Pursue a left-wing agenda round the political race track long enough, and you meet a right-wing agenda coming at you from the other direction.
Nazism and Bolshevism stood at opposite extremes of the political spectrum and their philosophies were poles apart, yet their regimes bore remarkably similarities to each other – smothering of dissension, persecution of political opponents, insistence that the state was more important than the individual, total disregard for the rule of law, rejection of religion, and so forth and so on.
The latest example of this political anomaly are ever-stronger calls from left and right alike to reject the two-state solution to the perennial Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
Partition of the Holy Land emerged formally in 1937 as the preferred way of healing the festering sore of the Arab-Jewish conflict. The British government had been mandated by the League of Nations to administer Palestine and implement its own objective as set out in the Balfour Declaration – namely to establish in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. However the mandate administration was finding it virtually impossible to keep the lid on the simmering pot of Arab resentment at the influx of Jews into Palestine, and following the Arab revolt of 1936 the British government set up a commission under Lord Peel to examine the situation and come up with a solution. Partition was the central recommendation of the Peel Commission.
Ten years later, following the Second World War, the two-state concept was also the considered conclusion of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), which recommended as much to the UN General Assembly in 1947. On 29 November 1947 the General Assembly recommended the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition. The Jewish Agency accepted the decision; the Arab states rejected it. In October 2011 Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, said that the Arab world had been wrong to do so. “It was our mistake,” he said, in an interview on Israeli television.
And indeed Abbas, together with most of the rest of the world, has proclaimed the two-state solution as the Holy Grail of the peace process. It is the desired objective according to the Quartet (the US, the EU, the UN and Russia), and it was agreed upon in principle by both the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the November 2007 Annapolis Conference. Most of the rest of the non-Arab world also give it their seal of approval.
For some time it was only the extreme rejectionist elements within the Arab world that repudiated the concept entirely. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and related factions refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist at all. They set as their target the elimination of Israel and its replacement by an Islamist Palestine, on the lines of the government established by Hamas after they seized power in Gaza.
Slowly more subtle forms of eliminating Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish people emerged. Support among Palestinians for a one-state solution began to grow because it was claimed that their population growth rate would leave Palestinians as a majority in a single state. Then voices from the liberal left in the United States. the United Kingdom and Israel itself began calling for a single state in Israel and the West Bank (possibly including Gaza), with citizenship and equal rights in the combined entity for all inhabitants of all three territories, without regard to ethnicity or religion.
As Carlo Strenger noted in an article in Ha’aretz in June 2010, the practical results of such a solution would be profound. The new state would have to sever its ties to all religious institutions and become completely secular, along the French or US model. Jews and Muslims would have to accept that religion could play no role in the affairs of state; Jews and Palestinians would have to be willing to renounce the struggle for hegemony. Jews would have to accept Jabotinsky’s suggestion that the President of the state could be sometimes Jewish and sometimes Arab. Arab rejection of a fully liberal Israel-Palestine would no longer have a case, but of course radical Islamists would almost certainly continue to object to the presence of non-Muslims in the land.
These and related views formed the agenda of a much-discussed, and much-excoriated, One-State conference held at the Harvard Kennedy School in May 2012. Panels examined the two-state approach, questioned how a one-state solution would work, and discussed obstacles to its realization.
What was certainly not considered, however, was the concept increasingly advocated by more extreme right-wing voices such as US Congressman Joe Walsh and columnists like Gershon Baskin, Martin Sherman and Caroline Glick: namely the annexation by Israel of the whole of the West Bank, and the establishment of one state – Israel – in the area.
The rationale for this lies in right-wing Jewish fears that the application of the two-state solution would mean the end of the Zionist dream of Jewish national sovereignty in the “Land of Israel” – in other words, they regard the West Bank as an integral element of the Jewish state. In the words of US Congressman Joe Walsh: “the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.”
Or, to quote columnist Caroline Glick: “Given the abject failure of the two-state paradigm, it is abundantly clear that for all the complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel than Israeli surrender of the areas.”
She is not alone in her thinking. As she points out, members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, have launched repeated attempts in recent months to debate legislation calling for Israel to apply its sovereignty over all or parts of Judea and Samaria. This coming Wednesday, 23 May, MK Miri Regev is holding a conference to launch a new Knesset caucus calling for the adoption of this policy.
Advocates of policies along these lines seem blind to their wholly unrealistic nature, politically speaking, to say nothing of the totally negative effect their application would have on Israel’s relations with the rest of the world. If anything were to push Israel into the status so ardently desired by her worst enemies – a pariah state – this version of the one-state solution would achieve it. The other would eliminate Israel altogether as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Hobson’s choice.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Friday, 18 May 2012
The New Palestinian Government
The Palestinian Authority (the PA) is nominally the governing body of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. However the world knows that, following the elections of 2006, Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody fratricidal coup, and has been the de facto ruling authority ever since, remaining at daggers drawn with its political rival, Fatah, which controls the PA. The latest in a long line of attempts to foster a formal accord between the two took place on the 6th of February 2012 in Qatar’s capital city, Doha.
Efforts at reconciliation between the two power blocs within the Palestinian body politic began as early as 2008. Five rounds of talks held in Cairo failed to achieve agreement. A sixth meeting, held in June 2009, was intended to pave the way for final reconciliation on the 7th of July. It never happened. All the same, Egypt continued hosting intermittent joint discussions between the parties in the forlorn hope of achieving a breakthrough – forlorn, because all such efforts are attempts at reconciling the irreconcilable.
Insofar as Mahmoud Abbas has embraced the concept of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has consistently engaged with Israel – even if to no obvious effect, as yet – and went so far in September 2010 as to sit down at the same table with Israel’s prime minister and talk peace, in Hamas’s eyes the PA has placed itself beyond the pale. For Hamas remains what it has always been – an extreme Islamist and terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel.
Hamas, which includes in its official charter the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has never endorsed the two-state solution, since to do so would be to recognise Israel. For the same reason Hamas opposed Abbas’s attempt, in September 2011, at gaining United Nations’ recognition of Palestine within the old 1967 borders. Recognising Palestine within the 1967 borders would, by extension, mean recognising Israel outside them. Nor has it accepted the three minimal requirements for official recognition demanded of it by the Middle East Quartet, representing the US, the UN, Russia and the EU. These are recognizing Israel’s right to exist, abandoning terrorism, and accepting previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements – all of which are accepted by the PA.
Nevertheless, in February 2012 these irreconcilable differences appeared to have been overcome. After several rounds of discussion, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and the leader-in-exile of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, formally signed the Doha Declaration. which called for the formation of a national consensus Palestinian government whose main mission would be to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections and rebuild the Gaza Strip. Abbas was appointed interim prime minister of the new joint Hamas-Fatah unity government.
The reaction of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was instant. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said, addressing Mahmoud Abbas. “It’s either a pact with Hamas, or it’s peace with Israel.”
Of course he was quite correct, and in little more than three months the Doha declaration has been revealed as a slap-dash papering over of cracks, and incapable of providing a lasting accommodation.
Abbas and his spokesmen insist that at Doha Hamas agreed to honour all previous agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel, and accept that being part of a united Palestinian government means recognising Israel. But Hamas officials themselves have repeatedly denied this, and their various leaders have failed to unite behind the Doha deal. Senior Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip, including Gazan Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mahmoud al-Zahar, criticised the agreement from the start, and signs soon emerged of a growing split within the movement.
By swearing in a new Palestinian government in the West Bank on 16 May, Mahmoud Abbas and the PA have acknowledged the validity of Netanyahu’s options – engage with Hamas or engage with Israel – and openly declared their choice. It is to continue their struggle against Hamas, and perhaps to re-engage in negotiations with Israel that might lead to an accord. For following an exchange of letters between Israel’s prime minister and the Palestinian President, Abbas is travelling to Cairo today, Friday 18 May, where he is scheduled to hold talks with Mohamed Tantawi, the de facto ruler of Egypt. He will also visit Amman for talks with King Abdullah, and the tour could also include Qatar and Saudi Arabia. PLO executive committee member Wasel Abu Yusef said that Abbas was planning on requesting a meeting of the Arab League to discuss the Israeli reply to his letter.
Meanwhile Salam Fayyad, the West Bank Palestinian leader widely credited with developing and boosting the Palestinian economy over the past few years, though anathema to the Hamas leadership, remains prime minister. His previous additional role as finance minister is now taken by Nabil Kassis, a former university president who will have to deal with the challenge of steady decline in donor funds. The PA is relying on foreign aid to cover a 2012 budget projected to reach nearly $1.7 billion. Most of the aid comes from the European Union, the United States and Arab countries.
The new cabinet consists of representatives of Fatah, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Democratic Union, as well as independent figures. It includes six female ministers – the largest number of women to serve in a PA cabinet.
Prior to the swearing-in ceremony of the new government in Ramallah, Abbas told a news conference that the incoming government "will be dismissed immediately" if the political partnership with Hamas is consummated. It looks as though the new Palestinian government is safely installed for its full term.
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Likud and Kadima - A Winning Team?
Israel's new Likud-Kadima unity government is a bold initiative that opens the way for interesting developments, both domestic and external. There is logic in the coalition of the two parties. Kadima is in a real sense the child of Likud - a hard-line party, which itself softened its ideas with time and experience. Kadima embodied a hard-nosed look at demographics - the realisation that it was not in Israel's best interests to continue governing a huge Arab minority that could easily turn into a majority. Thus was born major non-Labour support for the two-state solution.
Talk of a possible conjoining of Israel's Likud and Kadima parties was in the air as early as July 2010 (see my blog of 9 July 2010: 'A Peace Deal by 2011?' ). But with Tzipi Livni leading Kadima the idea came to nothing. She was intent on remaining the official opposition, hoping for a political opportunity - that frustratingly remained out of reach - to oust Likud and take over the reins of power. Her replacement as chairman of Kadima by Shaul Mofaz has opened the door to this new configuration of Israel's political kaleidoscope.
A major effect must be to reduce considerably prime minister Netanyahu's dependence on the support of the religious right-wing parties. They - in particular, but not exclusively, Yisrael Beitenu - not only consistently restricted his freedom of manoeuvre during the peace negotiations of 2010, but placed positive obstacles in his path.
The main reasons for forming this new alliance are internal and domestic - to do with devising new rules for ensuring that most young haredi men undertake some form of national service - but the new unity government will inevitably adopt a new approach to any peace initiatives that might arise between now and the autumn of 2013, when a general election becomes mandatory. Neither Likud nor Kadima offer the same hard-line support for the settler movement as the more right-wing religious parties. This in itself will open the way for greater flexibility, should any moves towards new peace negotations make an appearance. Let us hope they do.
Talk of a possible conjoining of Israel's Likud and Kadima parties was in the air as early as July 2010 (see my blog of 9 July 2010: 'A Peace Deal by 2011?' ). But with Tzipi Livni leading Kadima the idea came to nothing. She was intent on remaining the official opposition, hoping for a political opportunity - that frustratingly remained out of reach - to oust Likud and take over the reins of power. Her replacement as chairman of Kadima by Shaul Mofaz has opened the door to this new configuration of Israel's political kaleidoscope.
A major effect must be to reduce considerably prime minister Netanyahu's dependence on the support of the religious right-wing parties. They - in particular, but not exclusively, Yisrael Beitenu - not only consistently restricted his freedom of manoeuvre during the peace negotiations of 2010, but placed positive obstacles in his path.
The main reasons for forming this new alliance are internal and domestic - to do with devising new rules for ensuring that most young haredi men undertake some form of national service - but the new unity government will inevitably adopt a new approach to any peace initiatives that might arise between now and the autumn of 2013, when a general election becomes mandatory. Neither Likud nor Kadima offer the same hard-line support for the settler movement as the more right-wing religious parties. This in itself will open the way for greater flexibility, should any moves towards new peace negotations make an appearance. Let us hope they do.
Ha'aretz vs the Jews
In the Jerusalem Post of 4 May 2012 Martin Sherman, in a piece titled “Haaretz vs the Jews” castigates the Left for running an “unambiguous campaign for the conversion of Israel from the 'nation state of the Jews' to 'a state of all its citizens.' But the one surely does not preclude the other. The choice is not between a Zionist Greater Israel and a post-Zionist state denuded of its Jewish identity. I remind Martin Sherman of Israel’s Declaration of Independence which, while unequivocally endorsing “the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country”, states:
The State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants… it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.
Israel can and must retain its identity as the nation state of the Jewish people. But this is entirely compatible with the aspiration of the founding fathers to respect the rights of minorities and to strive for equality on every level for all the country's citizens.
A letter from me to this effect appears in the Jerusalem Post of 8 May 2012.
The State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants… it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.
Israel can and must retain its identity as the nation state of the Jewish people. But this is entirely compatible with the aspiration of the founding fathers to respect the rights of minorities and to strive for equality on every level for all the country's citizens.
A letter from me to this effect appears in the Jerusalem Post of 8 May 2012.
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Gunter Grass
This Must Be Said
Allan Massie, writing in the London Daily Telegraph on 26 April, makes a valid point. To understand history, it is necessary to appreciate the context in which events occurred and the pressures influencing people’s behaviour. I am, therefore, content to suspend judgement on Gunter Grass’s teenage Nazi past. What I find unforgiveable are his current distorted and frankly antisemitic views, as expressed in his recent poem “What Must Be Said”. In it he declares that Israel is the major obstacle to world peace and is planning a first nuclear strike against Iran “to extinguish the Iranian people.” But this is surely viewing the world through a totally warped lens. Is it not Iran that is alarming the world by continuing to develop its nuclear capability? Was it Israel that threatened to wipe Iran off the map, or the other way around? Surely it is Iran that is providing military and financial support to Assad in Syria, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Perhaps it is Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s continual denial of the Holocaust that pleases Gunter Grass. Whatever his reasoning, he proclaims the aggressor the victim, and castigates the victim of threats of annihilation as an aggressor.. No amount of empathy with Gunter Grass’s past can justify this biased view of today’s world.
Allan Massie, writing in the London Daily Telegraph on 26 April, makes a valid point. To understand history, it is necessary to appreciate the context in which events occurred and the pressures influencing people’s behaviour. I am, therefore, content to suspend judgement on Gunter Grass’s teenage Nazi past. What I find unforgiveable are his current distorted and frankly antisemitic views, as expressed in his recent poem “What Must Be Said”. In it he declares that Israel is the major obstacle to world peace and is planning a first nuclear strike against Iran “to extinguish the Iranian people.” But this is surely viewing the world through a totally warped lens. Is it not Iran that is alarming the world by continuing to develop its nuclear capability? Was it Israel that threatened to wipe Iran off the map, or the other way around? Surely it is Iran that is providing military and financial support to Assad in Syria, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Perhaps it is Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s continual denial of the Holocaust that pleases Gunter Grass. Whatever his reasoning, he proclaims the aggressor the victim, and castigates the victim of threats of annihilation as an aggressor.. No amount of empathy with Gunter Grass’s past can justify this biased view of today’s world.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Israeli Peace Initiative (IPI)
I thought I closed this blog officially on 31 December 2010. [The book based on it: "One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine" was published on 1 June 2011]. However, the announcement of Wednesday, 6 April 2011 of the Israeli Peace Initiative was too significant a development to allow to pass unremarked. Accordingly, I exceptionally posted this additional piece. Since then I have been adding an occasional article as matters of particular interest have caught my attention.
What is the IPI?
