing Israeli one-staters who advocate a single state that legally enshrines Jews as dominant above Palestinians. Those ideas are advancing today because any reasonable person understands that the Oslo process is dead and has been proven to be unworkable, and these ideas are beginning to fill that vacuum. If we want to see a two-state solution emerge, as I think we need to, we need to re-think the basis of that solution and build one that avoids all the bias and mistakes of Oslo.

J Street, as champions of the two-state solution, this is your time to show that you can truly lead. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to do so and not play scared by clinging to the only solution that has actually been tested and which led to a dead-end.

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by Mitchell Plitnick

US Secretary of State John Kerry was shuttling between Jordan and Saudi Arabia on Sunday, shoring up support for his efforts to find some kind of framework for negotiations that Israel and the Palestinian Authority could both sign on to. But back in Israel, the difficulties Kerry faces [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

US Secretary of State John Kerry was shuttling between Jordan and Saudi Arabia on Sunday, shoring up support for his efforts to find some kind of framework for negotiations that Israel and the Palestinian Authority could both sign on to. But back in Israel, the difficulties Kerry faces became even more apparent.

First, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that, while he believed the deal Kerry envisions is the best Israel is likely to get, he would not support any peace deal that did not involve transferring Arab towns in Israel to the Palestinian Authority. In other words, Lieberman is insisting on a condition he has long held that forces the expulsion from Israel of some significant number of its Arab citizens. That is something that even the United States will find difficult to endorse, although most in Congress probably would have no problem with it (as long as AIPAC pushes them in that direction). The PA is not going to accept that condition, so Lieberman is basically putting a poison pill inside conciliatory language.

By the end of the day, Yuval Steinitz, a far right wing member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud coalition and Minister of Intelligence, Strategic Affairs and International Relations, stated that Israel could not accept anything less than a sole Israeli military presence for an indefinite period in the Jordan Valley, a clear non-starter. Steinitz made this statement despite the insistence of the former head of the Mossad that the Jordan Valley was not a vital security concern or Israel, so one has to wonder about the motivation for Israel’s insistence on this point.

And in between, Steinitz set off a row in a cabinet meeting by presenting the latest update of the so-called “Palestinian Incitement Index,” and claiming it is proof that the current negotiations are futile. Minister of Justice and lead Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians Tzipi Livni took umbrage at that, and must have been even more convinced of her own irrelevance when the Prime Minister, though stopping short of agreeing with Steinitz that the talks were futile, agreed with him that the report reflected hatred of not only Israel but of Jews in general and that this was why the talks were not succeeding.

The report in question was recently compiled, according to the Israeli media, but the conclusions seem to be virtually identical to the one that was issued one year ago and is available in powerpoint format at the Prime Minister’s web site. Most of that report is simply a rehash of familiar Israeli claims, with some threadbare innuendo mixed in with a few examples of youth contributions to school Facebook pages that do reflect some very objectionable images and statements that are clearly anti-Semitic. It is the greatest stretch of argument to claim that this report (compiled by the Netanyahu government itself) can amount to the “core reason that peace is unattainable” as Netanyahu has repeatedly claim.

The link above takes you to the report, which you can judge for yourself. There is no doubt that some of the images and messages are offensive, even classically anti-Semitic, and, as a Jew, this author was certainly bothered by them. But nothing there indicates to my eyes anything like the pattern of indoctrination of hate that the Netanyahu government has claimed.

On a personal note, as a Jew who has been the victim of anti-Semitic violence in my youth, I am highly sensitive to such images as the objectionable ones in the report. I hope that more thoughtful members of the Palestinian community will intervene against such images and the ideas they reflect. But they are not indicative of some massive conspiracy among the Palestinians to indoctrinate youth into a culture of hate. As the Israeli peace activist (and former Irgun militant) Uri Avnery has pointed out, Israel, with its killings, closures, denial of rights, destruction of homes, confiscations of land and other activities, does this quite adequately all by itself. Conflict breeds hate of the other, and the effect is visible for Israelis as well as Palestinians.

It is precisely to stop that very cycle of suffering that the occupation needs to end and Palestinian rights and security, hand in hand with Israeli rights and security, need to be firmly and equally established and protected. Unfortunately, that is still not the approach the United States is taking.

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 [...]]]> via LobeLog

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 [...]]]> via LobeLog

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:

• The permanent agreement will be implemented in phases, and the first phase will have a Palestinian state in a temporary border.
• The United States will commit to the Palestinian Authority to ensure that the full agreement will be implemented according to an established schedule.
• The issues of Jerusalem, the refugees and final borders will be postponed to later stages.
• The Palestinian state will be recognized by the United Nations, with the support of Israel, which will withdraw to the separation fence line.
• Any settlers wishing to stay in what will be Palestinian territory will be able to, provided they are willing to live under Palestinian rule.
• Israel will enact a generous “eviction-compensation” law, with international funding, and the settlers living in remote areas will converge to the borders of the separation line.

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.