Moderate Arab-Americans still hopeful

Ghaith Al-Omari, advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP)--an organization that strongly supports a negotiated two-state solution--concluded his Sept. 27th appearance on the PBS Newshour as follows:

.... I simply cannot imagine either side coming to the U.S. president, to President Obama, and saying, here, we're handing you a failure in this process one month into the process. It's unthinkable, inconceivable at the moment.

And, as I said, I believe that the strategic interests of both the Palestinians and the Israelis can only be fulfilled through a negotiated process. They might position and posture and do brinkmanship, but, ultimately, you know, there is no other option in the long term but to negotiate.  

Al-Omari's colleague at the ATFP, Hussein Ibish, outlines a possible way for Israel and the Palestinians to finesse the settlements issue for now: 

.... The settlement issue is crucial because with every significant expansion of the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories, the borders of a Palestinian state become more difficult to draw.... 

... all sensible parties, including Israeli parties, must recognize that ... Israel cannot be allowed to continue to reshape the strategic landscape while negotiations are proceeding.

This suggests the usefulness of an informal understanding, enforced by the US, that Israel can build modestly in “consensus areas” generally understood to be the likely subject of a land swap between Israel and a new Palestinian state. However, Israel must not engage in significant new land expropriation in the West Bank, incursions into Palestinian neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem, or building in the “E-1 corridor” that would cut Jerusalem off from the West Bank.

Not only would such an understanding resolve, for a limited period of time, the strategic problems posed by continued settlement activity, it could and should buy time for negotiators to focus on fixing the borders of a Palestinian state, which would defuse the issue over a much longer term. ...

You can read this entire article by Ibish at the Now Lebanon website. 

Ruth Gruber's inspiring story

Born in Brooklyn in 1911 (where she grew to adolescence believing that everyone was Jewish), the prolific author and photo-journalist Ruth Gruber will reach her 99th birthday on Sept. 30.  Her life story is currently being told in "Ahead of Time," a documentary film that is well worth seeing. 

She first obtained notoriety when she became the world's youngest Ph.D., earning her doctorate on the writings of Virginia Woolf, in Germany, on the eve of the Nazi takeover.  She became a correspondent for the Herald Tribune where she again made news reporting on the Soviet Arctic in 1935.  Gruber repeated a similar task in 1942, this time reporting on conditions in Alaska for the Roosevelt administration. 

This earned her the credibility to again work for the government in escorting a thousand Jewish refugees from Europe, to the US, where they were interned in Oswego, NY.  This was one of the few concrete achievements of the Roosevelt administration in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust---an effort forced upon FDR by his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, who had assembled evidence of the State Department's work to block Jewish immigration and had threatened to make this public.  The film makes reference to this fact.

Her next milestone event was in reporting on the "Exodus" story, from Palestine, for the New York Post.  This was the Haganah ship, filled to the gills with Jewish refugees, which attempted to run the British blockade of Palestine in 1947, only to be stopped and violently boarded by British sailors and marines.  Three of the ship's passengers and crew were killed and many were injured.  

There are some superficial parallels in this incident with the deadly Israeli takeover of the Turkish ship attempting to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2010; both involved humanitarian issues and both were propaganda triumphs for the side whose ship was intercepted.  But I wouldn't for a minute want to equate the efforts of the Haganah with the values of Hamas ruling over Gaza.  Still, both incidents had a backdrop in tragic circumstances.  

The film records, without comment, a recent event, when Gruber visited current-day Israel; she is interviewed by the journalist and historian Tom Segev.  It struck me that Segev rather smugly and condescendingly asked Gruber if her compassion for refugees only applied to Jews, or if it included Palestinians.  To the credit of this still sharp elderly lady, she did not stumble.  She responded that she was saddened at the injustice of how Palestinians remained in camps. 

My takeaway from the Jewish aspects of this film, and Ruth Gruber's extraordinary life, is that even if we have good reason to criticize Israeli policies in later decades, Israel was legitimately conceived and born as a haven against anti-Jewish oppression. We should not forget this. 

Why Settlement Moratorium Should Continue

[from the September 26 Meretz USA e-newsletter]
"Israel's settlement moratorium has made a difference on the ground and improved the atmosphere for talks. And our position on this issue is well known.  We believe that the moratorium should be extended." --  President Obama to the UN General Assembly, last week.
 
By the time you read this column, on, or after, September 26, we should know whether the 10-month moratorium on new Israeli construction in the West Bank (except East Jerusalem), set to expire today, has been extended, in line with President Obama's explicit and public request at the UN.

Alternatively: A face-saving compromise deal might be worked out.  Or, in the worst-case scenario, the just-renewed peace talks might soon begin to founder in the wake of resurgent Israeli settlement expansion.  As I write on September 22, erev Sukkot, however, there is no way of knowing.

But, regardless of developments over the next few days, it is worthwhile considering Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent justification for restarting settlement construction amid Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.  In a press briefing on September 21, Netanyahu reasoned as follows:

"Peace talks have been going on for 17 years, even when there was construction in the West Bank."

The Prime Minister's statement was historically accurate, of course.

But the Prime Minister wasn't only reciting a fact.  He was also trying to convince the world that settlement expansion is innocuous, and represents no obstacle to peace.

A review of the 17 years cited by Netanyahu can help us determine whether that's indeed the case.

Read the entire column on the Meretz USA website!

These Talks Must Not be Allowed to Fail

People have asked me what I think about the chances for the current talks to succeed. The following article explains some of my thinking on the question.--Yours, Hillel

... if this round of talks ends in the same manner as the Camp David 2000 talks, with a total breakdown and mutual recriminations, it may represent the last opportunity to achieve a realistic two-state solution.

Ten years ago, one of the major failures of the Camp David talks was the fact that they ended without any joint declaration, and with no statement of progress from the American hosts. Although President Clinton asked adviser Dr. Aaron David Miller to draft such a statement of progress when the talks ended without an agreement, the combined opposition of Prime Minister Barak and President Arafat to the publication of such a statement caused Clinton to back down.

Hopefully a formula for continuing the talks will be found. But if the talks collapse because of an Israeli unwillingness to extend the settlement freeze scheduled to end next week, Palestinian terrorist actions or any other reason, it will be absolutely essential that the Americans issue such a "progress report" to serve as a benchmark and basis for the continuation of the negotiations.
[....]
Click here to read the rest of my article at the Palestine-Israel Journal website.

Alternatives to two states

Michael Lame writes thoughtfully about the range of long-term options that Israelis and Palestinians face if negotiations fail for a two-state solution:

.... What is the fall-back position if the talks fail? Is there another solution waiting in the wings? Yes, there are several of them, though none as popular right now as two states for two peoples. ... All of them have obvious flaws; some would say fatal flaws:

... There are at least four different models for a so-called “one-state solution” based on the establishment of a single political entity encompassing all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
1) One big Jewish State;
2) One big Arab State;
3) A federated state;
4) A bi-national state

Read this entire piece at Michael Lame's "Re-think the Middle East" weblog.

