The Palestinian Authority (PA) has now moved a step closer to making good on its threat to go to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and bring charges against Israel. There is little doubt that this was a move Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tried desperately to avoid. In the end, he was forced to do it by a combination of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, Palestinian desperation to do something to try to end Israel’s occupation, and his own many missteps.
Abbas signed on to 18 international agreements after the quixotic attempt to pass a resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) predictably failed. Among them was the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC and took formal effect in 2002. This is the step that the U.S. and Israel have warned Abbas against most strongly. Among all the “unilateral steps” the Palestinians could take (which, one should note, is no more “unilateral” than any number of actions taken by Israel on a routine basis), this is the one Israel worries about most.
The reason, of course, is obvious. Israel knows it has committed war and other international crimes—some very serious—in the course of its occupation. While Israel generally scoffs and waxes indignant at critical world opinion, it is concerned that being hauled before the ICC could further negatively impact public and elite opinion in Europe, Israel’s main trading partner, where patience with Israeli policies has grown ever thinner.
Abbas knows only too well that he risks losing what little power he has in the West Bank. There are many ways this move can blow up in his face, and most of the roads to success are going to take more time than he has. That he has taken this step testifies to his desperation.
When, on behalf of the Palestinians, Jordan submitted its resolution to the UNSC last month, it did so under tremendous pressure from other Arab states. Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah had preferred to wait until France was ready with its own resolution, which the United States had strongly hinted it would support, or at least not oppose. Abbas knew full well that, even if the Palestinian resolution had mustered the nine votes needed to pass the UNSC, Washington would have vetoed it. Approval of the French version, while toothless and lacking a fixed deadline to end Israel’s occupation, would at least have had virtue of demonstrating the international community’s insistence on a two-state solution.
But internal pressure to submit the Palestinian version, as well as the external pressure that turned out to be decisive, seems to have pushed the French version to the back burner, at least for the time being. With the expected failure of the Palestinian resolution at the UNSC, Abbas was forced to carry through with his threat to sign the Rome Statute, a move that many Palestinians, including many in his own Fatah faction, had been clamoring for ever since the 2012 U.N. General Assembly vote that granted Palestine non-member observer state status, thus enabling it to join international agreements and UN specialized agencies.
In the long run, this is a move that could pay off for the Palestinians, but it carries enormous risks, especially to the PA. The most obvious and immediate threats lie with the responses that can be expected from Israel and its most important foreign backer, the new Republican-led U.S. Congress. Many in Congress have made it clear that they intend to push for suspension of aid to the PA if it signs the Rome Statute. And Israel will surely ramp up its settlement expansion and likely once again withhold taxes it collects on the PA’s behalf. The resulting economic impact could very well lead to the PA’s collapse.
That outcome has been forestalled in the past by Israel’s recognition that the security and economic costs it would inherit would be exorbitant. Israeli officials not only allowed their own cooler heads to prevail, but also urged restraint on their friends in Congress. Despite the recent splash the Labor Party made by joining forces with peace process veteran Tzipi Livni, Bibi Netanyahu’s main challenge still comes from his right in the elections scheduled for mid-March, and he can’t afford to look soft on the Palestinians.
That certainly won’t help Abbas. He knows the dangers that confront him. Moreover, the approach to the ICC carries another risk. Even if Abbas survives the Israeli-U.S. response, it is very possible that Hamas will also face charges at the ICC. The case against Hamas, while covering crimes involving far less destruction and loss of life, is also more clear-cut than one likely to be brought by the PA against Israel, whose acts in Gaza and in the day-to-day occupation of the West Bank will require lengthy investigation. Should Hamas find itself on the losing end of the law before Israel does, Abbas’s position is likely to weaken further.
Despite his moves toward internationalization, Abbas still much prefers to work with Washington. U.S. fecklessness in the face of persistent Israeli opposition to any diplomatic initiative, however, has essentially brought him to this Rubicon. And his own clear reluctance to cross it will itself likely diminish the chance of success.
Under the Rome Statute, the Palestinians will not be able to formally file any cases with the ICC prosecutor for 60 days from the date of signing. That time will certainly be used by the Obama Administration, which will no doubt argue that such a filing could bolster the Israeli Right in the critical final days of the election campaign, to pressure the Palestinians against going forward. Still, the repeated failure of the Security Council to address the occupation in any substantive way, coupled with the failed history of the U.S.-brokered peace process, has sent the Palestinian people the message, however unintentionally, that diplomacy and cooperation are dead-end strategies. That is going to lead to more Palestinians embracing the violent paths called for by Hamas and other, considerably more militant, factions.
At the same time, Palestinians have seen the futility of armed struggle over the decades. Failure at the UNSC and joining the ICC — but then forgoing charges against Israel – will only increase Palestinian despair and desperation. That will no doubt lead to more of the kind of “lone wolf” attacks that Israelis endured in 2014.
The one party that could make a difference is the European Union (EU). It can exert serious pressure on Israel of a kind even the United States cannot match. The EU accounts for nearly one-third of Israel’s export business. (By comparison, the U.S. accounts for just under one-quarter). Labeling settlement products (as some EU countries currently require, but don’t generally enforce) could be a first step. And if it is couched as a warning that sterner measures are in the offing, the impact on Israeli thinking could be significant, perhaps even a game-changer.
Indeed, ultimately, that sort of European action is what Israel fears. If the Obama administration wants to see a reversal of the downward spiral its own peace-making efforts have helped create in Israel-Palestine, it could quietly encourage the EU in that direction.
Such a course would be wise. Abbas’s strategy of relying entirely on U.S. help to pull him through has clearly failed, and his reign, whether due to a P.A. collapse or just his own advancing age, will not last much longer. He has no clear heir apparent, so what comes after is a mystery. The United States won’t exert significant pressure on Israel in the near future, and, absent some unanticipated shock, Obama’s successors in the White House are unlikely to spend as much political capital as he has on resolving the conflict. The pressure must come from Europe and from the Palestinians using whatever international tools are at their disposal.
This is, after all, just what was always demanded of the Palestinians—that they pursue their goals without recourse to violence. If a peaceful path to statehood is denied them, ongoing and escalating violence is all we can expect to see.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
This past Tuesday saw the latest in a horrifyingly long line of atrocities in Jerusalem. Two armed Palestinians entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood, killed five Israeli civilians and wounded six others before police gunned the murderers down. The reactions of Israeli and Palestinian leaders are worth examining.
Hamas, unsurprisingly, praised the murders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, equally unsurprisingly, condemned them unequivocally. In his official statement, Abbas said that he “…condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it.”