• The Israeli Peace Initiative is a peace proposal launched by a group of public figures in Israel, including former generals and others.
• It presents itself as an Israeli response to the Arab Peace Initiative promoted by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002.
• It outlines the terms for final status agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon, and the normalisation of relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab world.
The principles for peace in the document include:
> A Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank based on 1967 borders with 1:1 land swaps not exceeding 7% of the West Bank.
> Jerusalem shared as the capital of two states with special arrangements for shared sovereignty in the Old City.
> Refugees to receive financial compensation from the international community and Israel with the right of return only to a Palestinian state but with ‘with mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions.'
> Peace with Syria to be based on a staged Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and agreed security arrangements.
> Peace with Lebanon based on existing borders and Lebanon exercising ‘full sovereignty over its territory through the Lebanese army.'
> Regional security arrangements and economic cooperation based on the creation of a ‘Middle East Economic Development Bloc'.
> The gradual normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab and Islamic states that would commence at the start of negotiations.
Who is behind it?
The initiative was launched by a group of public figures in Israel, who perceive the current deadlock in the peace process to be damaging for Israel. They include:
* Yaakov Peri - Former Shin Bet (Israeli internal security) chief
* Amram Mitzna - Retired IDF general and former leader of Israeli Labour party
* Danny Yatom - Former head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service
* Amnon Lipkin Shahak - Former IDF Chief of Staff and former Knesset member
* Yuval and Dalia Rabin - Children of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
* Adina Bar Shalom - Daughter of Shas Rabbi and spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef
* Professor Aliza Shenhar - President of Emek Yezreel College
* Idan Ofer - Israeli business mogul
Here is the Israeli Peace Initiative in full:
The Israeli Peace Initiative (IPI)
in response to the Arab Peace Initiative (API)
Proposal - April 6, 2011
The State of Israel,
*Reaffirming that Israel's strategic objective is to reach a historic compromise and permanent status agreements that shall determine the finality of all claims and the end of the Israeli Arab conflict, in order to achieve permanent and lasting peace, lasting and guaranteed security, regional economic prosperity and normal ties with all Arab and Islamic states,
*Recognizing the suffering of the Palestinian refugees since the 1948 war as well as of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, and realizing the need to resolve the Palestinian refugees problem through realistic and mutually agreed-upon solutions,
*Realizing that wide-scale multilateral economic cooperation is essential in order to ensure the prosperity of the Middle East, its environmental sustainability and the future of its peoples,
*Recognizing the Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002 (API) as a historic effort made by the Arab states to reach a breakthrough and achieve progress on a regional basis, and sharing the API statement that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties,
Therefore Israel accepts the API as a framework for regional peace negotiations and presents the IPI as an integrated response to the API, and as a vision of the regional final-status agreements to be negotiated and signed between the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel, based on the following proposed principles:
1) CONFLICT RESOLUTION PRINCIPLES
The key principle of all regional peace agreements shall be Israeli withdrawals, guaranteed security, normal relations and end of all conflicts, while recognizing the security needs of all parties, the water resources challenges, the demographic realities on the ground, and the interests and needs of the followers of the three monotheistic faiths;
Furthermore, the Israeli Palestinian conflict shall be resolved on the principle of two states for two nations: Palestine as a nation state for the Palestinians and Israel as a nation state for the Jews (in which the Arab minority will have equal and full civil rights as articulated in Israel's Declaration of Independence). On this basis, the following parameters are proposed:
1a) Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Statehood and Security
A sovereign independent Palestinian state shall be formed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on territories from which Israel withdrew. The state shall be demilitarized, exercising full authority over its internal security forces. The International community shall play an active role in providing border security and curbing terrorist threats.
2. Borders
The borders shall be based on the June 4, 1967, lines, with agreed modifications subject to the following principles: the creation of territorial contiguity between the Palestinian territories; land swaps (not to exceed 7% of the West Bank) based on a 1:1 ratio, including the provision of a safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, under de facto Palestinian control.
3. Jerusalem
The greater Jerusalem area shall include the two capitals of the two states. The line shall be drawn so that: Jewish neighborhoods shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Arab neighborhoods shall be under Palestinian sovereignty; special arrangements shall be implemented in the Old City, ensuring that the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Temple Mount shall remain under a special no-sovereignty regime ("God Sovereignty"), with special agreed-upon arrangements, ensuring that Islamic holy places shall be administered by the Moslem Waqf, and Jewish holy sites and interests shall be administered by Israel. The implementation of these arrangements will be supervised by an Israeli-International committee.
4. Refugees
The solutions for the Palestinian refugees shall be agreed upon between Israel, the Palestinians and all regional parties in accordance with the following principles: Financial compensation shall be offered to the refugees and the host countries by the international community and Israel; the Palestinian refugees wishing to return (as mentioned in UNGAR 194*) may do so only to the Palestinian state, with mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions.
1b) Israeli-Syrian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders
Israel shall withdraw from the Golan to a border-line to be designed based on the June 4, 1967 status, with agreed minor modifications and land swaps based on a 1:1 ratio, reflecting the 1923 international border. The agreement shall be mutually implemented in stages, based on the Sinai model, over a period not to exceed 5 years.
2. Security Arrangements
A comprehensive security package shall be mutually agreed, defining, inter alia, the scope of demilitarized zones on both sides of the border and the deployment of peace keeping international forces.
1c) Israeli-Lebanese Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders Israel and Lebanon shall establish permanent peace based on UNSCR 1701**, subject to which Israel concluded its withdrawal to the international border.
2. Lebanese Sovereignty
In addition to the full implementation of UNSCR 1701, Lebanon shall exercise full sovereignty over its territory through the Lebanese army.
1d) State of Peace
In each of the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and the Israeli-Lebanese peace agreements the respective parties agree to apply between them the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law governing relations among states in time of peace; to settle all disputes between them by peaceful means; to develop good neighborly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security; to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and from forming any coalition, organization or alliance with a third party, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or hostility against the other party.
2) REGIONAL SECURITY PRINCIPLES
1. The parties will create regional security mechanisms, addressing shared threats and risks arising from states, terrorist organizations, marine pirate groups, and guerrilla organizations. to ensure the safety and security of the peoples of the region.
2. The parties shall build regional frameworks to jointly fight against crime and environmental threats.
3) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES
Based on significant economic support by the international community, the parties shall implement wide-scale regional cooperation projects in order to ensure the stabilization, viability and prosperity of the region, and to achieve optimal utilization of energy and water resources for the benefit of all parties. Such projects will improve transportation infrastructure, agriculture, industry and regional tourism, thus addressing the rising danger of unemployment in the region. In the future, the parties shall create the "Middle East Economic Development Bloc"(inviting all Middle Eastern countries to join), aiming at reaching a special status in the EU, the US and the International Community.
4) STEPS TOWARDS NORMAL RELATIONS PRINCIPLES
Israel, the Arab States and the Islamic States commit to implement gradual steps towards establishing normal relations between them, in the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, which shall commence upon the launching of peace negotiations and shall be gradually upgraded to full normal relations (including diplomatic relations, open borders and economic ties) upon the signing of the permanent status agreements and throughout their implementation.
* United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194
was passed on December 11, 1948. It consists of 15 articles, the most quoted of which are:
Article 7: protection and free access to the Holy Places
Article 8: demilitarization and UN control over Jerusalem
Article 9: free access to Jerusalem
Article 11: the return of refugees
**United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701
was a resolution intended to resolve the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. Approved by both the Lebanese and the Israeli Cabinets, the ceasefire came into effect on Monday, 14 August 2006.
What is the IPI?
• The Israeli Peace Initiative is a peace proposal launched by a group of public figures in Israel, including former generals and others.
• It presents itself as an Israeli response to the Arab Peace Initiative promoted by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002.
• It outlines the terms for final status agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon, and the normalisation of relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab world.
The principles for peace in the document include:
> A Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank based on 1967 borders with 1:1 land swaps not exceeding 7% of the West Bank.
> Jerusalem shared as the capital of two states with special arrangements for shared sovereignty in the Old City.
> Refugees to receive financial compensation from the international community and Israel with the right of return only to a Palestinian state but with ‘with mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions.'
> Peace with Syria to be based on a staged Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and agreed security arrangements.
> Peace with Lebanon based on existing borders and Lebanon exercising ‘full sovereignty over its territory through the Lebanese army.'
> Regional security arrangements and economic cooperation based on the creation of a ‘Middle East Economic Development Bloc'.
> The gradual normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab and Islamic states that would commence at the start of negotiations.
Who is behind it?
The initiative was launched by a group of public figures in Israel, who perceive the current deadlock in the peace process to be damaging for Israel. They include:
* Yaakov Peri - Former Shin Bet (Israeli internal security) chief
* Amram Mitzna - Retired IDF general and former leader of Israeli Labour party
* Danny Yatom - Former head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service
* Amnon Lipkin Shahak - Former IDF Chief of Staff and former Knesset member
* Yuval and Dalia Rabin - Children of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
* Adina Bar Shalom - Daughter of Shas Rabbi and spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef
* Professor Aliza Shenhar - President of Emek Yezreel College
* Idan Ofer - Israeli business mogul
Here is the Israeli Peace Initiative in full:
The Israeli Peace Initiative (IPI)
in response to the Arab Peace Initiative (API)
Proposal - April 6, 2011
The State of Israel,
*Reaffirming that Israel's strategic objective is to reach a historic compromise and permanent status agreements that shall determine the finality of all claims and the end of the Israeli Arab conflict, in order to achieve permanent and lasting peace, lasting and guaranteed security, regional economic prosperity and normal ties with all Arab and Islamic states,
*Recognizing the suffering of the Palestinian refugees since the 1948 war as well as of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, and realizing the need to resolve the Palestinian refugees problem through realistic and mutually agreed-upon solutions,
*Realizing that wide-scale multilateral economic cooperation is essential in order to ensure the prosperity of the Middle East, its environmental sustainability and the future of its peoples,
*Recognizing the Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002 (API) as a historic effort made by the Arab states to reach a breakthrough and achieve progress on a regional basis, and sharing the API statement that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties,
Therefore Israel accepts the API as a framework for regional peace negotiations and presents the IPI as an integrated response to the API, and as a vision of the regional final-status agreements to be negotiated and signed between the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel, based on the following proposed principles:
1) CONFLICT RESOLUTION PRINCIPLES
The key principle of all regional peace agreements shall be Israeli withdrawals, guaranteed security, normal relations and end of all conflicts, while recognizing the security needs of all parties, the water resources challenges, the demographic realities on the ground, and the interests and needs of the followers of the three monotheistic faiths;
Furthermore, the Israeli Palestinian conflict shall be resolved on the principle of two states for two nations: Palestine as a nation state for the Palestinians and Israel as a nation state for the Jews (in which the Arab minority will have equal and full civil rights as articulated in Israel's Declaration of Independence). On this basis, the following parameters are proposed:
1a) Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Statehood and Security
A sovereign independent Palestinian state shall be formed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on territories from which Israel withdrew. The state shall be demilitarized, exercising full authority over its internal security forces. The International community shall play an active role in providing border security and curbing terrorist threats.
2. Borders
The borders shall be based on the June 4, 1967, lines, with agreed modifications subject to the following principles: the creation of territorial contiguity between the Palestinian territories; land swaps (not to exceed 7% of the West Bank) based on a 1:1 ratio, including the provision of a safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, under de facto Palestinian control.
3. Jerusalem
The greater Jerusalem area shall include the two capitals of the two states. The line shall be drawn so that: Jewish neighborhoods shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Arab neighborhoods shall be under Palestinian sovereignty; special arrangements shall be implemented in the Old City, ensuring that the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Temple Mount shall remain under a special no-sovereignty regime ("God Sovereignty"), with special agreed-upon arrangements, ensuring that Islamic holy places shall be administered by the Moslem Waqf, and Jewish holy sites and interests shall be administered by Israel. The implementation of these arrangements will be supervised by an Israeli-International committee.
4. Refugees
The solutions for the Palestinian refugees shall be agreed upon between Israel, the Palestinians and all regional parties in accordance with the following principles: Financial compensation shall be offered to the refugees and the host countries by the international community and Israel; the Palestinian refugees wishing to return (as mentioned in UNGAR 194*) may do so only to the Palestinian state, with mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions.
1b) Israeli-Syrian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders
Israel shall withdraw from the Golan to a border-line to be designed based on the June 4, 1967 status, with agreed minor modifications and land swaps based on a 1:1 ratio, reflecting the 1923 international border. The agreement shall be mutually implemented in stages, based on the Sinai model, over a period not to exceed 5 years.
2. Security Arrangements
A comprehensive security package shall be mutually agreed, defining, inter alia, the scope of demilitarized zones on both sides of the border and the deployment of peace keeping international forces.
1c) Israeli-Lebanese Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders Israel and Lebanon shall establish permanent peace based on UNSCR 1701**, subject to which Israel concluded its withdrawal to the international border.
2. Lebanese Sovereignty
In addition to the full implementation of UNSCR 1701, Lebanon shall exercise full sovereignty over its territory through the Lebanese army.
1d) State of Peace
In each of the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and the Israeli-Lebanese peace agreements the respective parties agree to apply between them the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law governing relations among states in time of peace; to settle all disputes between them by peaceful means; to develop good neighborly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security; to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and from forming any coalition, organization or alliance with a third party, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or hostility against the other party.
2) REGIONAL SECURITY PRINCIPLES
1. The parties will create regional security mechanisms, addressing shared threats and risks arising from states, terrorist organizations, marine pirate groups, and guerrilla organizations. to ensure the safety and security of the peoples of the region.
2. The parties shall build regional frameworks to jointly fight against crime and environmental threats.
3) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES
Based on significant economic support by the international community, the parties shall implement wide-scale regional cooperation projects in order to ensure the stabilization, viability and prosperity of the region, and to achieve optimal utilization of energy and water resources for the benefit of all parties. Such projects will improve transportation infrastructure, agriculture, industry and regional tourism, thus addressing the rising danger of unemployment in the region. In the future, the parties shall create the "Middle East Economic Development Bloc"(inviting all Middle Eastern countries to join), aiming at reaching a special status in the EU, the US and the International Community.
4) STEPS TOWARDS NORMAL RELATIONS PRINCIPLES
Israel, the Arab States and the Islamic States commit to implement gradual steps towards establishing normal relations between them, in the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, which shall commence upon the launching of peace negotiations and shall be gradually upgraded to full normal relations (including diplomatic relations, open borders and economic ties) upon the signing of the permanent status agreements and throughout their implementation.
* United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194
was passed on December 11, 1948. It consists of 15 articles, the most quoted of which are:
Article 7: protection and free access to the Holy Places
Article 8: demilitarization and UN control over Jerusalem
Article 9: free access to Jerusalem
Article 11: the return of refugees
**United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701
was a resolution intended to resolve the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. Approved by both the Lebanese and the Israeli Cabinets, the ceasefire came into effect on Monday, 14 August 2006.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine
"A Mid-East Journal" closes
I began this blog early in January 2010, and I wrote the last piece on 30 December. My intention from the start was to follow the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of the peace process during a period that I thought might prove a turning point in the history of both Israel and Palestine – and then to produce a book about the events that I had lived through and described.
As 2010 dawned, it seemed to me possible that the year might prove seminal in the long-drawn-out process of finding an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. Although many of the negative factors that had frustrated past efforts were still present, the signs that meaningful negotiations might be resumed and brought, eventually, to some sort of favourable outcome seemed more hopeful than for many years.