Fidel talks about Jews & antisemitism

One stunning result of Jeffrey Goldberg's provocative recent Atlantic article on Israel and Iran is that it motivated an extraordinary invitation from Fidel Castro. Goldberg's thoughtful reporting on his visit to Cuba (see, for example, his blog post, "America's Absurd and Self-defeating Cuba Policy") substantiates my point that Goldberg has been slandered as being right-wing.

Of special interest in this episode to Jews was Fidel's chastisement to Iran and Pres. Ahmadinejad for Holocaust-denial, antisemitism and threats against Israel. Although still critical of Israel, Fidel has made it clear that he holds no brief for antisemitism, as Goldberg recalls:

Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their weapons. Global and simultaneous nuclear disarmament is, of course, a worthy goal, but it is not, in the short term, realistic.

Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence. ...

It's gratifying to see Fidel opine with such understanding on Jews and Israel, but this is something of a departure for him (see these remarks he made two and a half years ago). Unlike many (or most?) Communist leaders, he's never traded in antisemitism as a policy, but Cuba's long been hardcore in its anti-Israel statements and actions---even once having sent troops to Syria. Evidently, his recent broadside against antisemitism has had a positive effect on Hugo Chavez, his disciple who is the strongman of Venezuela and has been flirting with antisemitism.

Israel and Yom Kippur

My favorite day in Israel (especially in Tel Aviv) has always been Yom Kippur. A day of national quiet. The kind of quiet that allows for reflection and introspection, even for secular Jews who don’t express their Jewishness through synagogue prayer.

A day of absolute rest for cars, trains, planes and other fossil fuel-burning vehicles. A day for bicycles and rollerblades and feet on otherwise empty streets and highways. So much so that some Israeli environmentalists have started to embrace the day as an example of what societies can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

But perhaps what’s most amazing is that the quiet of Yom Kippur has been achieved without the intrusion of religion into politics, without legislative fiat. True, laws have been passed that keep businesses closed and buses off the streets on Yom Kippur, but that’s the case for Shabbat in Israel as well, when the roads are still inundated with private cars, cabs and the shared sherut taxis.

Compare the near-unanimous, unlegislated and largely harmonious observance of this automotive abstinence by Israel’s Jewish public with the yearly tensions generated around other holidays – e.g., when ultra-orthodox politicians seek to prevent all Israelis from eating hametz on Passover by coercive means (by banning its sale in stores), not persuasion. Rather than encouraging a “kosher Passover”, the ultra-orthodox diktat promotes hostility, resentment and resistance.

As Israeli Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, of Hiddush – For Religious Freedom and Equality, noted in the Forward recently, “if [religious] coercion were removed,” far from undermining Jewish identity in Israel, “new springs of Jewish creativity and growth would bloom”. Amen.

Meanwhile, if you can’t be there, enjoy this video of Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv.

G’mar Hatima Tova

Hussein Ibish vs. Isi Liebler

This is my email query to Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogger, who has consented to posting our exchange:

Hussein,
I've debated Isi Liebler on cable television. A supporter of Oslo during the '90s, he turned into a bitter critic of peacemaking efforts because of terrorism. His regular column in the Jerusalem Post is very hardline, because he totally distrusts the Palestinian leadership. I'm sure that his views are mirrored on the Palestinian side by many who totally distrust the Israeli leadership because of the settlements.

Do you think that anything he writes here is true? I know that he's basically correct on these ceremonies; how do moderates like ourselves handle such questions on proving the PA's goodwill? [I quote Liebler here:]

Mahmoud Abbas was adamant that the Palestinian Authority would not contemplate any compromises. He told Al Kuds newspaper that "we're not talking about a Jewish state and we won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state... you can't expect us to accept this." Interviewed by Al Ayyam he said, "If they demand concessions on the right of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can't allow myself to make even one concession." He also told the Egyptian media that while he would contemplate NATO forces being deployed in a future Palestinian state, he would not tolerate the presence of Jews among NATO forces and "will not allow even one Israeli to live among us on Palestinian soil."
.... It should be noted that Abbas failed to explicitly condemn the recent killings by Hamas and merely noted that the timing of the assassinations "contradicts Palestinian interests."
.... We continue downplaying the criminal nature of Palestinian society such as the sanctification of "martyrs" engaged in appalling crimes against our civilians, as well as incitement against Jews and Israelis in PA mosques, in the media and throughout the educational system. In Ramallah a square was recently named in honor of Dalal Mugrabi who massacred 37 Israelis on a bus.
A few weeks ago Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, participated in a ceremony honoring Amin al-Hindi one of the chief architects of the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

Hussein Ibish's response:

Most of it's either distorted or false. The ceremonies are right, but to reduce Amin al-Hindi to someone suspected of having a role in the Munich terrorist act is to misunderstand his role in Palestinian society. It's a little bit like objecting to Israelis honoring former members of Irgun or the Stern gang. The statements attributed to Pres. Abbas are not accurate at all, and they have been thoroughly rebutted by the PLO and the PA. That's definitely not what he said and it's not their position at all. Yes, there are plenty of people on the Palestinian side, maybe most, who totally distrust the Israeli leadership, and not just because of settlements, but also because of violence and the occupation. Anyone capable of including a phrase such as “the criminal nature of Palestinian society” or “the criminal nature of Israeli society” has little to offer and is just looking for reasons not to strive for peace. To call it unhelpful would be a serious understatement.

[Abbas is] on the record as saying the opposite: that he welcomes NATO forces, including Jews and even if commanded by Jews, and many Palestinian officials have said Jews can stay in the Palestinian state, only not as settlers. Abbas obviously didn't say no Jews in Palestine; he said no more settlers, which is a completely different matter since it's about their status and not their identity.

Anyway, I'm really not interested in refuting this guy, because I've never heard of him and anyone who wants to engage in this kind of finger-pointing is wasting all of our time. We can talk about Lieberman, Yousef and all the others too. But this is a stupid zero-sum approach that concentrates on proving why the other party is bad, and which is therefore completely pointless.

Demos pro & con Muslim community center

Reporter Doug Chandler covered the rallies and counter-demonstrations regarding the Park 51 Lower Manhattan Muslim community center, which filled the weekend of Sept. 10-12---including the rally and march that J Street-NYC participated in, and I attended. And you should not miss the amusing cover story Chandler wrote two weeks ago on his abortive interview with Pamela Geller, a leading Jewish crusader against the community center project.

The NY Jewish Week's Washington, DC correspondent James Besser analyzed the issue from a national Jewish point of view.

Compromise possible on settlements freeze?