But this didn’t stop Israeli leaders from continuing their campaign to demonize Abbas, the Palestinian leader who has tried harder, made more compromises and sacrificed more of his own credibility to achieve a two-state solution than any of his predecessors.
“Abbas has intentionally turned the conflict into a religious one between Jews and Muslims, and the systematic incitement he leads against Jews…is the ‘go-ahead’ for these despicable terror attacks,” said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Nov. 18, the day of the attack.
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett meanwhile told reporters that “Abbas, one of the biggest terrorists to have arisen from the Palestinian people, bears direct responsibility for the Jewish blood spilt… while we were busy with delusions about the [peace] process… Abbas has declared war on Israel and we must treat that accordingly.”
Not to be outdone by the rivals within his own governing coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “This [attack] is a direct result of the incitement lead by Hamas and Abu Mazen (Abbas), incitement that the international community irresponsibly ignores.” He also dismissed Abbas’ condemnation of the attack because Abbas had said: “While we condemn this incident, we also condemn the aggression toward Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy places and torching of mosques and churches.” To Netanyahu, such a statement, though demonstrably based on factual Israeli actions and statements, is “incitement.”
Netanyahu didn’t stop there. He accused the Palestinians of “blood libel,” a term that refers to historical incidents where false charges against Jews of ritual murder were invented to incite anti-Jewish violence.
The vast majority of Netanyahu’s venom, and that of the other Israeli leaders was directed at Abbas, despite the shameful way Hamas applauded this heinous crime. There was a touch of irony to that, as on the same day of the attack, the head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency charged with internal security, had declared quite clearly that “[Abbas] is not interested in terror and is not leading [his people] to terror. Nor is he doing so ‘under the table.’”
All of this raises a question: Why is the Israeli right ignoring the low-hanging fruit of Hamas and going full bore at Abbas instead? After all, Hamas praised the attack, and Netanyahu and company could easily have stopped at tainting Abbas with the argument that he was in partnership with the Islamists via the unity government. Instead, the Israelis went much farther, to the point of virtually ignoring Hamas and the other Palestinian factions who voiced support for the attack.
The explanation for this behavior involves both the long-term and the short-term. In the short run, this is all part of Netanyahu’s broader public relations campaign linking Iran, Hamas, the Islamic State and now the Palestinian Authority. This campaign has several goals: to make it politically impossible for the United States to work with Iran against Islamic State (ISIS or IS), to make a deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries more difficult, to forestall any further international scrutiny of the siege of the Gaza Strip and to legitimize harsher Israeli measures in Jerusalem, among other goals.
On most counts, the strategy is failing, with the usual exception that Israeli actions in Gaza and Jerusalem are being downplayed, although not totally ignored. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is having more of an effect toward his long-term goal.
The endless refrain of “Iran is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas” is designed to use the universally despised Islamic State to further de-legitimize Iran and the Palestinians. The reasons for this are obvious: to paint both Hamas and Iran as such implacable enemies that Israel would be justified in any action taken against them. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is gradually broadening its scope of Palestinian targets. By blaming incitement from Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the recent attack in Jerusalem, and by repeatedly pointing out that the PA is now run by a unity government (however dysfunctional) that includes Hamas, Netanyahu is, in effect, subtly folding the PA into the “Hamas-ISIS-Iran” equation.
The strategy is working in Netanyahu’s target areas: Israelis at home and Israel’s supporters abroad, and Washington. After the synagogue murders in Jerusalem, John Kerry sounded just like Netanyahu when he blamed Palestinian incitement, clearly including the PA, for the attack. He was followed by a slew of Congress members from both parties, some of whom singled out Abbas by name.
This is part of the Israeli right’s “solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It begins with rolling back the arrangements under the Oslo Accords. The vision is something similar to what existed before the Accords were signed in 1993. Israel would have full security control in the West Bank, and the PA would be reduced to an administrative body in the increasingly isolated Palestinian cities, towns and villages. Freedom of movement for Palestinians would be increased in the hope that their economic conditions would improve (possibly through increased Palestinian employment in Israeli businesses) and that this would be enough, with increased Israeli security, to maintain relative calm.
This is a shared vision among Netanyahu, Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and numerous other right-wing figures in Israel, even though they each present it differently. It was sketched out in broad terms in the Israeli media recently. Another prize in the arrangement for Israel is that it would diminish the PA as the international representative of the Palestinians, thus blunting the gains the Palestinians have gotten through various international recognitions of their statehood. The PA would still exist, but it would be disconnected from the Palestinian street in the Occupied Territories. This would, indeed, resemble the pre-Oslo era.
Even if Netanyahu is ousted from the Prime Minister’s office in the near future (not likely, but possible given the current political waves in Israel), another right-wing leader would certainly be his successor. Thus, the rollback of Oslo would continue, as would the freeze in the peace process. And without a visible representative Palestinian leadership, international pressure for peace would diminish, simply because there won’t be anyone to press Israel to talk to (the United States, Europe and even the United Nations will not, in any foreseeable future, push Israel to talk with Hamas).
The Israeli right believes that this is a status quo that could be maintained indefinitely, with the occasional flare-up of violence with Gaza and sporadic, but disorganized attacks by individual Palestinians from the West Bank. And since right-wing leaders will be controlling Israel until an opposition that can sway the Israeli public toward a more moderate course coalesces, the vision will be pursued.
But we’re already seeing some of the reasons why this vision is unsustainable. Israeli radicals will continue to agitate for greater Jewish control of the Temple Mount, and any right-wing Israeli government cannot simply ignore them. That will lead to more and more individual acts of violence like the one this week in Jerusalem and the several that preceded it recently.
Perhaps the Israeli right thinks they can handle that as well, and they may be correct. But there is another aspect about the pre-Oslo existence that they may be overlooking.
The separation of the Palestinian masses from the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s led to the development of a more grassroots, locally based Palestinian leadership. It was that leadership, not the PLO, which created the first, and by far the more successful, Intifada. Palestinians have been yearning for a new leadership, and a new generation of leaders with popular support would be most welcome among them.
The first intifada was certainly not non-violent, but it relied much more on strikes, protests and civil disobedience than the second one did. Violence was a very minor aspect of it at first, until Yitzhak Rabin’s policy of “breaking the Palestinians’ limbs” increased it. Even so, the non-violent aspects of that uprising remained front and center. It was then that the United States, and soon after, Israel, embraced the idea of peace with the PLO, in order to end the intifada and to blunt and co-opt that new Palestinian leadership.
