It's common to talk about a couple of frustrating years of stagnation in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Roger Cohen, for example, refers to the last year as one of waste.
It is certainly true that the lack of progress is disheartening for outside observers, crushing for Palestinians, and threatening to Israel. But how we understand these past failures is an important factor for understanding how to move forward. Unfortunately, most of what passes for explanation of breakdowns is actually blame; and especially blame of Israel.
In Cohen's piece, for example, he notes that "There is no alternative to resolving this most agonizing of conflicts but neither party ever quite gets to that realization." But he immediately follows this by arguing that the balance of power is in Israel's favor, and that domestic politics in the US (presumably he means the activities of the pro-Israel lobby groups) prevents it from mitigating that imbalance. The rest of the article implies Palestinians have made mistakes, but only out of confusion or lack of real options, while Israel has purposely gone and sabotaged talks.
There are three problems with these types of analyses.
First, it is based on a presumption of expectations--of the United States and of American presidents. In the case of the former, it is assumed that Washington can move mountains if it wants to, and that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it could pressure either party into an agreement. When this doesn't happen, all sorts of odd explanations get posited, including that pro-Israel American organizations and Jewish individuals in government working on behalf of Israel are single-handedly responsible for preventing resolution.
In the case of the latter, it gets argued that Barack Obama's seemingly hostile position toward Israeli priorities is responsible for an unprecedented drop in Jewish support for a Democratic president. Or it leads to such high expectations that Obama's approval ratings since his 2009 Cairo speech then fall lower in the Arab world than even George W. Bush's had been!
But anything other than a surface reading of past agreements between Israel and the Arabs illustrates that the US has never been able to push the parties together until they wanted to; and it only had a hand in facilitating one of them. The 1979 Egypt-Israel treaty was made because Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted to move out of the Soviet orbit and obtain American aid. Jimmy Carter did help bridge the gaps between the two sides, but both Egypt and Israel badly wanted an agreement. The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO was negotiated in total secrecy and the US was only briefed on it once or twice, almost as an afterthought. And the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty was again negotiated in secret and the issues almost all resolved solely between the two.
Second, the Palestinians always seem to escape their share of responsibility for failure, mostly because Israel is the stronger power and therefore assumed to be able to make the rules of the game and determine its outcomes. Again, even a glimpse at Palestinian actions over the last couple of years should be enough to redress this: Castigating Israel for not renewing the 10-month partial settlement freeze that began in November 2009 ignores the fact that during the first such freeze, PA President Mahmoud Abbas did not engage in any serious efforts at talks until the last month. It also ignores continuing violence by Palestinians--including those affiliated with Fatah--against Israeli civilians. Focusing only on Israel means missing a key part of the equation of failure, which leads to misinformed conclusions and therefore misguided policies.
Third, it is often forgotten that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a series of isolated events but rather an interactive dynamic. Israeli foreign policy is in many ways a function of this dynamic: Israeli public opinion polls, for example, indicate lower levels of trust of the Palestinians and less interest in major concessions to them during certain moments in time, such as more intense violence or stagnation in the peace process.
The electoral switching off between Labor, Likud, and (once, anyway) Kadima governments similarly indicates that certain governments come to power under particular conditions in the conflict. All of this demonstrates that it is less true that "Israel" is acting badly in the conflict, and more effective to say that it reacts to developments. This, in turn, brings us back to the dynamic process of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
None of this is to absolve Israel of its share of the blame. Certainly, settlement activity has continued apace under all types of Israeli governments. And the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu has imposed unnecessary and counter-productive conditions on talks; acted like an ungrateful bully toward its major ally, the US; allowed rightist members of the coalition to infuse foreign policy rhetoric with intolerance and belligerence toward its only available peace partner; and implicitly or explicitly worked to make the West Bank legally and morally part of sovereign Israeli territory--all of which progressively weakens the possibility of successful negotiations.