Within its first days in office, the new US administration had clearly marked the Middle East as a priority for its attention. It was on 22 January 2009, in a special ceremony in the White House, that newly-elected President Barack Obama named George Mitchell his "special envoy to the Middle East". The event, attended also by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was widely interpreted as a determination on Obama's part to involve himself and his new administration in working for, and in finally achieving, a settlement to the long-running Arab-Israel dispute.
At the ceremony Mitchell said that, along with Obama and Clinton, he believed the objective of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state living side by side was possible, and that the conflict, old as it was, could be resolved
Obama charged his Middle East envoy to return to the Middle East, and to seek a "comprehensive peace". By that, Mitchell soon made clear, he meant not only a settlement of the Israel-Palestine impasse, but also peace between Israel and Syria, and between Israel and Lebanon, and a normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab world as a whole – ambitious objectives indeed, and certainly not susceptible of achievement in the space of one short twelvemonth. Some sort of breakthrough in the long-lasting Israel-Palestine dispute did, however, seem a possibility.
It was in March 2009 that the Obama administration explicitly incorporated into US policy the 2002 Arab League peace plan, originally mooted by Saudi Arabia, under which the Arab world undertook formally to recognise Israel and enter into normal relations with her, in exchange for Israel's withdrawing from territories captured in the 1967 war. Three months later President Obama, in an unprecedented move, reached out to the Muslim world in a speech in Cairo.
In what must still be regarded as an historic address, Obama said the "cycle of suspicion and discord" between the United States and the Muslim world must end. He called for a "new beginning"; both sides needed to make a "sustained effort... to respect one another and seek common ground". The US bond with Israel was unbreakable, he said, but the Palestinians' plight was "intolerable".
Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way one chooses to regard the matter, water continued to flow under the bridge. Events overtook aspirations. For example, it quickly became apparent that all the overtures in the world counted for nothing against the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
As regards the position of the Palestinians, the West Bank, administered by the Palestinian Authority, had been enjoying unprecedented economic growth – something between 5% and 7% was the World Bank's estimate for 2009. Meanwhile the Islamist terrorist organisation Hamas, having seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody internecine coup d'état, remained virtually at war with Fatah, its rivals within the Palestinian Authority, and deeply opposed to any accommodation with, or even recognition of, Israel.
Considering itself at war with Israel, Hamas had pursued a consistent policy of firing rockets from Gaza, indiscriminately hitting anything within range. Supplied with ever more sophisticated weaponry from Iran and Syria, Hamas's attacks started reaching deeper and deeper into Israel. Finally, in December 2008 – after Barack Obama had won the Presidential election, but before his inauguration – Israel launched its short, sharp and devastating Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas regime.
The legacies of that conflict were a virtual cessation of the rocket incursions, accusations that Israel's attack had taken too little account of the impact on the civilian population, and a continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip by both Israel and Egypt – Egypt being as keen as Israel to prevent Hamas boosting its military capabilities. Israel's blockade, which allowed a regular though restricted flow of humanitarian aid through the main land crossings, extended also to a naval blockade aimed at preventing the import of weaponry and related materials by sea.
A possible additional legacy of the conflict – though this is difficult to assess – was that Hamas had agreed to Egypt acting as a mediator in talks aimed at the release of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured in June 2006 by Hamas in a cross-border raid and held prisoner in the Gaza Strip ever since.
In Israel the intensive peace talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, that had occupied the then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, during the final months of 2008, came to a sudden end with Israel's strike against Hamas in the December. In any case, Olmert was already acting in a caretaker capacity, following his resignation after charges of corruption, and Israel was awaiting new elections. These produced a change of government, and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu finally headed his new – and rather fragile – coalition in March 2009.
The following months saw Israel's right-wing prime minister, and America's new Democrat president, attempting to bring apparently irreconcilable political perspectives on the Middle East into some sort of congruence. On the face of it they succeeded. Against the odds, before the end of 2009 Netanyahu had formally accepted the two-state solution as the desired outcome of any future peace deal, and had, moreover, instituted a ten-month moratorium on building in the settlements of the West Bank.
This was the overall position at the start of 2010 – sufficiently encouraging, it seemed to me, to give hope of some sort of breakthrough during the course of the year. And so I decided that for twelve months, starting on 1 January 2010, I would follow the ups and downs in what could scarcely at the time be called a "peace process". How much, if anything, would be achieved during the year? Would my initial feeling that we were on the brink of a breakthrough be realised? These were the questions that my articles would eventually reveal.
So I created the blog “A Mid-East Journal”, and posted the pieces as I wrote them. Taken together, they trace the tortuous progress of the early efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, recording the occasional gleams of hope and the predictable setbacks, and then, when the principals were finally brought face-to-face, both the depressing cynicism of many about the prospects of success, and the uplifting determination of a few to maintain the process, whatever the setbacks – and there were many. The articles record also events in the region that impacted on the peace process – the Gaza flotilla episode, the “Mossad assassination” in Dubai, the Lebanon border incident, the rocket attacks on Israel.
Of course the breakthrough that seemed so enticing a possibility in January – and virtually within grasp in September, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down at the same table with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for their first direct face-to-face talks in nearly two years – had by December apparently turned to dust and ashes.
The peace process had certainly stalled. Yet it had not foundered. President Obama had invested so much in his Middle East policy that he could not – indeed he simply refused – to acknowledge defeat. As the year ended, behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity led by the US administration was fast and furious, while in front of the curtain US special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had virtually reopened the initial, pre-breakdown, "proximity talks" phase – a version of shuttle diplomacy aimed at keeping dialogue between the principal parties open.
At the same time a new factor in the complex equation had emerged – moves by the Palestinians towards a form of "unilateral declaration of statehood", initially by seeking recognition from international bodies and friendly states for a sovereign Palestine within the boundaries that existed just prior to the Six Day War in 1967. Practical considerations of many sorts probably militate against success in this enterprise on its own, but as a psychological means of exerting pressure on the right-wing within Israel's coalition government, it may prove effective.
Whatever the outcome of this, and of the many other initiatives afoot at the end of the year aimed at trying to break the Israeli-Palestinian log-jam, it is clear that when eventually the first history of the sovereign state of Palestine, and the next history of the sovereign state of Israel, come to be written, the events of 2010 will prove of major significance in both stories – and I hope my book, “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” will provide those future historians not only with the facts that underlay the events of 2010, but also background to and commentary on the facts.
Details of “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” can be found at:
http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=1390
I began this blog early in January 2010, and I wrote the last piece on 30 December. My intention from the start was to follow the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of the peace process during a period that I thought might prove a turning point in the history of both Israel and Palestine – and then to produce a book about the events that I had lived through and described.
As 2010 dawned, it seemed to me possible that the year might prove seminal in the long-drawn-out process of finding an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. Although many of the negative factors that had frustrated past efforts were still present, the signs that meaningful negotiations might be resumed and brought, eventually, to some sort of favourable outcome seemed more hopeful than for many years.
Within its first days in office, the new US administration had clearly marked the Middle East as a priority for its attention. It was on 22 January 2009, in a special ceremony in the White House, that newly-elected President Barack Obama named George Mitchell his "special envoy to the Middle East". The event, attended also by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was widely interpreted as a determination on Obama's part to involve himself and his new administration in working for, and in finally achieving, a settlement to the long-running Arab-Israel dispute.
At the ceremony Mitchell said that, along with Obama and Clinton, he believed the objective of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state living side by side was possible, and that the conflict, old as it was, could be resolved
Obama charged his Middle East envoy to return to the Middle East, and to seek a "comprehensive peace". By that, Mitchell soon made clear, he meant not only a settlement of the Israel-Palestine impasse, but also peace between Israel and Syria, and between Israel and Lebanon, and a normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab world as a whole – ambitious objectives indeed, and certainly not susceptible of achievement in the space of one short twelvemonth. Some sort of breakthrough in the long-lasting Israel-Palestine dispute did, however, seem a possibility.
It was in March 2009 that the Obama administration explicitly incorporated into US policy the 2002 Arab League peace plan, originally mooted by Saudi Arabia, under which the Arab world undertook formally to recognise Israel and enter into normal relations with her, in exchange for Israel's withdrawing from territories captured in the 1967 war. Three months later President Obama, in an unprecedented move, reached out to the Muslim world in a speech in Cairo.
In what must still be regarded as an historic address, Obama said the "cycle of suspicion and discord" between the United States and the Muslim world must end. He called for a "new beginning"; both sides needed to make a "sustained effort... to respect one another and seek common ground". The US bond with Israel was unbreakable, he said, but the Palestinians' plight was "intolerable".
Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way one chooses to regard the matter, water continued to flow under the bridge. Events overtook aspirations. For example, it quickly became apparent that all the overtures in the world counted for nothing against the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
As regards the position of the Palestinians, the West Bank, administered by the Palestinian Authority, had been enjoying unprecedented economic growth – something between 5% and 7% was the World Bank's estimate for 2009. Meanwhile the Islamist terrorist organisation Hamas, having seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody internecine coup d'état, remained virtually at war with Fatah, its rivals within the Palestinian Authority, and deeply opposed to any accommodation with, or even recognition of, Israel.
Considering itself at war with Israel, Hamas had pursued a consistent policy of firing rockets from Gaza, indiscriminately hitting anything within range. Supplied with ever more sophisticated weaponry from Iran and Syria, Hamas's attacks started reaching deeper and deeper into Israel. Finally, in December 2008 – after Barack Obama had won the Presidential election, but before his inauguration – Israel launched its short, sharp and devastating Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas regime.
The legacies of that conflict were a virtual cessation of the rocket incursions, accusations that Israel's attack had taken too little account of the impact on the civilian population, and a continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip by both Israel and Egypt – Egypt being as keen as Israel to prevent Hamas boosting its military capabilities. Israel's blockade, which allowed a regular though restricted flow of humanitarian aid through the main land crossings, extended also to a naval blockade aimed at preventing the import of weaponry and related materials by sea.
A possible additional legacy of the conflict – though this is difficult to assess – was that Hamas had agreed to Egypt acting as a mediator in talks aimed at the release of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured in June 2006 by Hamas in a cross-border raid and held prisoner in the Gaza Strip ever since.
In Israel the intensive peace talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, that had occupied the then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, during the final months of 2008, came to a sudden end with Israel's strike against Hamas in the December. In any case, Olmert was already acting in a caretaker capacity, following his resignation after charges of corruption, and Israel was awaiting new elections. These produced a change of government, and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu finally headed his new – and rather fragile – coalition in March 2009.
The following months saw Israel's right-wing prime minister, and America's new Democrat president, attempting to bring apparently irreconcilable political perspectives on the Middle East into some sort of congruence. On the face of it they succeeded. Against the odds, before the end of 2009 Netanyahu had formally accepted the two-state solution as the desired outcome of any future peace deal, and had, moreover, instituted a ten-month moratorium on building in the settlements of the West Bank.
This was the overall position at the start of 2010 – sufficiently encouraging, it seemed to me, to give hope of some sort of breakthrough during the course of the year. And so I decided that for twelve months, starting on 1 January 2010, I would follow the ups and downs in what could scarcely at the time be called a "peace process". How much, if anything, would be achieved during the year? Would my initial feeling that we were on the brink of a breakthrough be realised? These were the questions that my articles would eventually reveal.
So I created the blog “A Mid-East Journal”, and posted the pieces as I wrote them. Taken together, they trace the tortuous progress of the early efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, recording the occasional gleams of hope and the predictable setbacks, and then, when the principals were finally brought face-to-face, both the depressing cynicism of many about the prospects of success, and the uplifting determination of a few to maintain the process, whatever the setbacks – and there were many. The articles record also events in the region that impacted on the peace process – the Gaza flotilla episode, the “Mossad assassination” in Dubai, the Lebanon border incident, the rocket attacks on Israel.
Of course the breakthrough that seemed so enticing a possibility in January – and virtually within grasp in September, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down at the same table with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for their first direct face-to-face talks in nearly two years – had by December apparently turned to dust and ashes.
The peace process had certainly stalled. Yet it had not foundered. President Obama had invested so much in his Middle East policy that he could not – indeed he simply refused – to acknowledge defeat. As the year ended, behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity led by the US administration was fast and furious, while in front of the curtain US special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had virtually reopened the initial, pre-breakdown, "proximity talks" phase – a version of shuttle diplomacy aimed at keeping dialogue between the principal parties open.
At the same time a new factor in the complex equation had emerged – moves by the Palestinians towards a form of "unilateral declaration of statehood", initially by seeking recognition from international bodies and friendly states for a sovereign Palestine within the boundaries that existed just prior to the Six Day War in 1967. Practical considerations of many sorts probably militate against success in this enterprise on its own, but as a psychological means of exerting pressure on the right-wing within Israel's coalition government, it may prove effective.
Whatever the outcome of this, and of the many other initiatives afoot at the end of the year aimed at trying to break the Israeli-Palestinian log-jam, it is clear that when eventually the first history of the sovereign state of Palestine, and the next history of the sovereign state of Israel, come to be written, the events of 2010 will prove of major significance in both stories – and I hope my book, “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” will provide those future historians not only with the facts that underlay the events of 2010, but also background to and commentary on the facts.
Details of “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” can be found at:
http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=1390
Thursday, 30 December 2010
December Reviewed
Neither breakthrough nor breakdown
Early in December it became undeniable that the impetus towards achieving a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority had slowed almost to a stop. Brokered painstakingly from the beginning of 2010 by the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, the process had moved slowly into an initial “proximity” talks phase which, against all the odds, managed to weather the storms of the Ramat Shlomo building project in East Jerusalem; the consequential spat between President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; recourse by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the Arab League for political cover; and the tragic Mavi Marmara affair.
And then, against all the odds, but certainly as the result of the most intensive diplomatic and political activity on the part of Washington – and despite a succession of spoiling actions by various extremist groups, aimed at destabilising the situation – Arab League foreign ministers proceeded to give the OK to Mahmoud Abbas to enter direct peace talks with Israel if and when he wanted to.
As a result, perhaps the most surprising event of the year occurred on 20 August when, at a press conference, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, were to begin direct peace talks in Washington on 2 September. This meeting, said Clinton, was intended to "re-launch direct negotiations to resolve all final status issues, which," she said, "we believe we can complete in one year." Clinton said she herself would host the first direct Israel-Palestinian negotiating session on 2 September, and that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan had also been invited to join that first discussion.
As we now know, that first session indeed took place amid many honeyed words and assurances from both sides that the framework of a final settlement would be a possibility within 12 months. But the worm lurking at the heart of the situation was that Israel’s 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank was scheduled to end on 26 September. Clearly Mahmoud Abbas cherished the hope that, in view of the opening of direct talks and the lightening of the political atmosphere, Israel’s building freeze would be renewed – and indeed extended to cover East Jerusalem. If that was indeed his hope it was a vain one, for he reckoned without the right-wing elements within Netanyahu’s fragile coalition – the coalition he relied on to remain in power. So Abbas’s position hardened, and he finally made the return of the Palestinians to the negotiating table entirely dependent on a renewed construction moratorium covering not only the West Bank but East Jerusalem as well.
Israel too adopted a harder line, and maintained that there would be no renewed building freeze without some compensation – such as recognition by the PA of Israel as a Jewish state. This proposition the Palestinians rejected out of hand. And so it was left to the US to attempt to patch together some sort of formula that would enable the peace process to continue.
