DR.HENRY SEIGMAN.ONE LAST CHANCE FOR THE TWO STATE SOLUTION?

 PROSPECT

february 2013

Dr.Henry Siegman.

He is President of US/Middle -East Proyect.

One of Israel’s most respected political scientists

recently dismissed the idea “that simply engaging in

negotiations will automatically foster a peace agreement”

between Israel and the Palestinians. Writing

in Haaretz, Shlomo Avineri, a former director-general

of Israel’s foreign ministry, called it “a fantasy proven baseless

by the experience of the past 20 years.”

In this he is unquestionably correct. He is off base, however,

when he maintains that previous peace initiatives have failed

because they tried to resolve questions about the terms of a “permanent

status” deal. He argues that even the two sides’ most

moderate positions on these core issues are too far apart, making

agreement impossible. He therefore proposes that the peace

process shift from discussions of the endgame and Palestinian

statehood to incremental improvements—“interim agreements,

trust-building exercises, unilateral steps and other mechanisms,”

that would serve as building blocks for broader future agreements.

But this is the most deceptive illusion of all. For what the

20 years of failure to which Avineri refers prove above all is the

bankruptcy of incrementalism and confidence-building measures.

They were the hallmark of the stewardship of Dennis Ross,

special Middle East coordinator for President Bill Clinton, and

discredited the peace process.

That illusion should be resisted particularly by those now considering

a new attempt at peace talks. European Union countries,

led by Britain, France and Germany, are reportedly preparing to

present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his new government

with a new initiative for negotiations with the Palestinians.

The initiative is prompted by the anger of European governments

at his announcement in November of plans for new construction

in East Jerusalem’s E-1 corridor and other sites around Jerusalem

that would effectively exclude the prospective Palestinian state’s

capital from East Jerusalem and would also destroy the territorial

contiguity of such a state.

The closing off of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians is a deal

breaker that forecloses a two-state solution: the creation of a separate

Palestinian state alongside Israel. It would also pre-empt

any new initiatives President Barack Obama may be considering

in his second term with a new team that is likely to be more resolute

in its determination to preserve the two-state option.

It is untrue that negotiations that focused on the endgame

drove the parties further apart. There were only three such negotiations:

the Camp David Summit between prime minister Ehud

Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000, the Taba

talks that followed, and the negotiations between prime minister

Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at the

time of the Annapolis Conference in 2007. Despite their failure,

each one advanced the process beyond where it had been.

At Camp David, Palestinians accepted the annexation of the

settlement blocs—new towns that Israel has built in the West

Bank—and Ehud Barak agreed to the sharing of Jerusalem. The

Taba talks that followed narrowed the differences even more. The

Olmert-Abbas negotiations of 2007/8 brought the parties even

closer together, and according to the principals would have led to

an accord had their negotiations not been interrupted by Operation

Cast Lead in December, Israel’s military offensive against

Gaza, and by Olmert’s resignation.

The peace process was brought to a complete halt only by

Netanyahu’s government. Not only did he refuse to address the

endgame, but he would not even agree to recognise the pre-1967

border (before the Six-Day War when Israel captured land from

Syria, Jordan and Egypt) as the starting point for territorial

negotiations. He reacted hysterically when President Obama was

about to propose in his address to the State Department on May

19, 2011 that negotiations must begin from that point. Netanyahu

called the president and demanded that he remove that proposal

from his address. The president did not comply, but he also did

not follow up and translate his speech into policy.

The requirement that Israeli-Palestinian talks begin from

the 1967 line was so upsetting to Netanyahu and his government

because they are unalterably opposed to Palestinian statehood

anywhere in Palestine. Obliterating the memory of such a border

(going so far as to remove that border from Israeli governmental

maps) is therefore seen by Netanyahu as an essential step

towards that goal.

To be sure, Netanyahu committed himself to a two-state solution

in his landmark speech at Bar-Ilan university in June 2009.

Some naively invoke that commitment as evidence that a resumption

of the peace process is justified. Tzipi Hotovely, a leading

member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, recently explained to these

naïfs that the Bar-Ilan speech notwithstanding, Netanyahu has

no intention of ever carrying out the evacuation of West Bank

settlements. His commitment to the two-state solution was “tactical,”

she said, “intended for the world,” but “the Likud will not

evacuate settlements.”

The Palestinian people have known all along how utterly disingenuous

was Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech. Not only was this

The US and Europe are poised to put new effort into peace talks. There is

one litmus test for whether the move is serious

self-evident from the facts Netanyahu and his government were

creating on the ground, in the form of the West Bank settlements

and building in largely Arab East Jerusalem. Senior Likud officials

were also the founders and leaders of the “Land of Israel”

Knesset Caucus that was established for only one purpose: preventing

a Palestinian state in any part of Palestine. At no point

did that caucus provoke a murmur of protest from the US or from

the Quartet (the joint attempt by the US , UN, EU and Russia

to mediate the Israel-Palestinian peace process). Imagine their

reaction—or the reaction of the US Congress, for that matter—if

President Abbas’s cabinet members had established a “Land of

Palestine” Caucus within the Palestinian Authority.

