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| Mac Deford: Any Hope for Peace? | | 11/25/2009 10:16:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | This is the last in a 4-part series in which Mac Deford reports on his most recent travels in the Middle East, including a week in Lebanon and Jordan, and the rest of the time traveling around Israel and the occupied West Bank.
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by Thomas McAdams Deford
So, finally, is there any hope? Is a peaceful resolution possible? If so, what might it look like?
Many thoughtful observers have been saying for the last year or two that settlement growth, and the purposeful way it has surrounded Jerusalem and permeated the West Bank, means a two-state solution will shortly become a practical impossibility. Maybe not, but the changing reality on the ground makes, with each passing day, a peaceful outcome that much more difficult.
Previous methods of reaching a negotiated settlement - the elder Bush and Clinton's Oslo, step-by-step approach; the younger Bush's leave-them-alone with a road map approach -seem to be at a dead-end. But, ironically, as the drive for peace has yearly become more frustrating, the outline of the end-game, the two-state solution, has emerged ever more clearly - and it has, still, the support of the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians.
The final picture involves a workable Palestinian state, which necessarily means one based, with only minor rectifications, on the 1967 borders, its capital in East Jerusalem; a resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem in the form of Israeli acknowledgment of its role in creating it, international compensation and resettlement of the refugees but not, except for token numbers, in Israel; and firm guarantees for Israel's security, involving recognition by the Arab World and a lengthy period of demilitarization of the new Palestinian state with UN-supported international forces along the borders.
The president of a large Jerusalem-based foundation-cum-think tank put it succinctly, "There can be no security for Israel without freedom for the Palestinians, and no freedom for the Palestinians without security for Israel."
But after nearly two decades of watching Palestinians and Israelis floundering around in attempts to make the two-state solution a reality, knowledgeable experts are increasingly proposing other options.
In a lengthy piece of analysis in a recent New York Review of Books article, Robert Malley, a key Middle East player during the Clinton years, concluded that "an end-of-conflict settlement is out of reach and the status quo out of the question." Therefore, "options that fall somewhere in between deserve at least serious exploration."
There are, however, a very limited number of options: the one-state solution, the two-state solution, the no-state (or Jordanian) solution, and the default, "we'll-deal-with-it-later" button. Malley and his co-author Hussein Agha propose variations on the last two, the Jordanian option and one they call a "long-term interim arrangement." Roger Cohen, a thoughtful and perceptive New York Times columnist, suggests a variant of the interim arrangement, which he calls "detente."
Both proposals have as an underlying rationale the buildup of trust, now lacking, that would pave the way for successful peace talks down the road. But there's a Catch-22 here: without trust to begin with - and Malley and Cohen are right, there is none now - the Palestinians would worry that the Israelis would let an "interim" or "detente" period become permanent in the same way that the Oslo Accords, the first step in an evolution to two states, never evolved. Worse, Israeli settlements and continued confiscation of Palestinian land, the source of most of the tension and lack of trust between the two sides, would continue, along with Palestinian frustration.
Tom Friedman, more facile these days than insightful, proposes the US back off until both sides want us back in. Fine, but as Jim Jones, Obama's national security advisor, recently said publicly, if the United States could solve the "one problem in the world" that would most be in our strategic interest to do so, it would be the Palestinian one. He was stating, in other words, what should be obvious: after decades of the growth of radical Islam fueled in large measure by Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the US needs a solution to this problem for our national security interest, not for Israel's or the Palestinians'.
Malley's other proposal, that the West Bank be absorbed into Jordan, is equally a non-starter. It falters, from a Jordanian perspective, for the same reason a single-state solution won't work for Israel: demographics. Palestinian, that is West Bank, Arabs already outnumber their Jordanian cousins; poltical power, however, remains with the Jordanians. To bring in additional millions of Palestinians would skew the balance intolerably for the Jordanian establishment. Short of the overthrow of the Hashemite ruling family, it's not a realistic option.
But the status quo - indefinite occupation - is unsustainable over the long-term. As Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister Netanyahu's embattled predecessor, came to realize and publicly state, because of the demographics, without a separate Palestinian state, "Israel is finished." The Israeli fear of the development of a single state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is mirrored by its increasing appeal to Palestinian intellectuals, who foresee that the injustice of Israel's occupation will eventually lead the majority of Americans, as is already happening with Europeans, to see Israel in the same pariah light as apartheid South Africa was seen.
In many ways, the conundrum facing Israel today is broadly similar to the issue of slavery faced by our Founding Fathers. They knew that slavery would eventually have to be abolished; but they didn't have the political will to do so in their day.
Successive generations also knew that the indefinite continuation of slavery was unfeasible; but the political reality, whether in 1776 or 1820 or 1860, made dealing with it - and was there ever a bigger elephant in the room? - impossible. The fallback position: we'll handle it next year. The result: the Civil War.
Israel, a democracy - at least if you're Jewish - cannot find the political will to end the occupation in a way that would be minimally acceptable to the Palestinians. Over the last 15 years, Israel's politics has moved to the right. Yearly, the settlements, and their expansion, become more sacrosanct. As Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street, the new liberal and rational Israeli lobby, states it: the settlements are "a cancer eating away at the state of Israel ... taking over Israel's chances of survival."
Being a parliamentary democracy has its own complications. Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party did not win the most number of seats in the last election; the more centrist Kadima party did. But with the support of ultra-Orthodox Knesset members, Netanyahu was able to form a government, a government that, as Foreign Minister Lieberman illustrates, is able to remain in power only so long as it kowtows to the most extremist of its members.
So where are we? The one-state solution is anathema to Israel; the no-state/Jordanian solution is equally anathema to Jordan; the maintainance of the status quo - call it an "interim" arrangement or a detente or whatever - only postpones the moment of truth while creating heightened tension and greater likelihood of violence.
Faute de mieux, we're stuck with the two-state solution.
Fair enough, but how do you get there?
The key, as it always has been, lies with the United States. After reaching agreement with our European allies and Russia - sure, we consult along the way with Israel and the Palestinians, including Hamas, but no side holds a veto - we produce a detailed picture of what the final destination will be, with a complete step-by-step, year-by-year blueprint of how we get there: which settlements are demolished when, which part of the wall comes down in what year, how specific Arab states and the Palestinian Authority respond.
We would not leave it to the two parties to negotiate that destination. The US would impose it. Successive US presidents have always shied away from an imposed solution, primarily because of the opposition it has long engendered from Israel and its well-funded US supporters. But again, J Street is changing the rules: "Only with a serious American role at the table" is peace possible, according to Ben-Ami. Granted, he's not openly opting for an imposed settlement, but he's edging towards it.
It's reasonable to assume that even with an imposed settlement, the final creation of a full-fledged Palestinian state would require a decade or more, but knowing in advance the destination would make the length of the trip acceptable.
The US has sufficient leverage with Israel - and with Egypt and the Saudis - to impose this solution, especially since everyone knows its essential ingredients.
Nothing short of two separate states is the long-term answer. And, after years of fruitless negotiations between the unequal parties, nothing short of one imposed by the US is possible.
Whether the US Congress has the guts, as individuals, to support what is strongly in the strategic interest of the US even as they worry it might risk the wrath of the Israel lobby and their own re-election; and whether Obama has the political stomach, as he has shown to date he doesn't, to fight for it - these are of course different issues.
So, finally, is there any hope?
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