If such a leadership arose again, it would be impossible to ignore politically, even in Washington and Tel Aviv. But Palestinians need to hope for it, because if the Obama administration is so removed from this issue that it is willing to blame Abbas for acts that he has strongly condemned, then the Oslo rollback-vision will prove successful, and there will be even less pressure on Israel to compromise. But that would also present an opportunity for the new Palestinian leadership to encourage renewed international activism aimed at economically pressuring Israel. And that could bring real change.
There is, however, a very long road between that sort of hope and where we are right now.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The obsession in politics and diplomacy with decorum–largely a relic from the past–can easily distract people from the realities of the present. Case in point, the uproar over Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest article in the Atlantic, the headline of which, The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here, would seem important enough to warrant more attention than it has gotten so far.
Instead, the whisper of an unnamed “senior Obama administration official,” who called Netanyahu a “chickenshit,” has occupied headlines. And instead of taking a strong, or even a weak stance on Netanyahu’s repeated declarations about expanding settlement activity everywhere in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the White House has only tried to distance itself from the remark, describing it as “unauthorized” and “inappropriate.”
As Goldberg himself pointed out, the fact that Bibi is a chickenshit is not entirely a bad thing. Whatever else it does, it also makes him quite afraid to back up his rhetoric with action. Even in Gaza this summer, the ongoing slaughter seemed, from Netanyahu’s point of view, to be something that spiraled much further out of control than he had intended. Indeed, his constant shifting of the mission’s goal posts indicated the lack of any sort of planning beforehand. Political pressures kept driving him on, as they do with most of his actions. But at least the “chickenshit” was never going to attack Iran despite his bellicosity, as the United States seems to finally understand.
Being less of a leader and more of a leaf blowing in the political wind is an apt description of Netanyahu, and it is strongly suggested in Goldberg’s piece. But it also applies to the Obama administration, which has repeatedly refused to use the tools it has at its disposal to create real pressure on Israel to, at the very least, desist from its actions that are obviously intended to destroy any possibility of a two-state solution. So, chickenshit cuts both ways.
Maybe Goldberg intended the chickenshit comment to overshadow the rest of his point, maybe he didn’t. But the assertion that we are in a period of crisis for US-Israel relations is a very important one. The question is: are we?
The simple answer is no, but Goldberg is not wrong in suggesting that such a crisis could occur in the near future. One can understand why Goldberg focuses so much on personal clashes. Never in the history of Israel has there been a government that so arrogantly insulted the United States so frequently. Whether it’s Netanyahu, Finance Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, or some other member of the Knesset, anti-American statements have risen to unprecedented levels.
For their part, US officials have been getting just the tiniest bit harsher in their criticism of Israel, while Israeli officials escalate their anti-US rhetoric. And then there’s the endless stories about how much Obama and Netanyahu dislike each other, with Goldberg’s in the lead. The problem, of course, as it is presented in this narrative of interpersonal conflict, is bad communication, or mismatched personalities.
In reality, none of this is really about Bibi and Barack disliking each other. They do, but that is beside the point. It is the direction that Israel has decided to go in that is the problem.
Let’s start off by noting that the degree of the “crisis” is being massively overblown. There is a much bigger problem in Europe for Bibi than there is in the United States. The Europeans are actually threatening to take some action, not just calling Bibi names in whispers to reporters. Sweden’s recognition of Palestine as a state is just a first step in a series of actions that might be on the horizon from Europe, where Israel conducts the biggest share of its trade. When the United States gets to that point, as it has on occasion in the ever more distant past, then we can start wondering if there is a crisis in relations that might cause some small shift in the status quo.
The “chickenshit” epithet can apply to Obama just as much as it can to Netanyahu. He is a president with a non-confrontational style trying to govern with what is, arguably, the most defiant and combative Congress any president has ever had to deal with. And he is dealing with an Israeli government that is pursuing a very different strategy than its predecessors. The Israel of today no longer cares about the majority of the Jewish community in the United States. This Israel, correctly, determined that its ultimate desire to completely thwart a two-state solution and maintain an apartheid system over the Palestinians would never be acceptable to most American Jews. But most US Jews weren’t the ones providing the political power and, more importantly, the funding for congressional campaigns and for settlements in the West Bank.
The Jews that do provide these things, as well as the Christians, are right-wingers, either in their general politics or at least on Middle East policy (including policy toward the entire Arab world, Iran and Turkey). They are now the only ones Israel cares about. More liberal-minded devotees are not, at this stage, providing that much support for Israel, either economically or financially. Those of them who do provide this support will continue to check their otherwise liberal values at the Israeli door. The rest are not, in the estimate of the Netanyahu government, worth the compromises that must be made to garner their support.
In this circumstance, Israel has a freer hand in its actions. While Netanyahu announces more and more building plans in East Jerusalem and other sensitive parts of the Occupied Territories, Republicans, who stand a good chance of controlling both houses of Congress, are not criticizing Israeli actions in the slightest. Instead, as one would expect, they are attacking Obama for his insufficient support of Israel.
In this context, Israeli journalist Roi Ben-Yishai, one of Israel’s best, recently reported on Israel’s “new approach” to the Palestinians. It holds few surprises. Israel is not intending to return to talks, correctly believing they will be futile, and therefore would only make things worse. Israel’s assessment will remain correct until its own positions can be moderated by pressure like that of the Palestinians over the years.
The plan is then to have the quiescent Palestinian Authority (PA) assume control over Gaza and reinforce its control on the West Bank. In other words, marginalize Hamas throughout the Palestinian body politic. Under those circumstances, Israel would end the siege of Gaza and ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank as well. The idea is that the Palestinians can then build a functional economy, which Israel believes will cause the Palestinian people to oppose actions that could draw Israeli military reprisals. I rather doubt that would be the result, but right now, the delays in Palestinian international action imply that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is cooperating with Israel and Egypt on this effort, probably in the hope that this strategy would eliminate Hamas as a political rival.
This seems like another doomed plan, one that harkens back to old Israeli beliefs that Palestinian nationalism will eventually just go away. But we must recognize that this is happening with the silent approval of the United States. Egypt, in particular, would not work with Israel on such a plan if it believed that the United States would object. More to the point, the plan is also intended to provide the US with what it wants most: Palestinian silence. What American policy has always represented is the complete lack of importance placed on the welfare of the Palestinians, or anyone else (including ordinary Israelis) in the region, for that matter. The entire issue is only relevant insofar as it affects more “important” US concerns.