There is enough blame to go around in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once we realize this, we can then move to more accurate explanations of the malfunctions in the peace process, as well as craft policies that directly address the proper causes of failure.
John L. Esposito: The Chutzpah of Netanyahu Trumps the Audacity of Hope
"Hillary Clinton today warned Israel against any further new Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, saying they undermined prospects for Middle East peace negotiations." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/22/hillary-clinton-warns-israel-peace
The occupation is a useful tool in maintaining support for whatever coalition government is in place.
For quite some time, Israel has had both rising inequality and land scarcity issues. Settlement construction effectively defuses both those problems by offering otherwise unaffordable and unobtainable suburban homes. Additionally, supposed demographic issues (how to keep Israel a Jewish state) or the conflict are easily rallying points.
Beyond this, there are the larger geopolitical decisions. Israel is the #1 U.S. client state, rewarded for destroying independent Arab nationalism in 1967. That dependence has caused Israel to, at least for time being, forgo any regional integration. They're basically taking what they can get in the form of U.S. aid and military technology transfers until the cost total international isolation exceeds the benefits.
All of this contributes to a situation where Israel simply isn't interested in peace. As a result, PA negotiators are unable to propose serious counteroffers since Israel has already said no to concessions beyond Fatah's mandate.
The plain and simple truth is that Israel has had the ability to end the conflict for decades now. Instead, they've chosen to continue it for political gains.
Nice sentence to sum up; but wrong. Say for instance a nuclear reactor is hit with an earthquake and a tsunami and is melting down. You realize that the cause of this was poor design and sub standard construction. It does not stop the meltdown. Analogies suck. There is no rational justification for the establishment of israel on land inhabited by anyone else. The first and last defense is always "This land is mine, God gave this land to me". It's a theological answer to a political problem-more of which we will see here in the states. I might just let you know that the promised land biblically runs from "the great river of Egypt to the Euphrates" and they might pretend to settle for less but they never will.
This right is grounded in the Jewish people's historic right to Eretz Israel (Land of Israel; in the Jewish people ethical right to national self-determination and independence in its historic homeland; and, to the the Jewish people's legal right as expressed in and incorporated into the corpus dubbed 'international law' the Balfour Declaration, 1917; San Remo Conference, 1920; League of Nations decisions, 1922; and the United Nations resolutions, 1947 and 1949.
When, when shall we ever learn to address the cause of conflict instead of its symptoms...??
Most people do not accept your most basic premises. The core issue is not some basic right to a tribal nation state. And there is no basic right to the land at the eastern end of the Mediterrean based on a mythical promise from a god thousands of years ago.
The notion of a tribal based nation state is a throwback almost to the stoneage. It is a ridiculous expectation in 2011.
The notion that a god gave some real estate to an ancient people three or four thousand years ago, and that you are the rightful inheritors of that land, is laughable or would be if it was not the cause of misery and death for millions.
And it has not escaped notice that Eretz Israel stretches from the Euphrates to the Nile and includes Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So will you be demanding that as soon you have all of Palestine?
Israel, it has been accepted, is the nation-state of a people, of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people as such has been entitled to exercise its universally accepted right of national self-determination and independence, which Israel is that practical expression. This has been recognized by the international community due to the Jewish people's historic rights in its homeland and the cradle of its civilization of Judaism, a right that has become part of that which is dubbed 'international law'.
As noted, only the Muslim-Arab world and its advocates refuse to accept this reality, and has attempted numerous times to see to Israel's physical demise, thus the Arab Israeli conflict whose solution, as this poster sees it, is the application, as is, of UN Security Council Resolution, 242, designed for this purpose.
Go directly to the root cause of the problem.
Lord Sydenham expressed it, concisely and precisely, in a House of Lords debate:
"If we are going to admit claims based on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down...
The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied."
House of Lords, 21 June, 1922.
