One of Israel’s most respected political scientists recently
dismissed the idea “that simply engaging in negotiations will
automatically foster a peace agreement” between Israel and the
Palestinians. Writing in Haaretz, Shlomo Avineri, a former
director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry, called it “a fantasy
proven baseless by the experience of the past 20 years.”
In this he is unquestionably correct. He is off base, however, when
he maintains that previous peace initiatives have failed because they
tried to resolve questions about the terms of a “permanent status” deal.
He argues that even the two sides’ most moderate positions on these
core issues are too far apart, making agreement impossible. He therefore
proposes that the peace process shift from discussions of the endgame
and Palestinian statehood to incremental improvements—“interim
agreements, trust-building exercises, unilateral steps and other
mechanisms,” that would serve as building blocks for broader future
agreements. But this is the most deceptive illusion of all. For what the
20 years of failure to which Avineri refers prove above all is the
bankruptcy of incrementalism and confidence-building measures. They were
the hallmark of the stewardship of Dennis Ross, special Middle East
coordinator for President Bill Clinton, and discredited the peace
process.
That
illusion should be resisted particularly by those now considering a new
attempt at peace talks. European Union countries, led by Britain,
France and Germany, are reportedly preparing to present Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and his new government with a new initiative for
negotiations with the Palestinians. The initiative is prompted by the
anger of European governments at his announcement in November of plans
for new construction (see map, left) in East Jerusalem’s E-1 corridor
and other sites around Jerusalem that would effectively exclude the
prospective Palestinian state’s capital from East Jerusalem and would
also destroy the territorial contiguity of such a state.
The closing off of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians is a deal
breaker that forecloses a two-state solution: the creation of a separate
Palestinian state alongside Israel. It would also pre-empt any new
initiatives President Barack Obama may be considering in his second term
with a new team that is likely to be more resolute in its determination
to preserve the two-state option.
It is untrue that negotiations that focused on the endgame drove the
parties further apart. There were only three such negotiations: the Camp
David Summit between prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat in 2000, the Taba talks that followed, and the
negotiations between prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas at the time of the Annapolis Conference in 2007.
Despite their failure, each one advanced the process beyond where it
had been.
At Camp David, Palestinians accepted the annexation of the settlement
blocs—new towns that Israel has built in the West Bank—and Ehud Barak
agreed to the sharing of Jerusalem. The Taba talks that followed
narrowed the differences even more. The Olmert-Abbas negotiations of
2007/8 brought the parties even closer together, and according to the
principals would have led to an accord had their negotiations not been
interrupted by Operation Cast Lead in December, Israel’s military
offensive against Gaza, and by Olmert’s resignation.
The peace process was brought to a complete halt only by Netanyahu’s
government. Not only did he refuse to address the endgame, but he would
not even agree to recognise the pre-1967 border (before the Six-Day War
when Israel captured land from Syria, Jordan and Egypt) as the starting
point for territorial negotiations. He reacted hysterically when
President Obama was about to propose in his address to the State
Department on May 19, 2011 that negotiations must begin from that point.
Netanyahu called the president and demanded that he remove that
proposal from his address. The president did not comply, but he also did
not follow up and translate his speech into policy.
The requirement that Israeli-Palestinian talks begin from the 1967
line was so upsetting to Netanyahu and his government because they are
unalterably opposed to Palestinian statehood anywhere in Palestine.
Obliterating the memory of such a border (going so far as to remove that
border from Israeli governmental maps) is therefore seen by Netanyahu
as an essential step towards that goal.
To be sure, Netanyahu committed himself to a two-state solution in
his landmark speech at Bar-Ilan university in June 2009. Some naively
invoke that commitment as evidence that a resumption of the peace
process is justified. Tzipi Hotovely, a leading member of Netanyahu’s
Likud party, recently explained to these naïfs that the Bar-Ilan speech
notwithstanding, Netanyahu has no intention of ever carrying out the
evacuation of West Bank settlements. His commitment to the two-state
solution was “tactical,” she said, “intended for the world,” but “the
Likud will not evacuate settlements.”