I was heartened to hear on National Public Radio today that Secretary of State Clinton is trying to tie an agreement on borders to the contentious issue on whether Israel will continue a partial building suspension in the territories---although the borders issue was not mentioned in today's NY Times report. Personally, I support a full freeze until the status of East Jerusalem and all territories beyond Israel's 1948-'67 borders is decided in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. At the same time, the natural inclinations of Prime Minister Netanyahu will be to undo the partial freeze.

Ms. Clinton may be grasping an opportunity here. If at least a partial agreement can be reached on borders, salting away the long understanding that most of the heavily populated settlement blocs contiguous with Israel will be annexed in exchange for a transfer of an equivalent quantity of sovereign Israel to the Palestinians, then building may be resumed there but not in the wider expanse of settlements substantially beyond the current border. And my sense is that the settlement town of Ariel, 18 kilometers beyond the Green Line, is too far to be included within the area where construction may resume.

Do we dare hope that an agreement of this sort will soon emerge? This would be an unprecedented compromise for a right-wing prime minister of Israel and a politically weak president of the Palestinian Authority to arrive at. It would prevent a breakdown over this issue and be substantial evidence that this time, negotiations may actually work.

Still, this is only my hope; I would not bet the farm on this, nor can I predict that there will be any sort of agreement to get over the hump of the settlements freeze issue. Such an agreement is feasible---even obvious. Sadly, historical odds dictate that it would be wise to bet against such a positive development.

Ibish: Hamas NOT a partner for peace

Hussein Ibish, of the American Task Force on Palestine, rebuts calls for incorporating Hamas directly into the peace process:

With the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, numerous voices in the United States have been urging the inclusion of Hamas in international diplomacy....

... One is to allege ... that without Hamas there is no chance of any Palestinian leadership being able to deliver on a peace agreement. This ignores the extent to which Hamas’ appeal relies on cynicism and despair about peace, and the likely surge of legitimation for any leadership that can secure independence for the Palestinians.

Another assumes that Hamas is somehow more “authentic” than the Palestine Liberation Organization because it is a violent revolutionary group. Some have transferred sympathy for left-wing revolutionaries of the past to this ultra right-wing fundamentalist organization precisely because it is violent and revolutionary. ...

... George Washington University professor Nathan Brown has recently argued that because there have been no Palestinian elections in years so that terms in office have expired, there are two equally illegitimate and authoritarian Palestinian Authorities, one in Ramallah and the other in Gaza.

Arguments assuming that elections alone are what matter ... ignore why there can be no elections (Hamas is blocking them because it rightly fears the results)....

Harvard professor Stephen Walt recently suggested that if peace negotiations fail, “Hamas will be in a strong position” to lead “a Palestinian campaign for political rights within [a] single state, based on well-established norms of justice and democracy.” Walt doesn’t seem to understand what Hamas is, what it believes in, what it opposes, or the implications of its regional affiliations. The idea that Hamas might become a civil-rights movement for international standards of justice and democracy is simply laughable.

... Hamas showed its true colors once again by attempting to sabotage the current peace negotiations – which the organization fears might succeed in ending the conflict before it can unseat the PLO. This Hamas did by murdering four Israeli settlers in a drive-by shooting; it claimed “full responsibility” for the killings, called them “heroic,” vowed to repeat the crime (and tried to the very next day) ....

To read entire article, click here.

Films show how Holocaust haunts us still

Within the space of a few days last week, I saw two very different films related to the Holocaust, but I see value in exploring the two in tandem. One is “A Film Unfinished,” a documentary about a Nazi faux-documentary; the other is last year's Quentin Tarantino spoof, “Inglorious Basterds,” which I saw on the Showtime cable network. The former makes the Nazi cameramen into honest documentarians despite their intention; the latter fictionalizes World War II in an outlandish way, to make Jewish characters into uber-avengers who shorten the war by wiping out most of the Nazi leadership in a fiery climax.

If “Inglorous Basterds” were simply a spoof, it would be in exceptionally poor taste and not worth commenting upon. Instead, it is surprisingly serious and even riveting. Fortunately, it is not just about the buffoonish squad of mostly Jewish “Golems” (the Hitler character even uses this term in an exasperated conversation about them) commanded by Brad Pitt as a cartoonishly crude Tennessee goy with Cherokee blood who has them scalp their German victims. Its most compelling revenge fantasy is that of French actress Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna (it kills me not to fill in another h after the second s, but this is how her name is presented online) the sole survivor of a French-Jewish family slaughtered three years before by the “Jew hunter,” SS Colonel Landa.

Filmmaker Yael Hersonski takes the raw footage of what ultimately was an unproduced Nazi propaganda film, found in an East German archive, and uses it to strain truth out of what was meant to be a lie. The Nazis had intended to document life in the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942, a couple of months before massive deportations began to the gas chambers at Treblinka. But their purpose was to show how well “rich” Jews were living, and how callous they were to the impoverished, starving masses in their midst---a patently false premise, given that all were imprisoned and starving to various degrees, and all were equally slated for death.

The reality of the Holocaust as seen in “A Film Unfinished” underscores the emotional validity of the fantasy revenge scenario of “Inglorious Basterds.” History provides Jews with every reason to want to revisit such events, this time witnessing the acts of Jewish avenging angels.

In a real sense, this is what Israel has become to many of us. Back in 1948, and for me as a teenager in 1967, Israel's exceptional military prowess was a tremendous source of pride. Israel's failure to use its military advantage to try harder to forge peace in the early 1970s, began to intervene in my consciousness when I realized that Prime Minister Golda Meir had not engaged with very public peace overtures by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Later I learned that Golda may also have missed the possibility of a peace treaty with Jordan's King Hussein, then an unofficial ally of Israel, who had in fact offered a peace treaty, but not on terms that Israel saw as sufficiently advantageous at the time.

I do not question the need for Israeli military power to have prevailed to prevent the country's destruction at its birth, and to ward off very real threats from the Arab world in ensuing decades. But the wars in Lebanon and Gaza in more recent times, although largely provoked by the other side, illustrate the limited utility of Israel's military strength. We should also by now have gone beyond the emotional needs of a historically oppressed people to only have faith in physical power; diplomacy and compromise must also have their place.

Still, I don't want to be seen as preaching. The concrete threats and hateful propaganda from so much of the Muslim world--and especially the Nazi-like rhetoric emanating from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah--have the understandable effect of making us feel frightfully vulnerable again. In fervently advocating a peaceful path for Israel, I want not to excuse these Jew-hating (or "anti-Zionist") enemies, who make peace activism so much more difficult.

Happy New Year/ Shana Tova! May this coming year end our fears and substantially advance our hopes for peace.

The Lieberman We Need To Worry About

Israeli Minister of Minority Affairs Avishai Braverman (Labor) thinks Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman should be fired from his ministry for saying that an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “…is not achievable in the next year or in the next generation.”

One understands Braverman’s point. Lieberman was, after all, not just offering an analysis. He himself is one of the main reasons that the pessimism he expresses exists. Lieberman is not merely a bystander offering a judgment, but an actor working against the sorts of resolutions that have, for more than 15 years, made up the foundation of a two-state solution.

But Braverman’s solution wouldn’t really change much. Lieberman’s “role” as Foreign Minister has been thoroughly curtailed. Indeed, every now and then, Lieberman, who is well aware of his marginalization in the Netanyahu government, bristles and has a public spat with his boss, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bibi might toss Lieberman some kind of bone, but he has made it clear that Lieberman is not part of the inner circle. His opinion, in and of itself, carries no weight, and Bibi’s only concern (and it is a serious one) is what Lieberman can do domestically to rally people against the Likud leader.

This was evidenced once again at the Washington launch of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians last week. Surely, any country’s foreign minister should be present at such a momentous event. But Lieberman couldn’t make it as he had a very important job in bringing his diplomatic powers to bear on the sensitive and crucial relationship between Israel and … Cyprus.

Bibi and Ehud Barak function as Israel’s Foreign Minister; this is well known. When one considers how much damage Lieberman’s Ministry has done to Israeli diplomacy (greatly magnifying the problems which are caused by some very misguided Israeli policies and actions) one can only imagine how bad a position Israel would be in as far as international standing goes if Bibi really let Lieberman be a foreign minister.

That’s not say that Lieberman is not a major threat, to peace, to the Palestinians, to Israeli security and democracy. It’s just that removing him from the foreign ministry, as Braverman calls for, won’t actually affect Lieberman’s ability to cause such problems.

Lieberman’s real strength is in his leadership of Yisrael Beiteinu, the second biggest party in the governing coalition Bibi leads, and his position as Israel’s most influential right-wing demagogue. The sad fact is that Lieberman, whose fanatical anti-Arab racism has drawn rebuke from a range of pundits that stretches from MJ Rosenberg all the way too Marty Peretz, has a sizable following in Israel.

This must be taken very seriously, and Lieberman can manipulate that popularity whether he is Foreign Minister or not, which is why Braverman’s remedy is insufficient.

Israel is still a democracy, albeit a democracy whose democratic structure is under increasing attack, as evidenced by the activities not only of leaders like Lieberman, but of groups like Im Tirtzu. And as such, political views of all types must be given their airspace. But for a democracy to function, forces like Lieberman’s which threaten that very democracy, as well as Israel’s security by opposing and trying to undermine peace with the Palestinians must be forcefully opposed.

It is not enough to oppose Lieberman’s presence in the Cabinet. Lieberman’s attempts to rid Israel of its non-Jewish inhabitants is an assault on the very essence of the Zionist dream, which sought to create a Jewish homeland that was also capable of governing a diverse community of people with reasonable equanimity. Israel has fallen very short of that goal already, but Lieberman’s drive to actually rid Israel of its Arab citizens directly contradicts the ideals of Zionism, right and left wings.

Lieberman’s marginalization in the government has had the unhappy side effect of letting Israelis treat him as a kind of embarrassing joke. Everyone in Israel knows he has no pull in the government, so they’d rather, quite understandably, try to ignore him.

But this means missing an opportunity to take back the notion of a Jewish homeland from those who understand that to mean Jewish domination of non-Jews. Ongoing support for Israel, from liberal Diaspora Jews as well as many other groups, depends on Israel becoming the state it can be, but has never been since its birth: a state that is the Jewish homeland, but which gives full equal rights, both on the books and in practice, to everyone.

That’s a lot to ask. Certainly we, in the United States, however much we may have progressed from slavery, and later, the Jim Crow days, still struggle with racism, disenfranchisement, and bigotry. The current wave of hate against Muslims as embodied in one church’s “Burn-a-Qu’ran Day” and the Park 51, or Ground Zero Mosque debate, demonstrates this amply.

But Israel is not the United States. It’s a much smaller country, much more of a community/country, and, due to the manner of its birth and the permanent conflict it has always lived with, its democracy is a much more fragile thing. And its dependence on escaping its own increasing pariah status is much more important to its future survival.

One cannot expect Israel to suddenly become an egalitarian utopia, but it must start t reverse the course it is on; that is, the course that led to the last election, where right-wing groups garnered so much support and an open racist like Lieberman can hold the keys to forming a new government as he did in 2009.

That is accomplished through public discourse and debate. It happens by the silent majority of Israelis who find such views abhorrent convincing some of Lieberman’s supporters to change their minds and marginalizing the rest. We’ve seen that process take place in many countries.

Lieberman is an embarrassment, but he is also a danger, one that needs to be confronted. It’s up to Israelis to do it, but it’s certainly a process that we in the Diaspora can contribute to and encourage. It’s time we do so.

Israeli universities resist rightist assault

Our friend in Montreal, Stephen Scheinberg, emeritus professor of history at Concordia University and co-chair of Canadian Friends of Peace Now, is pleased to share this "good news" story, which he wrote for The Mark:

.... Israel’s nascent McCarthyism emanates from several sources, including right-wing members of the Knesset and several non-governmental organizations that have enjoyed important financial support from rightist American sources....

The rightist campaign has achieved some success, such as the removal of Prof. Naomi Chazan (chair of the NIF) from the contributors to the Jerusalem Post, threats to the financing of both NIF and Human Rights Watch, and most probably the withdrawal of funding by the new, Tory-dominated board of Canada’s Rights and Democracy from three human rights groups....

However, ... the Israeli right may have miscalculated when it went after the universities. Israel’s university faculties are obvious targets for the right because liberal education and academic freedom are anathema to those who believe that their particular brand of Zionism should reign triumphant in every corner of Israeli society. If they knew any history, they might also have thought that the universities would capitulate with no more than a whimper of protest. In the Cold War 1950s, American universities cooperated with congressional investigating committees and the FBI to purge their faculties (Canada and the U.K. profited when they absorbed some of these academic refugees). So there was some reason to think that Israeli academia, which is overwhelmingly dependent on government financing, would not protest too much.

In this instance, it was Im Tiirtzu (Hebrew for “if you will it”), purporting to be a student organization, that launched the offensive. This same organization had won important support last February when it attacked the NIF as the instrument behind the UN’s Goldstone Report on the Israeli army’s Gaza offensive.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar even addressed their convention, and Prime Minister Netanyahu sent warm and encouraging greetings to a group whose leader, Ronen Shoval, told writer Gershom Gorenberg that “the purpose of the New Israel Fund is to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state,” and that the human rights terminology of groups it supports “serves Communist interests.” Shoval must have been channeling the late senator McCarthy.

The first reaction of BGU’s president Rivka Carmi was to condemn the threat made by Im Tirtzu but ignore the organization and its letter. However, other past and present university leaders recognized that this was the time to speak out. Gen. Shlomo Gazit, former president of BGU and a former head of military intelligence, did not mince words. “Israeli society,” he wrote, “is on the verge of being consumed by a menacing wave of McCarthyism stoked by nationalist movements and publicity-hungry legislators. If we ignore this wave and it’s not stopped immediately, it will endanger – perhaps even destroy – Israeli democracy.”

