The same old peace process

By: Alan Levine

I feel like I’ve seen this movie before. Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are in many ways like cheesy chick flicks. Each round of talks may have different characters and interesting story lines, but we always know the ending—the main character will find her prince charming and live happily ever after. Likewise, Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations will always find a way to fail.

The details of this Middle East movie are as follows: The Obama administration tried to make a halt to West Bank settlement building its strategy to bring Israel and the Palestinians together. For 10 months—including most of 2010—Israel froze construction in all Jewish neighborhoods in the disputed West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in order to try to woo the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the negotiating table. The PA did not sit down with Israel until the last month of that 10 month moratorium.

When Israel’s construction freeze reached its pre-announced expiration date in September, Palestinian negotiators said they would walk out unless the building freeze was extended another several months. So, the United States asked Israel to extend the construction moratorium for another 90 days (while offering a package of incentives in return).

The U.S., however, abandoned the plan last week because the Palestinian Authority said it would not negotiate unless the construction freeze also applied to East Jerusalem, in addition to Judea and Samaria.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians have been rewarded for not coming to the negotiating table. Also last week, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay officially recognized “Palestine” as an independent state with the 1949 armistice lines as its borders.

None of this is new. Most observers are pessimistic about the prospect of peace because this seems like a repetition of history.

The Palestinians have always walked away with the excuse that they did not get enough from Israel—as they did in 1947 and 2000.  They still call Gaza “occupied” even after Israel uprooted the territory in 2005. Even Ehud Olmert’s offer of 93 percent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and recognition of the Palestinian refugees was also not enough in 2008.

The Palestinians once again are not being pressured and are being rewarded for intransigence, just as they have ever since Yasir Arafat was given the honor of addressing the UN General Assembly in 1974, two years after the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Critics are seeing the story line unfold as it always does, and thus are concluding that a peace deal is not reachable.

The United States will attempt to prove them wrong with Senator George Mitchell conducting “parallel talks,” where he will once again shuttle back and forth between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership. He will be discussing “core issues” with both parties separately.

Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, wrote that the administration will “re-examine the sequencing.”  In other words, the administration believes that the strategy of dealing with settlements first has failed. They will now discuss all five core issues—Jerusalem, border, security, Palestinian refugees, and settlements—with Israeli and Palestinian officials separately.

Though Mitchell is a skilled negotiator, this strategy is not all that different from the negotiations that have failed over the last 17 years.  A strategy to consider may be to redefine, as opposed to re-order, the core issues.  The following should be added to the list.

• The Palestinian Authority and its big brother, the Arab League, must bring themselves to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
• While Salam Fayyad has shown he is capable of building institutions, his government must root out advocacy of violence, jihad, and anti-Semitism in the Palestinian press (see this example from PA television last month). The US could attempt to help make this happen by withholding foreign aid.
• The Palestinians are still in a tense schism, in which the Iranian-backed Hamas controls the Gaza strip and Fatah governs (with Western assistance) the West Bank. The two sides are still in a state of war, and an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would likely result in renewed Palestinian inner-fighting.
• Iran continues to surround Israel by proxy. Iranian-backed Hezbollah borders Israel to the north and Iranian-backed Hamas borders Israel to the west. Both groups acquire increasingly deadlier weaponry to threaten Israel. Many Israelis believe that a withdrawal from the West Bank would lead to another Iranian proxy state on Israel’s border. This time, however, it would be on the hills overlooking Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ben Gurion airport.

In order for the movie to end differently this time around, these core issues must be tackled. Iranian influence, anti-Semitism and rejection of Israel in the Muslim world will not go away with geographic concessions. As long as this is not understood, this movie will end the same way as it has the past 17 years.

Recommended Reading:

“Peace will come when Palestinians want it,” Joel Mowbray, Washington Times

“Why U.S. ended push for Israeli building freeze,” Ethan Bronner, New York Times

“Israel’s Oren interview,” Indira Lakshmanan, Michael Oren, Bloomberg

“Bleak House: The prospects for a Palestinian state have never been more grim,” Benny Morris, Tablet Magazine

"Beyond the Freeze Deal: A New Agenda for U.S. Efforts on the Peace Process," Robert Satloff, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy