THE TIME IS RIPE FOR OBAMA TO PROMOTE TWO-STATE SOLUTION FOR ISRAEL, PALESTINE
The pursuit of peace for Israel and Palestine
Of all the conflicts in the world today, which is the easiest to settle? Answer: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And of all these conflicts, which is the most difficult to settle? Also, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the one hand, nearly everyone who has seriously examined the conflict agrees on the solution, including a great many Israelis and Palestinians –even the current Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers. On the other hand, the internal conflicts within both sides have paralyzed their ability to reach a settlement, let alone successfully implement it.
There are few indications that this deadlock can be broken by the parties themselves, so the prospect is for increasing fanaticism and violence from hard-liners on both sides. It is likely that the only way this grim future can be averted is for the incoming Obama administration to put its full weight behind a comprehensive peace settlement.
Since everyone knows the solution and substantial numbers of Israelis and Palestinians already support it, the task will be to isolate the hard-liners on both sides. Contrary to the common view in this country, Israeli rightists –the settlers and their supporters –are at least as much of an obstacle to a settlement as are Palestinian Islamist fundamentalists. Even so, the Obama administration will be in a unique position to insist on a settlement –not only because the U. S. government has always had great influence over Israel, when it has chosen to exercise it, but also because the election of Barack Obama has raised American prestige to levels not seen in many years.
For nearly a century, the nationalist movements of two peoples, the Jewish and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, have claimed the same piece of land and have been prepared to fight for it –no matter how long it took, and whatever the costs. Moreover, both sides have serious, though conflicting, historical and moral arguments to support their claims. Consequently, for nearly a century it has been clear that the only way out of the dilemma has been a compromise: a division of the historic land of Palestine between the two peoples.
The division of Palestine became the official international solution in the U. N. partition plan of 1947. However, for the next 20 years the Palestinians and their Arab state supporters refused to accept the compromise settlement, which resulted in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli
wars. Those wars did not settle the issue, though; indeed, the smashing Israeli military victories actually exacerbated the conflict, since they led to the expansion of Israel from the territories allocated to it by the partition plan, thus providing more fuel for the seemingly endless Arab-Israeli conflict.
The way out of this increasingly intolerable and dangerous deadlock is still partition or, as it is known today, the two-state solution. This is the settlement supported not only by an overwhelming majority of the international community but also by leading Israeli and Palestinian moderates and realists. Moreover, this consensus is not merely over the principle of two states for two peoples, but over most of the details.
Key settlement proposals
Today, the three most important proposed settlements are the “Clinton Plan” of 2000, the Saudi-Arab League peace plan of 2002 and the joint but nongovernmental Israeli-Palestinian “Geneva Accord” of 2003. With only relatively minor differences of detail, all these proposals arrive at the same solution:
• An independent Palestinian state will be created in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, requiring an Israeli withdrawal from most of the territories that it has occupied and settled since the 1967 war.
• A territorial swap. Israel will be allowed to keep some 5 percent of the land it now occupies, principally its major settlements located just beyond the pre-1967 boundary, as well as some Jewish neighborhoods established in East Jerusalem after 1967. In return, Israel will turn over territory to the Palestinian state that is quantitatively and qualitatively equal to the land it is keeping.
• Jerusalem will be divided — or shared. Israel will retain sovereignty and control over mostly Jewish West Jerusalem as well as Judaism’s important religious sites in the historically core area of Jerusalem, the Old City. The Palestinian state will gain sovereignty and control in most of Arab East Jerusalem, which will become its capital, as well as over Islam’s important religious sites, principally two major mosques in the Old City.
• The Palestinian refugees — families displaced from their homes during the wars — will not be granted the right to return to Israel. At its own discretion and subject to its veto, Israel may allow some to return to Israel, but most will be permanently settled either in the Palestinian state or elsewhere in the world. In exchange, the refugees and their immediate ancestors will receive generous international compensation.
• The Palestinian state will be nonmilitarized. It will be allowed only a small and lightly armed army and police forces, sufficient to maintain internal security, but far short of armed forces capable of threatening Israel.