Haifa University president Aaron Ben-Zeev thundered: “Im Tirtzu is a political organization trying to dictate whom a university will or will not hire. This is academic destruction, the kind that will bring us to the kind of situation prevalent in Iran or communist Russia,” while several of the university heads signed a joint letter against the dangers of “thought police.”

Obviously, this was only one major battle in a war for the soul and character of Israel. Legislators are now framing repressive legislation in the Knesset, and other rightist organizations that are more sophisticated than Im Tirtzu will continue to malign and attack the institutions of progressive Zionism. However, the university presidents have made an impressive stand against the forces of repression, and perhaps, with their example, the centre can hold.

Beilin open to interim agreement

Former Meretz party chair, Yossi Beilin, advises in Haaretz ("A two-pronged approach to peace") that since a full peace under Netanyahu is probably not attainable, that an interim agreement is preferable to nothing. Beilin's pragmatic approach contrasts with more passionate views expressing either hope or disdain. This piece also confirms my long-held understanding that the 1995 "Beilin-Abu Mazen Document" was an agreement on principles that could have helped shape a permanent peace:

.... When I started the Oslo process, my aim was to overcome obstacles in the talks in Washington between Israel and the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, and to agree on the parameters of an interim agreement leading to a permanent settlement within five years. I proposed to the late Yitzhak Rabin that we seize the opportunity and try to begin negotiations on a permanent settlement, but he rejected this, saying that if such negotiations failed, it would not be possible to talk about an interim agreement and we would lose out both ways.

Immediately after the signing of the Oslo Accords, I began talks with Mahmoud Abbas on a statement of principles for a peace agreement. The work was completed after two years. Then-prime minister Shimon Peres rejected the document. Benjamin Netanyahu, as prime minister, did everything in his power to avoid reaching the moment of truth of a permanent settlement.

Ehud Barak, who was elected in 1999, wanted to reach a permanent settlement, but refused an American proposal to put what was then called the Beilin-Abu Mazen Document (though it was not a signed document) on the negotiating table at Camp David. The talks with the Palestinians failed because both sides did not try hard enough to reach a permanent agreement.

After the talks on a permanent settlement did not succeed, I proposed to Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information, to maintain an informal channel to prepare a detailed proposal for a permanent settlement, and prove to the two peoples that every issue could be resolved. That is the Geneva Initiative, signed seven years ago by a group of Israeli and Palestinian notables; it became the only detailed document acceptable to a large constituency of Israelis and Palestinians.

The prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, decided on a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. This withdrawal completely contradicted the spirit of the Geneva Initiative, but I supported it nonetheless because I understood that this was what Sharon was prepared to do, and that it was preferable to leave Gaza with Sharon than wait for another prime minister. Had Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, continued down the unilateral path, I would have supported him. Happily, for me, he attempted the bigger move, but it too was a far cry from the agreements we reached in the Geneva Initiative, and the Palestinians were not enthusiastic about it.

Netanyahu was elected a second time, unfortunately. He is miles away from a peace agreement along the lines of the Clinton parameters or the Geneva Initiative. I'm not sure he's prepared for an interim agreement, but to me it seems more practical than futile talks about security, the environment, water and the Jewish character of the State of Israel. That's why I propose trying the partial move. ...

Alpher calms speculation on Iran

The veteran Israeli strategic analyst, Yossi Alpher, writes in the new issue of The Forward to calm talk of Israel soon deciding to attack Iran:

.... The Israeli strategy regarding Iran’s nuclear threat is premised on the need to persuade the global community to deal with it as an international, not just an Israeli, problem. ...

Further, there are plenty of serious officials in Israel who don’t believe Iranian strategic decision-making is in the hands of “a messianic apocalyptic cult” (Goldberg quoting Netanyahu) and who have something to say in the Israeli chain of command. The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, for example, is understood to doubt the wisdom of an Israeli attack. ...

Under what conditions would an Israeli leader, left or right, civilian or military, actually consider attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure? By my reckoning, the following set of conditions would have to exist in its entirety:

First, the regime in Tehran continues to call for Israel’s destruction. This is indeed the case today.

Second, the Iranian nuclear program is crossing a “red line” and the timetable for Iran to obtain the capacity to attack Israel with nuclear weapons has become extremely short. This has not happened yet.

Third, all international efforts based on diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions are understood unequivocally to have failed. Right now, those efforts are actually escalating.

Fourth, all clandestine efforts to slow the Iranian program (which have apparently been very effective over the past 15 years) are understood to have failed.

Fifth, it is clear to Israel that neither America nor any other international actor is prepared to deal militarily with Iran, but that Washington is giving Israel at least a “yellow light” to move. This is not the case today; the United States itself frequently hints that it might ultimately resort to military means.

Sixth, Israel has a safe air corridor for its aircraft via one or more of the countries separating it from Iran. Turkey may recently have dropped off this list.

And seventh, an Israeli attack can set back the Iranian military nuclear program for a significant period of time, while a sober cost-benefit analysis persuades Israeli planners that the strategic advantages of damaging the Iranian program outweigh the very heavy potential ancillary costs of the strike: rocket attacks on Israel from the north and south and missile attacks from Iran; regional and international outrage and isolation; a possible historic crisis in Israeli-American relations; dangers to Diaspora Jewish communities from terrorist attacks, etc. ...

Both sides setting stage for agreement?

There is ample reason for skepticism on this new round of negotiations begun this week, but we are presenting our own and other views exploring both doubts and hopes. Today, I open with NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner writing of Prime Minister Netanyahu's potential for delivering peace, even or perhaps because of his right-wing credentials (my thanks to Lilly Rivlin for flagging this article):

.... “I intend to confound the critics and the skeptics,” Mr. Netanyahu said in July at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. .... Even more than his own aides, Mr. Netanyahu seems to believe that a deal can be reached under his guidance. He does not want to hand the negotiations over to committees of experts but to meet personally with Mr. Abbas every two weeks. ...

One sign of that readiness is that it was Mr. Netanyahu who suggested that the talks be kept to a relatively short, one-year time frame, according to American and Israeli officials. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is from the left-leaning Labor Party, told the newspaper Haaretz, “If Netanyahu leads a process, a significant number of rightist ministers will stand with him.”

But it may also be, as critics on the left maintain, that Mr. Netanyahu is focused assiduously on projecting an image of peacemaker in order to keep the Obama administration on his side for the issue he cares about most — combating Iran. It remains unclear whether the terms of any two-state agreement he seeks can be made acceptable to the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu has often said that he has three requirements for a deal. The potential for mass smuggling of rockets and other weapons into the Palestinian state must be avoided, Israel must be recognized as the state of the Jewish people by the Palestinian leadership, and the accord must declare a complete end to the conflict. After Tuesday night’s murder by Hamas of four Israeli settlers, Mr. Netanyahu’s focus on the need for security may carry more weight. ...

