In
Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means
Robert Blecher
and Mouin Rabbani
November 26,
2007
(Robert Blecher,
an editor of Middle East Report, and Mouin Rabbani, a
contributing editor, are International Crisis Group analysts
based, respectively, in Jerusalem and Amman.)
At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women
threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed
across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t
you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted,
the self-appointed traffic cop himself stepped off the curb and
made his way to the other side of the boulevard. Such is life in
the West Bank on the eve of the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland,
where the Bush administration intends to create the semblance of
a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians for the first
time since it assumed office. There is excitement in Palestinian
towns about the urban order newly emerging from years of chaos;
there is a willingness to play by the rules even as many remain
convinced that doing so will not get them very far; and, lastly,
there is the reality that when the waiting grows tiresome, people
will again take matters into their own hands. As for the Annapolis
meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few
believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily
lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation
now in its fifth decade.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are also once again playing
by the rules, cajoled by the United States to return to the table
following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June and Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas’ subsequent formation of an interim government
in Ramallah. This would be no small feat, as negotiations over
the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which
the Palestinian leadership has long been clamoring, have been frozen
for more than six years. But today, with Palestinians deeply divided
and the international community deeply invested in perpetuating
their division, negotiations have become a venue for struggle as
much as a means for reaching a settlement. The current talk of
peacemaking is thus an exercise in conflict by other means, raising
opposition -- among Israelis and Palestinians alike, though in
different ways -- to what was already a contentious process.
THE ANNAPOLIS MEETING
The Annapolis meeting was announced by a Bush administration that
was unsure how to address the mess created by its six years of
neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet eager to salvage
an achievement from its catastrophic Middle East policy and cognizant
of the need to rally Arab support for a possible confrontation
with Iran. In July, Bush announced an “international meeting” whose
agenda was something of a mélange: Anchored in boilerplate about
Palestinian institutional reform, it also offered “diplomatic support”
for Abbas’ and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s biweekly discussions.
At the time, these talks were focused on delimiting a “political
horizon” -- that is, the rough contours of what a Palestinian state
would look like -- but as the conversations took on a genial tone,
Ramallah’s aspirations for what Annapolis could accomplish rose.
The commentariat began to bruit about prescriptions for what it
would take to accord Abbas a major diplomatic victory and thus
transform the Palestinian political order. Would Israelis and Palestinians
agree to a framework agreement for peace, thereby succeeding where
their predecessors had failed, or only produce a more general declaration
of principles, as had already been done in 1993? The negotiating
teams, appointed in early October, did not meet even the most modest
of expectations in this regard.
As the gaps between the two sides remained unbridgeable, domestic
fronts opened up as well. Olmert’s coalition partners threatened
to abandon the government if Annapolis should yield the kind of
result from which Abbas could make political hay, while Hamas withdrew
the mandate to negotiate it had extended to Abbas in a 2006 agreement
and confirmed in an accord brokered by the Saudis in 2007. What,
then, could the two sides agree on?
First, they agreed that whatever they decide in Annapolis will
be implemented only in accordance with the “road map,” the 2003
document sponsored by the so-called Quartet of the US, the UN,
Russia and the European Union. The road map required the relative
normalization of daily life before any discussions of the “final
status” issues -- borders, settlements, water, Jerusalem, Palestinian
refugees -- could get underway. For Palestinians, this meant ensuring
Israeli security, including the disbanding of militias, as well
as transforming the Palestinian Authority into an efficient and
effective institution. For Israelis, it meant measures aimed at
making Palestinian life under occupation a bit more bearable. But
with armed groups having seized the initiative from the Palestinian
leadership, and Israel attaching conditions that vitiated its acquiescence
of any import, the document was dead on arrival.
More than four years later -- and two years after the road map’s
proclaimed expiration date -- it has a new lease on life. For Olmert
and his colleagues, the road map’s resurrection offers a way to
divorce final status negotiations from the act of talking about
them to the Palestinians, thus enabling Israeli officials to cast
their glance at the horizon without sacrificing crucial support
at home. It also allows for continued insistence on Palestinian
security reform, though Palestinian officials, all the way up to
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, seem to need no prodding in this direction.
As for Abbas, the road map permits him to insist that Israel undertake
a range of measures that Palestinians have been demanding for a
long time: a settlement freeze, the reopening of Palestinian institutions
in East Jerusalem, removal of restrictions on Palestinian freedom
of movement and dismantling of outposts (that is, settlements that
are not just illegal under international law but also unauthorized
by the Israeli government) built since 2001. And since Abbas is
confident that the Palestinians have already made good progress
toward meeting their commitments, the road map is, in his estimation,
cost-free.