• To ensure the implementation of these steps and to guarantee the security of both Israel and the Palestinian state, an international peacekeeping force will be established along the new borders. It is understood that Israel will demand a significant U. S. presence in that force, which therefore most likely officially will be a NATO force.
• In addition to refugee compensation, large-scale economic assistance will be provided by the international community, including by the wealthy Arab oil-producing states, to ensure the economic viability and genuine independence of the new Palestinian state.
Some Israeli resistance
If just about everyone knows what a definitive two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must include, and such a solution has overwhelming American, European, Arab and moderate Israeli and Palestinian support, why hasn’t it been attained?
While both the Israelis and the Palestinians share some of the blame for the continued deadlock and violence, the central problem today stems less from the Palestinians — probably including Hamas, the leading Palestinian Islamist organization — than from Israel’s unwillingness to give up most of the territory it conquered in 1967, even in exchange for peace and a much greater likelihood of real security for Israel than the continued occupation of the Palestinians can ever afford it.
There has been a growing willingness by most Palestinians and the leading Arab states to accept a compromise settlement. Yasser Arafat, the dominant political leader of the Palestinians until his death in 2004, gradually abandoned his dream of regaining all of historic Palestine. Since 1988, Arafat and other Palestinian leaders have officially accepted the state of Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries and agreed to the principle of a two-state settlement, with the Palestinian state to be created in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — just 23 percent of the original land of Palestine.
Since Arafat’s death, there have been two major developments on the Palestinian side. On the one hand, Mohammed Abbas, Arafat’s successor and the leader of the Palestinian government in the West Bank, is not only willing but anxious to agree to the consensus settlement. Moreover, Palestinian opinion surveys show that some 60 percent to 70 percent of the general population support a two-state settlement — and that support would surely increase if such a settlement and its clear benefits to the Palestinian people actually materialized.
Hamas increasingly powerful
To be sure, in the last few years Hamas has become increasingly powerful in the occupied territories, and today rules Gaza. However, Hamas is not al-Qaida, and there are many indications that it is following the same stages of political evolution as did Arafat and the PLO prior to 1988 — an ideological commitment to “regain” all of Palestine, but gradually giving way to a pragmatic recognition of the impossibility of realizing such a goal.
Since 2004, the main Hamas leaders have made repeated public statements and private overtures to both the Israeli and the U. S. governments indicating that they would be prepared to end the violence and agree to a long-term “truce” (variously described as 10 years or longer) in return for an Israeli withdrawal and the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Until now, the U. S. and the Israeli governments have simply ignored or dismissed out of hand these strong indications of Hamas flexibility.
To be sure, at least in the present stage of Hamas thinking, there would be no official recognition of Israel, and a Hamas-led Palestine would reserve the right to resume the struggle. On the other hand, if a settlement is reached it would be endorsed by nearly the entire world, including almost every Arab state — the Arab League peace plan is now unanimously supported by all 22 of its members. Moreover, a settlement would be followed by massive international development assistance to the new Palestinian state, giving the now-impoverished Palestinian people a huge economic stake in peace.
Under such circumstances, it is nearly impossible to imagine that Hamas could resume its efforts to conquer Israel, even if it wished to do so. It would have little chance of gaining support of the Palestinian people or the Arab world for a pointless, bloody and dangerous war that would have no chance of defeating Israel, would surely result in an even more draconic Israeli reoccupation and an end to the two-state experiment, and which could destabilize the entire Middle East.
Promising new developments
As well as on the Palestinian side, there have been at least a few promising new developments in Israel — principally that a number of important Israeli political leaders have come around to accepting the need for the end of the Israeli occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. In the last few months, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, two former prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, and current Labor Party leaders have all spoken about the Arab League proposals in favorable terms.
The evolution in the thinking of Olmert has been particularly striking. Until recently among the hardest of the Israeli right-wingers, on the eve of his departure from office he has recanted his former views, and in remarkably blunt and unsparing terms. Warning that Israel faces disaster if it doesn’t withdraw from almost all of the occupied territories and allow the creation of a Palestinian state, he says: “Greater Israel is over. . . . Anyone who talks that way is deluding himself. . . . If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses . . . [we will] face a South Africanstyle struggle . . . [and] then the State of Israel is finished.”
To be sure, while actually holding power Olmert has done little or nothing to end the Israeli occupation. Even so, he has legitimized the most far-reaching criticism of Israel’s behavior, which can no longer be attributed merely to Israeli or American “leftists.” Other developments within Israel, however, are far less hopeful.
Fear of civil war
To begin, while most Israelis today do not subscribe to religious or nationalist “Greater Israel” ideology, there has been a hardening of public opinion toward the Palestinians. For example, until recently most public opinion polls showed that a majority of Israelis supported the general concept of a compromise settlement with the Palestinians — although there was no majority support for some of the essential elements of such a settlement, especially the need to compromise over Jerusalem. Today, however, there is no longer a reliable majority even for the general principle of Israeli withdrawal and two states for two peoples.
Another dismal development has been the growing power of the most violent and fanatical Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There is no question that Israeli political leaders fear civil war. Peres, the current president of Israel (a largely symbolic post), has now said so publicly — if the government ever gave orders to bring the settlers back into Israel in the context of a peace agreement. Indeed, the growing power of the settler movement within the Israeli army itself, together with a number of other indications of shaky Israeli political control over the military, suggests that it is not even clear that the army would obey an order to remove all the settlers. In effect, then, the settlers may well have a de facto veto over a now-attainable peace settlement with the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole.
Finally, as a consequence of hardening Israeli attitudes, Benjamin Netanyahu, an unrepentant rightist, is leading in the race to elect a new Israeli prime minister in February. If he is elected, even the fading prospects for a two-state solution will be seriously damaged, perhaps fatally.
Opportunity for Obama
There is widespread agreement in Israel that only strong U. S. pressures might forestall Netanyahu’s election, beginning with a warning by Obama that continued intransigence will jeopardize Israel’s alliance with the United States.
For obvious domestic political reasons, during the campaign Obama was unwilling to be seen as pressuring Israel. But his real views may be different: according to some reports, Obama has privately told Israeli leaders that Israel “would be crazy” to refuse the Arab peace plan. Moreover, if Obama chooses to play an activist role, he will have domestic political cover, for an end to the Israeli occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state has now received important high-level bipartisan support.
In particular, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisers to President George H. W. Bush and President Jimmy Carter, have recently urged Obama to adopt the two-state consensus plan and to seek to overcome the obstacles to it by “speaking out clearly and forcefully — and press[ing] the case with steady determination.” As a recent editorial in Israel’s most prestigious newspaper, Haaretz, put it: if the Scowcroft/Brzezinski proposals are adopted by the Obama administration, both Palestinian and Israeli hard-liners would understand that if they opposed it, “they would be choosing confrontation with Obama’s America.”
The strong Obama electoral victory, together with the incoming president’s remarkably widespread prestige and global popularity, has provided the United States with a unique, and perhaps fleeting, opportunity for this country to successfully press Israel and Hamas to agree to a two-state solution.
U.S. national security
The case for doing so does not rest only on the fact that it would serve the genuine interests of our Israeli ally: attaining such a settlement is a crucial national interest of the United States itself, for not only would it finally end the 60-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would help stabilize moderate Arab governments and undercut the growing power of Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists throughout the Middle East.
Indeed, such a settlement may even be crucial for homeland U. S. national security. Although not the only factor, there is no serious doubt that U.S. support of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians is one of the main reasons Islamic terrorists are expected to again attack this country. Moreover, sooner or later Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida or other terrorist groups are likely to acquire nuclear or biological weapons. Since in all probability we cannot indefinitely prevent Islamic fundamentalists from gaining the technological capability of killing millions of Americans, our best hope is to reduce their motivation to do so, or at least the motivation of renegade states, like Iran, to help them.
The best way to do that is for Obama to use his personal prestige and the full range of U. S. power and influence to ensure a fair and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement, beginning with a major effort to persuade Israelis not to elect Netanyahu.
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