So, the Obama administration will likely allow Israel to proceed with its plans, even if it doesn’t believe those plans are likely to succeed. This is evident in the lack of material response to Israel’s direct challenge to the international consensus on a two-state solution.
The name-calling most recently highlighted by Goldberg merely reflects these disagreements and the fact that the increasingly populist and rightward tilt not only in the Israeli government but also in its population leads to verbose criticism of US officials, up to and including the president. Responses to such insults can be countered by Israel’s power in Congress in a way that more fundamental policy differences cannot. That frustrates some American officials, but it doesn’t provoke any material US response.
If Congress persists in pressuring the administration on its Iran policy, a pressure which most understand as directed by Jerusalem, Obama may well respond through the Palestinian issue. In that case, we might see a more direct counter to Israeli policies, such as a Security Council resolution condemning the settlements or even an “Obama Plan” basing a two-state solution on the 1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem. That would be a turn of events not seen in decades, but Israel has also never worked so hard to undermine US goals on foreign policy matters as it has on Iran.
But make no mistake, if the Palestinians get any respite from the Obama administration it will be because of Israel’s meddling through Congress on the Iran issue. It will not be due to any Palestinian action, much less on the insulting attitude of Israeli officials or the personal dislike between the current Israeli leader and the president of the United States. It is, ultimately, all about policy priorities, not personalities.
]]>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
Once again, in his speech Wednesday at the United Nations, President Obama revealed the reduced importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on his agenda. He also revealed just how out of touch his entire country is with respect to reality.
The Israel-Palestine conflict was the last specific global issue mentioned by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly, and his wording was straight out of the playbook. It was also only mentioned briefly and without any hint that the United States would be taking any action at all on the issue.
Here’s what he said:
Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.
Could this have been any emptier? Just last month, Israel and Hamas were engaged in the biggest uptick in violence since the Second Intifada was in full swing.
The message from Obama comes through, though: We’re no longer interested in forcing the parties to the table. The subtext behind that is a US surrender to the stubbornness of the far-right wing government running Israel these days. The US will stop pressuring Israel for talks, and indeed, it already has. The question this raises, of course, is how the Obama administration will respond when and if the Palestinian Authority makes good on its repeated threats to bring this issue to the UN and the International Criminal Court.
In such a case, Obama will undoubtedly condemn the Palestinians’ “unilateral action”—de facto US policy dictates that when the Palestinians take action, it is to be condemned, but when Israel does the same thing, it is, at worst, “unhelpful.” Yet the real question for the Palestinians is whether the United States will have any other response outside of some pro forma public statement. Obama’s hands-off approach seems to imply that it will not, though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be unwise to count on that.
But there’s another piece of this statement worth examining. Obama said, as he has many times, that the situation is unsustainable. He also notes that one myth that has long been held by many has been exposed as false by recent events: the notion that Palestine is the key source of instability in the region.
Obama is correct about the exposed old myth, but he merely spouts another in its place. Of course the occupation will not remain the same as it is today. It has changed some of its characteristics, almost always to the detriment of the Palestinians, many times since 1967. But the essence of the matter, the relationship between an occupying power and an occupied people locked in a conflict over land, rights, narratives, nationalism and competing claims of justice, has endured quite well over those years.
The Israeli right-wing was long aware, and often stated, that their subjugation of the Palestinians was not the main cause of instability in the region. Of course, there was a time when there was a much stronger argument for that myth. When the many Arab regimes, throughout most of the 20th century, were comfortably entrenched in power, things were pretty stable, as they often are under dictatorships that maintain their control. Under those circumstances, the cry of “Free Palestine” was heard much more loudly, as it was the only one the dictators would permit. Due to many factors (especially the US invasion of Iraq), that stability was shattered and, as one would expect, much of the Arab world, while not forgetting the Palestinians, demonstrated a focus on the miserable conditions they themselves were living in, and conflicts within their own countries. Thus, the myth was exposed.
But we need no shakeup like the Arab Awakening to see that the claim that the occupation is “unsustainable” is a myth. We really need only see that it has endured for more than 47 years, and when circumstances did threaten the status quo, Israel adapted its occupation to meet those circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the massive tightening of the occupation and even more massive expansion of settlements that constituted Israel’s response to the Oslo Accords.
Of course, it is a truism that any oppressive regime eventually meets its demise. That is clearly not what Obama means when he calls the occupation “unsustainable.” Rather, he means what so many others mean: Israel cannot continue to hold millions of Palestinians without rights. But, like so many other myths around Israel-Palestine, this one doesn’t bear scrutiny. Israel has done this for 47 years, and can do it for the foreseeable future. The demise of the occupation regime will come, as the demise of all regimes eventually come. But there is nothing particularly unsustainable about this one.
The Israeli right has become the Israeli mainstream, and they are busily coming up with ideas for how to sustain this occupation or, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman likes to put it, to “manage” the conflict. They recognize that the fear, ingrained in the thinking of many of the early Zionist philosophers of a Jewish Israel ruling over a majority of disenfranchised Muslim and Christian Arabs is unfounded. It turns out that contrary to the expectations of the early Zionist thinkers, Israelis can live with denying rights to Arabs, and the world is prepared to tolerate it, despite the clucking of tongues it evokes.
This issue can be traced back all the way to Theodor Herzl, and it was actively dealt with by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and, most notably, by the person in charge of land acquisition for the Jewish National Fund both before and after the State of Israel was established, Yoseph Weitz. In modern times, this notion has been expressed as a “demographic time bomb,” most notably by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
But there’s no reason to believe this is really a problem. After all, according to the February 2014 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are about 6,119,000 Jews in Israel and the West Bank. Between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, there are some 5,894,631 Palestinians, according to the CIA World Factbook. Given the different population growth rates, Palestinians will be a majority very soon, but the day that happens, what is going to change? On the ground, in day to day life, what will be different than the day before?
The answer, of course, is that nothing will change and the Israeli right wing understands this. The United States, on the other hand, does not appear to. More to the point, the many activists who believe that Jews going from 51% of the population to 49% of it will suddenly mean that Israel is an apartheid state, as both Olmert and another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak warned, also do not understand that when that line is crossed nothing will change. Nothing will change when that so-called demographic time bomb goes off.
So, while right wing leaders like Naftali Bennett consider ways to continue to “manage” the Palestinians indefinitely, Obama and a great any others, in the United States, Israel, Europe and even some among the Palestinians, continue to engage in myth-making and wishful thinking.