The Palestinian people have known all along how utterly disingenuous
was Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech. Not only was this self-evident from the
facts Netanyahu and his government were creating on the ground, in the
form of the West Bank settlements and building in largely Arab East
Jerusalem. Senior Likud officials were also the founders and leaders of
the “Land of Israel” Knesset Caucus that was established for only one
purpose: preventing a Palestinian state in any part of Palestine. At no
point did that caucus provoke a murmur of protest from the US or from
the Quartet (the joint attempt by the US, UN, EU and Russia to mediate
the Israel-Palestinian peace process). Imagine their reaction—or the
reaction of the US Congress, for that matter—if President Abbas’s
cabinet members had established a “Land of Palestine” Caucus within the
Palestinian Authority.
Indeed, even when Netanyahu announced plans to build extensively in
the E-1 corridor, the best that the US and the EU were able to say is
that such a plan would be an obstacle to peace and to a two-state
solution. There were no intimations that such a plan, if implemented,
might trigger sanctions against Israel or end the American and European
insistence that Palestinians can achieve statehood only in negotiations
with the man who has been systematically dismantling what chances for
such an accord might still exist.
What Middle Eastern experts, not to speak of the US and European
governments that are calling for a return to negotiations, cannot get
themselves to acknowledge is that Netanyahu does not accept Palestinian
statehood anywhere in Palestine, and will do everything in his power to
prevent it because he and his government want the West Bank for
themselves. It is that simple. They are convinced that with their vast
military superiority over the Palestinians, they can have it all. That
is an obstacle to the achievement of a two-state solution that neither
incrementalism nor reconfiguration of parameters for resumed
negotiations (a subject to which leading US Middle East experts last
year devoted an entire book) can overcome. Anyone who still does not
understand this simple reality, or who refuses to address it, has little
to contribute to a discussion of this subject.
To be sure, Israelis remain concerned about retaining the financial,
military and diplomatic support of the US, but Netanyahu is convinced
this is not a problem. He believes he exercises greater control over the
US Congress than does President Barack Obama.
As ridiculous as this may sound, there are good reasons for that
belief. The main TV commercial in Netanyahu’s campaign for reelection in
January to his third premiership of the country featured his last
address to the combined US Senate and House of Representatives, whose
members jumped up from their seats to applaud wildly every second
sentence in his speech. The speech included the suggestion that the West
Bank is “disputed” territory, not occupied territory, to which Israel
has as much a claim as do the Palestinians, a claim rejected by the
whole world, the only exceptions being residents of the Capitol building
in Washington.
But it is not only the behaviour of the US Congress that gives
Netanyahu and his supporters the confidence that the US will always have
their back. It is a notion reinforced by President Obama as well. In
his speech to the UN General Assembly in September of 2011, he
admonished Palestinians, saying that they could achieve statehood only
through negotiations with Israel. He thus removed the issue from the
realm of international legality and turned it over to the man he knew,
from the experience of his first two years in office, will never allow
that to happen.
Both formally and politically, what the president said is untrue.
Formally, the right to self-determination by a majority population in
previously mandated territories is a “peremptory norm” in international
law. The implementation of that right was one of the primary purposes of
the UN’s establishment, and international courts have confirmed it is a
right that even overrides conflicting treaties or agreements. The only
reason the Security Council has failed in its clear responsibility to
implement the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is Obama’s
threatened veto.
Practically, it is true that given its overwhelming military power,
and the virtually uncritical support it receives from the US in the
exercise of that power, Israel’s government can and will continue to
block Palestinian statehood. But that is a reason not to subject the
Palestinians’ peremptory right to self-determination to an Israeli veto.
Instead it is a reason to demand that the UN exercise the role assigned
to it by its charter. Israel’s engagement with the Palestinians will
cease to be the historic fraud it has been only when its government
comes to believe that its continued stonewalling will lead to America’s
support for intervention by the Security Council. That is yet to happen.
The problem is that too often the policy proposals of experts and
diplomats are shaped in response to the claims made by the protagonists,
but not by realities on the ground. Israel’s government insists it has
no choice but to continue its occupation because it has made many
painful concessions, and promised more, only to run up against
Palestinian refusals to consider reciprocal concessions. It will put to
you that in return for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s magnanimous
unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, President George W. Bush agreed
to allow Israel to take in the main settlement blocs.