That formula, which rumour has it is still a possibility, has so far failed to materialise, but US special envoy George Mitchell has meanwhile returned to the region, and has virtually reopened the earlier proximity talks method of keeping dialogue going between two sides who, for the moment, are not prepared to meet face to face.
A sad way to end a year that opened with such high hopes of a possible breakthrough in the apparently endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Meanwhile the Palestinians have opened a new front in their search for a sovereign state – moves suggesting the possibility of a unilateral declaration of statehood. They have begun to woo such bodies as the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the European Union and as many countries as possible to grant them recognition as a state within the borders of the West Bank and Gaza as they were on 4 June 1967 – the day before the Six Day War.
And indeed on Christmas Eve 2010 Ecuador became the fifth Latin American state formally to recognise Palestine on this basis. Following his neighbours Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, which took this step earlier in December, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa signed "the Ecuadoran government's official recognition of Palestine as a free and independent state with 1967 borders."
The term "the 1967 borders" has been part of the Arab-Israeli peace process lexicon for over five years, but the plain fact of the matter is that in 1967 there was no recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel. What existed was the 1949 Armistice Line – basically where Israeli and Arab forces found themselves at the formal end of Israel's first battle against the combined Arab armies that surrounded it. And all sides agree that a final agreement will have to incorporate land swaps aimed at ensuring secure borders for both Israel and the future Palestine.
In virtual acknowledgement that the"1967 borders" would be totally inadequate as a basis for establishing a sovereign Palestine, the EU, although recently reaffirming its readiness to recognise a Palestinian state at an "appropriate" time, stopped short of doing so and instead reaffirmed support for "a negotiated solution" between the two sides "within the 12 months set by the Quartet" of international mediators.
The fact that this approach is unlikely in itself to prove fruitful may not inhibit Abbas from pursuing it, on the grounds that to do so may exert such a degree of psychological pressure on Israel's hard-line rightists that – to quote the Johnny Mercer song – "something's gotta give."
Meanwhile PA prime minister Salam Fayyad has not abandoned his August 2011 deadline for preparing for Palestinian statehood (and by implication Israeli withdrawal) – a deadline which, by coincidence or not, exactly matches that endorsed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas at their first direct face-to-face discussion on 2 September for reaching agreement on a framework settlement.
And so December comes to an end. The year 2010, though it achieved a memorable climax in the opening of direct talks in September, certainly witnessed no breakthrough in the long voyage towards an accord between Israelis and Palestinians. But equally the peace process has not broken down; it has stalled, as any vessel may do in stormy weather, battered by wind and waves. The ship can, and surely will, be repaired, and the journey towards a just and durable peace between Israel and a sovereign state of Palestine finally brought to a successful conclusion.
Early in December it became undeniable that the impetus towards achieving a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority had slowed almost to a stop. Brokered painstakingly from the beginning of 2010 by the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, the process had moved slowly into an initial “proximity” talks phase which, against all the odds, managed to weather the storms of the Ramat Shlomo building project in East Jerusalem; the consequential spat between President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; recourse by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the Arab League for political cover; and the tragic Mavi Marmara affair.
And then, against all the odds, but certainly as the result of the most intensive diplomatic and political activity on the part of Washington – and despite a succession of spoiling actions by various extremist groups, aimed at destabilising the situation – Arab League foreign ministers proceeded to give the OK to Mahmoud Abbas to enter direct peace talks with Israel if and when he wanted to.
As a result, perhaps the most surprising event of the year occurred on 20 August when, at a press conference, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, were to begin direct peace talks in Washington on 2 September. This meeting, said Clinton, was intended to "re-launch direct negotiations to resolve all final status issues, which," she said, "we believe we can complete in one year." Clinton said she herself would host the first direct Israel-Palestinian negotiating session on 2 September, and that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan had also been invited to join that first discussion.
As we now know, that first session indeed took place amid many honeyed words and assurances from both sides that the framework of a final settlement would be a possibility within 12 months. But the worm lurking at the heart of the situation was that Israel’s 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank was scheduled to end on 26 September. Clearly Mahmoud Abbas cherished the hope that, in view of the opening of direct talks and the lightening of the political atmosphere, Israel’s building freeze would be renewed – and indeed extended to cover East Jerusalem. If that was indeed his hope it was a vain one, for he reckoned without the right-wing elements within Netanyahu’s fragile coalition – the coalition he relied on to remain in power. So Abbas’s position hardened, and he finally made the return of the Palestinians to the negotiating table entirely dependent on a renewed construction moratorium covering not only the West Bank but East Jerusalem as well.
Israel too adopted a harder line, and maintained that there would be no renewed building freeze without some compensation – such as recognition by the PA of Israel as a Jewish state. This proposition the Palestinians rejected out of hand. And so it was left to the US to attempt to patch together some sort of formula that would enable the peace process to continue.
That formula, which rumour has it is still a possibility, has so far failed to materialise, but US special envoy George Mitchell has meanwhile returned to the region, and has virtually reopened the earlier proximity talks method of keeping dialogue going between two sides who, for the moment, are not prepared to meet face to face.
A sad way to end a year that opened with such high hopes of a possible breakthrough in the apparently endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Meanwhile the Palestinians have opened a new front in their search for a sovereign state – moves suggesting the possibility of a unilateral declaration of statehood. They have begun to woo such bodies as the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the European Union and as many countries as possible to grant them recognition as a state within the borders of the West Bank and Gaza as they were on 4 June 1967 – the day before the Six Day War.
And indeed on Christmas Eve 2010 Ecuador became the fifth Latin American state formally to recognise Palestine on this basis. Following his neighbours Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, which took this step earlier in December, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa signed "the Ecuadoran government's official recognition of Palestine as a free and independent state with 1967 borders."
The term "the 1967 borders" has been part of the Arab-Israeli peace process lexicon for over five years, but the plain fact of the matter is that in 1967 there was no recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel. What existed was the 1949 Armistice Line – basically where Israeli and Arab forces found themselves at the formal end of Israel's first battle against the combined Arab armies that surrounded it. And all sides agree that a final agreement will have to incorporate land swaps aimed at ensuring secure borders for both Israel and the future Palestine.
In virtual acknowledgement that the"1967 borders" would be totally inadequate as a basis for establishing a sovereign Palestine, the EU, although recently reaffirming its readiness to recognise a Palestinian state at an "appropriate" time, stopped short of doing so and instead reaffirmed support for "a negotiated solution" between the two sides "within the 12 months set by the Quartet" of international mediators.
The fact that this approach is unlikely in itself to prove fruitful may not inhibit Abbas from pursuing it, on the grounds that to do so may exert such a degree of psychological pressure on Israel's hard-line rightists that – to quote the Johnny Mercer song – "something's gotta give."
Meanwhile PA prime minister Salam Fayyad has not abandoned his August 2011 deadline for preparing for Palestinian statehood (and by implication Israeli withdrawal) – a deadline which, by coincidence or not, exactly matches that endorsed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas at their first direct face-to-face discussion on 2 September for reaching agreement on a framework settlement.
And so December comes to an end. The year 2010, though it achieved a memorable climax in the opening of direct talks in September, certainly witnessed no breakthrough in the long voyage towards an accord between Israelis and Palestinians. But equally the peace process has not broken down; it has stalled, as any vessel may do in stormy weather, battered by wind and waves. The ship can, and surely will, be repaired, and the journey towards a just and durable peace between Israel and a sovereign state of Palestine finally brought to a successful conclusion.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Israel-Palestine – can Obama’s errors be rectified?
Bradley Burston, an American-born Israeli journalist, is a regular columnist for the influential daily, Ha’aretz. In today’s edition (21 December), he produces a brilliant analysis of the mistakes President Obama has perpetrated in his Middle East strategy. He weighs the effectiveness of Obama’s strategy against Sun Tzu's ancient The Art of War.
He starts by quoting two of Sun Tzu’s basic principles:
We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbours.
He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
Burston points out how very effectively Obama followed these principles in much of his domestic policy, and how abysmally he failed to do so in respect of his approach to the Middle East. Burston reckons the President should have taken more fully into account the inherently hardline background and beliefs of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the instability of Netanyahu’s coalition foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the former nightclub bouncer determined to bar entry to any peace progress; and should have made a realistic assessment of the chance of a working rapprochement between Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas in Gaza.
The last point is worth emphasising, for of what value would a peace accord be between Israel and a Palestinian Authority whose writ ran only in the West Bank? The past year has shown that every attempt to broker an understanding between Hamas and Fatah – the party of President Mahmoud Abbas – has failed. Hamas are irretrievably rejectionist – not only of any sort of peace accord with Israel, but of any rapprochement with the PA. They seized power in Gaza in a bloody coup d’état, and their aim clearly is to extend their power over the rest of the Palestinian body politic, converting it to their extreme Islamist ideology.
“A lack of movement in any one of these three elements alone,” writes Burston, “would have been sufficient to impede Washington's peace overtures. Together, they guaranteed defeat. But,” he adds, “that was just the beginning.”
To illustrate Obama’s failure in respect of his settlement policy, he quotes another of Sun Tzus’s principles: The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him. Burston asserts, not without reason, that Obama's demand for a freeze on building in the West Bank settlements including East Jerusalem played into the hands of the pro-settlement right (for to the fury of many in Israeli politics, and not only those on the right, Washington persisted in including East Jerusalem in the demand for a construction freeze).
“Had more groundwork been laid,” asserts Burston, “the administration might have concluded, correctly, that the demand for a settlement freeze would have done more harm than good. As it was, the freeze made Washington look bad for no gain and considerable pain.”
Burston asserts that if the administration had taken more time and care, it might have realized in advance that the original 10-month building freeze would not in itself be enough to bring the PA back to negotiations. In fact, once the freeze had run its course, the subsequent high-profile dispute over continued Israeli construction both in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem brought the first phase of the peace process to a juddering halt.
Even more to the point – something Burston does not touch on – the moment that Washington made public its view that all construction on the West Bank and East Jerusalem was unacceptable and should be halted (and this it did quite early on and reiterated more than once), the US administration had effectively backed Mahmoud Abbas into a corner from which there was no escape. Without so clear-cut an opinion from America, Abbas could have brokered a deal with Netanyhau, an understanding of the sort that has existed for many years. Construction in the West Bank has never inhibited previous attempts by Israel and the Palestinians to talk about the issues. It has proved an insurmountable stumbling block this time simply because the US has made it so – and in the process has strengthened the hands of Obama's pro-settlement, anti-peace process opponents in Israel and the United States.
Then there was the matter of Obama's Cairo address to the Muslim and Arab world in June 2009. "The intention was good," wrote commentator Nahum Barnea, visiting Chicago this month to interview Rahm Emanuel for Israel’s leading Hebrew language newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “The result was destructive.” Obama sought to turn a new leaf with Arabs and Islamic peoples, wrote Barnea, but in the wake of the speech, "the Muslims he failed to gain, and the Israelis he lost."
According to Barnea, "Obama's path in the twists and turns of the Mideast has been paved with errors." Barnea's list:
Mistake A: Obama was convinced that the Palestinian issue was first on the order of priorities of pro-American Arab leaders, and that a working peace process would win their gratitude. But given Wikileaks, what the Arab leaders really wanted was for the U.S. "to annihilate Iran for them.”
Mistake B: Turning the peace process into "a hostage of the settlement freeze."
Mistake C: Thinking that the Israeli Labour leader, Ehud Barak, a conviction dove on the peace process, could effectively influence Netanyahu.
Mistake D: Making the same error with Israel that he had with the Arabs, that is, thinking that there was a connection between what Netanyahu said in public, and what he did in practice.
The end result? A foundering of the first phase of the peace process that had been so painstakingly brokered by Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, and finally brought to the point of direct face-to-face talks at the start of September.
Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? Well, in the nursery rhyme all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t achieve it – but in international politics anything is possible. Nil desperandum, as the Roman poet Horace has it – “Don’t despair.”
For two senior US officials arrived in Israel on Sunday (19 December) to continue discussions with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and officials, as part of the Obama administration's attempt to revive the diplomatic process between the two sides. Dan Shapiro, Director of the US National Security Council, and David Hale, deputy to US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, are set to meet with senior prime ministerial aides Isaac Molho, Ron Dermer and Uzi Arad. They will also meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the PA's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat.
Also on Sunday, a group of over 100 Israeli politicians and activists from across the political spectrum visited PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, under the auspices of the Geneva Initiative. The delegation was led by former Labour Chairman Amram Mitzna. It included members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, from the centrist Kadima and left-leaning Labour and Meretz parties, as well as activists from the centre-right Likud party and ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Abbas told the gathering that he had reached understandings with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on security issues during talks in 2008, and rejected accusations that he had failed to respond to Olmert's peace proposal.
With many in Israel sceptical about the chances of a breakthrough in final status talks, there are various voices calling for an alternative approach, including the opposition Kadima party’s deputy leader and former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz. Ideas include some form of interim agreement, as opposed to a final status accord, which would give the Palestinians greater control over the West Bank, whilst deferring for now the final status issues.
All of which are straws in the wind, indicating ways in which the peace process might indeed be revived, and Phase Two launched, in 2011. "A consummation," as Shakespeare so felicitously puts it, "devoutly to be wished."
He starts by quoting two of Sun Tzu’s basic principles:
We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbours.
He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
Burston points out how very effectively Obama followed these principles in much of his domestic policy, and how abysmally he failed to do so in respect of his approach to the Middle East. Burston reckons the President should have taken more fully into account the inherently hardline background and beliefs of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the instability of Netanyahu’s coalition foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the former nightclub bouncer determined to bar entry to any peace progress; and should have made a realistic assessment of the chance of a working rapprochement between Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas in Gaza.
The last point is worth emphasising, for of what value would a peace accord be between Israel and a Palestinian Authority whose writ ran only in the West Bank? The past year has shown that every attempt to broker an understanding between Hamas and Fatah – the party of President Mahmoud Abbas – has failed. Hamas are irretrievably rejectionist – not only of any sort of peace accord with Israel, but of any rapprochement with the PA. They seized power in Gaza in a bloody coup d’état, and their aim clearly is to extend their power over the rest of the Palestinian body politic, converting it to their extreme Islamist ideology.
“A lack of movement in any one of these three elements alone,” writes Burston, “would have been sufficient to impede Washington's peace overtures. Together, they guaranteed defeat. But,” he adds, “that was just the beginning.”
To illustrate Obama’s failure in respect of his settlement policy, he quotes another of Sun Tzus’s principles: The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him. Burston asserts, not without reason, that Obama's demand for a freeze on building in the West Bank settlements including East Jerusalem played into the hands of the pro-settlement right (for to the fury of many in Israeli politics, and not only those on the right, Washington persisted in including East Jerusalem in the demand for a construction freeze).
“Had more groundwork been laid,” asserts Burston, “the administration might have concluded, correctly, that the demand for a settlement freeze would have done more harm than good. As it was, the freeze made Washington look bad for no gain and considerable pain.”
Burston asserts that if the administration had taken more time and care, it might have realized in advance that the original 10-month building freeze would not in itself be enough to bring the PA back to negotiations. In fact, once the freeze had run its course, the subsequent high-profile dispute over continued Israeli construction both in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem brought the first phase of the peace process to a juddering halt.
