It’s probably helpful to have someone like Dennis Ross in the room when discussing policy options towards the Israeli-Palestinian question. But he’s only helpful as a kind of canary in the coal mine, who will tell you what moves are going to evoke passionate howls of protest and come with significant political pain.
The truth is that the only way to get Netanyahu to back down and make real concessions is to make a credible threat to the status quo and show that you can withstand the blowback in Congress. Frankly, Netanyahu needs that kind of pressure to be able to sell tough decisions to his cabinet and to provide political cover with the Israeli citizenry. As long as Netanyahu can come to our country and lecture the president on history and flatly reject his framework for negotiations, he doesn’t have any cover back home to make moves towards peace.
Right now, there are two main obstacles to getting a peace process started. The disagreement about the 1967 borders is being framed around the “indefensibility’ of those borders. The idea is that the old borders invited attack. I think that argument is wholly without merit. What invited attack was the relative degree of parity between the Arab and Israeli armed forces. But, truthfully, as the CIA accurately predicted in 1967, the Arabs never had a chance against Israel. Their decision to amass armies against Israel was based on delusions of parity. All that has changed in the intervening time is that Israel has grown many times stronger relative to its Arab neighbors and now has a nuclear deterrent.
The second thing holding up peace talks is more reasonable. Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas, and Hamas has now formed a cautious alliance with Fatah. This one is a classic Catch-22. When Palestine was split with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip, it was impossible to negotiate because what Fatah might agree to could be rejected by Hamas. The Palestinians needed to unify so that they could negotiate with one voice. But now that they can speak with one voice, Israel uses Hamas’s presence in the talks as a reason not to negotiate at all.
They have some justification in taking that stance, but I wish they would be more open-minded. Why not listen to what the Palestinians say rather than refusing to listen? The stance Netanyahu is taking basically precludes the possibility of negotiations.
As for the Palestinians, they would need Hamas to issue a recognition of Israel in fairly straight-forward terms for there to be any hope of moving past this impasse. The president made that clear in his speech.
As for the Palestinians, they would need Hamas to issue a recognition of Israel in fairly straight-forward terms for there to be any hope of moving past this impasse.
And what would the Palestinians get for it?
Not much. They’d get the start of negotiations that won’t result in an acceptable outcome.
Truthfully, I find this Peace In Our Lifetime™ quest for a “solution” in the Middle East to be about as entertaining as the “Rapture Today/Tomorrow/Soon” crowd. At this point Israel has nothing to gain by acceding to anyone’s demands and would have no problem telling America to pound sand if we issued an ultimatum. Israel forcibly removed all settlements and settlers from Gaza in 2005 and what did they get in return? More rockets. Hamas et al. won’t actually be placated until Israel is no more – the Palestinian Liberation Organization was formed in 1964, not 1967 or 1973.
And it’s not like Israel’s hands are clean, either.
There will be talks, negotiations, conferences, proposals, coalitions and more quartets, but the status quo is the new normal. Consider the West Bank to be Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California – or don’t, but let me know when we have achieved Peace In The Middle East, when the lion and the lamb shall lay down together…
” Israel forcibly removed all settlements and settlers from Gaza in 2005 and what did they get in return?”
This statement has appeared many times to show the world the futility of dealing with the Palestinians, and why, I presume, the colonization of the West Bank, and the deligitimations of the Palestinian state, must go on.
Sharon made a strategic decision not a moral one to leave Gaza because a few thousand Israelis living among 1.5 million Palestinians, residents and refugees, was an untenable circumstance. Also, Erstaz Israel never had much congress with Gaza, and hence held less historical value than say, Judea and Samaria.
However, that never stopped Israel from using Gaza as an example of why Israel will not rid itself of terrorism by giving the Palestinians an independent state. The key term here is “give.” The occupation has been so twisted that it appears that it is there solely to protect Israel, rather than its obvious role, to make the colonialism of the West Bank possible.
Setting aside that the Spanish weren’t indigenous to the Southwest, either, and inhabited it rather sparsely in 1848, this analogy still only works if the displaced residents of those states had no Mexico to retreat to, and instead were kept under military occupation in beseiged enclaves for generations.
A better analogy would be the US settlement of the West in general, wherein we simply stole the land and expected the existing inhabitants to just disappear, and when the lucky survivors didn’t, we herded them into impoverished, resource-stripped reservations. But the Middle East is a lot more compact and a lot more densely populated. And now, the whole world is paying attention.
It’s also not the 19th-Century and we’ve evolved quite a bit in our way of thinking about human rights.
The Likud projection is for the Greater Israel dream, the annexation of all of old Palestine into Israel. That would conform to David’s empire, which in any case was expanionist and lasted for about a hundred years. That, however, is a trivial matter.
“The stance Netanyahu is taking basically precludes the possibility of negotiations.”
And one might ask here: what’s new. Netanyahu’s strategy is to preclude negotiations with the Palestinians until the dream is fulfilled. As Shamir’s aide, Bibi understands how to prolong negotiations, false pretenses to peace, until the facts on the ground are too overwhelming to ignore. And essentially that is what he told Obama: you just don’t understand the reality. That reality is that Israel is close to claiming the West Bank (East Jerusalem is in the bag) and just needs another decade to implement the annexation. Apartheid? Don’t be silly. The Palestinians will have full opportunity to flourish under Israeli rule. Checkpoints will be eased as long as there is no more of this non-violent nonsense. There are plenty of jobs in Israel.
It all happened in South Africa once, jobs in the diamond mines. Low wage perhaps, but jobs nonetheless. They put kababs on the table.
Sorry but when you have delved deep into this conflict, the cynicism is almost unavoidable.
Ahhh – Hamas. They’re terrorists, doncha know. One can only look forward to the day when they are respected leaders in the international community … like Ben Gurion, Begin, et al
OK, I give up: how are borders that have been successfully defended in a full scale war “indefensible?”
Apparently, they are ‘no longer’ defensible.
“They have some justification in taking that stance” against negotiating with Hamas.
No they don’t. You don’t have to negotiate with your friends, you negotiate with your opponents/enemies. That’s what negotiation is for. Netanyahu’s stance parses simply into “we don’t intend to give an inch, and prefer to keep the conflict going indefinitely”.
I wonder why you think Netanyahu has any interest in selling negotiations to his government or citizens. The “indefensible” argument could be addressed by the territory swaps that Obama included. The motivation part probably requires nothing less than a credible move to end military aid to Israel until real progress has happened.
Could be that the Citizens United decision will have the unintended consequence of removing the US Likudnik crazy’s lobbying/intimidating advantage in light of all the new players, and hence its out-of-proportion political clout.
I’m seeing similarities between the Israel lobby and the oil barons.
“The truth is that the only way to get Netanyahu to back down and make real concessions is to make a credible threat to the status quo and show that you can withstand the blowback in Congress. Frankly, Netanyahu needs that kind of pressure to be able to sell tough decisions to his cabinet and to provide political cover with the Israeli citizenry.”
I can’t believe Obama doesn’t know this.
Everything you said is right on the money, but I think recognition should be a two-way street. Do the Israelis recognize the Gazans’ right to exist? It seems not; in fact, Israel’s previous actions toward them have been practically genocidal. The ”Greater Israel” strategy over the past 60 years seems to have been to decimate their morale until they can’t take it anymore and so they just pack up and leave. Or else just kill them.
It’s hard to recognize people who have invaded your home, destroyed your life and want to exterminate you.
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