However, Israel has not offered a single concession on any of the
issues in dispute. On every one, whether borders, territory, Jerusalem,
refugees, water or security, it wants the concessions to be made by
Palestinians. Not a single concession has been offered by Netanyahu on
Israel’s side of the 1967 border.
As to the alleged “gift” of the settlement blocs to Sharon, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice said this at a joint press conference with
Israel’s then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni in February 2006:
“The United States position on [unilateral changes in the border] is
very clear and remains the same. No one should try and unilaterally
predetermine the outcome of a final status agreement. That’s to be done
at final status. The President did say that at the time of final status,
it will be necessary to take into account new realities on the ground
that have changed since 1967, but under no circumstances should… anyone
try and do that in a preemptive or predetermined way, because these are
issues for negotiation at final status.”
Netanyahu has famously accused Palestinians of demanding that Israel
“give and give, while they only take and take.” This comes from the head
of a government that has already helped itself to more than 60 per cent
of the West Bank. Here is what Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, had to
say on the subject. When challenged to defend his claims for the
importance of the 1993 Oslo Accords (and for which he was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize), Peres said, “Before Oslo, the Palestinian state’s
size should have been according to the 1947… UN map. In Oslo, Arafat
moved from the 1947 map to the 1967 one. He gave up on 22 per cent of
the West Bank. I don’t know any Arab leader who would give up 2 or 3 per
cent. He gave up 22 per cent.” (But instead of acknowledging that this
concession was a gut-wrenching one-sided Palestinian contribution to
peace, Peres described it as “our greatest achievement.”)
* * *
If Netanyahu and his new government are not to continue on their
certain road to apartheid, President Obama would have to leave no doubt
in their minds that the “special relationship” between the US and Israel
has its roots in shared values, and an Israeli government that acts in
egregious violation of those values undermines that special
relationship. International law grants native populations of former
colonies the right to national self-determination. An Israel that denies
Palestinians that right—in this case, in the territories beyond the
pre-1967 border—while at the same time denying them full and equal
Israeli citizenship is not a democracy but an apartheid state.
Is President Obama up to that challenge? Nothing in his performance
during his first term in office would indicate that he is. However, two
recent developments hold out some hope. The first, as indicated above,
is his nomination of Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and
Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defence—two men who have few
illusions about the reason for the failure of the peace process and the
courage to speak the truth.
The second are intimations of a new European initiative to present to
Israel’s new government a set of clear parameters that establish the
pre-1967 border (with provision for equal land swaps to compensate
Palestinians for Israel’s retention of the large settlement blocs) as
the starting point for resumed peace talks. It is a parameter that by
definition precludes Israel’s unilateral annexation of all of East
Jerusalem. Another parameter would preclude a large scale return of
Palestinian refugees to their previous homes in Israel.
Because the UK, France and Germany are reportedly all on board, it is
likely this initiative will also receive the backing of most—perhaps
all—EU countries. More important, its sponsors are likely to have
received assurances that even if Washington will not lead the effort, it
will not block it. If so, that would indeed be a significant change of
direction. Ironically, the chances of this initiative’s success will
only be strengthened if the new Israeli government proves even more
rigidly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
But no one should be deceived about the chances of such an initiative
if it does not contain the one condition that is the litmus test of its
seriousness. That is that if the parties do not accept the parameters
or are not able to reach an accord by a certain date, the terms for an
end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank will be determined by the UN
Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter. If it lacks
that provision, or the provision faces the threat of an American veto,
the initiative will be as phony as Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state
solution in his Bar-Ilan speech.
For nothing short of the threat of being turned into a pariah by the
entire international community because of its apartheid regime will
persuade Israel’s electorate to bring back a government that will
safeguard the country’s democratic character and accept a viable and
sovereign Palestinian state along its border.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/israel-palestine-conflict-settlements-henry-siegman/
Thursday 24 January 2013
One Last Chance for the Two-State Solution?
Posted @ 02:35
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