Even more to the point – something Burston does not touch on – the moment that Washington made public its view that all construction on the West Bank and East Jerusalem was unacceptable and should be halted (and this it did quite early on and reiterated more than once), the US administration had effectively backed Mahmoud Abbas into a corner from which there was no escape. Without so clear-cut an opinion from America, Abbas could have brokered a deal with Netanyhau, an understanding of the sort that has existed for many years. Construction in the West Bank has never inhibited previous attempts by Israel and the Palestinians to talk about the issues. It has proved an insurmountable stumbling block this time simply because the US has made it so – and in the process has strengthened the hands of Obama's pro-settlement, anti-peace process opponents in Israel and the United States.
Then there was the matter of Obama's Cairo address to the Muslim and Arab world in June 2009. "The intention was good," wrote commentator Nahum Barnea, visiting Chicago this month to interview Rahm Emanuel for Israel’s leading Hebrew language newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “The result was destructive.” Obama sought to turn a new leaf with Arabs and Islamic peoples, wrote Barnea, but in the wake of the speech, "the Muslims he failed to gain, and the Israelis he lost."
According to Barnea, "Obama's path in the twists and turns of the Mideast has been paved with errors." Barnea's list:
Mistake A: Obama was convinced that the Palestinian issue was first on the order of priorities of pro-American Arab leaders, and that a working peace process would win their gratitude. But given Wikileaks, what the Arab leaders really wanted was for the U.S. "to annihilate Iran for them.”
Mistake B: Turning the peace process into "a hostage of the settlement freeze."
Mistake C: Thinking that the Israeli Labour leader, Ehud Barak, a conviction dove on the peace process, could effectively influence Netanyahu.
Mistake D: Making the same error with Israel that he had with the Arabs, that is, thinking that there was a connection between what Netanyahu said in public, and what he did in practice.
The end result? A foundering of the first phase of the peace process that had been so painstakingly brokered by Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, and finally brought to the point of direct face-to-face talks at the start of September.
Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? Well, in the nursery rhyme all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t achieve it – but in international politics anything is possible. Nil desperandum, as the Roman poet Horace has it – “Don’t despair.”
For two senior US officials arrived in Israel on Sunday (19 December) to continue discussions with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and officials, as part of the Obama administration's attempt to revive the diplomatic process between the two sides. Dan Shapiro, Director of the US National Security Council, and David Hale, deputy to US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, are set to meet with senior prime ministerial aides Isaac Molho, Ron Dermer and Uzi Arad. They will also meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the PA's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat.
Also on Sunday, a group of over 100 Israeli politicians and activists from across the political spectrum visited PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, under the auspices of the Geneva Initiative. The delegation was led by former Labour Chairman Amram Mitzna. It included members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, from the centrist Kadima and left-leaning Labour and Meretz parties, as well as activists from the centre-right Likud party and ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Abbas told the gathering that he had reached understandings with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on security issues during talks in 2008, and rejected accusations that he had failed to respond to Olmert's peace proposal.
With many in Israel sceptical about the chances of a breakthrough in final status talks, there are various voices calling for an alternative approach, including the opposition Kadima party’s deputy leader and former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz. Ideas include some form of interim agreement, as opposed to a final status accord, which would give the Palestinians greater control over the West Bank, whilst deferring for now the final status issues.
All of which are straws in the wind, indicating ways in which the peace process might indeed be revived, and Phase Two launched, in 2011. "A consummation," as Shakespeare so felicitously puts it, "devoutly to be wished."
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Israeli-Palestinian peace – Phase Two
The Obama administration clearly has no intention of turning its back on the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Phase One, which climaxed at the end of August in an unparalleled display of bonhomie between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has run itself into the ground. At the launch the two sides agreed on the goal of a framework agreement within a year. But since the conclusion of Israel's 10-month settlement freeze at the end of September, the process has stalled. Netanyahu found it politically impossible to extend the freeze and keep his coalition together, while Abbas was unwilling to continue direct talks without an extension of the freeze.
The US attempted to address this problem by getting Israel to extend the freeze for a temporary period, in return for a package of US incentives. Washington hoped that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over a 90-day period might make enough progress on core issues, particularly on borders, to build trust between the parties and keep them both at the table. At the end of last week the US acknowledged that this approach had not worked. Netanyahu was struggling to get the deal past his coalition, and the Palestinians looked set to reject the settlement freeze anyway because it would not explicitly include East Jerusalem.
Frankly admitting that Phase One of the peace process had foundered, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week provided a detailed explanation of the Obama administration's plans to move it forward. Whilst the US had given up for now the hope of direct talks, Clinton also made clear that they did not support any attempt to impose a solution. Instead, they now proposed to try to make progress by getting the parties to set out their positions in dialogue with the US. Washington will then try to narrow gaps by asking ‘tough questions and expecting substantive answers', and will ‘offer our own ideas and bridging proposals when appropriate.'
Clinton stated that the defined goal remains ‘a framework agreement that would establish the fundamental compromises on all permanent status issues and pave the way for a final peace treaty', as agreed by the parties at the September summit. The one-year timetable has been conspicuously dropped, but the determination of the US to move forward with this issue appears as strong as ever.
US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, maintains a pivotal role in this process, and so a first step was for him to return to the region, and virtually resume the “proximity talks” which preceded the reopening of face-to-face negotiations.
George Mitchell met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday (Wednesday, 15 December), and briefed him on the latest developments. Now, according to a news agency report today, 16 December, Mitchell has proposed that the United States holds separate, parallel talks with Israelis and Palestinians for six weeks, to discuss security and borders, in order to enable Washington to develop a strategy for the eventual re-launch of direct negotiations. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to convene his 'septet' of senior ministers to discuss the new proposal.
Mitchell’s meeting with President Mubarak came as Arab League foreign ministers rejected any talks between Israeli and Palestinian representatives unless the US commits itself on the issue of the borders of a future Palestinian state. The ministers also agreed to go to the UN Security Council to seek a resolution against the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
What is, perhaps, significant, is that the Arab League has as yet not endorsed either of the two threats made by Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and which appear to represent his current position. One is to break off – or at least not to re-enter – the peace process unless Israel agrees to a complete freeze on building in all West Bank settlements including East Jerusalem. The other is to seek UN Security Council recognition for what might be termed a “unilateral declaration of statehood” by the Palestinian Authority. A significant factor inhibiting any such action by the League might be that Hillary Clinton’s recent speech included an explicit rejection of the idea. And since the US is in a position to veto any such move in the Security Council, a statement by the Arab League supporting the idea would be a somewhat empty gesture.
It may also be of significance that earlier in the week the EU, although reaffirming its readiness to recognise a Palestinian state at an "appropriate" time, stopped short of outright recognition despite mounting pressure from a minority of states to seek to break the Middle East impasse in this way, and despite Argentina and Uruguay joining Brazil in actually declaring that they recognised an independent Palestinian state.
The fact is that, following long and prickly negotiations, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels adopted a statement that falls short of an ultimatum and breaks little new ground. So while the EU statement expresses "regret" at Israel's rejection of a new freeze, describing settlements as "illegal" and "an obstacle to peace", it underlines EU support for "a negotiated solution" between the two sides "within the 12 months set by the Quartet" of international mediators.
It does, however, also welcome a recent World Bank assessment that the Palestinian Authority "is well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future" and goes on to say that the EU "reiterates its readiness, when appropriate, to recognise a Palestinian state." “When appropriate” are the operative words and, in the light of what the EU foreign ministers say, appear to mean “following a negotiated settlement.”
Let us hope so, as the hazard-strewn peace process sets out on Phase Two of its uncertain journey.
The US attempted to address this problem by getting Israel to extend the freeze for a temporary period, in return for a package of US incentives. Washington hoped that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over a 90-day period might make enough progress on core issues, particularly on borders, to build trust between the parties and keep them both at the table. At the end of last week the US acknowledged that this approach had not worked. Netanyahu was struggling to get the deal past his coalition, and the Palestinians looked set to reject the settlement freeze anyway because it would not explicitly include East Jerusalem.
Frankly admitting that Phase One of the peace process had foundered, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week provided a detailed explanation of the Obama administration's plans to move it forward. Whilst the US had given up for now the hope of direct talks, Clinton also made clear that they did not support any attempt to impose a solution. Instead, they now proposed to try to make progress by getting the parties to set out their positions in dialogue with the US. Washington will then try to narrow gaps by asking ‘tough questions and expecting substantive answers', and will ‘offer our own ideas and bridging proposals when appropriate.'
Clinton stated that the defined goal remains ‘a framework agreement that would establish the fundamental compromises on all permanent status issues and pave the way for a final peace treaty', as agreed by the parties at the September summit. The one-year timetable has been conspicuously dropped, but the determination of the US to move forward with this issue appears as strong as ever.
US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, maintains a pivotal role in this process, and so a first step was for him to return to the region, and virtually resume the “proximity talks” which preceded the reopening of face-to-face negotiations.
George Mitchell met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday (Wednesday, 15 December), and briefed him on the latest developments. Now, according to a news agency report today, 16 December, Mitchell has proposed that the United States holds separate, parallel talks with Israelis and Palestinians for six weeks, to discuss security and borders, in order to enable Washington to develop a strategy for the eventual re-launch of direct negotiations. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to convene his 'septet' of senior ministers to discuss the new proposal.
Mitchell’s meeting with President Mubarak came as Arab League foreign ministers rejected any talks between Israeli and Palestinian representatives unless the US commits itself on the issue of the borders of a future Palestinian state. The ministers also agreed to go to the UN Security Council to seek a resolution against the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
What is, perhaps, significant, is that the Arab League has as yet not endorsed either of the two threats made by Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and which appear to represent his current position. One is to break off – or at least not to re-enter – the peace process unless Israel agrees to a complete freeze on building in all West Bank settlements including East Jerusalem. The other is to seek UN Security Council recognition for what might be termed a “unilateral declaration of statehood” by the Palestinian Authority. A significant factor inhibiting any such action by the League might be that Hillary Clinton’s recent speech included an explicit rejection of the idea. And since the US is in a position to veto any such move in the Security Council, a statement by the Arab League supporting the idea would be a somewhat empty gesture.
It may also be of significance that earlier in the week the EU, although reaffirming its readiness to recognise a Palestinian state at an "appropriate" time, stopped short of outright recognition despite mounting pressure from a minority of states to seek to break the Middle East impasse in this way, and despite Argentina and Uruguay joining Brazil in actually declaring that they recognised an independent Palestinian state.
The fact is that, following long and prickly negotiations, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels adopted a statement that falls short of an ultimatum and breaks little new ground. So while the EU statement expresses "regret" at Israel's rejection of a new freeze, describing settlements as "illegal" and "an obstacle to peace", it underlines EU support for "a negotiated solution" between the two sides "within the 12 months set by the Quartet" of international mediators.
It does, however, also welcome a recent World Bank assessment that the Palestinian Authority "is well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future" and goes on to say that the EU "reiterates its readiness, when appropriate, to recognise a Palestinian state." “When appropriate” are the operative words and, in the light of what the EU foreign ministers say, appear to mean “following a negotiated settlement.”
Let us hope so, as the hazard-strewn peace process sets out on Phase Two of its uncertain journey.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Israeli-Palestinian peace – the end of Phase One
That the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has stalled is undeniable. That it has foundered is almost certainly not the case – “almost” because nothing is certain, but the portents for a revival of negotiations are far from unfavourable.
For one thing, President Obama has invested too much political capital in achieving a Middle East breakthrough to walk away at the first major setback. For another, it is pretty obvious to the Arab League in general, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, that the first and best hope of achieving a sovereign Palestine lies in coming to an agreement with Israel. Yes, they have a couple of other options up their sleeves (eg seeking endorsement from the UN Security Council for a unilateral declaration of independence), but the chances of such a move achieving their objective are remote. For the reality of the situation is that the areas in the West Bank that they seek to acquire in order to create their state are in Israel’s hands as the occupying power, and would scarcely be handed over in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement.
As for the Gaza Strip, Israel has vacated the area, but its administration was seized by the terrorist Islamist organisation, Hamas, in a bloody coup in June 2007. In the elections held in January 2006 for the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas won 74 seats to the ruling Fatah's 45. President Mahmoud Abbas accordingly formed a national unity government led by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. But sharing power with the Fatah nationalists did not suit Hamas. In four days in mid-June 2007 their ‘Executive Force’ seized control of the entire Gaza Strip, sweeping away key security services and the national militia. President Abbas responded by dissolving the national unity government and forming an emergency government led by former Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Since then Hamas and Fatah have been at daggers drawn, and all efforts to achieve a reconciliation have ended in failure. It is unlikely that Hamas would meekly hand Gaza over to Abbas in the event of a unilateral declaration of independence, when their aim is control of the whole Palestinian entity.
Nor is it as if the Palestinian Authority actually has an undisputed right to the areas in question. Strictly, the position at the moment is that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip belong to no nation. Following the 1948 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, but in March 1979 Egypt renounced any claim to the territory as part of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty – the agreement which, following the Camp David Accords, made Egypt the first Arab country officially to recognize Israel. As for the West Bank, at the time of the Six Day War in 1967 Jordan had assumed sovereignty of the area (by simply annexing the region, let it be said), but in July 1988 it renounced all claims to the area. Since neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip currently fall within the sovereignty of any nation, the establishment of a sovereign state of Palestine is essential in order to acquire them in the first place, and then to bestow legitimacy on their possession.
Which perhaps explains why Washington still declares itself utterly determined to press ahead with their declared aim of bringing the two-state solution to fruition.
Last Friday (10 December), in her speech before Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton provided a detailed explanation of the Obama administration's plans to move the Middle East peace process forward in the wake of the collapse of direct peace talks.
“We will push the parties to grapple with the core issues. We will work with them on the ground to continue laying the foundations for a future Palestinian state. And we will redouble our regional diplomacy. When one way is blocked, we will seek another. We will not lose hope and neither should the people of the region. We will deepen our support of the Palestinians’ state-building efforts, because we recognize that a Palestinian state, achieved through negotiations, is inevitable.”
Commenting that she shares “the deep frustrations” of so many parties invested in the peace process who have been concerned at its stalling in recent days, she said the US would be consulting assiduously with the parties to try to reignite direct talks.
Clinton's speech marked her first Middle East policy address after the United States abandoned efforts this week to persuade Israel to stop new construction of Jewish settlements, a step the Palestinians said was essential if they were to resume direct peace talks which collapsed just weeks after their September launch.
US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell will head back to the region next week, and Clinton said diplomacy would now concentrate on a range of "core issues", all of which have so far proved difficult to resolve. These include borders and security, settlements, water, refugees, and Jerusalem itself, which Israel says is its capital but which the Palestinians also hope will serve as the capital of their future independent state.
On this key issue Israel's Defense Minster Ehud Barak, who spoke after Clinton at the Saban dinner, described the well-rehearsed solution of splitting the city. He said this issue would be discussed last and resolved along the lines set out back in 2000, namely “western Jerusalem and the Jewish suburbs for us, the heavily populated Arab neighborhoods for them, and an agreed upon solution in the ‘Holy Basin.’”
President Mahmoud Abbas has been manoeuvred by events into demanding the politically impossible from Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as his price for returning to the negotiating table – namely a freeze on all building not only in the West Bank but in East Jerusalem. This is the log-jam that Washington is determined to break.
