Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations
Cynics have already charged that in the Bush administration’s intensive focus on Israeli-Palestinian issues, we are seeing a repeat of the Clinton years. Supposedly, in the seventh and eighth year of any White House administration, there is an attempt to break the deadlock over one of the thorniest negotiating issues in the world: the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians. Just as President Clinton, in his last year in office—indeed, in his final days in office—came tantalizingly close to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in 2000, so President Bush is trying the same ploy in 2007 and 2008. He has dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East region to try to prod the two sides towards an accord, and to mobilize support for any subsequent agreement among regional powers.
In a four-day dash through the region in mid-October, Rice reiterated the Bush administration policy of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian stand-off by strong advocacy of the creation of a Palestinian state. “Frankly, it is time for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” she said. In fact, a two-state solution has been official U.S. policy since early in the Bush administration, and official Israeli policy under the prime ministership of Ehud Olmert’s predecessor, Ariel Sharon. Of course, it’s not just a question of the Palestinians raising their flag over Ramallah and everyone saluting. The real crux of the two-state solution is whether Israel and the Palestinians can negotiate all the outstanding issues standing in the way of a final settlement. As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said succinctly: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
We’ve been over this ground before, of course. The Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestinians of September 1993 (also referred to as the Oslo Accords, was supposed to set in motion a succession of agreements on important bilateral issues: security, water rights, territorial boundaries, settlements, Israeli roads in the West Bank, the Palestinian “right of return,” that had always been difficult ones. But after Hamas began deliberately sabotaging the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority by starting a campaign of suicide bombing against Israel in 1994, progress in the so-called Oslo Process (the Declaration of Principles had been negotiated in secret in Norway) ground to a halt. President Clinton invited PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Camp David in the summer of 2000 for one final effort. But Arafat decided not to accept Barak’s best offer, returned to Palestine, and gave the order for the Second Intifadeh to begin in September 2000.
Several events on the ground have precipitated the newest interest in negotiations. One has been the sheer cost of the conflict in human lives. The latest count, at the end of October, was about 5,900 Palestinian and Israeli lives lost since September 2000. Another has been the increased polarization among Palestinians. Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement that won control of the Palestinian legislature in 2005, refused even to recognize the State of Israel as a legitimate international entity. It’s electoral victory shocked Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor as President of the Palestinian Authority, was the brutal seizure of power by Hamas gunmen in Gaza in June 2007. Confronted by the prospect of perhaps terminal erosion of his own political power, Abbas turned to his only potential trump-card: an agreement with Israel to establish a Palestinian state.
There are, however, many ironies in this renewed call for Palestinian-Israeli peace. One is that the leaders of the two sides—Israel and the Palestinians—are politically the weakest they have ever been relative to their own societies. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s approval rating hovers around 9 percent. Since Hamas took over Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas has presided with executive power only the West Bank, even though Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says that the Hamas control of Gaza is only “temporary.” In order to make a two-state solution work, both Israel and the Palestinians will have to make mutual concessions, concessions that their politically fractious publics may not accept. Another irony is that as America has finally warmed to the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, neighboring Arab states have grown distinctly lukewarm about the prospect. A third irony is that, although Olmert is prepared to cede control over some parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, some of the Palestinians who live there are adamantly against living under Palestinian rule.
Why? Chaos and corruption, lack of legal due process, and far superior free medical care under the Israelis.
Condoleezza Rice in her most recent visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah encouraged the negotiating teams to work hard on reaching reasonable goals. But tough issues remain. Although the Palestinians may retreat from their hitherto cast-iron public position that Israel must allow a right of return to Israel proper of Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their property in 1948, in return they will demand commensurate concessions from Israel. They will insist on the release of all Palestinian prisoners detained for political activity against Israel. They may concede Israel’s retention of West Bank territory where there are heavy urban populations around or near Jerusalem, but they will demand the Israel hand over some of its own territory in return. They will also insist that tens of thousands of Israel’s West Bank settlers in remoter areas of the West Bank be dislodged and forced to return to Israel. This will require traumatic confrontations between Israeli and Israeli as the Israeli army is called upon to implement the process.
It is Rice’s objective to convene a final conference in Annapolis, MD, in late November this year. She plans to persuade the two negotiating parties to sign a final agreement establishing a Palestinian state there. She also hopes that leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states will attend, thus conferring their benediction on the negotiating process. If Abbas and Olmert cannot settle their differences before then, or if there is a resounding boycott of any proposed state by Middle East regional states, all the resolute efforts to resolve the stand-off through negotiations will come to naught. In that sorry event, the horrifying bloodshed of the 2000–2004 Intifadeh could pale in comparison with the mayhem that is to come.
If the U.S. were to succeed in cajoling Palestinians and Israelis to live together peaceably, that “legacy” would eclipse all the previous failure of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. And even Democrats might applaud that.
Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.
6 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, Global Culture, War and Peace, Mon 05 Nov 2007