Second, Israelis
and Palestinians agreed to continue talking. On the one hand,
this development ought not to be dismissed: Not since January
2001 have final status issues been on the table, and after six
years of stonewalling Palestinian demands to take them up anew,
the Israeli government finally relented. The atmosphere surrounding
the Annapolis meeting has accordingly lightened of late: Press
accounts, which had been poking fun at the administration’s inability
even to name a date for the talks, began taking the meeting more
seriously. The State Department, which semi-comically insisted
early on that the meeting was “not a conference,” so as to bottom
out the low expectations, took to dropping the C-word regularly
in briefings. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even says she
hopes the two sides can strike a final deal “in this president's
term, and it’s no secret that means about a year.”
But, on the other hand, what seems to be a victory of sorts should
be recognized for the failure that it is: Annapolis was not supposed
to be a launching pad for final status talks, as an adviser to
the Palestinian negotiating team put it. Rather, the Maryland meeting
was supposed to mark the halfway point to a final status agreement.
If the two teams could not agree, in the course of nearly two months,
upon a short statement of the most basic parameters for a resolution
-- the 1967 border with minor and reciprocal territorial modifications,
a divided Jerusalem as the capital of two states, a negotiated
solution to the refugee question -- why would another eight months
(as the Palestinian team wanted) or 14 (as Olmert suggested) help?
After 15 years of on-again, off-again negotiations, why would time
be the salient variable? And even should Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators find common ground before Bush’s term ends, what hope
does either government have of selling it at home?
ISRAEL: A HORIZON DIMMED
Public opinion in Israel, like that in the Occupied Territories,
has long been equivocal: A majority of the population supports
a two-state solution to the conflict, though it is substantially
less willing to accept concessions on specific final status issues.
But even before he could plumb the nuances of public opinion, Olmert
found himself confronted with political difficulties that limited
whatever maneuvers he might have been willing to assay.
The hardline Yisrael Beitenu party and the ultra-Orthodox Shas
party each threatened to bolt from the cabinet if substantive negotiations
occurred at Annapolis. Yet with polls predicting that they would
lose seats in new elections, these parties were loath to bring
down the government and, in any event, satisfied that the pressure
they exerted had led Olmert to dim the horizon of expectations.
Yisrael Beitenu and Shas are planning to use the same tactic after
the Annapolis proceedings close, when they will be no less intent
on clinging to the perquisites of power. Hence the political problems
the prime minister could face down the road are not necessarily
smaller than those of today -- not that either of his coalition
partners believes an Annapolis process will ever progress far enough
to produce a moment of truth.
But there is some risk in this strategy for Yisrael Beitenu and
Shas as well. Should there be sufficient progress in negotiations
to push these parties into opposition, Olmert could count on votes
from the left-of-center Meretz party (five seats) and the “Arab
parties” (as parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel,
which hold ten seats, are known) to block the no-confidence motion
that could bring down the government. These votes would give him
the necessary bridge to complete negotiations, which he could then
take into new elections that would become a referendum on the agreement.
Fraught with uncertainty, this scenario would be the last resort
of any sitting prime minister, who would use all the carrots and
sticks he could muster to prevent the breakup of his coalition.
But it may well provide Olmert with his only way out. Previous
prime ministers have depended on the votes of Meretz and Arab legislators
to pass crucial pieces of legislation (Yitzhak Rabin for the second
Oslo accord in 1995, Ariel Sharon for the budget during “disengagement”
from Gaza in 2005). But today, given the increasing emphasis on
the Jewishness of Israel, it is far riskier to rely on Arab votes
when fateful questions hang in the balance.
Securing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been a regular
feature of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (though not of Israel’s
successful negotiations with Egypt and Jordan). During the Oslo
talks of the early 1990s, Israeli negotiators demanded Palestinian
recognition of Israel as a legitimate political entity; at Camp
David in July 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak insisted
that Yasser Arafat recognize the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Temple
Mount (Haram al-Sharif); and now, leading into Annapolis, a
raft of Israeli politicians have made Palestinian recognition of
the Jewish character of the state a central issue -- and for some,
a prerequisite -- for final status negotiations. In the context
of “separation from the Palestinians,” a phrase which disengagement
thrust to the forefront of political discourse, the emphasis on
the Jewishness of the state has become all the more prominent.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been among the most outspoken
in this regard, holding that the future state of Palestine will
represent the national solution for the Palestinian citizens of
Israel no less than for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak numbers among those seeking recognition
of Israel as a Jewish state, but his lack of enthusiasm for Annapolis
and whatever may come after does not stem primarily from ideology.
As a result of the Camp David fiasco and eruption of the fall 2000 intifada,
during which he was also prime minister, he fundamentally mistrusts
the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. Not less importantly, he
also doubts the capacity of Palestinian security services, a concern
that resonates publicly following Israel’s war with Hizballah in
2006 and continued rocket fire from Gaza.