"Israeli and Palestinian leaders should stop trying to assign blame for the next failure," said Hillary Clinton, "and focus instead on what they need to do to make these efforts succeed." She emphasized the US commitment to the peace process and that its goal was "eventually restarting direct negotiations." She continued: "In the days ahead, our discussions with both sides will be substantive, two-way conversations, with an eye toward making real progress in the next few months on the key questions of an eventual framework agreement."
Nothing could be clearer than that. And as if to underline the US commitment, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters that the Middle East peace process had not unravelled, despite the failure of the Obama administration to keep direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians alive.
“I would say we're definitely not back at square one," said Crowley. "We think, through the many, many conversations and work that we've done over the course of almost two years, we've built a foundation for what lies ahead."
So there does indeed seem to be a future for a Phase Two in the long, wearisome peace process. The hope of a sovereign state of Palestine, living alongside the state of Israel, by agreement and in peace, is not dead.
For one thing, President Obama has invested too much political capital in achieving a Middle East breakthrough to walk away at the first major setback. For another, it is pretty obvious to the Arab League in general, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, that the first and best hope of achieving a sovereign Palestine lies in coming to an agreement with Israel. Yes, they have a couple of other options up their sleeves (eg seeking endorsement from the UN Security Council for a unilateral declaration of independence), but the chances of such a move achieving their objective are remote. For the reality of the situation is that the areas in the West Bank that they seek to acquire in order to create their state are in Israel’s hands as the occupying power, and would scarcely be handed over in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement.
As for the Gaza Strip, Israel has vacated the area, but its administration was seized by the terrorist Islamist organisation, Hamas, in a bloody coup in June 2007. In the elections held in January 2006 for the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas won 74 seats to the ruling Fatah's 45. President Mahmoud Abbas accordingly formed a national unity government led by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. But sharing power with the Fatah nationalists did not suit Hamas. In four days in mid-June 2007 their ‘Executive Force’ seized control of the entire Gaza Strip, sweeping away key security services and the national militia. President Abbas responded by dissolving the national unity government and forming an emergency government led by former Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Since then Hamas and Fatah have been at daggers drawn, and all efforts to achieve a reconciliation have ended in failure. It is unlikely that Hamas would meekly hand Gaza over to Abbas in the event of a unilateral declaration of independence, when their aim is control of the whole Palestinian entity.
Nor is it as if the Palestinian Authority actually has an undisputed right to the areas in question. Strictly, the position at the moment is that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip belong to no nation. Following the 1948 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, but in March 1979 Egypt renounced any claim to the territory as part of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty – the agreement which, following the Camp David Accords, made Egypt the first Arab country officially to recognize Israel. As for the West Bank, at the time of the Six Day War in 1967 Jordan had assumed sovereignty of the area (by simply annexing the region, let it be said), but in July 1988 it renounced all claims to the area. Since neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip currently fall within the sovereignty of any nation, the establishment of a sovereign state of Palestine is essential in order to acquire them in the first place, and then to bestow legitimacy on their possession.
Which perhaps explains why Washington still declares itself utterly determined to press ahead with their declared aim of bringing the two-state solution to fruition.
Last Friday (10 December), in her speech before Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton provided a detailed explanation of the Obama administration's plans to move the Middle East peace process forward in the wake of the collapse of direct peace talks.
“We will push the parties to grapple with the core issues. We will work with them on the ground to continue laying the foundations for a future Palestinian state. And we will redouble our regional diplomacy. When one way is blocked, we will seek another. We will not lose hope and neither should the people of the region. We will deepen our support of the Palestinians’ state-building efforts, because we recognize that a Palestinian state, achieved through negotiations, is inevitable.”
Commenting that she shares “the deep frustrations” of so many parties invested in the peace process who have been concerned at its stalling in recent days, she said the US would be consulting assiduously with the parties to try to reignite direct talks.
Clinton's speech marked her first Middle East policy address after the United States abandoned efforts this week to persuade Israel to stop new construction of Jewish settlements, a step the Palestinians said was essential if they were to resume direct peace talks which collapsed just weeks after their September launch.
US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell will head back to the region next week, and Clinton said diplomacy would now concentrate on a range of "core issues", all of which have so far proved difficult to resolve. These include borders and security, settlements, water, refugees, and Jerusalem itself, which Israel says is its capital but which the Palestinians also hope will serve as the capital of their future independent state.
On this key issue Israel's Defense Minster Ehud Barak, who spoke after Clinton at the Saban dinner, described the well-rehearsed solution of splitting the city. He said this issue would be discussed last and resolved along the lines set out back in 2000, namely “western Jerusalem and the Jewish suburbs for us, the heavily populated Arab neighborhoods for them, and an agreed upon solution in the ‘Holy Basin.’”
President Mahmoud Abbas has been manoeuvred by events into demanding the politically impossible from Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as his price for returning to the negotiating table – namely a freeze on all building not only in the West Bank but in East Jerusalem. This is the log-jam that Washington is determined to break.
"Israeli and Palestinian leaders should stop trying to assign blame for the next failure," said Hillary Clinton, "and focus instead on what they need to do to make these efforts succeed." She emphasized the US commitment to the peace process and that its goal was "eventually restarting direct negotiations." She continued: "In the days ahead, our discussions with both sides will be substantive, two-way conversations, with an eye toward making real progress in the next few months on the key questions of an eventual framework agreement."
Nothing could be clearer than that. And as if to underline the US commitment, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters that the Middle East peace process had not unravelled, despite the failure of the Obama administration to keep direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians alive.
“I would say we're definitely not back at square one," said Crowley. "We think, through the many, many conversations and work that we've done over the course of almost two years, we've built a foundation for what lies ahead."
So there does indeed seem to be a future for a Phase Two in the long, wearisome peace process. The hope of a sovereign state of Palestine, living alongside the state of Israel, by agreement and in peace, is not dead.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
WikiLeaks exposes new realities in the Middle East
Following publication of the latest WikiLeaks documents, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that, after sixty years of propaganda painting Israel as the greatest threat to the Middle East, for the first time in history there is agreement that Iran is the threat. "Israel has not been damaged at all by the WikiLeaks publications," Netanyahu told a group of editors. "The documents show many sources backing Israel's assessments, particularly of Iran."
And indeed WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has shattered the widely-held “politically correct” view about the Middle East in the 21st century.
What is the accepted dogma? That the main cause of conflict in the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and that the essence of the conflict is Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Current emphasis is on the settlements and their expansion. Freeze the settlements, the argument runs, the peace talks will resume, the occupation will be brought to an end, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved and the Middle East will be stable.
This, writes Ari Shavit in Israel’s prestigious newspaper Ha’aretz, is “a kind of core belief that cannot be questioned.” He describes it as a “truth” that “formed the world view of enlightened élites in the West and directed the policies of the Western powers.”
“Then,” continues Shavit, “along came Assange and shattered the dogma. The secret documents that WikiLeaks published proved that the settlements, the occupation and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not the main problem in the Middle East. Assange proved that there was no connection between the real Middle East and the Middle East they talk about in The Washington Post, Le Monde and The Guardian. He revealed that the entire Arab world is currently busy with one problem only - Iran, Iran, Iran.”
What in fact do the leaked cables reveal? If the accounts of the conversations and the opinions reported in them are accurate – and there is no reason to suppose otherwise – they show that, contrary to their public positions, Arab leaders strongly support, and are indeed campaigning for, a US attack on Iran’s growing nuclear programme. According to the leaked documents Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah “frequently exhorted” the US to bomb Iran and “cut the head off the snake.” He warned Washington that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.”
Abu Dhabi’s crown prince is reported to have said that Iran was seeking regional domination, and urged the Americans to “take out” its nuclear capacity, or even send ground troops. Iran “is going to take us to war … it’s a matter of time.”
The king of Bahrain said the US “must terminate” Iran’s nuclear programme, “by whatever means necessary”. Zeid Rifai, then president of Jordan’s senate, said: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb.” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt expressed a “visceral hatred” for the Islamic Republic. Even Syria, according to conversations with Turkish officials, was sounding “alarm bells.”
Britain’s future secretary of state for defence, Dr Liam Fox, told the Americans that he thought the negotiations would fail and said that “the US and UK should work together to prevent a nuclear arms race” in the Middle East.
In short no government, Arab or Western, accepts Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme is merely peaceful. More to the point, perhaps, if ever a military strike by the US, or even Israel, on Iran’s nuclear capability were deemed essential, it could scarcely be followed by a universal outcry of condemnation given what the WikiLeaks documents have revealed.
And what effect has this new truth for the prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian accord? There is no doubt that the situation resulting from the Six Day War in 1967 must be resolved. The conflict is dangerous. A Palestinian sovereign state living in peace alongside Israel is the consensus objective of most parties that wish the region well. But the leaked diplomatic cables are telling us that, whether or not Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu resume the direct face-to-face talks and come to an accord, there will be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Arab world is living under Tehran's incessant threat. Iran is the heart of the problem. As long as Iran is growing stronger, is seeking nuclear weapons and is terrorizing the Middle East, there is no chance for peace.
The lesson seems to be that Iran must be dealt with, one way or another.
And indeed WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has shattered the widely-held “politically correct” view about the Middle East in the 21st century.
What is the accepted dogma? That the main cause of conflict in the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and that the essence of the conflict is Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Current emphasis is on the settlements and their expansion. Freeze the settlements, the argument runs, the peace talks will resume, the occupation will be brought to an end, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved and the Middle East will be stable.
This, writes Ari Shavit in Israel’s prestigious newspaper Ha’aretz, is “a kind of core belief that cannot be questioned.” He describes it as a “truth” that “formed the world view of enlightened élites in the West and directed the policies of the Western powers.”
“Then,” continues Shavit, “along came Assange and shattered the dogma. The secret documents that WikiLeaks published proved that the settlements, the occupation and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not the main problem in the Middle East. Assange proved that there was no connection between the real Middle East and the Middle East they talk about in The Washington Post, Le Monde and The Guardian. He revealed that the entire Arab world is currently busy with one problem only - Iran, Iran, Iran.”
What in fact do the leaked cables reveal? If the accounts of the conversations and the opinions reported in them are accurate – and there is no reason to suppose otherwise – they show that, contrary to their public positions, Arab leaders strongly support, and are indeed campaigning for, a US attack on Iran’s growing nuclear programme. According to the leaked documents Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah “frequently exhorted” the US to bomb Iran and “cut the head off the snake.” He warned Washington that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.”
Abu Dhabi’s crown prince is reported to have said that Iran was seeking regional domination, and urged the Americans to “take out” its nuclear capacity, or even send ground troops. Iran “is going to take us to war … it’s a matter of time.”
The king of Bahrain said the US “must terminate” Iran’s nuclear programme, “by whatever means necessary”. Zeid Rifai, then president of Jordan’s senate, said: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb.” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt expressed a “visceral hatred” for the Islamic Republic. Even Syria, according to conversations with Turkish officials, was sounding “alarm bells.”
Britain’s future secretary of state for defence, Dr Liam Fox, told the Americans that he thought the negotiations would fail and said that “the US and UK should work together to prevent a nuclear arms race” in the Middle East.
In short no government, Arab or Western, accepts Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme is merely peaceful. More to the point, perhaps, if ever a military strike by the US, or even Israel, on Iran’s nuclear capability were deemed essential, it could scarcely be followed by a universal outcry of condemnation given what the WikiLeaks documents have revealed.
And what effect has this new truth for the prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian accord? There is no doubt that the situation resulting from the Six Day War in 1967 must be resolved. The conflict is dangerous. A Palestinian sovereign state living in peace alongside Israel is the consensus objective of most parties that wish the region well. But the leaked diplomatic cables are telling us that, whether or not Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu resume the direct face-to-face talks and come to an accord, there will be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Arab world is living under Tehran's incessant threat. Iran is the heart of the problem. As long as Iran is growing stronger, is seeking nuclear weapons and is terrorizing the Middle East, there is no chance for peace.
The lesson seems to be that Iran must be dealt with, one way or another.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
WikiLeaks – the Israel-Palestine dimension
WikiLeaks, the website dedicated to publishing covertly acquired information, shook the diplomatic world on 28 November by starting to publish excerpts from more than 250,000 confidential United States documents it claims to have in its possession. In partnership with five Western newspapers, including the New York Times and the Guardian of London, it began putting out “redacted” versions of these documents – that is to say, the newspapers have cooperated with WikiLeaks in an attempt to reduce the potential danger to individuals from some of the more sensitive material, but not in any way to mitigate the embarrassment to the United States or its allies. It was quickly apparent that the disclosures have indeed angered Washington by exposing the inner workings of US diplomacy, including candid assessments of world leaders.
The diplomatic cables and other documents are being released in a drip-feed fashion, little by little, day by day – a tactic clearly designed to optimise their value to the newspapers who are cooperating with WikiLeaks in the operation. So far only a comparatively few have been concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but on 1 December the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, rather surprisingly defended his disclosure of the classified US documents by singling out Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example of a world leader who believes the publications will aid global diplomacy.
"We can see the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement," Assange told Time Magazine, “that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can. He believes that the result of this publication, which makes the sentiments of many privately held beliefs public, will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran."
Conspiracy theorists abound the world over, and one shouldn’t be surprised at anything that emanates from people who still believe that the notorious forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, reveals a world-wide Jewish plot to seize control of the world. Nevertheless, it is pretty astounding to learn that a senior Islamist official can announce with a straight face that the blame for the release of the WikiLeaks documents must be laid at the door of Israel, the universal scapegoat. Addressing reporters on 1 December, Huseyin Celik, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party, hinted that Israel engineered the leak of the quarter of a million US diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure the Turkish government.
“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these," Celik was quoted as saying. "Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents. Documents were released and they immediately said, ‘Israel will not suffer from this.’ How did they know that?”
The earliest revelation in the batch of cables so far released concerns the attitude of the Irish government to Israel following the second Lebanon conflict. A diplomatic cable sent from the US embassy in Ireland reveals that "the Irish Government has informally begun to place constraints on US military transits" at Shannon Airport. It seems that the Irish government, attempting to prevent weapons from reaching Israel through Shannon Airport, started requiring that any military equipment passing through the country required "prior notification" and "exemption waivers."
The Irish Transport Department notice followed an oral, but definitive, decision by Eire’s Department of Foreign Affairs during the Lebanon conflict forbidding US military transits carrying munitions to Israel. "A policy," the document reads, “that the DFA did not convey to the US embassy before informing the media."
The cable explains that this policy is due to the fact that "segments of the Irish public see the airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived US wrongdoing in the Middle East."
If we move forward to February 2009, another leaked US cable shows that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu supported the notion of land swaps with the Palestinians. An explanatory statement issued on 1 December 2010 by his Bureau said that Netanyahu meant only that he was willing to accept territorial compromises within the framework of a future peace deal. "That was Netanyahu's open policy,” said the statement, “that is his policy today and in the aforementioned meeting in February 2009, he did not voice any other position. Any other interpretation is incorrect and definitely does not represent the prime minister's position."
In the 26 February 2009 cable, written two weeks after the Israeli leader was elected, Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of land swaps and said that he did not want to govern the West Bank and Gaza, but rather to stop attacks being launched from there.
Israel and Pakistan do not share official diplomatic ties, although it is not unusual for the two countries to share intelligence on sensitive issues such as global terrorism. If we move forward to October 2009, we learn the perhaps surprising fact from one of the leaked cables that Pakistan shared intelligence information with Israel regarding possible terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli sites in India. According to the document dated 7 October 2009, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, told former US Ambassador Anne Patterson that he had conveyed to Israel intelligence on potential terror attacks in India. He told her that he had travelled to Oman and Iran to investigate information he received from the US about possible pending attacks in India.
