The objective of forging a lasting peace to the Israel-Palestine conflict has, at least on the surface, acted as a kind of Holy Grail for a number of American presidents – Kennedy, Carter and Clinton all made gestures toward peace and all failed on the count of co-birthing a Palestinian state. A myriad of promises have been made, and broken, thousands of pages and buckets of ink have been spent on documents and memoranda, whose stated objective was to bring peace to a troubled, turbulent and relatively small stretch of land deemed ‘holy’ by Christians, Jews and Muslims.
A broad consensus that cuts across party, religious, ethnic and national lines concedes that peace in the Middle East is inconceivable and to a large extent dependent on a just and equitable solution to the Palestinian issue. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security advisor to the Carter administration, generally seen as a staunch ‘realist’ in foreign policy circles wrote in 2004 that:
‘The U.S. inclination, in the spring of 2002, to embrace even the more extreme forms of Israeli suppression of the Palestinians as part of the struggle against terrorism…The unwillingness to recognize a historical connection between the rise of anti-American terrorism and America’s involvement in the Middle East makes the formulation of an effective strategic response to terrorism that much more difficult.’[i]
Brzezinski elucidates a point which is approaching self-evidence to those in the region and the overwhelming majority without: that the Israel-Palestine conflict is the biggest and most enduring impediment to peace in the Middle East. Moreover, the United States unwavering support for despite the latter’s complete disregard for international law and tens of UN Resolutions, is an all-too-real source of resentment and discontent in the Arab and Islamic worlds, fuelling anti-American sentiment and forestalling ’s full integration into the region. This is not a revolutionary idea by any means, and has been put forward by countless politicians, journalist, intellectuals, and concerned citizens. For example, Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in their recent book, The Israel Lobby contend just that. [ii] And just last week, King Abdullah of Jordan reiterated in an interview with The Washington Post that the tapering off of the peace process is the most significant threat to peace in the region. [iii]
This dusty and time-worn argument has been echoed throughout the decades since the creation of the Jewish state and the concomitant issue of Palestinian refugees in 1948. This conviction has only intensified since the Six Day War in 1967 when attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and annexed the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, and the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Despite the prevailing consensus, which advocates a two-state solution and that Israel withdraw to its pre-June 1967 borders, a peace initiative in which a viable Palestinian state will emerge and stand alongside its Israeli neighbor remains a distant, if not farfetched prospect. Amongst both Palestinians and Israelis it appears that a severe bout of apathy has set in and is amongst the most significant factors stalling the realization of the much feted two-state solution promised to both peoples, whose leaders have rarely failed to disappoint. The prime source of such disappointment: the abject failure of the Oslo Accords, which were flawed from the very outset, and yet at the time of their announcement couldn’t receive enough praise. Why were the Oslo Accords doomed to fail?: they never mentioned statehood or independence. They did not define boundaries or the fate of Jerusalem, and they did absolutely nothing to arrest the ‘settlement enterprise’. [iv] In fact, the rate of settlement construction continued to increase in the aftermath of Oslo and precipitously so under the supposedly ‘dovish’ Prime Minister, and present Minister of Defense Ehud Barak; [v] even by comparison with the notoriously hawkish former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Apathy but also the Bush administration’s pre-occupation with Afghanistan, Iraq and the possibility of a looming war with Iran have all forced the Arab-Israeli conflict onto the back burner.
Last week saw the announcement of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip between Palestinian armed groups, including the ruling party Hamas and Israeli authorities. Only days since its announcement this fragile and precarious ceasefire already appears to be in jeopardy as the Israeli army shot dead two Palestinians in the West Bank, which was returned with rocket fire from the militant group Islamic Jihad, and the fear is that the violence may well spread to Gaza.
When the dominant trend has been once of attacks, followed by retaliation and counter-retaliation it’s hardly a surprise that Israelis and Palestinians are skeptical about whether this most recent ceasefire shows signs of longevity or will turn out to be just another exercise in futility and wishful thinking. While Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev claims that this latest ceasefire could engender ‘a new reality’, [vi] few see this as anything more than a band-aid solution, greeted to the extent that it will temporarily quell the violence which has claimed the lives of over 560 Palestinians and 14 Israelis, since Hamas took control of Gaza at the expense of Muhammad Dahlan’s militia in June 2007. Dahlan’s militia receives funding from the US and some European countries, such as Britain, and some commentators opine that he’s currently being groomed as the next ‘strong man’ to accede to the presidency and restore Fatah to power. [vii]
If peace is to be realized it’s clear that Hamas cannot be excluded from the process as the International Quartet have pressed President Abbas to. President Carter in his most recent visit to the region frankly acknowledged just as much. Not only do they have deep communal ties inside the occupied territories, providing numerous social, welfare and health services to a population forsaken by the international community, and at the mercy of the IDF and Israeli policy makers. The extra-judicial assassinations of key Hamas figures and the international blockade of Gaza which has reduced Gazans to a new low in their long-established destitution has only gone to buttress support for the Hamas government elected in the January 2006 parliamentary elections with a majority of 74 out of 132 seats. In addition, its acceptance of the two-state solution as a basis for negotiations, not only bespeaks an ideological moderation since its inception in the 1987, but also its tacit recognition that is here to stay. Hamas is going through the same process of maturation as the PLO had done previously. Though by no means ideal, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
The pressure brought to bear by the International Quartet has further been viewed as an ultimatum to Gazans that they overthrow their own elected government or suffer the consequences. Abbas was urged not to yield security control to the government and its Interior Ministry, as stipulated in the constitution. The Quartet also demanded that he quickly reclaim powers from the new government and incorporate them into the executive branch: financial responsibilities would be removed from the Ministry of Finance; the salaries of government officials would be paid by the president’s office and finally, all key policy decisions would be enacted by presidential decree.
