As attention remains riveted on Iran, readers should not
miss two important pieces on the Israel-Palestine front. The first is Tony
Judt's blockbuster op-ed
from today's New York Times, which demolishes
most of the myths about Israel's "settlements" and calls them -- all of them --
what they are: illegal.
My only difference with Judt's analysis -- and it is a minor
one -- is his suggestion that Israeli leaders have repeatedly "hoodwinked"
American officials about the nature of the settlement enterprise. That may be
true of George W. Bush, who seemed to accept Ariel Sharon's world-view rather
uncritically, but it's not true of most of Bush's predecessors. Every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson formally opposed the creation of settlements,
and some administrations (e.g., Richard Nixon's) also referred to them as
contrary to international law. And even George W. Bush repeatedly called on
Israel to stop expanding the settlements, to little avail, of course.
The real problem has been that no president has been able to
put sustained pressure on Israel to stop building settlements, because to do so
would trigger reflexive opposition from AIPAC and the other hard-line elements
in the Israel lobby. Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush both took on the lobby
and were able to make some modest progress, but both paid a significant price
for doing so. Subsequent U.S. presidents have effectively sub-contracted their
Middle East policy to individuals (e.g., Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk under
Clinton and Elliott Abrams under Bush) who were connected to key groups in the
lobby and personally opposed to putting any pressure on Israel, so it's hardly
surprising that settlement expansion continued even though it was contrary to
official U.S. policy. Moreover, as the Washington
Post recently reported, the State Department issued an opinion in 1979 that
the settlements were "inconsistent with international law." That opinion, the Post reports, "has never been revoked or
revised." But it has been ignored.
The result of all this, as Judt makes clear, has been to
"create facts" that make a two-state solution increasingly difficult -- and
maybe impossible -- to achieve. But don't forget former Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert's warning: "If the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a
South African style struggle for political rights." If Israel continues on its
present trajectory, in other words, it will become an apartheid state. And once
that happens, Olmert said, "The state of Israel is finished." By turning a
blind eye towards the settlement project for decades, in short, Israel's
so-called "friends" helped pave the road to a very bleak future.
Judt will undoubtedly receive the usual denunciations from
hardliners committed to defending the status quo; we can expect the usual retorts
in the letters' section from Abe Foxman of the ADL or David Harris of the AJC.
But anyone with a genuine commitment to Israel's future should welcome his
honest and eloquent piece. And the Times deserves
credit for running it.
The second piece is a terrific commentary by Helena
Cobban on the internal paralysis within the Palestinian national movement, and
especially the current weakness of Fatah. Most people already know that Fatah and Hamas are bitter enemies, and
that this rift is an obstacle to peace. But Cobban shows that the problems are
in fact deeper than that, and will require sustained attention to repair.
The dysfunctional nature of current Palestinian leadership
has many origins, and lots of different groups bear responsibility for it. As Rashid Khalid documents in The Iron Cage, the British did their
best to decapitate the Palestinian Arab community during the 1936-1939 Arab
revolt, and the expulsion of the Palestinians at the hands of the
Zionists/Israelis in 1948 further decimated and divided the community. The Arab
states subsequently reinforced these divisions by backing competing Palestinian
factions in order to advance their own selfish interests. Key PLO leaders -- including
Yasser Arafat -- made serious blunders themselves. Israel also did its best to reinforce
Palestinian disunity by aiding Hamas in the late 1980s and by arresting or
assassinating Palestinian leaders, and especially anyone who looked like they
might be legitimate leader and capable foe.
Given the various forces that have worked to keep the Palestinians weak
and divided, it would be shocking if their leadership were not problematic.
But if our goal is peace, then we need strong and legitimate
leaders on both sides. It follows that
if Israel wants a durable peace, it has an interest in doing everything it can
to strengthen Palestinian leaders. As Barack Obama clearly understands, halting
settlement expansion and removing the hundreds of checkpoints that are
strangling Palestinian daily life would be an important step in both symbolic
and practical terms. Agreement on the basic principles of a two-state solution
-- starting with an agreement on borders -- would strengthen moderate leaders
and force Hamas to choose between being part of the peace process or being increasingly
irrelevant to the Palestinian future. Today, Israel's long-term interests are
advanced not by encouraging division and rancor on the other side but by
helping foster a greater sense of national unity and the creation of strong and
effective Palestinian institutions. The multinational effort to train
Palestinian security forces (under the leadership of U.S. general Keith Dayton)
is a step in the right direction, but it will only succeed if viable statehood
in the near future is a realistic possibility.
When making war, it is good to face an adversary who is weak
and divided. But when it comes time to
make peace, it is best if one's former foe is competent, legitimate, efficient,
and able to live up to its commitments. Convincing Israelis of that radical but
rather obvious idea will be one of Barack Obama's most important tasks.
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