Barak has provoked the ire of many of his Labor Party colleagues
who lament his defection from the Israeli “peace camp,” but his
opposition cannot be dismissed simply as politicking for personal
gain. Indeed, if Israel’s most sought-after asset is security,
why should it sign an agreement with a leader who cannot provide
it? Any agreement the parties reach will be shelved until that
elusive day when the Palestinian security services -- still under
the constraints of occupation -- prove themselves more adept than
the Israeli army. So why negotiate now, with a leader who, due
to the breakdown of his accord with Hamas, lacks a mandate to speak
for his entire people? If Israel finds itself in subsequent negotiations
with someone other than Abbas, its Palestinian interlocutors may
well insist on reopening negotiations -- much like new Israeli
leaders did in the 1990s -- pocketing the concessions that Israel
makes in this round.
PALESTINE: A HOUSE DIVIDED
The Palestinian national movement is more sharply fractured than
at any time in its recent history. The June 2007 Islamist seizure
of power in the Gaza Strip, and the appointment of a rival government
by Abbas whose authority is confined to the West Bank, has added
an unprecedented territorial dimension to the schism.
Prospects for reconciliation are meager at best, with Abbas’ Fatah
movement and Hamas more concerned with consolidating power within
their respective areas of influence and undermining their rivals’
authority, and with dialogue limited to informal contacts aimed
at exploring the basis upon which substantive talks might take
place at a later stage. Hamas seems to be increasingly in the grip
of a radical faction that has no interest in a deal that would
entail relinquishing Islamist hegemony over the Gaza Strip.
While many in Fatah are dissatisfied with the exclusion of Fatah
from the key portfolios in the Fayyad government, only a minority
advocates engagement with Hamas now. One former security commander,
when asked about Hamas’ strength in the West Bank, issued a sharp
rejoinder: “That’s the wrong question and the wrong approach. Fatah
should not deal with Hamas by overpowering it. It should be about
dialogue. Hamas should be crushed by dialogue, not by arms, by
embarrassing it over what it did in Gaza.” But his is a rare voice;
it is more common for Fatah notables to denounce parley with those
they consider putschists and declare they will accept nothing less
than a reversal of fortunes.
Israel and the international community, which bear significant
responsibility for the state of affairs because of their policies
toward the Palestinians since the 2006 elections that gave Hamas
control of the Palestinian Legislative Council, have only deepened
the rift with their insistence that Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy
and Palestinian reconciliation are fundamentally incompatible.
Even in the absence of external constraints, it will prove extremely
difficult to achieve a new agreement between the Palestinian rivals;
in the grip of them, the prospects are virtually zero.
Both Abbas and Hamas are betting, in opposite directions, on the
Annapolis meeting and the process it may spawn. Abbas hopes to
show that bilateral negotiations can achieve what resistance cannot,
both in terms of diplomatic process and improvements in daily life.
Hamas is wagering that precisely the opposite will occur, and that,
once chastened, Fatah will have no choice but to revive its partnership
with the Islamists, on the latter’s terms. Yet even should the
international custodians of this process provide Abbas with sufficient
goods to dissuade Fatah from resuming dialogue with Hamas, the
Islamist movement assumes that the fruits of the process will ultimately
redound to its benefit, as did those of the Oslo process when Hamas
in 2006 won control of the legislature. And should the process
further threaten Hamas’ position, it need not stand idly by. Abbas
is in no position to conclude a historic compromise without the
safety net of a national consensus including Hamas -- much less
implement one in the teeth of active and perhaps armed Islamist
opposition.
Compelling Hamas to fight for its very survival rather than what
it perceives as its rightful role in the Palestinian political
system is only compounding these challenges. The Gaza Strip is
under unprecedented pressure. Border crossings remain closed to
most exports and all but the most vital imports, precipitating
an economic freefall from which an eventual recovery will be prolonged
and difficult. The economy is being hollowed out, as the private
sector -- the most productive -- is progressively destroyed. Given
the continued rocket fire on southern Israel, the Olmert government
has declared Gaza a “hostile entity,” setting the stage for further
measures including embargoes on electricity and fuel. These sanctions
may be a prelude to an eventual Israeli military offensive in the
Gaza Strip akin to that in the West Bank in 2002, though many consider
this scenario unlikely -- except in the event of significant Israeli
causalities -- because it will create as many Israeli dilemmas
as it resolves. Once Israel conquers the coastal strip, it will
either need to remain and occupy or withdraw and, inevitably, face
further attacks. That Hamas will be unseated from within seems
even less likely; despite growing popular disenchantment and sporadic
clashes, the Islamists have the wherewithal to remain in power
and a proven determination to use it.
