|
Almost a decade ago I wrote an article describing
Israel’s “matrix of control” over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It consisted then of three interlocking systems: military administration
of much of the West Bank and incessant army and air force intrusions
elsewhere; a skein of “facts on the ground,” notably settlements
in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also bypass roads
connecting the settlements to Israel proper; and administrative
measures like house demolitions and deportations. I argued in 2000
that unless this matrix was dismantled, the occupation would not
be ended and a two-state solution could not be achieved.
Since then the occupation has grown immeasurably
stronger and more entrenched. The first decade of the twenty-first
century has so far seen the steady constricting and fragmentation
of Palestinian territory through still more wholesale expropriation
of Palestinian land, checkpoints and other physical restrictions
on freedom of movement, settlement construction, more and more
massive highways intended for Israeli settlers, control over natural
resources and, most visibly of all, the erection of the separation
barrier in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since December 2000,
according to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, the
settler population of the West Bank has grown by 86,000 and that
of East Jerusalem by 50,000. Gaza was evacuated of settlers and
soldiers in 2005, but Israel retains near complete control over
egress and exit of people and goods to and from the coastal strip,
regularly cuts supplies of fuel and other necessities to punish
the residents and mounts military incursions at will. All the Palestinian
territories are subject, to one degree or another, to the measures
of house demolitions, “closures” that halt economic activity, administrative
restrictions on movement, deportation, induced out-migration and
much more.
Indeed, the matrix has reconfigured the country
to such an extent that today it seems impossible to detach a truly
sovereign and viable Palestinian state from an Israel that has
expanded all the way to the Jordan River. Anyone familiar with
Israel’s “facts on the ground,” perhaps first and foremost the
settlers, would reach the conclusion that, in fact, the matrix
cannot be taken apart in a piecemeal fashion, leaving a few settlements
here, a road there and an Israel “greater” Jerusalem in the middle.
The matrix has become far too intricate. Dismantling it piece by
piece, with Israel stalling by arguing for the security function
of each “fact on the ground,” would be a frustrating series of
confrontations that would eventually exhaust itself. The only way
to a genuine two-state solution and not a cosmetic form of apartheid
is to cut the Gordian knot. The international community, led by
the United States, must tell Israel that the occupation must be
ended entirely. Israel must leave every inch of the Occupied Territories.
Period.
And now, at this critical juncture, as the two-state
solution for the Israeli-Palestinian impasse disappears under the
weight of Israeli settlements, there is a great imponderable: Is
President Barack Obama genuinely serious about reaching such a
solution or is he merely going through the motions familiar from
previous administrations?
The Tea Leaves
Many Palestinian, Israeli and international proponents
of a just peace took heart in Obama’s early gestures. Beginning
with the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special
envoy and continuing through the president’s June 4 speech in Cairo,
these proponents allowed themselves, after years of disappointment
and struggle, a cautious hopefulness. Some of the speech’s formulations,
like the nods to the “pain of dislocation” felt by Palestinians
and the “daily humiliations” of occupation, had been heard before.
But one sentence had not been: Obama said that a two-state solution
“is in Israel’s interest, Palestine’s interest, America’s interest
and the world’s interest.” Obama seemed to “get it,” that is, he
seemed to understand that the US is isolated politically by its
unquestioning backing of Israel, which is seen as obstructing a
solution to the conflict. And, for the first time, a US president
actually said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
in the vital national interest, not just a nice thing to do. These
words significantly raise the bar. Framing the conflict in this
way makes it easier for the administration to win Congressional
support for tougher demands upon Israel while undermining the ability
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to mount
an effective resistance, given American Jewish sensibilities about
suspicions of dual loyalty.
Since the Cairo speech, however, fundamental doubts
about US efforts have resurfaced. The only demand made by Obama
upon Israel has been for a settlement “freeze,” a welcome symbolic
gesture, to be sure, yet irrelevant to any peace process. Israel
has enough settlement-cities in strategic “blocs” that it could
in fact freeze all construction without compromising its control
over the West Bank and “greater” Jerusalem, the Arab areas to the
north, south and east of the city where Israel has planted its
flag. Focusing on this one issue -- which, months later, is still
being haggled over -- has provided Israel with a smokescreen behind
which it can actively and freely pursue more significant and urgent
construction that, when completed, will truly render the occupation
irreversible. It is rushing to complete the separation barrier,
which is already being presented as the new border, replacing the
“Green Line,” the pre-June 1967 boundary to which Israel is supposed
to withdraw, by the terms of UN Security Council resolutions, but
on which even the most ardent two-staters have long since given
up. Israel is demolishing homes, expelling Palestinian residents
and permitting Jewish settlement throughout East Jerusalem, measurably
advancing the “judaization” of the city. It is confiscating vast
tracts of land in the West Bank and “greater” Jerusalem and pouring
bypass road asphalt at a feverish pace so as to permanently redraw
the map. It is laying track on Palestinian land for a light-rail
line connecting the West Bank settlement-city of Pisgat Ze’ev to
Israel. It is drying up the main agricultural areas of the West
Bank, forcing thousands of people off their lands, while instituting
visa restrictions that either keep visiting Palestinians and internationals
out of the country altogether, or limit their movement to the truncated
Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank.