The simple fact is, Abbas has been unable to make serious counteroffers at the negotiating table since Israel has said no to offers by Fatah that were already well beyond their mandate. From Israel's perspective, their's no reason to negotiate in good faith until they actually become a pariah state, a benchmark they're hurdling towards rapidly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15iht-edcohen15.html?_r=3&ref=rogercohen
"Israel's presence in the West Bank is the result of a war of self-defense and should not be seen as occupied territory; because there was no sovereign body there before, it should be called disputed." "Please, let's stop using the terms 'occupied territories' and '67 borders,' they're simply not politically correct."
View the Video: The Truth About the West Bank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGYxLWUKwWo&feature=channel_video_title
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcCrccpyi8c&feature=player_embedded
I'm sorry, but I think I miss some logic in that.
The Saudi Peace Plan, endorsed by the Arab league, and the Organization of Islamic States, (56 countries), offers Israel EVERYTHING it says it wants-peace and normalized relations in return for the 1967 borders. Again this is EVERYTHING Israel has claimed to want. But Israel's response to the plan is that it is a only a starting point.
The Palestinians have inalienable rights under international law:
1. A state in ALL the occupied territories.
2. The Right of Return, or compensation for those who choose not to.
The details can be negotiated, if the Palestinians choose, but this is the law, and Israel is in violation of it.
242 passed unanimously at the Security Council and has been accepted by all relevant parties to the Arab Israeli conflict, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) included. It is high time those who have accepted 242 adhere to that which they accepted, unless they had intended to fool the world in the first place.
Thus, according to 242, Israel should withdraw its armed forces, i.e. the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from "territories" captured in the Six-Day War, 1967, to "secure and recognized boundaries" to be determined through direct negotiations by the warring parties.
The outcome should then be the incorporation of Gaza into Egypt, as had been the case until 1967, and much of the West Bank should be taken over by Jordan that had ruled over it until that military conflict.
I find it additionally odd that you would pick this resolution to defend Israel, as it unequivocally identifies Israel as an occupying power.
The lame Zionist argument that the line in the English version "withdraw from occupied territories",(The French version states withdrawl from all occupied territories), means they can keep some is analogous to my saying: "Get out of my house!", and you negotiating whether that means vacate the Living Room, but stay in the Dining Room.
PS - and you get 13% and I get 87%
The premise is just so false.
Israel is simply illegally occupying Palestine - it's a very simple concept
That's how the other side sees it, whether you think he's right or not. In other words, articles such as the one we just read take as their premise that there are two sides to the story and each side deeply and pasionately believes it's in the right.
Of course, you could say one side is completely wrong, and "peace" will come when that side is completely destroyed, and some exhilarating revenge is thrown in for compensation, and many people do feel that way. But that is not what this article is about.
YouTube video uploaded by B'Tselem shows an IDF officer cocking his gun and pointing it at a Palestinian man during an IDF operation in the West Bank; IDF says will open investigation into the matter."
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/watch-idf-officer-points-loaded-gun-at-unarmed-palestinian-1.374285
But the crucial difference is this:
While for the past couple of decades every Israeli government (including the current one) has accepted the concept of an Arab Palestinian state, Palestinian leaders have yet to accept the concept of a Jewish state. The Palestinian position is "We want an independent Palestine in West Bank & Gaza AND ALSO the right to "return" TO ISRAEL (not to Palestine!) 10 million "refugees" (the vast majority of whom were born in Arab countries and never set foot in Israel). In other words, their distorted version of "two states" is not "two states for two peoples", but "two Arab states". This is just like Israelis accepting a Palestinian state in West Bank & Gaza AND ALSO demanding the right for Jewish Israelis to settle in it. Ridiculous.
Frankly, as long as the Arabs continue to demand the "right of return", I see no point in discussing territory or borders. If I were Israel's PM, I would tell Abbas: "Either you want an independent state alongside Israel, or you want Israel. Call me when you've made up your mind".