The squeeze on Hamas in the West Bank is less obvious to the naked
eye, but no less real. There have been widespread arrests of suspected
Hamas activists, pressures on NGOs and charities affiliated with
the movement, and politically motivated hirings and firings --
all of which have generated an atmosphere of intimidation paralleling
that experienced by Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Hamas leaders in the
West Bank claim that certain government employees, accused of Islamist
sympathies, have been denied salaries on the pretext they were
“acting against legitimacy.” But it is not only Hamas that is affected,
as a Nablus transportation worker complained: “I used to work as
a policeman in Jenin. I left in 2000 when the intifada started.
Now that things seem to be settling down, I tried to get my job
back when the new [interim] government [under Salam Fayyad] started
working. I was refused on flimsy and false pretexts. Finally, after
I really pushed it, the officer asked me, ‘What is your political
affiliation?’ I told him, ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.’ He knew that’s what I was going to say. It was no secret.
But at least he was honest: ‘That’s why you’re not getting your
job back. Affiliate with Fatah and we’ll rehire you.’”
Ramallah’s ham-fisted approach is the reason that Nasir al-Din
al-Sha‘ir, the Islamist former deputy prime minister and minister
of education in the national unity government, believes that “in
the long term, the big loser will be the Palestinian Authority.
Repression plays into Hamas’ hands. Every person who is fired,
every person who isn’t accorded his rights -- each has families
and neighbors. Hamas has only been in power for a year in its entire
history. If you pull Hamas out of power, you are returning it to
its normal position where it is most comfortable.”
Nobody, not even Hamas representatives, disputes that the movement’s
popularity has shrunk from the unusually high level of support
that it won in the 2006 legislative elections. But it is fanciful
to think that the movement has shriveled to the point of irrelevance.
Difficult as conditions are, and may yet become, for the Islamist
movement, its continued military and political potency poses two
fundamental challenges to Abbas. First, he cannot credibly claim
to represent the Palestinian people in his dealings with Israel
and the international community, particularly if the Gaza Strip
is excluded from any benefits the Annapolis process may produce.
Second, he cannot hope to legitimize any peace agreement he may
reach with Israel.
Hamas, no less than Abbas, faces dilemmas of its own. It confronts
external pressure and the consequences of its own brutal campaign
to impose internal order -- and, no less important, the contradictions
born of governance. Palestinians have begun to wonder how Hamas
can claim the mantle of resistance even as it abstains from it,
and how it can oppose the Annapolis meeting yet reap the fruits
of the “peace process” writ large.
THE ANNAPOLIS PROCESS
With Israelis and Palestinians agreeing to little more than resumption
of talks on final status issues and the gradual implementation
of the road map, the Annapolis meeting seems poised to morph into
the Annapolis process, belatedly signaling that its predecessor,
the Oslo process, has been superseded. The change in nomenclature
is entirely appropriate, not only because Oslo has, in practice,
been dead for six years, but also because the “two-state solution”
means something very different today than it did in 1993, when
the Oslo process got underway. Then, the call for two states was
the preserve of the left, of Palestinians and their allies, whereas
today, pinning down a two-state settlement seems just as important
to other parts of the political spectrum, if not more so. Rice
has told Congress that the window for a two-state settlement may
be closing, with Islamic radicals the ultimate beneficiaries if
it closes; Olmert openly worries about a South Africa-like struggle
that will be more difficult for Israel to combat; and Livni couches
her support for two states in the soothing formula of “empowering
the moderates.” US and Israeli politicians and diplomats see an
abyss to circumnavigate, a greater evil that only a new partition
of historic Palestine can avoid.
Partisans of a comprehensive peace must ask the question of whether
it will be possible to achieve this end via the exclusion of Hamas.
In narrow terms, this route will ensure that neither party will
get what it wants out of an Annapolis process: for Israel, security,
and for Ramallah, the flexibility to conclude and ratify an eventual
accord. But more broadly, the ongoing diplomatic and financial
blockade of Hamas raises questions as to the nature of the “endgame”
being contemplated: Will it turn out to be a vehicle for the realization
of Palestinian self-determination or -- as demography takes precedence
over territory in the Israeli political calculus -- an instrument
to constrain it?
And particularly if the Annapolis process does materialize, will
it amount to a means for Israel to buy time and further tighten
its grip on the West Bank, or will effective measures, such as
a settlement freeze, be built in to neutralize the element of time
while negotiators consider their options? Given the doubts that
have already enveloped the Annapolis meeting, it seems unlikely
to succeed where Oslo collapsed into renewed conflict. Not only
are many of the structural flaws of the Oslo process still present
in its anticipated Annapolis successor, but today there is the
added problem that the parley’s sponsors see progress toward Israeli-Palestinian
peace and an escalation of inter-Palestinian conflict as indivisible
objectives.
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