In the meantime, our friend from the American Task Force on Palestine, Hussein Ibish, has co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, "The Future Palestinian State Takes Root":

... The state-building program launched last year by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has made measurable progress. While the terrorist group Hamas rules in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians in the West Bank are trying to build the framework of a future state.

The West Bank economy grew by 8.5% last year (according to the International Monetary Fund), despite the global recession and regional factors inhospitable to foreign investment. Palestinian GDP for the third quarter of 2009 was $1.24 billion, up from $1.18 billion a year before. ...

The sine qua non for economic expansion has been the creation of the new Palestinian security services, which are a model for the state-building program in general. Palestinian forces have restored law and order in now-thriving towns like Jenin and Nablus and have coordinated effectively with Israeli forces, allowing Israel to remove a significant number of roadblocks and checkpoints.

Palestinian state-building also includes institutional and civil society reforms. The most recent was an intervention in the field of education announced on Aug. 8. Mr. Fayyad identified three key goals for reforming the curriculum: improving language skills, including Arabic; promoting analytical and critical thinking; and combating fundamentalism and extremism. The aim is not only to create future generations of entrepreneurs and thinkers, but to ensure that they're accustomed to notions of peaceful coexistence with their Israeli neighbors.

The state-building program has qualities of perestroika—efforts to separate party from government and to replace a patronage-based government designed to satisfy political constituencies with a technocratic meritocracy. As part of this, the Justice Ministry recently announced that it will seek increased separation of powers and protection from political interference in legal cases, which has been a persistent problem in recent years.

Mr. Fayyad's efforts have generated significant opposition from within the ranks of Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. As an independent, Mr. Fayyad is held in suspicion by some of the Arafat-era old guard. He is, however, supported by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In other quarters—including in a recent report by Washington's Carnegie Endowment—Mr. Fayyad has been criticized for running his state-building program outside the context of Palestinian democracy, since the terms of all elected officials have expired and no new elections have been held. (Hamas adamantly opposes any new national elections, as they have every reason to fear the results, and Fatah has proven unable to organize more limited municipal elections.)

This criticism misses the fact that Mr. Fayyad and his program are neither causes nor symptoms of the lack of elections, and the state-building efforts go on in spite, rather than because, of the electoral impasse. ... Mr. Fayyad's state-building program is creating the institutional framework that is essential to a functioning democracy. ...

The full article is also accessible at the ATFP website.

Peace Talks: Notes of caution, hope & pessimism

Thomas Friedman's NY Times column yesterday is an articulate blend of caution and hope. Last week's op-ed by former ambassador Martin Indyk laid out a hopeful scenario and Prof. Gadi Taub's op-ed presented a cogent argument as to the urgency of success for Israel's long-term survival as a country with a Jewish majority and a democratic form of government.

Our friend, Dr. Thomas Mitchell, has brought to my attention the following pessimistic but comprehensive and intelligent analysis by Donald L. Horowitz, writing for The American Interest Online:

As proximity peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians appear to give way to a resumption of direct negotiations, the parties will shift their attention from pre-negotiation maneuvering to the substance of the negotiations themselves. When they do, conventional wisdom will reassert itself. That wisdom holds that there is already in existence at least the general shape of a deal to which both sides can agree. It is a modified version of what Yasir Arafat walked away from at Camp David and then at Taba in 2000, what an unofficial group of Israelis and Palestinians presented at Geneva in 2003, and what Mahmoud Abbas failed to answer definitively when it was presented to him by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. With some fine-tuning, the chorus of pundits will say, perhaps an agreement can be consummated. President Obama himself said, during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on July 6, that he thinks an agreement can be readied within the year.

This is an illusion. ... [I fervently hope the writer is wrong in this, but he's still worth reading; be warned that this piece is long, however.--Seliger]

On the surface, this seems to be a good time to make peace. Internally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a strong position despite the fragility of his coalition arrangement. Even the far-right partners in his coalition, such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have shown a conciliatory side: They did not object to a West Bank settlement freeze. And even if the Israeli Right cannot stomach the final terms, perhaps it can be replaced in the coalition by the Kadima Party, whose former leader Ehud Olmert offered Abbas rather generous terms in 2008. Kadima led by its current standard bearer, Tzipi Livni, could join and keep the deal alive.

Furthermore, if in the past Israel has felt secure in the knowledge that it could hold out for its preferred terms, its position now is not what it was. The Goldstone Report on Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza gave ammunition to Israel’s enemies, including those embarked on a campaign to delegitimize it. So did the “peace flotilla” fiasco of May-June 2010. Regionally, Israel finds itself in an even more hostile environment than it was a decade ago. Hizballah has rearmed, and Syria has reasserted its hegemony in Lebanon. Hamas survived the war in Gaza. Israel’s relations with traditional ally Turkey are far poorer than they were, and Turkey is warming up to Syria and to some extent to Iran. Even Egypt, which, with Hamas on its border, has good reason to cooperate with Israel, shows signs of reconciling, or at least of hedging its bets, with Iran. And then, of course, there is Iran itself, with its nuclear threat looming.

Finally, Israeli Arabs have undergone a degree of radicalization. They no longer vote in significant numbers even for Jewish parties of the Left. The war in Gaza polarized them further, and last fall there was Arab-Jewish violence in the northern town of Acre. All are good reasons for Israel to make peace now, and that is indeed the position of much of the Israeli Left, which fears a future without an agreement and so is willing to take risks to get one.

On the Palestinian side, President Abbas has brought an unprecedented period of tranquility and economic growth to the West Bank. His career may be coming to an end, but for the time being he is stronger than ever. The 2009 Fatah conference gave him a central committee of loyalists.1 Younger, more tied to the West Bank, less drawn from Fatah’s armed wing, they are committed to building Palestinian institutions. With help from the United States, Abbas has professionalized Palestinian Authority security forces. His extraordinary security cooperation with the Israelis has enabled him to eliminate the multiplicity of militias that made the West Bank such a disorderly place under Arafat. The resulting quiet has allowed Palestinian institution-building that was unthinkable in Arafat’s time. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has shown himself to be a skillful administrator, with little tolerance for corruption. Courts, universities and private businesses are rising, and a middle class, with an interest in peace, is emerging. The change is palpable. Why risk it—and foreign-investor confidence—in further conflict?

So if the Israelis might have an incentive to negotiate in order to stop the deterioration of their position, the Palestinians might go to the table to build on their gains. But if some objective conditions suggest good timing, not all of them do. The division of Palestine, with Fatah in control of the West Bank and Hamas in control of Gaza, makes both Israel and the Palestinian Authority leery of negotiating: Israel because an Israeli pullout from the West Bank risks a possible Hamas takeover; the Palestinian Authority because the compromises necessary to an agreement render it vulnerable to a Hamas claim that it has sold the Palestinian patrimony. Neither side would like to sign an agreement that does not include Gaza, yet Gaza will be difficult to bring under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction anytime soon. It is no surprise, then, that both Netanyahu and Abbas responded to Special Envoy George Mitchell’s initial attempt to revive the talks with reasons not to proceed.