If this conflict is ever to be resolved, the only path to it entails full acknowledgment of the realities, on the ground, in the international diplomatic sphere and in politics. Anyone who truly believes that the demographic counter clicking down to under 50% Jewish will somehow shock the Israeli people and their government into recognizing the injustice of the occupation is engaging in fantasy. Such demographic changes are gradual, and this cushions the change so it is not a shock. In 1960, Whites, who were always an overwhelming minority, made up less than 20% of the population of South Africa, and Jews are unlikely to ever be anywhere near that small a minority in Israel-Palestine.
This is only one of many myths that need to be abandoned for any kind of resolution to be possible. It’s no less important to dispel these fanciful notions than it is to counter the stereotypes of Palestinians that are so widely held in the United States, Israel and elsewhere (like “they just want to kill the Jews” for instance). One way we will know people are serious about taking on this vexing conflict is when we see them abandon false notions and recognize that Israel-Palestine can contribute to a better world simply by ending the injustice and violence. When that’s the motivation, and it is applied to both sides, we’ll be getting somewhere.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
According to reports, Egypt has given both Israel and Hamas a take-it-or-leave-it plan for ending the current round of violence. It bears examination, not only for its intrinsic worth, but also for the implications it holds. As of this writing, Hamas has indicated it does not find the proposal [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
According to reports, Egypt has given both Israel and Hamas a take-it-or-leave-it plan for ending the current round of violence. It bears examination, not only for its intrinsic worth, but also for the implications it holds. As of this writing, Hamas has indicated it does not find the proposal “sufficient” in addressing their demands, and Israel has yet to respond directly. As reported:
At first glance, one might think that Israel would reject these terms. Almost none of Israel’s demands are included. Hamas, and the other Palestinian factions in Gaza, would not be disarmed, contrary to Netanyahu’s latest goal, which was not on the table when the fighting began (remember when Bibi was saying that all he wanted was “quiet for quiet”). And yet, while Israel certainly has shown no enthusiasm about this offer, it has not dismissed it either.
Israel is not, of course, going to accept the Egyptian terms, but its lack of outrage over what it certainly views as a one-sided deal speaks volumes. The fact that first Spain, then the United Kingdom and finally the United States all put temporary brakes on their usually consistent flows of arms to Israel was a serious message. And that message was heard loud and clear in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Make no mistake: Spain, the UK, and most certainly the US will all resume the normal flow of weapons to Israel soon enough. The reviews and procedural changes that the countries made will not impede that flow and they certainly are not affecting Israel’s military capabilities either now or in the future. That wasn’t the point.
The point was to send Israel a message. That message was that the excesses of the current right-wing government in refusing peace, ignoring the boiling crises in the Occupied Territories, needlessly torturing Gaza and now finally killing far more civilians than could be explained away was more than the West was prepared to tolerate. That message coming from Spain meant little. Coming from London, it meant more. Coming from Washington, it set off alarm bells in Israel.
So, Israel will not reject the offer out of hand, but Netanyahu is counting on the belief that Washington will not press him to accept these terms. He may be right about that; the terms do not offer Israel anything Washington will see as balancing the relief it grants Gaza. But something similar to this arrangement could well be on the horizon.
This is the case because both the Obama administration and the Egyptian government recognize this proposal for what it is: a death sentence for Hamas as a resistance movement in control of territory. Although the wording above was edited for space in this piece, the absence of not only any mention but any implied role for Hamas in Gaza’s immediate future was just as stark in the reported wording. The deal is intended to bring the people of Gaza relief while handing over rule of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority.
Of course, if Netanyahu was really interested in the “quiet” he routinely insists on, he would accept this deal. To be fair, though, if he did so, his right-wing flank would revolt and so would much of the center and even the center-left that has been backing him throughout this misadventure. That fact, however, only strengthens the crucial point that the Israeli right-wing, which is in firm control of the country and will be even more so if Netanyahu’s current government falls, is much more afraid of a unified Palestinian body politic than it is of Hamas.
The Islamist resistance group is in a difficult position with this Egyptian offer. Obviously Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has a passionate hate for Hamas, and they are well aware of that. But here he has been very clever; the deal is virtually everything Hamas has been demanding: the opening of border crossings, the easing of offshore restrictions, the elimination of the so-called “buffer zones” inside Gaza, and reconstruction in the wake of the recent destruction. Even the more ambitious demands of a seaport and airport are at least acknowledged. But it all happens between Israel and the PA, not in any kind of coordination, much less partnership, with Hamas.
In effect, this means that Hamas will cede control of Gaza to the PA. This was, of course, the ostensible goal of forming a unity government with the PA in the spring. But things have changed since then. The PA’s cooperation with Israel during the Gaza fighting has shattered what little faith Palestinians had and whatever shred of trust Hamas might have had in Mahmoud Abbas’ “government.” Hamas cannot possibly be certain that if they do cede power they will not suffer a fate similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood in al-Sisi’s Egypt.
Even if that scenario doesn’t materialize, there is no guarantee elections will be held any time soon, and so the technocratic PA, still under control of Mahmoud Abbas, will continue to run both the West Bank and Gaza. What Egypt has done is to include in that possible future the chance for Gazans to finally see the end of the siege, and to start rebuilding their infrastructure and growing their economy.
No doubt, the PA, as well as Egypt and the United States are very interested in that idea. You would think Israel would be as well, as this is the best path to obtaining the “quiet” Netanyahu claims this was all about. But his government loathes the idea of a PA with even the slightest shred of power.
If Abbas is able to convince Hamas to agree to something like this (a very big “if”), he should at once tell Israel that he will not pursue war crimes charges in the international legal system if the Israelis support the move. That could almost certainly buy Netanyahu off, despite his bluster that war crimes charges are meaningless. They aren’t, and he’s quite desperate to prevent them from being leveled at anyone inside Israel, especially himself.
The fly in the ointment for Abbas, al-Sisi, and the Obama administration is that, even if the terms of the proposal don’t spell it out, there is an assumption that a PA government in Gaza would move to disarm Hamas and the other factions. The goal would be to reduce them to the much less powerful position they hold in the West Bank. That was tried before, in 2007, and the Fatah forces were routed. There is no reason to believe they would not suffer a far worse defeat now, as many of their security people would be even more reluctant to take up arms against the force that just stood up to Israel. Abbas would have to come to some sort of understanding with Hamas in Gaza, which won’t sit well in Washington and Cairo.
Yet this sort of deal is exactly the kind that makes sense in terms of relief for the Palestinians. It also gives Israel a commitment to quiet and to Hamas’ refraining from building a new tunnel network. International monitors could certainly be put in place to ensure such things. It could work. But it’s not likely that Netanyahu will allow it, Hamas will just give up everything it has, or that Abbas has enough legitimacy in Gaza to take over there.
