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A Simulacrum
of Internationalization
Chris Toensing
Bitter Lemons
International (4/19/07)
The Palestinians
have long sought, and Israel has long resisted, the internationalization
of efforts to construct a process that would lead to a durable and
comprehensive peace. Independent advocates for a just peace have
echoed this call out of the realization that the near monopoly of
Washington on stewardship of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy has hindered
-- and even obstructed -- meaningful progress. Never has this fact
been more glaring than during the two administrations of President
George W. Bush.
The Bush administration's
default position is simply to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bush has never sought the resumption of the Oslo process that became
moribund at precisely its most promising juncture, the Taba meetings
of January 2001. Nor has Bush seized the opportunities presented
by successive iterations of the Saudi-drafted peace plan endorsed
by the Arab League. Instead, Bush has ridden shotgun while Israeli
Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert have driven events,
first with refusal even to meet Palestinian leaders and then with
unilateral measures like the August 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza
and four far-flung West Bank settlements. As a result, the two-state
solution, identified by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006
as a “personal goal,” has faded further and further from view, overshadowed
by expanded settlements and the 25-foot concrete wall in East Jerusalem
and parts of the West Bank.
At the same
time, and unlike the Clinton administration, the Bush administration
has participated in what appears to be an international body supervising
the Israeli-Palestinian file -- the Quartet of the United States,
the United Nations secretariat, the European Union and Russia. Notably,
the White House joined the Quartet before “multilateralism” and
“working with our allies” became Democratic and realist talking
points in the foreign policy establishment's feeble campaign to
stop the invasion of Iraq. So the Quartet cannot be dismissed as
a mere sop to domestic critics, but it certainly has been a simulacrum
of internationalization. As is obvious to all concerned, the clout
in the Quartet resides in Washington.
It is often
said that the Quartet is a tool for sanding the rough edges off
US policy preferences, in particular through the moderating influence
of the UN and the EU. In practice, however, the Quartet has mostly
served to cloak the Bush administration's unilateral peace-blocking
policy in the garb of international legitimacy.
Exhibit A is
the Quartet's signature achievement, the “road map” unfurled on
April 30, 2003. Though there had been intense pressure for a peace
process to replace Oslo throughout late 2001 and 2002, amidst a
series of suicide bombings in Israel and Israeli army incursions
into the West Bank, the US secured the postponement of the road
map's announcement three times. When it finally was released, the
road map's text bore clear marks of accommodation to US and Israeli
demands. First, Bush's newly discovered passion for Palestinian
“reform” was made a condition of final-status negotiations, as was
Israel's requirement of a full cessation of Palestinian armed attacks.
More damaging to the road map's prospects was the phased approach,
which left the plan vulnerable to constant derailment by acts of
violence and, like Oslo, delayed discussion of the most important
issues until the end. Finally, despite EU official Javier Solana's
insistence that “the road map is not the property of one country,”
the Bush administration's fundamental disinterest in the document's
implementation has rendered it effectively moot.
In 2006, upon
the capture by Hamas of a majority in the Palestinian Legislative
Council in internationally vetted elections, the US prevailed upon
the Quartet to bless an international financial blockade of the
Palestinian Authority -- a policy with the clear political goal
of impoverishing Palestinians into reversing their democratic choice.
The three US-Israeli conditions for talking to the Hamas-led PA
became known as the “Quartet conditions.” Cognizant of the worsening
humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories, the EU eventually
softened the blow of the aid embargo with the Temporary International
Mechanism. But it was Saudi Arabia -- not the Quartet -- that broke
the strategic impasse by convening Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas and Hamas leaders to hammer out a deal for a “national unity”
government.
Today, with
the Bush administration engaged in halfhearted attempts to jump-start
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, one hears fewer mentions in Washington
of either the road map or the Quartet. There are signs, meanwhile,
that EU member states will not toe Washington's line of maintaining
the blockade on the PA despite the Hamas-Fatah deal. But the raison
d'etre of the Quartet -- a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace
leading to a two-state solution -- is arguably less obtainable now
than it was at the time of the foursome's formation.
Israel's separation
barrier can be torn down; settlements and bypass roads can be dismantled
or swapped for land in Israel proper. But it is hard to believe
that any of this can or will happen absent a genuinely international
peace process -- one that is not controlled by Washington and is
not subject to the vicissitudes of American domestic politics. In
the case of the Quartet, one almost suspects that the simulacrum
has been used to discredit the real thing.
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Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report, publication
of the Middle East Research and Information Project (www.merip.org).
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