Rethinking Israeli-Palestinian Talks
Watching the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians fizzle out over the last week, I was reminded of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observation that “conflicts don’t have solutions – they have outcomes.” For nearly two decades, the contours of a final compromise on territory that would enable the State of Israel to live alongside a new State of Palestine have been known, yet an actual agreement has remained elusive.
The current hiatus in the talks, if the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League are to be believed, stems from Israel’s decision not to renew its ten month moratorium on building in existing West Bank Jewish settlements, which a combination of media shorthand and anti-Israel sniping has translated into “new settlement building on the West Bank.” The distinction is important, because there is a long-established understanding that these settlements would be incorporated into Israel in the event of a Final Agreement, and therefore would not impact a fresh partition of the land.
Now the Palestinians and their Arab allies have given the United States one month to get the talks restarted, hoping that the Obama Administration will cajole the Israelis into renewing the moratorium. This, incidentally, is the same moratorium which the Palestinian Authority dismissed when Israel first announced it, because it didn’t encompass the entirety of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. Less than a year later, the moratorium has conveniently become the test of Israel’s trustworthiness.
There’s nothing new in these spoiler tactics – for that is essentially what they are. Invariably, it begins with PA President Mahmoud Abbas reminding the world, “après moi, le déluge” – in other words, talk to me, because after me, there will be no-one to talk to. Fearful negotiators then round on the settlements as the primary, even sole, obstacle to a peace agreement. Israel doesn’t see it that way and highlights other issues, like continuing incitement against Israel on PA-financed media outlets. In response, Abbas, wearing a wounded look, threatens to resign as President. Predictably, he doesn’t follow through, talks begin, go nowhere, and arrive at a point where the Palestinians blame Israeli intransigence for the failure, and the Arab League dutifully provides the PA with cover.
Why, then, is the international community so keen to retrace its steps toward such a familiar dead end? In part, it’s because politicians, like everyone else, want to succeed in life – securing an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is the grand prize which Bill Clinton had thought was his, only to see it slip through his fingers when Yasser Arafat launched the second intifada in 2000.
And why is it a grand prize? Because of the prevailing myth that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is the key to global stability. Once justice is secured for the Palestinians, the wisdom goes, the anger of the Islamic world toward the west will be assuaged. The former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, neatly summarized this view upon leaving office: “We may wish to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many. It is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield.”
Eloquent, perhaps, but wrong. Well over a year ago, three of Washington’s seasoned Middle East wonks, who sharply disagree on substantive matters, all warned against a peace process founded upon overarching ideas and transformative goals. “The peace process is not a solution to the problem of global terrorism,” said Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Presciently, Satloff further advised: “Don't try to identify, pick, and put on a pedestal our chosen Palestinian leader. We have tried this. This is always a losing effort.”
“None of us is going to recommend, and, in fact, all us will recommend against, rushing towards a grand, comprehensive, end-of-conflict deal between Israelis and Palestinians,” said Robert Malley, a former Clinton negotiator who has often counseled the Palestinian side in his writings. Another veteran negotiator, Aaron David Miller, argued for “transactional” as opposed to “transformative” diplomacy – small, incremental steps on specific issues like the Gaza blockade, instead of a Middle Eastern version of the Congress of Vienna.
In the face of such caution, the Obama Administration nonetheless opted for a big idea approach – an Israeli-Palestinian agreement would strongly counter Iran’s regional influence, explained State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley – with the aim of resolving the conflict within one year. Only the most churlish would wish Obama failure in this endeavor; at the same time, the historical precedents are hardly encouraging.
Even if the direct talks are again rescued, the final status issues on the horizon stand out as so many obstacles. Israel will never agree to the physical division of its capital, Jerusalem, even if it wouldn’t discount a creative proposal on shared sovereignty. Where the Palestinians insist on the so-called “right of return” for the descendants of the 1948 refugees, Israel counters by demanding recognition of its character as the state of the Jewish people. Max Weber might have famously defined a state as an entity with a monopoly on the “means of violence,” but it is nigh on impossible to picture Israel assenting to a fully militarized Palestine a short drive away from Tel Aviv. And as for incitement, neither Abbas nor his congenial Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, have much incentive to stamp on it, loathsome as the rhetoric is.
There is a more basic question. Does it matter if the talks fail, when so little is expected of them anyway? After all, as Elliot Abrams recently pointed out, the West Bank is one of the few places on earth where the economy is booming, with growth at 8 percent and tax revenues up by 50 percent over last year. This kind of performance is one reason not to place Mahmoud Abbas – as Robert Satloff would say – “on a pedestal.” As they increasingly enjoy the fruits of their own labor, West Bank Palestinians, much as they might resent Israel, don’t want to risk a situation where Abbas is followed by the kind of Hamas regime which has brought so much devastation to their brethren in Gaza.
As for the U.S. Administration, it needs to exercise care that disillusionment with the peace process doesn’t become hostility to those urging it along. The present record is unsettling enough: among Israelis, President Obama’s policies have been viewed with distrust for some time. Among American Jews, according to the latest survey conducted by my organization, the American Jewish Committee, 45 percent disapprove of Obama’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations, while 62 percent approve Benjamin Netanyahu’s. Even in the Arab world, the President’s reputation is suffering (“President Obama has not translated his Cairo speech and all these good intentions into a coherent program and that is why his credibility among the Arab public has declined,” a former Jordanian Foreign Minister, Marwan Muasher, told CNN.)
There is no reason, in the final analysis, not to work for a peace agreement. Equally, there is no reason to believe that the lack of a peace agreement will plunge the region into war, especially when other factors, like Iran’s nuclear weapons quest and Hezbollah’s military build-up in southern Lebanon, are much more obvious triggers. Would an agreement deflate these belligerents? Perhaps, but the logic goes both ways – a two-state agreement could spur the rejectionist camp to renewed action against the hegemony of the “Great Satan” in the Middle East.
In such a situation, the best strategy is to assert control of those elements which you actually do control. Do not build up expectations. Do not allow apocalyptic prophecies to become self-fulfilling. And do not collapse into despair when what appears to be a solution turns out to be just one more outcome.
Ben Cohen is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist.
