There has been much discussion and grandiose speech-making on the Middle East this week. First Obama gave a “big” address on the Arab Spring, and he even touched on the Israel-Palestinian peace process too. Then Bibi Netanyahu arrived in town for meetings with Obama and to give a speech to a joint session of Congress (minus Rand Paul, who skipped it). Others far smarter than me and more in touch with the real decision-makers have already offered their thoughts and reactions. (For a few good ones, see the Christian Science Monitor, Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast, and the PLO’s representative in the US Maen Rashid Areikat, who wrote in Politico this morning “Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and policies of changing the geography and demographics there show that Israel is in the business of prolonging the occupation, not ending it.”)
Nevertheless, I have a blog and can therefore offer my own, totally original and ground-breaking analysis for your perusal. Firstly, Bibi’s speech does nothing for the peace process. “Netanyahu’s real message to Congress: there will be no peace talks” is the headline of CSM’s article on the speech, and they are not wrong. It is in Israel’s–and especially the current government’s–interest to sit down with the Palestinians, because come September and the UN General Assembly, the Palestinians are almost certain to come to the negotiating table with an endorsement of statehood from most countries in the world. Israel and the US would rather hash things out without involving the UN. But if Netanyahu sticks to the conditions he laid out in his speech today, the Palestinians might get up and walk out saying “see you in September.” I don’t blame them. Netanyahu made some unreasonable claims today, claims that do not serve Israel, the Palestinians, or the US.
What claims are these? Well he maintains that Israel cannot return to the borders of 1967. These borders, between Israel and the future state of Palestine as laid out in UN Resoultion 242 (pdf), are no longer acceptable for Netanyahu’s government. They were for Ehud Olmert, who went even further than arguing for a return to the ’67 borders:
“We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967…Every government will need to tell the truth, which unfortunately will require us to tear out many parts of the homeland in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.”
But Netanyahu calls these borders “indefensible”. Presumably he thinks that Israeli settlements in the West Bank will become part of Israel and the Palestinians will be compensated with other territory. Today, he promised to be “generous”. But as Peter Beinart rightly points out, these settlements as part of Israel territory would make the international border even more indefensible than it already is:
“…if Israel’s 1967 border is indefensible against conventional attack, land swaps of the sort that Clinton and Olmert envisaged actually make the problem worse. The settlement of Ariel, which Olmert hoped to swap for land inside Israel, juts like a bony finger 13 miles into the northern West Bank. According to the 2003 Geneva Initiative, keeping Maale Adumim, another large settlement for which Israel might swap land, requires a thin land bridge across a Palestinian state to Jerusalem. How on earth would keeping these islands of Jewish settlement make Israel’s borders more defensible? To the contrary, if Israel ever did suffer a conventional attack from the West Bank, one of the first things it would do is evacuate places like Ariel and Maale Adumim, precisely because their location makes them, well, indefensible.”
Then there is the issue of Jerusalem, which Netanyahu says will not be divided and will remain the capital of Israel, and no part of the city will lie in Palestine. And on the refugee situation Netanyahu asserts that it will be resolved “outside the borders of Israel,” meaning Palestinian refugees can go back to the West Bank or Gaza but will not be allowed to return to their homes if they are (were) in Israel. With these preconditions, what do the Palestinians have to gain from going back to the negotiating table?
In this humble blogger’s opinion, Israeli security–that much-shouted about idea that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end but is rather an all-encompassing excuse used by diplomats to explain anything from “excessive” force by the IDF to preconditions for negotiation to the ultimate basis of Israel’s existence–depends on making concessions to the Palestinians, making hard choices, uprooting some settlements, standing in an inevitable storm of Israeli extremists who believe that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews, talking to Hamas, and guaranteeing complete, viable and secure autonomy for Palestine. Then and only then will there be peace.
But now the prospects for peace seem even more remote than ever before. After all these speeches and commentators commentating, it will be quiet on the Israel-Palestine issue for a few weeks. But beware the day the Palestinians follow their brothers in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Bahrain. The day they start protesting peacefully, united, calm, and determined–that is the day Bibi should fear most. Come September, with no real progress on a final settlement, the Palestinians will finally have Palestine declared a state despite any strong-arming of the international community by the US or Israel.
And then what Bibi?