As so often happens, then, while nothing can be worked out by those with some power, the Palestinian people will continue to suffer the most — especially in Gaza.
Photo: Palestinian residents walk beside a damaged UN school at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip after the area was hit by Israeli shelling on 30 July 2014.
]]>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 [...]]]>
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.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be sure, the direct result of that proposal not meeting any of Hamas’ demands for a ceasefire and, because as one Israeli official put it, “…we discovered we’d made a cease-fire agreement with ourselves.” The dynamics of this turn of events are important and tell us much about how the ground has changed in the region. We first must ask why Hamas rejected the Egyptian proposal. They have been rather clear about their reasons:
Those reasons may show a certain rationality in Hamas’ refusal to accept a ceasefire. Wisdom and real concern for the innocents suffering under Israel’s bombings are far less apparent, however. In fact, Hamas’ refusal to accept the ceasefire completes the process of wiping from the memory of much of the world the fact that Israel initiated this round of fighting.
Rarely has Netanyahu been more accurate than earlier yesterday, when he said “[If Hamas] doesn’t accept the ceasefire proposal…Israel will have all the international legitimacy to broaden its military activity in order to achieve the necessary quiet.” Indeed, Hamas’ decision does exactly that. There will still be expressions of concern from various quarters, but for the most part, pressure on Israel to stop its onslaught from the US, EU, UN and even many Arab states will diminish essentially to zero. It is hard to imagine that the refusal is going to lead to a better deal. The only thing that might, and only might, do that is a massive uptick in civilian deaths from where the number is at now. Hardly something anyone would wish for. So, while Hamas may have had very good reason to reject this deal, it does not seem that rejection is a better option.
Indeed, one may argue that accepting the ceasefire deal with certain reservations may have put Hamas in a better position. At least the massive uptick in death and destruction in Gaza would have been stemmed, even if temporarily.
Egypt’s New Position
Hamas has issued a statement rejecting further Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire. They will now accept only Turkey or Qatar in that role. Those are, not coincidentally, the only two significant states who support the political goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the new Egyptian regime joins Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf States in despising.
Egypt has now demonstrated that not only has its position on Hamas hardened since the ouster of the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi, it is even more antagonistic to Hamas than former President Hosni Mubarak. Given this, it is likely that the role Mubarak frequently played as a broker between Israel and Hamas is not one that the current General/President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can assume, and this was a failed attempt to show that he could.
This will please Netanyahu, who is surely seeing the new Egyptian regime as much more to his liking than anything that ever came before it. But it is going to complicate matters for the United States, all the more so as Israel is not likely to accept Turkey or Qatar as an intermediary. Without Egypt as a broker, the US is going to have a much harder time stabilizing these periodic escalations between Israel and Hamas. This, again, may suit Netanyahu, who believes US President Barack Obama is much too quick to try to end conflicts. But it also makes Israeli decisions as to when to back off more complicated, as the US will not be able to give Israel a way out that shields its leadership at least a little from the political fallout of ending these operations while Hamas is still in control of the Strip.
Hamas’ weakened position
Hamas is facing serious isolation. Egypt was surely never very sympathetic to Hamas, even when Morsi was in office. It is now even more firmly in the US-Israeli camp. Hamas’ support for Syrian rebels and the slow thaw of relations between the United States and Iran has (to Netanyahu’s chagrin) cooled the Hamas-Iran relationship, and Qatar has had to back away to some degree from its support of the Brotherhood and its affiliates like Hamas due to pressure from other Gulf states. This is why, despite the forecasts by many that this latest round will end with the status quo more or less maintained, Netanyahu, and probably also Mahmoud Abbas, believes a severe blow can now be struck against Hamas.
Netanyahu believes, not without reason, that this can be done without resorting to the kind of all-out assault, and even re-occupation, which is being pushed by his right flank in Israel. Consider the Islamist group’s current position. It was already struggling to pay workers in Gaza and had been arguing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah about who bears the responsibility. Egypt’s harder line has been stifling the “tunnel economy,” which was the only method for bringing many goods and supplies into Gaza that Israel would not permit to pass through its blockade. Hamas seemed to have nothing but rhetoric to offer to deal with the situation, and it was losing standing among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad and other, more radical Palestinian factions, which Hamas was generally preventing from taking violent actions against Israel from Gaza, were accusing Hamas of abandoning its revolutionary ideals. Add to this the loss of much of its support from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, in the wake of the decline of the Brotherhood throughout the region, and it’s not hard to see why Netanyahu believes that, even if the outcome of the current fighting is merely an agreement to go back to the way things were, he will still come out a big winner.
He may be right. But it is more likely that Israel’s continued attacks will cause the various factions to rally together, as they have in the past, strengthening Hamas’ position. It is also more likely to exacerbate the already dire predicament Abbas is in, as he has cracked down in the West Bank to prevent anti-Israel protests during the fighting, sacrificing what little respect and confidence the Palestinians had left in the PA President.
To Cease or not to Cease
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions fighting in Gaza can certainly make the case that they have successfully stood firm under Israel’s attacks while demonstrating that they can shoot their missiles throughout Israel. The rockets being used in many cases were actually made in Gaza, along with what they have been able to smuggle in from outside. The fact that the locally made rockets include some of the medium range ones that have been penetrating farther into Israel than ever before is one reason Hamas is perhaps in less of a rush than one might think to stop the fighting.
The calculus, though, is cold and fails on a number of levels. The most obvious failure is the suffering of the people of Gaza. Over 190 Gazans have been killed, the vast majority civilians. These deaths do raise a great deal of anger among Palestinians against Israel, but to what end? There does not seem to be any victory, or even small gains, on the horizon for which these people are dying. When the fighting dies down, Israel will be the same villain in Gaza it always was, but people are surely going to wonder why the fighting went on for as long as it did with no gains in sight. And that is really the nub of it — there seems to be no hope for Hamas to achieve any of its goals, such as lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza or easing the border crossings. If they are hoping that other forces — such as those in Lebanon, which have lobbed a few projectiles across the border and to which Israel has responded quite forcefully — will be opening another flank against Israel, they are not paying attention to events in Syria and Iraq, which are occupying the efforts of Hezbollah and other parties that might be willing to engage Israel.
There simply isn’t an endgame that represents progress for Hamas. In 2012, when then-Egyptian President Morsi brokered an agreement, Hamas could claim a few minor concessions from Israel (which never really materialized once there was no pressure on Israel to follow through with them). There will be nothing of that sort here, but Hamas seems to be desperately clinging to the hope that it can extract something to base a claim of victory on.
