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
I would like to see an update on the above situation, post- Annapolis from Mr. Roberts, Wakefield and Rose.
IMO, things will work out and a two state solution will come about. Hoever, I am afraid that there will be much blood shed before it is all over.
In addition to Mr. Wakefield’s excellent book recommendations, I would add O Jerusalem by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre, two news correspondents who covered the Mideast in the 1940s. Their account of the establishment of the modern Jewish state is a compelling story. It’s (as well as Dr. Gabriel’s books) included in my list of recommended reading and may be purchased through Amazon: http://y-factor.net/folder/?page_id=46
I always appreciate Mr. Aikman’s writing. Thanks for the analysis of the current situation in the Mideast. Although Palestinian rights have been a rallying cry for Muslims for many years, they have been a smokescreen. Muslim contempt for the Jews is ingrained too deeply in the Qur’an. Only ‘apostates’ from Islam are willing to negotiate with them, which is what Anwar Sadat was branded, and is what made his assassination a certainty.
I echo the recommendation of Mark Gabriel’s book. He’s a personal friend and mentor. As a mesaure of his credibility, he’s recently been consulted by President Bush on a number of Mideast issues. I include many references to Dr. Gabriel in my blog postings: http://blog.y-factor.net
Mr. Rose hints at the real problem in dealing with Islam. The Palestinian crisis is no longer on center stage and I’m convinced the current effort for a lasting peace is a symbolic gesture that will garner nothing substantive.
We have been engaging Muslims on too many fronts: militarily, politically, ideologically and theologically. Quietly, but inexorably, another front has developed: Demographics. Wahabbi Islam is being funded by billions in Saudi oil profits and Muslims are infiltrating industrialized countries to replace the shrinking indigenous workforce. Muslim babies represent 40% of all births in much of western Europe. Mohammad has become the most popular name for newborns in places like Belgium.
I fear we lack sufficient political capital at home and abroad for a cohesive plan to arrest the advance of Islam and its attendant violence. It has become a global ‘whack-a-mole’.
After reading these comments it becomes clear why Americans look at Israel through the eyes of conservative American politics rather than an understanding of the historical evidence revealed in how followers of Islam have treated the Jew. The term, “Palestinian refugee”, is a farce. Dr. Aikman must have no knowledge of the history of the Jew in the Middle East over the last 1000 years, and especially the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews that were placed under the most barbaric of conditions prior to fleeing various Islamic countries, thus becoming refugees in the land of Palestine before and after 1948. Let me encourage the following readings.
Islam and the Jew by Dr. Mark Gabriel, Dr. Gabriel was an Egyptian who was raised to hate Jews but by a miracle, became a Christian. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
From Time Immemorial: The Conflict of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters.(1984) Ms. Peters set out to write a book on the plight of the “Palestinian refugee” only to learn after seven years of extensive research one of the greatest frauds of the 20th century. The TRUE refugees are the Jews. Israel became there escape from enormous human rights violations due to Shariah Law and the teachings in the Koran.
Dr. Samuel Huntington was an original member of the Trilateral Commission in 1975. His work, the Clash of Civilization which came out in 1997, revealed ten years ago, that Islam was the most violent religion in the world. He reveals in this work that in 1993 46 Islamic nations would not even agree that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion were universal rights when working on the UN Human Rights Commission.
May we awaken to realize if this forum is to foster values, then one of them should be the honest pursuit of truth.
New York City
on 2007 12 17
At a post-Annapolis conference that I attended, the impressive Jordanian Ambassador to the US and the Vice Prime Minister of Israel agreed that the general outlines of a “deal” were known and were acceptable to the majority on both sides.
These majorities are prepared to accept that:
A) The capital of a Palestinian state would be in a part of Jerusalem to be assigned to Palestine; B) The new borders of the two states would be essentialy along the lines of the 1967 negotiations, with some relatively minor (but important) modifications; C) there would be appropriate financial compenssation for Palestinians but no significant resettlement in Israel; D) Palestine would be an essentially de-miolitarized state; E) Approximately 25,00 to 30,000 Israelis now on the “wrong” side of the new borders would be re-settled in Israel; and F) A major international weffort would be made to deveopment Palestine.