“Quiet,” behind-the-scenes diplomacy is surely
taking place, but the few details that have emerged are far from
reassuring. The State Department has mocked as “fiction” a ten-point
document given to the Arab press by Fatah figure Hasan Khreisheh
that promises an “international presence” in parts of the West
Bank and US backing for a Palestinian state by 2011. The component
of this alleged plan that seems more likely is that the US wants
a partial freeze on settlement activity from Israel in exchange
for a pledge from Washington to push for more stringent sanctions
upon Iran for its nuclear research. On August 25, the Guardian quoted
“an official close to the negotiations” saying: “The message is:
Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not.”
By all indications, if the Obama administration does present a
regional peace plan, which it is expected by many to do around
the time of the UN General Assembly meeting on September 20, it
will be nothing more than a “rough draft.” It is no exaggeration
to say a two-state solution will rise or fall on the outlines of
this draft -- and may perhaps fall forever if no concrete plan
is presented at all, which is also possible. Although the two-state
solution has been eulogized many times in the past, Obama represents
a best-case scenario. If he presents, in the end, a disappointing
peace plan that offers no genuine breakthrough, then the shift
to a one-state solution on the part of the Palestinian people and
their international supporters will be inescapable.
Sovereignty and Viability
So how can Obama’s plan be judged if and when it
is unveiled? Its chance of success can be predicted by how well
it addresses the fundamental needs, grievances and aspirations
of the peoples involved. An effective approach to ending the conflict,
as opposed to shopworn posturing, rests on at least six elements:
national expression for both peoples; economic viability for Palestine;
a genuine addressing of the refugee issue; a regional approach;
security guarantees; and conformity with human rights norms, international
law and UN resolutions.
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are not simply
ethnic groups, like, for example, American Jews or Arab-Americans.
They are two peoples who, like national groups everywhere, demand
self-determination. This reality actually lends credence to a two-state
solution, but only if the Palestinian state is truly sovereign
and economically viable. One should not forget that, in the days
of apartheid, South Africa established ten “bantustans,” small
and impoverished “homelands” on 11 percent of South African land,
seemingly to address the demand of the black population for self-determination
but actually to ensure a “democracy” for the white population on
89 percent of the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
notion that the Palestinians should get “autonomy with certain
characteristics of a state” on about 15 percent of historic Palestine
-- “autonomy plus-independence minus,” as he called it -- is reminiscent
of apartheid.
If the Obama administration’s plan does not cut
the Gordian knot that is Israel’s matrix of control -- something
no plan or initiative has yet succeeded in doing -- it will simply
fail to achieve an equitable two-state solution. Only a complete
withdrawal of Israel from all the Occupied Territories and the
sharing of Jerusalem with no restrictions on movement can avert
a Palestinian bantustan.
Obama’s plan, like its predecessors, seems destined
to leave the major Israeli settlement blocs intact, including those
in Palestinian East and “greater” Jerusalem. Even with so-called
territorial “swaps,” this measure would significantly compromise
the sovereignty and economic viability of a Palestinian state.
The area designated on Israeli maps for future expansion of the
Ma’ale Adumim settlement reaches to the outskirts of Jericho in
the Jordan Valley, while the Ariel bloc already extends between
the northern West Bank town of Nablus and points south. Taken together,
settlements and the highways that interlink them displace Palestinian
passenger and commercial vehicles onto a few narrow routes, while
the checkpoints intended to protect the settlers snarl traffic
on a predictably unpredictable schedule. And then there is the
towering wall. It is not a landscape made for easy economic integration.
Why, then, leave these massive settlements intact?
The argument is that their residents would object to the point
of a civil war in Israel. This is patent nonsense. True, these
settlement blocs contain 85 percent of Israelis living in the Occupied
Territories, but these are not the ideological settlers who claim
the entire Land of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan
River. Instead, they are “normal” Israelis who have been attracted
to the settlements by high-quality, affordable housing. They would
have no objection to resettling inside Israel on the condition
that their living standards do not fall, while the Israeli economy,
assisted by international donors, would have no problem footing
the bill for this population, about 200,000 in number. Settlements
in “greater” Jerusalem, housing another 190,000 Israeli Jews, present
no problem whatsoever. Residents are free to stay where they are
in a shared and integrated Jerusalem.