That’s a terrible gamble. It is much more likely that the refusal to agree to a ceasefire is giving Netanyahu exactly what he wants: the chance to deliver a blow to a weakened Hamas regime in Gaza. Hamas has given Netanyahu the means to do this without having to overcome the global opposition that was apparent at the beginning of the current fighting. Their refusal is understandable. Israel has repeatedly failed to live up to prior agreements, and this entire thing does look very much like a setup cooked up by Egypt and Israel.
Still, it seems like the rejection of the ceasefire plays into Netanyahu’s hands even more than going along with it would have. Hamas was faced with two bad options. Some may say they chose the lesser of two evils, but they seem to have opted for the path of salvaging some pride while losing more innocent lives and gaining nothing.
Photo: A school in Gaza after an Israeli bomb attack.
]]>The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and [...]]]>
The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and white, good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in every situation. Nowhere is this truer than in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It has become even more important for Israel to fight this rhetorical battle because, while it can always count on mindless support from Washington and from the most radically nationalistic and zealous Zionists around the world, the current escalation and ugliness are going to be very difficult to defend to even mainstream pro-Israel liberals, let alone the rest of the world. The hasbara (propaganda) has been flowing at a rapid pace, even more than usual, as Israel struggles to maintain the treasured hold on the “moral high ground” that its own actions have increasingly undermined.
The Setup
Here is the very simple reality of what is happening now between Israel and Gaza: Israel willfully and intentionally seized upon a crime to demolish the unity government between Hamas and Gaza and, at the same time, significantly downgrade Hamas’ administrative, political, and military capabilities.
Israel, of course, could not have foreseen the kidnapping and murder of three youths on the West Bank, but once it happened, the Netanyahu government went into high gear to press its advantage. Recognizing that it needed to whip the Israeli public into a frenzy, the government put a gag order on the case to avoid revealing that it knew almost right away that the young men were dead. Under the cover of what seemed to be a kidnapping, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to attack Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza, launching a massive military operation throughout the former and increasing its bombing raids in the latter.
Hamas, for its part, didn’t react wisely, but the politics of its situation left its leadership little choice. They had advocated kidnappings too often in the past, and they delayed stating they were not behind this incident. They finally did, and when Israel named the two suspects, it gave weight to Hamas’ denial, as the alleged murderers were part of a powerful Hebron clan that, as J.J. Goldberg put it, “…had a history of acting without the [Hamas] leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests.”
But while it is rather clear at this point that the Hamas leadership had nothing to do with the three boys’ murders, it did support the act, which played well into Netanyahu’s hands. All over Israel and all over social media, calls for revenge popped up, along with cries of “Death to the Arabs,” and horrifying, indeed genocidal, statements by Israeli politicians. Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party compared Palestinian children to snakes, called for a war on the entire Palestinian people, and said “They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads.” It’s difficult for even the most brazen apologist to see those words as anything other than an incitement to attack civilians without restraint.
Such words bore their fruit when a Palestinian youth of 16 years, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, was burned alive. And here, of course, is where the Israeli rhetoric ratcheted up another notch. Setting out to capture the criminals was an imperative for the Netanyahu government because it made the case that “we prosecute such murderers, while our enemy celebrates them,” a refrain that was uttered continuously in various forms.
“…That’s the difference between us and our neighbors,” Netanyahu said. “They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them and we put them on trial and we’ll put them in prison.”
Not only is that rhetoric dehumanizing, it is also false. For example, the town of Kochav Yair in central Israel is named after the leader of the notorious LEHI, or “Stern Gang,” Avraham Stern, a terrorist who was summarily executed by the British. LEHI, along with the Irgun Z’Vai Leumi (or Irgun for short) was responsible for the massacre of the Palestinian Deir Yassin village in 1948, though this was after Stern’s death. The same group also boasted among its members about future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was behind, among other things, the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister for Middle East Affairs, while the Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, the first Israeli prime minister from an opposition party. Many streets are named after them.
If that’s not enough, in the settlement of Kiryat Arba one can find the Meir Kahane Memorial Park, dedicated to the late “rabbi” who called for violence against Arabs in Israel (and whose Jewish Defense League often organized violence against African-Americans in the US). And, of course, right across from that park is the tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994. That grave has been turned into a pilgrimage site for radical Jews.
So, Israelis are quite capable of celebrating murderers as well. But it’s important for Netanyahu to conceal this fact for now. During the staged operation to find the “kidnapped” youths, Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians, many, but not all associated with Hamas. They virtually closed down Hebron and the surrounding area, and entered many Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank, provoking frequent clashes with residents. Several Palestinians were killed and many were injured.
Hamas eventually took responsibility for some rockets that had been fired at Israel, and the situation continued to deteriorate. Eventually, Israel launched the current operation, which was dubbed “Solid Cliff” in Hebrew; their marketing people felt that “Protective Edge” sounded better in English.
Since then, over 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and minors. Houses have been targeted and destroyed, hundreds of people injured. United Nations human rights officials have warned that Israel may be committing war crimes by targeting private homes while the United States performs its usual task of preventing the Security Council from issuing critical statements about Israeli actions.
While the US works that task, both its president and its ambassador to Israel are reassuring Israel with total support. In a stunning example of double talk, President Barack Obama offered to broker a cease-fire, but Netanyahu bluntly stated he doesn’t want one. So, naturally US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro responded by saying the US would back a ground invasion of Gaza.
War of Choice
Israeli military leaders, whose role in deciding defense strategy has become increasingly, if quietly, marginalized under Netanyahu, are not enthusiastic about the current Israeli onslaught. They understand that Hamas is not going to be defeated militarily and that this action is further degrading Israel’s standing in the world. They also understand that the impetus for this action was not security, but politics.
Netanyahu is meanwhile not striking a blow for security, or even revenge. The purpose of all this, from the deception of the Israeli people and the world about the fate of the three murdered youths, the mass arrests and provocative behavior during the staged “search” for the boys, and the following attacks on Gaza were directed not at Palestinian terrorists, but at Palestinian political leaders. While it’s true that Netanyahu envisions no exit strategy (he never does) for this operation, he does have objectives; three of them, in fact.
The first is obvious: to deliver a blow to Hamas. He is well aware that the group is already struggling financially, even more than usual, and these attacks are diverting resources toward fighting Israel and creating greater needs among Gazans.