"Pasha asked Ambassador to convey to Washington,” read the cable, “that he had followed up on threat information that an attack would be launched against India between September-November. He had been in direct touch with the Israelis on possible threats against Israeli targets in India."
Despite this cooperation on the intelligence front, Israeli officials, such as Mossad chief Meir Dagan, were quoted in other documents published by WikiLeaks expressing grave concern about the stability of the Pakistani government and the security surrounding Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.
The WikiLeaks exposé of the inner workings of American diplomacy continued with revelations that in November 2009, two weeks before Israel decided on a settlement construction freeze, Berlin was urging the US to impose such a freeze on Israel. The telegram shows that German National Security Adviser Christoph Heusgen met with US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon and with US Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy on 10 November 2009 to suggest that the United States threaten prime minister Netanyahu with withdrawing its support for blocking a vote on the Goldstone Report [on Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza] at the United Nations Security Council, if he did not agree to a building moratorium.
Heusgen is quoted in the telegram as saying that Germany believes that Netanyahu needed "to do more" to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. "He suggested pressuring Netanyahu by linking favorable United Nations Security Council (UNSC) treatment of the Goldstone Report to Israel committing to a complete stop in settlement activity."
The American officials were surprised by the proposal and said that such linkage would be counterproductive "but agreed that it was worth pointing out to the Israelis that their policy on settlements was making it difficult for their friends to hold the line in the UNSC." At the time, Arab and Muslim countries, led by Turkey and Libya, were stepping up pressure to hold discussions on the Goldstone Report at the Security Council. The US administration managed to block the initiative and avoided an anti-Israeli vote.
A final surprise revelation – for the moment – is that in the latest round of WikiLeaks documents the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has said that Israel cannot be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, and that the Jewish state deserves credit for seeking peace in light of the threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah. The Qatari leader was reported to have made the remarks during a meeting with US Senator John Kerry on 23 February 2010.
"When you consider that many in the region perceive that Hezbollah drove Israel out of Lebanon and Hamas kicked them out of the small piece of land called Gaza, it is actually surprising that the Israelis still want peace. The region, however, is still far away from peace," said the Emir.
Al-Thani told Kerry that the time was right for an Israeli-Arab peace deal, and in his opinion the best way to achieve this was to reopen negotiations with Syria using Turkey as a mediator. "The Syrian Government can help Arab extremists make tough choices, but only if the US, whose involvement is essential, demonstrates to Syria early on a willingness to address the return of the Golan Heights and supports Turkey's mediation efforts between Israel and Syria." the classified cable said.
Qatar's ties with Israel were broken off in early 2009 after Operation Cast Lead, but the document revealed that efforts were being made to mend relations, and Qatar had invited Israel’s Foreign Ministry Middle East Head, Yaakov Hadas, to Doha to discuss renewing ties.
To the general public the leaked diplomatic papers so far published cast an unusual and revealing light on how the diplomatic world really operates, and the sometimes yawning gap between what governments and diplomats say in public, and what they really believe. Embarrassing to the US and to individuals they undoubtedly are, but since all governments and all diplomats play the same game, they are unlikely to affect the course of events to any significant degree.
Of course, there may yet be a quite unexpected revelation lurking among the tens of thousands of papers not so far made public. We must wait and see.
The diplomatic cables and other documents are being released in a drip-feed fashion, little by little, day by day – a tactic clearly designed to optimise their value to the newspapers who are cooperating with WikiLeaks in the operation. So far only a comparatively few have been concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but on 1 December the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, rather surprisingly defended his disclosure of the classified US documents by singling out Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example of a world leader who believes the publications will aid global diplomacy.
"We can see the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement," Assange told Time Magazine, “that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can. He believes that the result of this publication, which makes the sentiments of many privately held beliefs public, will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran."
Conspiracy theorists abound the world over, and one shouldn’t be surprised at anything that emanates from people who still believe that the notorious forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, reveals a world-wide Jewish plot to seize control of the world. Nevertheless, it is pretty astounding to learn that a senior Islamist official can announce with a straight face that the blame for the release of the WikiLeaks documents must be laid at the door of Israel, the universal scapegoat. Addressing reporters on 1 December, Huseyin Celik, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party, hinted that Israel engineered the leak of the quarter of a million US diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure the Turkish government.
“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these," Celik was quoted as saying. "Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents. Documents were released and they immediately said, ‘Israel will not suffer from this.’ How did they know that?”
The earliest revelation in the batch of cables so far released concerns the attitude of the Irish government to Israel following the second Lebanon conflict. A diplomatic cable sent from the US embassy in Ireland reveals that "the Irish Government has informally begun to place constraints on US military transits" at Shannon Airport. It seems that the Irish government, attempting to prevent weapons from reaching Israel through Shannon Airport, started requiring that any military equipment passing through the country required "prior notification" and "exemption waivers."
The Irish Transport Department notice followed an oral, but definitive, decision by Eire’s Department of Foreign Affairs during the Lebanon conflict forbidding US military transits carrying munitions to Israel. "A policy," the document reads, “that the DFA did not convey to the US embassy before informing the media."
The cable explains that this policy is due to the fact that "segments of the Irish public see the airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived US wrongdoing in the Middle East."
If we move forward to February 2009, another leaked US cable shows that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu supported the notion of land swaps with the Palestinians. An explanatory statement issued on 1 December 2010 by his Bureau said that Netanyahu meant only that he was willing to accept territorial compromises within the framework of a future peace deal. "That was Netanyahu's open policy,” said the statement, “that is his policy today and in the aforementioned meeting in February 2009, he did not voice any other position. Any other interpretation is incorrect and definitely does not represent the prime minister's position."
In the 26 February 2009 cable, written two weeks after the Israeli leader was elected, Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of land swaps and said that he did not want to govern the West Bank and Gaza, but rather to stop attacks being launched from there.
Israel and Pakistan do not share official diplomatic ties, although it is not unusual for the two countries to share intelligence on sensitive issues such as global terrorism. If we move forward to October 2009, we learn the perhaps surprising fact from one of the leaked cables that Pakistan shared intelligence information with Israel regarding possible terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli sites in India. According to the document dated 7 October 2009, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, told former US Ambassador Anne Patterson that he had conveyed to Israel intelligence on potential terror attacks in India. He told her that he had travelled to Oman and Iran to investigate information he received from the US about possible pending attacks in India.
"Pasha asked Ambassador to convey to Washington,” read the cable, “that he had followed up on threat information that an attack would be launched against India between September-November. He had been in direct touch with the Israelis on possible threats against Israeli targets in India."
Despite this cooperation on the intelligence front, Israeli officials, such as Mossad chief Meir Dagan, were quoted in other documents published by WikiLeaks expressing grave concern about the stability of the Pakistani government and the security surrounding Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.
The WikiLeaks exposé of the inner workings of American diplomacy continued with revelations that in November 2009, two weeks before Israel decided on a settlement construction freeze, Berlin was urging the US to impose such a freeze on Israel. The telegram shows that German National Security Adviser Christoph Heusgen met with US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon and with US Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy on 10 November 2009 to suggest that the United States threaten prime minister Netanyahu with withdrawing its support for blocking a vote on the Goldstone Report [on Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza] at the United Nations Security Council, if he did not agree to a building moratorium.
Heusgen is quoted in the telegram as saying that Germany believes that Netanyahu needed "to do more" to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. "He suggested pressuring Netanyahu by linking favorable United Nations Security Council (UNSC) treatment of the Goldstone Report to Israel committing to a complete stop in settlement activity."
The American officials were surprised by the proposal and said that such linkage would be counterproductive "but agreed that it was worth pointing out to the Israelis that their policy on settlements was making it difficult for their friends to hold the line in the UNSC." At the time, Arab and Muslim countries, led by Turkey and Libya, were stepping up pressure to hold discussions on the Goldstone Report at the Security Council. The US administration managed to block the initiative and avoided an anti-Israeli vote.
A final surprise revelation – for the moment – is that in the latest round of WikiLeaks documents the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has said that Israel cannot be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, and that the Jewish state deserves credit for seeking peace in light of the threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah. The Qatari leader was reported to have made the remarks during a meeting with US Senator John Kerry on 23 February 2010.
"When you consider that many in the region perceive that Hezbollah drove Israel out of Lebanon and Hamas kicked them out of the small piece of land called Gaza, it is actually surprising that the Israelis still want peace. The region, however, is still far away from peace," said the Emir.
Al-Thani told Kerry that the time was right for an Israeli-Arab peace deal, and in his opinion the best way to achieve this was to reopen negotiations with Syria using Turkey as a mediator. "The Syrian Government can help Arab extremists make tough choices, but only if the US, whose involvement is essential, demonstrates to Syria early on a willingness to address the return of the Golan Heights and supports Turkey's mediation efforts between Israel and Syria." the classified cable said.
Qatar's ties with Israel were broken off in early 2009 after Operation Cast Lead, but the document revealed that efforts were being made to mend relations, and Qatar had invited Israel’s Foreign Ministry Middle East Head, Yaakov Hadas, to Doha to discuss renewing ties.
To the general public the leaked diplomatic papers so far published cast an unusual and revealing light on how the diplomatic world really operates, and the sometimes yawning gap between what governments and diplomats say in public, and what they really believe. Embarrassing to the US and to individuals they undoubtedly are, but since all governments and all diplomats play the same game, they are unlikely to affect the course of events to any significant degree.
Of course, there may yet be a quite unexpected revelation lurking among the tens of thousands of papers not so far made public. We must wait and see.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
November reviewed
Israeli-Palestinian stalemate; WikiLeaks doesn’t help
So this is what all the high hopes and fine words of Friday, 20 August – the launch of the long-delayed direct face-to-face peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority – have come to: an apparent stalemate, each side locked into its own rigid demand-led stance, and each unable to initiate a move that could unfreeze the situation.
“Apparent stalemate” it still – just – remains, for in the wings waits a much-trumpeted, but as yet undisclosed, agreement between the US and Israel aimed at providing a formula designed to enable the peace negotiations to resume. However, given what has emerged about this agreement, the prospects for it achieving its objective seem slim.
It seems that the US is prepared to offer Israel a number of tempting incentives in return for a 90-day building freeze in the West Bank settlements – which is part (but part only) of the Palestinians’ demands for agreeing to resume the peace talks. The package is rumoured to include the US using its veto power in the UN against any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, and eventually to providing Israel with 20 additional F-35 Joint Strike fighter jets worth some $3 billion.
The problem is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is demanding a total freeze on construction not only in the settlements, but also in east Jerusalem – and this, as he himself knows full well – is a step too far for any Israeli government even to contemplate as a formal concession. Informally, a temporary building cessation would indeed have been a feasible option, but Abbas and his spokesmen have ruled out any such “gentleman’s agreement” by publicly reiterating the full demand time and again.
Whether US diplomacy can eventually broker an agreement between the two sides, based on a new 90-day Israeli construction freeze that is confined to the West Bank, is one of the imponderables that bedevil the current situation. Another that emerged early in November is the odd, but apparently serious, possibility reported by the London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat on 29 October. Israel, the paper reported, in its secret negotiations with the American administration aimed at clarifying the nature and demarcation of a Palestinian state, has been discussing the option of Israel leasing land in east Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley from the Palestinian state for up to 99 years. Britain’s 99-year lease of Hong Kong from China in 1898 provides a precedent. Palestinian sources apparently confirmed the story.
According to one of the sources, the initiative, which he said was "American, not Israeli," has been on the table for a while now "in order to reach common ground with the Israeli side regarding the borders issue and to reach an agreement on what will remain under Israeli sovereignty." Officials in Washington refused to confirm or deny the report.
A further imponderable is how effective the current pressures on Mahmoud Abbas, aimed at stiffening his rejectionist stance, are likely to be. He is pressurised not only by the obvious suspects – Hamas, his implacable brother-Palestinian rivals in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the leaders of the peace rejectionist axis, Iran and Syria, their puppet-masters. He is under further pressure from within his own camp, Fatah.
The Fatah Revolutionary Council concluded its fifth convention in Ramallah on 27 November by declaring its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – not in itself an insuperable obstacle to a renewal of the peace talks, for that concession is one of many that are likely to be made on both sides if or when an accord is reached. As for the putative US-Israeli agreement, the council dismissed plans to supply Israel with weapons in return for reviving the stalled peace talks, adding that the Palestinians would not accept any understandings between Israel and the US which could “harm Palestinian rights and prolong occupation.”
The Fatah leaders said they supported President Mahmoud Abbas’s policies, especially regarding the peace process with Israel. “The council salutes President Mahmoud Abbas for adhering to basic rights, first and foremost the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Also, the council salutes President Abbas for standing up against pressure aimed at resuming the peace talks without achieving Palestinian demands.”
Abbas told the Fatah leaders during the three-day gathering that the Palestinians want a just and comprehensive peace, but would not compromise on their rights. He also once again ruled out the possibility of returning to the negotiating table without a full cessation of construction in settlements and east Jerusalem. The plain fact of the matter is that if Abbas indeed sticks to the east Jerusalem leg of this demand, the chances of such a return are – short of the US pulling a rabbit out of the diplomatic bag – negligible. On the other hand if he gives way on this point, his street cred among his supporters would be severely dented, while the chorus of condemnation from his critics can only be imagined.
The fact of the matter is that Abbas has boxed himself – or been boxed by Washington’s rhetoric – into a corner from which it seems well-nigh impossible to escape. For it was President Obama, backed by his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who for a long time insisted that US policy favoured a complete cessation of construction in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Finally recognising the political imperatives of the situation facing Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, they may well have backed away from that position, but for Abbas – who took his lead from them – it may be too late. The US are capable of effecting a graceful retreat; Abbas seems stuck with his own unyielding demands.
And then, on Sunday 28 November, came the latest revelations from the internet site WikiLeaks – hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that have passed between the United States and its allies. Out of the more than 250,000 documents, one of them claimed that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with both Fatah and Egypt.
The following day a top aide to Mahmoud Abbas said, perhaps choosing his words with particular care: “There were never any actual consultations between us and the Israelis before the Gaza war.” Perhaps the consultations were “virtual” rather than “actual”, but however one chooses to describe them, in a June 2009 meeting between Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak and a US congressional delegation, Barak claimed that the Israeli government "had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas."
"Not surprisingly," Barak said in the meeting, Israel "received negative answers from both."
Equally unsurprisingly is the fact that Hamas has seized the opportunity to score brownie points against its arch-rivals Fatah. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said he wasn't surprised to learn of Fatah cooperation with Israel. "We have said several times that Fatah was implicated in this war, and that they wanted to return to Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.”
In fact the leaked telegram revealed more than a one-off contact between Israel, Fatah and Egypt on the subject of Gaza. According to the document, the defense minister had also "stressed the importance of continued consultations with both Egypt and Fatah," over the reconstruction of Gaza.
Incidentally, Hamas and Fatah have held several rounds of reconciliation talks since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Earlier this month the two groups failed yet again to reconcile major differences between them on security issues, and ended their latest round of talks without setting a date for the next round.