There is more to it than that, however. Some 70 percent of Palestinians believe it is impossible to reach a peace agreement with the current Israeli government, and about the same number believe the chance of a Palestinian state arising within the next five years is slim. Most Israelis are positively inclined to trade land for peace, but they have grown pessimistic that Palestinian leadership will actually make the trade. Even prominent doves, including Israelis who disdain Jewish settlers on the West Bank, despair of any negotiated solution. They point to all the protracted negotiations and promising proposals, especially the most recent Olmert proposals, that failed to secure Palestinian assent. Israel has a right-wing government today because Israeli voters perceive the Palestinian leadership to be intransigent.

Palestinians, in turn, see the current Israeli government as favorable to the settlers, implacably opposed to a divided Jerusalem, and unwilling to acknowledge the plight of Palestinian refugees. For now, Abbas is willing to let the Americans and Europeans push Israel while its international position is problematic, rather than engage in a serious negotiated exchange. The lesson of all this is that the previous series of negotiations that looked promising but ultimately went nowhere have produced a downward spiral of distrust and pessimism. Failed negotiations are not cost-free; they have reverberations in domestic politics and in the subsequent willingness to take risks for peace.

With this in mind, it is worth assessing the actual prospects for peace. To do that we need not just to examine the range of agreements that should attract the parties’ assent, but also whether the leaders could actually deliver the assent of their respective sides to what outsiders think is reasonable and, perhaps most importantly, whether they really have the power to end the conflict. When we do this, we find that what appears to be a reasonable agreement does not necessarily command the assent of both negotiating sides on all questions; that, even if it did, the leaders might not be able to produce a consensus in support of it; and that it is most unlikely that they could commit themselves credibly to ending the conflict. Thus the real question is whether they can take steps now that could lead to an agreement later.

Start with the terms of an agreement, first and foremost, on territory. After the Six-Day War of 1967, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 did not speak of a return to the armistice lines of 1949, which had held with very minor exceptions until that war, but to “secure and recognized borders.” The Israelis believe that the 1949–67 lines are by no means sacrosanct. The Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, on the other hand, demands Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries. The Palestinian Authority and the Israelis have, however, repeatedly negotiated about swapping West Bank territory inhabited by Jewish settlers for Israeli territory contiguous to what would be a Palestinian state. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement of last November spoke of a Palestinian state “based on” the 1967 borders, not coterminous with them, but rather involving “agreed swaps.” In 2008, Olmert and Abbas differed on the amount of territory to be exchanged (Olmert’s map from those negotiations contemplated sizeable annexations of Jewish settlements contiguous to Israel, where the vast majority of settlers live), but they did not disagree on swapping territory as a matter of principle. Nor are most Palestinians questioned in surveys averse to the idea of territorial swaps.

Clinton’s statement went on to refer to “the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” The “subsequent developments” referred obviously to concern not just for some Jewish settlements in the West Bank but for changes in East Jerusalem neighborhoods. The Palestinian Authority may very well be able to live with some adjustments in Jerusalem, but it is not willing to do without a capital in that city. Olmert’s proposals envisioned a division of Jerusalem, with Arab neighborhoods to become the capital of the new Palestinian state. But the current Israeli government is unwilling to go that far. Netanyahu has said he would never agree to partition Jerusalem, and Olmert’s successor as leader of Kadima, Tzipi Livni, also takes the position that Jerusalem may not be the capital of Palestine. So some elements of territorial compromise are very much in doubt.

Olmert also offered to relinquish sovereignty over the holy places in Jerusalem to a consortium consisting of Israel, Palestine, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. This was similar to a concession that Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered at Camp David in 2000, but there is deep resistance to it in the current Israeli government. The holy places are also among the most important issues for Palestinian public opinion.

For Israelis, a paramount issue is the right asserted by Palestinian refugees and their descendants—after more than sixty years, it is overwhelmingly their descendants—to return to homes in Israel. Israelis are keenly aware of issues of demographic balance, for Israel already has a growing 20.2-percent Arab minority. The arrival of large numbers of refugees from Arab lands would be most unwelcome in a state seeking to preserve its Jewish identity. At Camp David in 2000 and in later negotiations, there were discussions of Israel’s acceptance of a significant but still limited number of refugees. Surveys show that almost no Israelis agree to such proposals. Fortunately, there are alternatives: acceptance of the principle of the right of return to “historic Palestine” but its implementation in the Palestinian state rather than in Israel. Although most Palestinians, including most refugees, accept this solution, even moderate Israeli leaders who have negotiated with Abbas claim they found him to be most unyielding on the issue. It is far from clear that a compromise acceptable to both sides on the right of return can be negotiated.

There are other sticky issues as well, notably Israeli demands for a demilitarized Palestine and an Israeli security presence along the Jordan River. According to Netanyahu, the Israeli military needs access to the West Bank proper in order to prevent the importation of rockets. (Experience after the Gaza withdrawal has chastened the Israeli establishment.) A significant Israeli military presence in the West Bank is unacceptable to the Palestinians.

Perhaps compromises can be found for such difficult issues, but here is the rub: The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians want a comprehensive settlement, but once the demands of each side begin to be accommodated in part by the other, popular enthusiasm for the settlement declines sharply. Like a strong majority of Israelis, a strong majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution, but if its boundaries are not the 1967 lines because of territorial swaps, support shrinks. If Palestinians must acknowledge the Jewish character of the Israeli state, only a bare majority agrees. If the borders are not the 1967 lines, the territory is smaller, there is recognition of the Jewish character of Israel, and Palestine must be demilitarized, approval declines by more than half to about 33 percent, according to surveys conducted by the authoritative Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

So here, then, is the real problem concerning the terms of an agreement. On several issues, there are serious, possibly unbridgeable disagreements; but even if those can be overcome, that success gives rise to another difficulty: Compromise facilitates agreement but simultaneously reduces popular support for it. Of course, public opinion does not always lead; it can be led. But it is difficult to lead public opinion when political leaders have strong oppositions able to accuse them of selling out.

That brings us to the second question: If, despite everything, the two negotiating sides manage to reach agreement, can they bring along enough support to execute it? Can Netanyahu’s government survive? Can Abbas prevail over Palestinian opposition? Palestinians doubt that Netanyahu wants a peace agreement, and Israelis are unsure that Abbas, even if he wants one, has the strength to make an agreement.