The second is to humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu is absolutely furious that Abbas acted without Israel’s permission by joining international treaties and forming a unity government — two things which, actually, are not only Palestine’s right, but Abbas’ duty. Netanyahu is showing Palestinians how ineffective Abbas is: the PA president can do nothing but sit on the sidelines. This is a stupid thing for Netanyahu to do, of course, because it undermines the man who has been keeping the West Bank quiet for Israel, but when has that ever stopped him?
Finally, and most importantly, the goal that probably spurred all of this was Netanyahu’s desperation to dismember the Palestinian unity government. Bibi knows that while a unity government might not make progress in securing Palestinian rights, the split between Gaza and the West Bank makes it utterly impossible for there to be any progress toward ending Israel’s 47-year old occupation. From the day the unity agreement was signed, Netanyahu has been enraged about it and obsessed with undoing it. He hopes that the current violence will either increase international pressure on Abbas to dissolve his partnership with Hamas or that Hamas will grow so angry at Abbas that it will walk away.
Given that the West Bank has remained largely quiet, thanks entirely to Abbas’ security forces clamping down on any protests, let alone any action against Israel, it is entirely possible that Hamas will indeed bolt from the unity arrangement. This is rather remarkable because Netanyahu continues to demonize Abbas publicly and no one wants to compliment him on maintaining order because he is doing so at the expense of enraging his own people. Most Palestinians in the West Bank see their relatives being slaughtered in Gaza while their own president not only sits by helplessly but prevents his people from even protesting.
That is Netanyahu’s agenda, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping Israelis safe and secure. Indeed, as has always been the case, far more Israelis are threatened and injured when Israel attacks than at other times.
To even maintain this thin façade, Israel must continue to make the false case that it has the moral high ground. While Hamas could be easily assailed because they only target Israeli civilians, Netanyahu has still found a way to be even more criminal, Machiavellian and ruthless, and ultimately the most culpable villain here by far.
Make no mistake about what the United States is backing here. This is as pure a war of choice as any. Netanyahu has set up this fight, and has waged it. And, as always, it is the people of Gaza who pay the heaviest price. But Israelis too will bear the cost of this ruthless escapade in the long run. And the United States can only look at itself in shame as it supports this murderous and reckless endeavor.
Photo: Five people were reported killed in an air strike on Rafah, southern Gaza, on July 11. Credit: AP
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is [...]]]>
by
Mitchell PlitnickThe saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is far from over.
Even before the announcement was made that the bodies were found, clashes were reported between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the town of Halhul, where the grisly discovery was made. A massive Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence was reported, roads were closed and the area was generally closed down. The Israeli security cabinet is meeting at this writing to decide on further measures.
The only thing that seems certain right now about the Israeli response is that it will be unjust and have nothing to do with addressing the terrible crime that has just been confirmed. For the moment, at least, it appears that the perpetrators, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, are beyond the reach of Israel. Since Israel cannot punish those who so profoundly deserve punishment, they will punish those that they can. This, sadly, is the calculus of occupation. There is already violence reported by residents of Hebron. Some might see justice in that, but ask yourself how you would feel if your son, brother or father – or just a neighbor— was a murderer and you were the one who had to pay for their crime.
There is still no evidence that the two killers, who were apparently members of Hamas, did not act alone. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he will hold Hamas responsible and has repeatedly called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sever the unity government that he only recently forged with Hamas. Now, Netanyahu has declared, in a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet that “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”
What might that mean? Well, earlier, some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party described the response they wanted to see.
Danny Danon, the Deputy Defense Minister said “This tragic ending must also be the ending of Hamas! The nation is strong and ready to absorb [attacks] for the sake of a mortal blow against Hamas. … [W]e have to destroy the homes of Hamas activists, wipe out their arsenals everywhere, and stop the flow of money that directly or indirectly keeps terror alive… make the entire Palestinian leadership pay a heavy price.”
For Danon, it is not even enough that Hamas pay for this, but the Palestinian Authority as well. Yet there remains no evidence Hamas, as an organization had anything to do with this. The Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, issued a very telling statement about the murders: “Following intensive operational intelligence work by the Shin Bet, less than 24 hours after the kidnapping it became evident that two Hamas activists, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha, are those behind the kidnapping of the three teens.” No mention made of Hamas’ involvement; merely that the two men were members. If Bibi really has anything connecting Hamas to this crime, he’s keeping it inexplicably secret.
No matter to the outspoken Tzipi Hotovely of Likud, who said, “The despicable kidnapping and murder of the students cannot go by in silence, and those responsible in Gaza must pay the price. The government of Israel must declare a war to the death on Hamas, which is responsible for the murders, and return to the policy of [targeted] assassination.” Like Danon, Hotovely expresses no concern about the Israeli lives this will put at risk, much less those of innocent Palestinians. Nor do they care about the consequences of such actions.
One might think that these Likud members might have some interest in actually tracking down the murderers. But no, they’d prefer to cynically use this despicable crime to further a political agenda of the worst kind—one that legitimizes intense violence that will mean a far greater loss of innocent life. In this, they are joined by their fellow travelers of the American right wing. The extreme pro-occupation forces took to Twitter even before Netanyahu made his announcement to politicize and distort these events.
Whatever the two killers were thinking, their monstrous crime will yield no positive results for anyone. The PA is crippled, quite likely permanently, by its response to the initial kidnapping. Hamas has been devastated in the West Bank by the Israeli response, leaving it unable to take advantage of any political opening that might be created. The people of the West Bank will see a major crackdown, and Israel will surely follow the call of Housing Minister Uri Ariel for more settlements to be built in response. Gaza will be hit by more missiles. The only victors might be the most radical elements in the Occupied Territories, the ones Hamas has been in conflict with in Gaza and who have generally laid very low in the West Bank.
There seems to be little interest in capturing the perpetrators of the crime, and a great eagerness to make Hamas in particular and the Palestinians in general suffer for this outrage. And I’m sure that is just what will happen. The question will then become how Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the PA will respond.
Will they attempt to hit Israel back with more attacks on civilians? If they do, we may well have witnessed the beginning of a third intifada. Will they make a mere show of firing a few rockets that land harmlessly as most do? If they do that, there may be a backlash of rage that strengthen the more radical groups in the Territories. There are ISIS- and al-Qaeda-like groups there, which have seen little support among the Palestinian people, but this could change if the existing groups are seen as doing nothing in the face of Israeli aggression.
Whatever the outcome, the episode demonstrates yet again the futility of acts of violence. No one will gain from any of this, even if they think they will. And lost in it all, the murder of three young men, a heinous crime which everyone condemns, while everyone who gets hurt on both sides will have had nothing to do with it.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
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