As for the “ideological” settlers of the West Bank,
only about 40,000 in number (out of almost six million Jews altogether),
they can easily be relocated inside Israel, just as were their
counterparts in Gaza. Their relocation will be a test of international
assertiveness, of course, because the settlers are able to mobilize
the support of the right-wing parties in Israel. Since Israel can
make no cogent argument as to the security necessity of these tiny
settlements, however, internal opposition will simply have to be
overruled; the international community cannot allow such frivolous
ideological matters to destabilize the entire global system. If
the legitimate concerns of the Israeli public over its security
are addressed by the international community, which they can be,
there is no compelling reason why Israel should not return to the
pre-June 1967 border. In fact, if the Gaza episode indicates anything,
it is that the Israeli public is willing to remove settlements
if it is convinced that doing so will enhance its security. Reminding
Israelis that leaving every inch of the Occupied Territories will
still leave them sovereign over a full 78 percent of the country
-- not a bad deal for what will soon become a minority Jewish population
-- should seal the deal.
Refugees
The Obama platform, should it see the light of
day, will probably also adopt the Israeli position that Palestinian
refugees can only be repatriated to the Palestinian state itself,
not to their former homes inside Israel. This plank would place
a weighty economic burden on that tiny prospective state, since
the refugees are, by and large, a traumatized and impoverished
population with minimal education and professional skills. Add
to that another significant fact: Some 60 percent of the Palestinian
population is under the age of 18. A Palestinian state without
the ability to employ its people and offer a future to its youth
is simply a prison-state.
Now the need for a viable Palestinian state is
recognized and embodied in the “road map,” the peace initiative
propagated by President George W. Bush in 2003, and will probably
be acknowledged in a plan from Obama as well. Despite its limited
size, a RAND Corporation study concluded that such a state is possible,
but only if it controls its territory, borders, resources and movement
of people and goods. Israel must be made to understand that while
it will remain the hegemonic power in the region, its own long-term
security depends upon the economic wellbeing of its Palestinian
neighbors.
Eighty percent of the Palestinians are refugees,
and half of the Palestinians still live in refugee camps within
and around their homeland. Any sustainable peace is dependent upon
the just resolution of the refugee issue. Technically, resolving
the refugee issue is not especially difficult. The Palestinian
negotiators, backed up by the Arab League, have agreed to a “package,”
to be mutually agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, involving
a combination of repatriation in Israel and the Palestinian state,
resettlement elsewhere and compensation.
The “package” must contain, however, two other
elements, without which the issue will not be resolved and reconciliation
cannot take place. First, Israel must acknowledge the refugees’
right of return; a resolution of the issue cannot depend solely
on humanitarian gestures. And Israel must acknowledge its responsibility
for driving the refugees from their country. Just as Jews expected
Germany to accept responsibility for what it did in the Holocaust
(and Israelis criticized the Pope during his summer 2009 visit
for not apologizing enough), just as China and South Korea will
not close the book on World War II until Japan acknowledges its
war crimes, so, too, will the refugee issue continue to fester
and frustrate attempts to bring peace to the region until Israel
admits its role and asks forgiveness. Genuine peacemaking cannot
be confined to technical solutions alone; it must also deal with
the wounds caused by the conflict.
Regional Approach, Security and International
Law
Obama’s edge over his predecessors lies in his
understanding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is part of
-- and in some ways the symbolic epicenter of -- a wider regional
problem that extends from the neighboring countries to Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and, indeed, throughout the entire Muslim
world and beyond. This understanding lies behind his framing of
the conflict’s persistence as being antithetical to vital US interests,
and behind his chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s statements making
a solution for the conflict a virtual precondition for addressing
the Iran issue. It is precisely this linkage, long denied by Israel,
which insists that the Palestinian issue be handled separately,
that the Obama administration seems finally to have embraced. Indeed,
even in the confines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself,
the key issues – refugees, security, water, economic development
and others -- are regional in scope. A perfect peace between Israel
and Palestine, in which both countries flourish, is not a viable
solution for either if they exist as prosperous islands in an impoverished,
unstable region.
Israel, of course, has fundamental and legitimate
security needs, as do the Palestinians and the other peoples of
the region. Unlike Israeli governments, the Israeli peace camp
believes that security cannot be addressed in isolation, that Israel
will not find peace and security unless it enters into a lasting
peace with the Palestinians and achieves a measure of integration
into the Middle East region. It certainly rejects the notion that
security can be achieved through military means. Israel’s assertion
that the security issue be resolved before any political progress
can be made is as illogical as it is self-serving. Everyone, the
Israeli political establishment and the military together with
the peace movement and the Palestinians themselves, knows that
terrorism is a symptom that can only be addressed as part of a
broader approach to the grievances underlying the conflict. Israel,
which also must be held accountable for its use of state terror,
cannot be allowed to exploit legitimate security concerns to advance
a political agenda of permanent control.