Following the defection of members of the Likud Party to Ariel Sharon’s Kadima Party in 2005, Likud became even more right wing than it had been previously. Some members of Netanyahu’s cabinet are extremely resistant to some of the compromises that would need to be incorporated in an agreement, and they might well defect. The assumption has been that, in such an eventuality, the Kadima opposition would be available to take up the slack, but this assumption may not prove accurate. Kadima itself is torn by a leadership dispute, and Netanyahu’s attempts at the end of 2009 to induce Kadima to join his government or, failing that, to attract Kadima defectors, produced accusations by its leader that the Prime Minister was engaging in “gutter politics.” Moreover, former Likud leaders now in Kadima are not uniformly moderate; some are right-wing hardliners who have opposed peace proposals offered by both Olmert and Livni. If an agreement being negotiated by Netanyahu proved the least bit unpopular, it is not at all clear that Kadima would come to his rescue.

The Fatah government in Ramallah has an analogous but bigger problem. As indicated earlier, Abbas has the central committee of his party behind him, and Fatah has relatively strong, but not overwhelming, support even in Gaza. Yet Abbas’s control is far from complete, even in the West Bank. For example, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has threatened an intifada against the Palestinian Authority because its security cooperation with Israel has allowed the Israel Defense Forces to kill alleged terrorists in the West Bank.

Abbas’s personal support in Palestinian public opinion does not match that of his party. In the wings (or, more accurately, in an Israeli prison) sits a potential rival, Marwan Barghouti, a veteran of the two Palestinian intifadas who is said nonetheless to support a two-state solution. But that does not mean he would necessarily support any agreement negotiated by Abbas. Barghouti is exceptionally popular, in both the West Bank and Gaza. In a December 2009 survey asking about a hypothetical Palestinian Authority presidential race between him and the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Barghouti won in a landslide (67 percent to 28 percent overall, and by almost two to one even in Gaza). If an agreement negotiated by Abbas is to command assent, leaders like Barghouti will need to be on board and will need to resist the temptation to ride to power (assuming he is out of prison) by rejecting the terms of the deal.

Needless to say, Hamas is also a major problem. Both the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships will want to see major changes in the Hamas view of the peace process before they can reach agreement. Fatah cannot be confident in its ability to survive an agreement in the face of Hamas rejectionism, and Israelis fear that an upsurge of post-agreement Hamas popularity could produce a Hamas government not just in Gaza but in all of Arab Palestine. Egyptian-mediated unity negotiations between Fatah and Hamas have stalled, and Hamas shows no signs of moderating its objective of eliminating Israel and no willingness to accept prior agreements between Palestinians and Israel.

Therefore even if an agreement could be negotiated, it is difficult at this point to envision anything close to a political consensus favoring it on either side. It is always possible, of course, that if peace is in sight, momentum will develop that will make it difficult for opponents to prevail. But peace has been in sight before, and yet no peace agreement has been consummated.

A major reason for the elusive character of peace has been skepticism about its likely durability. Here the intractable, double-irredentist nature of the underlying conflict intrudes. Hardline Israeli politicians note that the Palestinian Liberation Organization never says it is aiming at “two states for two peoples”, although that was the official goal of the Quartet assembled by President George W. Bush to get negotiations started. They claim the Palestinians are aiming not for a two-state solution but a “two-stage solution”, the second stage of which is the obliteration of Israel. They note that Palestinian textbooks still contain ugly stereotypes of Jews, that the Palestinian Authority sends conflicting signals on the legitimacy of suicide bombings and the killing of Israeli civilians, that, in other words, it has not prepared its population for peace. A majority of Israelis surveyed in December 2009 believe that Palestinians aspire to conquer Israel, and 40 percent think they aim to destroy its Jewish population. The distrust obviously runs very deep.

The feeling is reciprocated. More than three-quarters of Palestinians believe that Israel wishes to annex the West Bank, and a 53-percent majority think it aims to expel the Palestinians. Abbas has explained that, although he has followed the Quartet’s road map by putting an end to terror attacks from the West Bank, Netanyahu has not even removed illegal settler outposts that the Israeli government committed itself to removing. Netanyahu and the Likud have been supporters of the settlers from the very beginning, which makes the Palestinian side doubt that a Netanyahu government would remove them. Netanyahu, they recall, voted against Israeli disengagement from Gaza and ultimately resigned from the government of Ariel Sharon that accomplished the removal of settlers from Gaza.

There is certainly widespread doubt about how easily any Israeli government could remove West Bank settlers. When Netanyahu agreed last year to a temporary construction freeze on the West Bank, settlers reacted forcibly against it. Some well-informed Israelis think the settlers learned from the removal of settlements in Gaza that, next time, they need to resist removal with force against their own government. Some pro-settler rabbis have urged IDF soldiers not to follow orders to remove settlers—advice that has produced a stern reaction from Labor Party Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. One third of Israelis support the refusal of soldiers to remove settlers.
The Olmert plan contemplates absorption into Israel of a significant number of West Bank settlements contiguous to Israel. Even if Palestinians accepted that plan, dozens of settlements containing about 20 percent of all settlers would still need to be evacuated. It remains to be seen whether the current Israeli government, or perhaps any Israeli government, could stomach the force that would be needed to remove so many settlers and the deaths that might be involved. And if it could not, then that government would have endorsed de facto the settlers’ claims in the West Bank.

The deep distrust, then, relates not just to the past—to the repeated failure of previous peace initiatives—but to the future: to the willingness and ability of each side to eliminate claims to what the other side sees as its land. Irredentist claims of this kind are hard to end, even after many decades—and doubly so if they are reciprocal.2 It is no wonder that while majorities of Israelis and Palestinians profess to support a two-state solution, neither believes that solution will be possible in the near term. Worse yet, neither side believes that the other side would support such a solution. Even if only minorities on each side harbor irredentist aims, those aims color the willingness of negotiators to trust the other side, and they impede the ability of each to make a credible commitment to deliver in the future.

Without such a commitment on both sides—that is, without an end to irredentist claims—an agreement could have consequences every bit as negative as failure to reach agreement. A peace agreement could actually produce warfare if internal divisions are poorly handled or a peace agreement proves controversial rather than satisfying. Hamas has fought Fatah in Gaza. At the moment, neither it nor other dissidents has the capacity to fight it in the West Bank, but an unpopular agreement could change that. Likewise, Jewish settlers in the West Bank could resist removal if a peace agreement required them to leave. Their resistance could become quite violent if Israeli opinion were not strongly in favor of the agreement.

So this is a case in which a peace agreement could exacerbate internal conflicts, but conflicts that could easily draw the two sides, Israeli and Palestinian, into violent confrontations with each other given the close quarters in which they live in the West Bank. Those confrontations could be serious enough to undo their agreement. To avoid such eventualities, an agreement has to be very popular. To achieve this, the respective populations have to be prepared in advance for the compromises embodied in it. Nothing at this point suggests that these conditions can be met. ...

Despite its pessimism, more of value can be read in the complete article available online.