President Obama is hosting a dinner for Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on
Sept. 1, in order to kick off the new round of direct talks between Israeli
and Palestinian negotiators. As
regular readers know, I don't think this effort will go anywhere, because the
two sides are too far apart and because the Obama administration won't have the
political will to push them towards the necessary compromises.
Furthermore, there are now a few hints that the Obama
administration is about to repeat the same mistakes that doomed the Clinton
administration's own Middle East peacemaking efforts and the Bush
administration's even more half-hearted attempts (i.e., the "Road Map" and the stillborn
Annapolis summit). Last week, the Israeli
newspaper Yediot Ahronoth provided a
summary of a conference call between Obama Middle East advisors Dennis Ross,
Dan Shapiro, and David Hale and the leaders of a number of influential American
Jewish organizations. According to
the article (whose accuracy I cannot vouch for), the goal of the direct talks
will be a "framework agreement" between the two sides that would then be
implemented over a period of up to ten years.
Excuse me, but haven't we seen this movie before, and isn't the last reel a bummer? This idea sounds a lot like the
Oslo Accords, which also laid out a "framework" for peace, but deferred the hard issues to the end and repeatedly missed key deadlines. Or
maybe it's another version of the Road Map/Annapolis summit, which offered deadlines and bold
talk and led precisely nowhere. Or perhaps what they have in mind is a "shelf agreement" -- a
piece of paper that sits "on the shelf" until conditions are right (i.e.,
forever). It is this sort of
charade that has led veteran observers like Henry Siegman to denounce the
long-running peace process as a "scam," and Siegman is hardly alone in that view.
Here's the basic problem: Unless the new "framework" is very
detailed and specific about the core issues -- borders, the status of East Jerusalem, the refugee
issue, etc., -- we will once again have a situation where spoilers on both sides
have both an incentive and the opportunity to do whatever they can to disrupt the process. And even if it were close to a detailed final-status agreement, a ten-year implementation schedule provides those same spoilers (or malevolent third parties) with all the time they will need to try to derail the deal. I can easily imagine Netanyahu and other
hardliners being happy with this arrangement, as they would be able to keep expanding settlements (either
openly or covertly) while the talks drag on, which is what has happened
ever since Oslo (and under both Likud and Labor governments). Ironically, some members of Hamas might secretly welcome this outcome too, because it would
further discredit moderates like Abbas and Fayyad. And there is little reason to think the United States would do
a better job of managing the process than it did in 1990s.
The great paradox of the negotiations is that United States
is clearly willing and able to put great pressure on both Fatah
and Hamas (albeit in different ways), even though that is like squeezing a dry lemon by now. Fatah has already recognized Israel's
existence and has surrendered any claims to 78 percent of original Mandate
Palestine; all they are bargaining over now is the share they will get of the
remaining 22 percent. Moreover, that
22 percent is already dotted with Israeli settlements (containing about 500,000
people), and carved up by settler-only bypass roads, checkpoints, fences, and
walls. And even if they were to
get an independent state on all of that remaining 22 percent (which isn't
likely) they will probably have to agree to some significant constraints on
Palestinian sovereignty and they are going to have to compromise in some
fashion on the issue of the "right of return." The obvious point is that when you've got next to
nothing, you've got very little left to give up, no matter how hard Uncle Sam
twists your arm.
At this point, the main concessions have to come from
Israel, simply because it is the occupying power whose presence in the West
Bank and whose physical control over Gaza makes a Palestinian state impossible.
Some readers may think this characterization
is unfair, but the issue isn't so much one of "fairness" as one of simple
practicality. How do you possibly create
"two states for two peoples" if Israel doesn't
withdraw from virtually all of the West Bank?
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