If the WikiLeaks documents in general do anything, they reinforce – albeit with embarrassingly frank comments never intended for public consumption – previously known, or suspected, circumstances. That the “moderate” Arab gulf states were viscerally opposed to Iran’s pretensions to moral leadership of the Middle East, and mightily fearful of the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weaponry, was well known. That Israel has long conducted negotiations on a realpolitik basis with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, inter alia, was also no secret. Another Wikileaks document, recording the views of Israel’s top diplomats in Ankara of Turkey's prime minister, should also come as no surprise. They see him as a religious "fundamentalist" committed to spreading hatred against Israel. The dispatch by the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, James Jeffrey, details a conversation with his Israeli counterpart, Ambassador Gaby Levy, and points to a shared assessment of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a demagogue whose policies are fuelled by "hatred" rather than political calculations.
All of which adds a certain spice to the Middle East pudding, but advances its cooking time by not an instant.
So this is what all the high hopes and fine words of Friday, 20 August – the launch of the long-delayed direct face-to-face peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority – have come to: an apparent stalemate, each side locked into its own rigid demand-led stance, and each unable to initiate a move that could unfreeze the situation.
“Apparent stalemate” it still – just – remains, for in the wings waits a much-trumpeted, but as yet undisclosed, agreement between the US and Israel aimed at providing a formula designed to enable the peace negotiations to resume. However, given what has emerged about this agreement, the prospects for it achieving its objective seem slim.
It seems that the US is prepared to offer Israel a number of tempting incentives in return for a 90-day building freeze in the West Bank settlements – which is part (but part only) of the Palestinians’ demands for agreeing to resume the peace talks. The package is rumoured to include the US using its veto power in the UN against any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, and eventually to providing Israel with 20 additional F-35 Joint Strike fighter jets worth some $3 billion.
The problem is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is demanding a total freeze on construction not only in the settlements, but also in east Jerusalem – and this, as he himself knows full well – is a step too far for any Israeli government even to contemplate as a formal concession. Informally, a temporary building cessation would indeed have been a feasible option, but Abbas and his spokesmen have ruled out any such “gentleman’s agreement” by publicly reiterating the full demand time and again.
Whether US diplomacy can eventually broker an agreement between the two sides, based on a new 90-day Israeli construction freeze that is confined to the West Bank, is one of the imponderables that bedevil the current situation. Another that emerged early in November is the odd, but apparently serious, possibility reported by the London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat on 29 October. Israel, the paper reported, in its secret negotiations with the American administration aimed at clarifying the nature and demarcation of a Palestinian state, has been discussing the option of Israel leasing land in east Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley from the Palestinian state for up to 99 years. Britain’s 99-year lease of Hong Kong from China in 1898 provides a precedent. Palestinian sources apparently confirmed the story.
According to one of the sources, the initiative, which he said was "American, not Israeli," has been on the table for a while now "in order to reach common ground with the Israeli side regarding the borders issue and to reach an agreement on what will remain under Israeli sovereignty." Officials in Washington refused to confirm or deny the report.
A further imponderable is how effective the current pressures on Mahmoud Abbas, aimed at stiffening his rejectionist stance, are likely to be. He is pressurised not only by the obvious suspects – Hamas, his implacable brother-Palestinian rivals in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the leaders of the peace rejectionist axis, Iran and Syria, their puppet-masters. He is under further pressure from within his own camp, Fatah.
The Fatah Revolutionary Council concluded its fifth convention in Ramallah on 27 November by declaring its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – not in itself an insuperable obstacle to a renewal of the peace talks, for that concession is one of many that are likely to be made on both sides if or when an accord is reached. As for the putative US-Israeli agreement, the council dismissed plans to supply Israel with weapons in return for reviving the stalled peace talks, adding that the Palestinians would not accept any understandings between Israel and the US which could “harm Palestinian rights and prolong occupation.”
The Fatah leaders said they supported President Mahmoud Abbas’s policies, especially regarding the peace process with Israel. “The council salutes President Mahmoud Abbas for adhering to basic rights, first and foremost the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Also, the council salutes President Abbas for standing up against pressure aimed at resuming the peace talks without achieving Palestinian demands.”
Abbas told the Fatah leaders during the three-day gathering that the Palestinians want a just and comprehensive peace, but would not compromise on their rights. He also once again ruled out the possibility of returning to the negotiating table without a full cessation of construction in settlements and east Jerusalem. The plain fact of the matter is that if Abbas indeed sticks to the east Jerusalem leg of this demand, the chances of such a return are – short of the US pulling a rabbit out of the diplomatic bag – negligible. On the other hand if he gives way on this point, his street cred among his supporters would be severely dented, while the chorus of condemnation from his critics can only be imagined.
The fact of the matter is that Abbas has boxed himself – or been boxed by Washington’s rhetoric – into a corner from which it seems well-nigh impossible to escape. For it was President Obama, backed by his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who for a long time insisted that US policy favoured a complete cessation of construction in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Finally recognising the political imperatives of the situation facing Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, they may well have backed away from that position, but for Abbas – who took his lead from them – it may be too late. The US are capable of effecting a graceful retreat; Abbas seems stuck with his own unyielding demands.
And then, on Sunday 28 November, came the latest revelations from the internet site WikiLeaks – hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that have passed between the United States and its allies. Out of the more than 250,000 documents, one of them claimed that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with both Fatah and Egypt.
The following day a top aide to Mahmoud Abbas said, perhaps choosing his words with particular care: “There were never any actual consultations between us and the Israelis before the Gaza war.” Perhaps the consultations were “virtual” rather than “actual”, but however one chooses to describe them, in a June 2009 meeting between Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak and a US congressional delegation, Barak claimed that the Israeli government "had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas."
"Not surprisingly," Barak said in the meeting, Israel "received negative answers from both."
Equally unsurprisingly is the fact that Hamas has seized the opportunity to score brownie points against its arch-rivals Fatah. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said he wasn't surprised to learn of Fatah cooperation with Israel. "We have said several times that Fatah was implicated in this war, and that they wanted to return to Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.”
In fact the leaked telegram revealed more than a one-off contact between Israel, Fatah and Egypt on the subject of Gaza. According to the document, the defense minister had also "stressed the importance of continued consultations with both Egypt and Fatah," over the reconstruction of Gaza.
Incidentally, Hamas and Fatah have held several rounds of reconciliation talks since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Earlier this month the two groups failed yet again to reconcile major differences between them on security issues, and ended their latest round of talks without setting a date for the next round.
If the WikiLeaks documents in general do anything, they reinforce – albeit with embarrassingly frank comments never intended for public consumption – previously known, or suspected, circumstances. That the “moderate” Arab gulf states were viscerally opposed to Iran’s pretensions to moral leadership of the Middle East, and mightily fearful of the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weaponry, was well known. That Israel has long conducted negotiations on a realpolitik basis with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, inter alia, was also no secret. Another Wikileaks document, recording the views of Israel’s top diplomats in Ankara of Turkey's prime minister, should also come as no surprise. They see him as a religious "fundamentalist" committed to spreading hatred against Israel. The dispatch by the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, James Jeffrey, details a conversation with his Israeli counterpart, Ambassador Gaby Levy, and points to a shared assessment of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a demagogue whose policies are fuelled by "hatred" rather than political calculations.
All of which adds a certain spice to the Middle East pudding, but advances its cooking time by not an instant.
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Israel’s referendum
Yesterday (Monday, 22 November) Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, by a vote of 65-33, passed into law an Act unique in the nation’s history. In future, any proposal to withdraw from Israeli territory would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in the legislature. In the event that this was impossible, a national referendum would be mandatory. The law will take effect immediately.
Because the law applies only to sovereign Israeli territory, no referendum would be needed to withdraw from any part of the West Bank. However, should the Knesset not approve by a two-thirds majority, a referendum would be required for a pullout from east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, as both have been annexed by Israel. It would also be required if, under a future deal with the Palestinians, Israel ceded land within the pre-1967 lines in exchange for keeping the settlement blocs.
In all its 62-year history, Israel has never held a national referendum. Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher says: "In effect it weakens the authority of the Knesset to decide these issues, and turns it over to a system that has never been tried in Israel. It is clearly intended to make it more difficult to approve withdrawal from these territories.”
The bill was originally sponsored by Likud MKs, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in favour: "A referendum will prevent an irresponsible agreement, but at the same time will allow any agreement that satisfies Israel's national interests to pass with strong public backing." He was convinced, he added, that any agreement he submitted to the Knesset would indeed enjoy such backing.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni said it was a sign of "weak leadership," and her Kadima party voted overwhelmingly against the bill.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, was highly critical of the new law. "The Israeli leadership, yet again, is making a mockery of international law, which is not subject to the whims of Israeli public opinion. Under international law there is a clear and absolute obligation on Israel to withdraw not only from east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but from all of the territories that it has occupied since 1967. Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum."
Erekat’s view, while understandable, takes no account of the political realities. As Israel’s previous withdrawals from occupied territory – notably the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza strip – have shown, when it comes down to evacuating settlements, the government needs the utmost determination in imposing its will against often implacable opposition from its own citizens. But these earlier examples could be as nothing compared with the situation that could develop, if it came to forcible evacuations from West Bank settlements.
Imagine a situation in which an Israeli government has concluded a draft peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority involving the swapping of Israeli territory in exchange for retaining some West Bank settlements but evacuating others, and is unable to command a majority for that action in the Knesset. In such circumstances, a national referendum could provide it with enhanced legitimacy for taking the necessary action. Settlers determined to combat government efforts to evacuate them would have a far weaker case if government action were backed by a majority of the nation.
All the same, should the parliamentary vote fail, going to the Israeli public would undoubtedly be something of a gamble.
Although polls of public opinion are notoriously unreliable indicators of a nation’s mood, and indeed public opinion itself is notoriously fickle, columnist Akiva Eldar, writing recently in Israel’s Ha'aretz newspaper may be correct when he says: "Israel has gone back to having a majority of people who view peace as a dangerous trap that the Arabs are laying at the feet of weak politicians."
For example, polls tend to show most Israelis oppose ceding the Old City of Jerusalem, where Judaism's holiest site – the Western Wall – sits virtually cheek-by-jowl with the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and both are within hailing distance of Christianity’s revered Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But a comprehensive peace accord could undoubtedly incorporate a formula, reasonably satisfactory to Israelis, Palestinians and other concerned parties such as the various Christian sects currently administering their holy sites. Winning a “yes” vote in a national referendum would, in short, be dependent on the nature of the agreement for which the government was seeking endorsement, and also on how convincingly the government was able to make its case.
The law received more than 61 votes, meaning it was passed by an absolute majority of the 120-member Knesset. This will make it harder for anyone to seek to overturn it through the High Court of Justice, because it will eliminate the argument that the Act was passed with insufficient support for such fundamental, quasi-constitutional legislation. Nevertheless Yariv Oppenheimer, secretary general of Peace Now, said yesterday that his organization will consider petitioning the High Court against it.
Knesset House Committee chairman Yariv Levin, of the Likud party, whose panel prepared the law, told the plenum before the vote that it "reflects the need to ensure that fateful, irreversible decisions about conceding parts of the homeland to which Israeli sovereignty have been applied" will not be made via dubious political horse trading ("as has happened in the past," he added). Instead it will reflect the will of the people, either by way of a genuine two-thirds majority in the Knesset, or failing that, by a referendum of the nation as a whole. As such, he said, the law will promote national unity, because even opponents will not be able to argue - as they have in the past - that the Knesset's decision was not actually supported by a majority of the public.
And that, in the final analysis, is the nub of the case in its favour. The question is, with the peace process apparently irretrievably log-jammed, will even the prospect of a national referendum ever arise?
Because the law applies only to sovereign Israeli territory, no referendum would be needed to withdraw from any part of the West Bank. However, should the Knesset not approve by a two-thirds majority, a referendum would be required for a pullout from east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, as both have been annexed by Israel. It would also be required if, under a future deal with the Palestinians, Israel ceded land within the pre-1967 lines in exchange for keeping the settlement blocs.
In all its 62-year history, Israel has never held a national referendum. Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher says: "In effect it weakens the authority of the Knesset to decide these issues, and turns it over to a system that has never been tried in Israel. It is clearly intended to make it more difficult to approve withdrawal from these territories.”
The bill was originally sponsored by Likud MKs, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in favour: "A referendum will prevent an irresponsible agreement, but at the same time will allow any agreement that satisfies Israel's national interests to pass with strong public backing." He was convinced, he added, that any agreement he submitted to the Knesset would indeed enjoy such backing.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni said it was a sign of "weak leadership," and her Kadima party voted overwhelmingly against the bill.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, was highly critical of the new law. "The Israeli leadership, yet again, is making a mockery of international law, which is not subject to the whims of Israeli public opinion. Under international law there is a clear and absolute obligation on Israel to withdraw not only from east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but from all of the territories that it has occupied since 1967. Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum."
Erekat’s view, while understandable, takes no account of the political realities. As Israel’s previous withdrawals from occupied territory – notably the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza strip – have shown, when it comes down to evacuating settlements, the government needs the utmost determination in imposing its will against often implacable opposition from its own citizens. But these earlier examples could be as nothing compared with the situation that could develop, if it came to forcible evacuations from West Bank settlements.
Imagine a situation in which an Israeli government has concluded a draft peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority involving the swapping of Israeli territory in exchange for retaining some West Bank settlements but evacuating others, and is unable to command a majority for that action in the Knesset. In such circumstances, a national referendum could provide it with enhanced legitimacy for taking the necessary action. Settlers determined to combat government efforts to evacuate them would have a far weaker case if government action were backed by a majority of the nation.
All the same, should the parliamentary vote fail, going to the Israeli public would undoubtedly be something of a gamble.
Although polls of public opinion are notoriously unreliable indicators of a nation’s mood, and indeed public opinion itself is notoriously fickle, columnist Akiva Eldar, writing recently in Israel’s Ha'aretz newspaper may be correct when he says: "Israel has gone back to having a majority of people who view peace as a dangerous trap that the Arabs are laying at the feet of weak politicians."
For example, polls tend to show most Israelis oppose ceding the Old City of Jerusalem, where Judaism's holiest site – the Western Wall – sits virtually cheek-by-jowl with the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and both are within hailing distance of Christianity’s revered Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But a comprehensive peace accord could undoubtedly incorporate a formula, reasonably satisfactory to Israelis, Palestinians and other concerned parties such as the various Christian sects currently administering their holy sites. Winning a “yes” vote in a national referendum would, in short, be dependent on the nature of the agreement for which the government was seeking endorsement, and also on how convincingly the government was able to make its case.
The law received more than 61 votes, meaning it was passed by an absolute majority of the 120-member Knesset. This will make it harder for anyone to seek to overturn it through the High Court of Justice, because it will eliminate the argument that the Act was passed with insufficient support for such fundamental, quasi-constitutional legislation. Nevertheless Yariv Oppenheimer, secretary general of Peace Now, said yesterday that his organization will consider petitioning the High Court against it.
Knesset House Committee chairman Yariv Levin, of the Likud party, whose panel prepared the law, told the plenum before the vote that it "reflects the need to ensure that fateful, irreversible decisions about conceding parts of the homeland to which Israeli sovereignty have been applied" will not be made via dubious political horse trading ("as has happened in the past," he added). Instead it will reflect the will of the people, either by way of a genuine two-thirds majority in the Knesset, or failing that, by a referendum of the nation as a whole. As such, he said, the law will promote national unity, because even opponents will not be able to argue - as they have in the past - that the Knesset's decision was not actually supported by a majority of the public.
And that, in the final analysis, is the nub of the case in its favour. The question is, with the peace process apparently irretrievably log-jammed, will even the prospect of a national referendum ever arise?
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