The international community’s economic blockade of Gaza, rather than initiating Hamas’ downfall has strengthened the resolve of Palestinians, who refuse to be cowed. The actions of the Quartet have only reinforced many Palestinians profound sense of isolation and further entrenched the perception of Western double-standards. Palestinians democratically elected a government in free and fair elections and were punished for having done so. For critics of the Bush administration’s policy vis-à-vis the Israel/Palestine impasse, ample evidence has been provided that the US will only accept a democratically elected government if the democratically elected government in question is one of which the administration approves. A similar trend is deemed to be present in the analogous cases in Algeria, Egypt and Iraq.
Despite the hollow and evermore distant prospect of a Palestinian state, President Bush has said repeatedly that it might be realized before he leaves office. A crucial omission however, is that the Bush administration has entirely undercut the pre-existing international consensus, i.e. that Israel should withdraw to the pre-June 1967 border in exchange for peace. When Bush gave a letter to the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, whereby he committed his government to recognition of the de facto legitimacy of the settlement blocks inside the West Bank, he lent credence to Israel’s transformation of any future Palestinian state into a series of non-contiguous cantons, without meaningful sovereignty in any sense of the word i.e. control of its airspace, borders, trade and armed forces. [viii] The consequence: in March 2006 Olmert, announced a unilateral program of withdrawal, postulating that intended to keep 36.5% of the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem and the Jordan valley that represents almost half of the 22% of the post-1949 Palestine upon which many Palestinians had dreamt of building their very own state. [ix]
The settlement enterprise continues unabated as we speak, while armed settlers, protected by the Israeli army travel back and forth to Tel Aviv on modern roads strictly for the use of Israeli Jews, from which Palestinians are barred. Israeli settlers are furthermore permitted to harass, maim and kill Palestinians with impunity; and it is exactly because Jimmy Carter has underscored the presence of parallel legal and lived worlds predicated on race and religion in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that he has created such a stir inside the American mainstream.
Finally of course there is the issue of the Israeli ‘security wall’. The illegality of the wall was unequivocally condemned by the International Court of Justice in July 2004, since it violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids any occupying power from transferring part of its civilian population into territories seized by military force. The wall is projected to be at least three and a half times as long as ‘s internationally recognized border and cuts directly through Palestinian villages, breaking up families and dividing farmland. Some 375,000 Palestinians have been included on the ‘Israeli’ side of the wall. Moreover, the wall completely encircles the Palestinian city of Qalqiliya and its 45,000 inhabitants, with the overwhelming majority of their land and one third of their water supply seized unlawfully by the Israelis. [x] Scores of communities have been bulldozed. The concrete and electrified fencing materials are supplemented by two-meter-deep trenches, roads for patrol vehicles, electronic ground and fence sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, sniper towers and razor wire, all of which have been erected on Palestinian land.
Both Israelis and Palestinians have become attached to the idea of having their own states, and Israelis have had just that going on 60 years. A solution has long been supported by international law and more recently the March 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which affirmed the basic principle of ‘land for peace’. The overwhelming majority of both Israelis (62% of which favor direct talks with Hamas) and Palestinians desire peace: the only question which remains is when their tired, weary and uninspired leaders will finally deliver on a promise which has been a long time in coming and whose solution we continue to ignore at our own peril?
[i] The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 2004, p31 [ii] The Israel Lobby, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Allen Lane, 2007 [iii] A Conversation with King Abdullah of Jordan, Lally Weymouth, The Washington Post, [iv] Into the Lion’s Den, Robert Malley & Hussein Agha, The New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 7, May 1, 2008 [v] Siegman: After Arafat, Key Question Is Whether U.S. and Israel Will Resume Peace Talks with Palestinians, November 9, 2004, http://www.cfr.org/publication/7500/siegman.html [vi] Hamas Ceasefire Could Bring ‘New Reality’ to Gaza, Donald Macintyre, The Independent, June 18, 2008 [vii] Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East, Alistair Cooke, London Review of Books, July 5, 2007 [viii] Israelis Claim Secret Agreement with U.S., Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, April 24, 2008 [ix] What Hamas Wants: The Sunni Islamists’ Changing Agendas, Paul Delmotte, Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2007 [x] Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter, Simon and Shuster, 2007, 190-193 © Sadegh Kabeer