To the degree that negotiations are entered into,
they must have as their terms of reference international law and
UN resolutions if the Palestinians are to enjoy even minimal parity
with their Israeli interlocutors. The lack of grounding in such
principles was the fatal shortcoming of all the preceding attempts
to reach an agreement. Once negotiations are based solely on power,
the Palestinians lose, the differential being so heavily weighted
on the Israeli side, which totally controls Palestinian life and
territory. Indeed, a peace agreement rooted in international law
and human rights -- in short, a just peace -- would offer the best
prospect of working.
Trump Cards
Put simply, any plan, proposal or initiative for
peace in Israel-Palestine must be filtered through the following
set of critical questions: Will this plan really end the occupation,
or is it merely a subtle cover for control? Does this plan offer
a just and sustainable peace or merely an imposed and false quiet?
Does this plan offer a Palestinian state that is territorially,
politically and economically viable, or merely a prison-state?
Does this plan genuinely and justly address the refugee issue?
And does this plan offer regional security and development?
While one may glean optimism from the fact that
a US president finally comprehends the need for a comprehensive
peace in the Middle East, even if solely for the sake of US interests,
it is difficult to be optimistic over the prospects of such a peace.
No matter what the plan, Israel will neither cooperate nor negotiate
in good faith. A solution will have to be imposed, if not overtly,
then in ways that make Israel’s continued hold on the Occupied
Territories too costly to sustain. Simply withholding Israel’s
privileged access to American military technology and markets,
for example, would have that effect.
Any attempt to pressure Israel, however, will run
into a familiar obstacle: Congress, Israel’s trump card in its
encounters with the administration. In the case of Obama, Israeli
leaders know well that his own party has always been far more “pro-Israel”
than the Republicans. Already his loss of momentum after the Cairo
address (perhaps related to his difficulties over his health care
plan) has emboldened the temporarily cowed AIPAC. In early August,
the vaunted lobby produced a letter signed by 71 senators from
both parties -- led by Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Jim Risch (R-ID)
-- telling the president to lay off Israel and place more pressures
on the Arab states to “normalize” relations with Israel. Obama
had already, in his comments introducing Mitchell as special envoy
and subsequently, called for “normalization” simultaneous with
Israeli moves to lessen the burdens of occupation, in contravention
of the 2002 Arab League peace plan, which proposed that the Arab
states establish ties with Israel after withdrawal to the pre-1967
lines. Now AIPAC and its backers in Congress want the administration
to push for “normalization” before any Israeli overtures whatsoever.
The Netanyahu government has played its part, as well. In August,
its ministers, standing on the strategically crucial site of “E-1”
between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, vowed that
Israel would continue building settlements anywhere it pleases.
On September 7, Israel announced it was beginning work on 500 new
apartments in Pisgat Ze’ev and 455 in other West Bank locales.
These actions essentially tell Obama to go to hell mere weeks before
he is projected to launch his peace initiative. The US replied
with an expression of “regret.”
Any plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace that has
a hope of succeeding requires both an effective marketing strategy
and a level of assertiveness as yet unseen in a US president, excepting,
perhaps, Dwight Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter. Obama’s only hope
of breaking through the wall of Israeli and Democratic Party resistance
is to articulate an approach to peace based on clear and accepted
principles anchored in human rights and justice and then framed
in terms of US interests. A cold, calculating assessment of US
interests would certainly push Obama in this direction. Time will
tell, though the limp response to the new settlement construction
does not bode well.
In the meantime, growing opposition to the occupation
on the part of the international grassroots is making it increasingly
difficult for governments to support Israeli policies. The movement
targeting Israel for boycott, divestment and sanctions gains strength
by the day, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict begins to assume
the dimensions of the anti-apartheid struggle. But the Palestinians,
exhausted and suffering as they may be, possess a trump card of
their own. They are the gatekeepers. Until the majority of Palestinians,
and not merely political leaders, declare that the conflict is
over, the conflict is not over. Until most Palestinians believe
it is time to normalize relations with Israel, there will be no
normalization. Israel cannot “win” -- though it believes it can,
which is why it presses ahead to complete the matrix and foreclose
the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. The failure of yet
another peace initiative will only galvanize international efforts
to achieve justice for the Palestinians. Only this time the demand
is likely to be for a single binational state, the only alternative
that fits the single-state, binational reality that Israel itself
has forged in its futile attempt to impose an apartheid regime.
|