Indeed, even when Netanyahu announced plans to build

extensively in the E-1 corridor, the best that the US and the EU

were able to say is that such a plan would be an obstacle to peace

and to a two-state solution. There were no intimations that such

a plan, if implemented, might trigger sanctions against Israel

or end the American and European insistence that Palestinians

can achieve statehood only in negotiations with the man who

has been systematically dismantling what chances for such an

accord might still exist.

What Middle Eastern experts, not to speak of the US and

European governments that are calling for a return to negotiations,

cannot get themselves to acknowledge is that Netanyahu

does not accept Palestinian statehood anywhere in Palestine, and

will do everything in his power to prevent it because he and his

government want the West Bank for themselves. It is that simple.

They are convinced that with their vast military superiority

over the Palestinians, they can have it all. That is an obstacle to

the achievement of a two-state solution that neither incrementalism

nor reconfiguration of parameters for resumed negotiations

(a subject to which leading US Middle East experts last year

devoted an entire book) can overcome. Anyone who still does not

understand this simple reality, or who refuses to address it, has

little to contribute to a discussion of this subject.

To be sure, Israelis remain concerned about retaining the

financial, military and diplomatic support of the US , but Netanyahu

is convinced this is not a problem. He believes he exercises

greater control over the US Congress than does President

Barack Obama.

As ridiculous as this may sound, there are good reasons for

that belief. The main TV commercial in Netanyahu’s campaign

for reelection in January to his third premiership of the country

featured his last address to the combined US Senate and House of

Representatives, whose members jumped up from their seats to

applaud wildly every second sentence in his speech. The speech

included the suggestion that the West Bank is “disputed” territory,

not occupied territory, to which Israel has as much a claim as

do the Palestinians, a claim rejected by the whole world, the only

exceptions being residents of the Capitol building in Washington.

But it is not only the behaviour of the US Congress that gives

Netanyahu and his supporters the confidence that the US will

always have their back. It is a notion reinforced by President

Obama as well. In his speech to the UN General Assembly in

September of 2011, he admonished Palestinians, saying that they

could achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. He

thus removed the issue from the realm of international legality

and turned it over to the man he knew, from the experience of his

first two years in office, will never allow that to happen.

Both formally and politically, what the president said is

untrue. Formally, the right to self-determination by a majority

population in previously mandated territories is a “peremptory

norm” in international law. The implementation of that right

was one of the primary purposes of the UN’s establishment, and

international courts have confirmed it is a right that even overrides

conflicting treaties or agreements. The only reason the

Security Council has failed in its clear responsibility to implement

the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is Obama’s

threatened veto.

Practically, it is true that given its overwhelming military

power, and the virtually uncritical support it receives from the

US in the exercise of that power, Israel’s government can and will

continue to block Palestinian statehood. But that is a reason not

to subject the Palestinians’ peremptory right to self-determination

to an Israeli veto. Instead it is a reason to demand that the

UN exercise the role assigned to it by its charter. Israel’s engage-

ment with the Palestinians will cease to be the historic fraud it
has been only when its government comes to believe that its continued
stonewalling will lead to America’s support for intervention
by the Security Council. That is yet to happen.

Formally, the right to self-determination by a majority

population in previously mandated territories is a “peremptory
norm” in international law. The implementation of that right
was one of the primary purposes of the UN’s establishment, and
international courts have confirmed it is a right that even overrides
conflicting treaties or agreements. The only reason the
Security Council has failed in its clear responsibility to implement
the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is Obama’s
threatened veto.
Practically, it is true that given its overwhelming military
power, and the virtually uncritical support it receives from the
US in the exercise of that power, Israel’s government can and will
continue to block Palestinian statehood. But that is a reason not
to subject the Palestinians’ peremptory right to self-determination
to an Israeli veto. Instead it is a reason to demand that the
UN exercise the role assigned to it by its charter. Israel’s engage-

ment with the Palestinians will cease to be the historic fraud it

has been only when its government comes to believe that its continued

stonewalling will lead to America’s support for intervention

by the Security Council. That is yet to happen.

The problem is that too often the policy proposals of experts

and diplomats are shaped in response to the claims made by the

protagonists, but not by realities on the ground. Israel’s government

insists it has no choice but to continue its occupation

because it has made many painful concessions, and promised

more, only to run up against Palestinian refusals to consider

reciprocal concessions. It will put to you that in return for Prime

Minister Ariel Sharon’s magnanimous unilateral withdrawal from

Gaza in 2005, President George W. Bush agreed to allow Israel to

take in the main settlement blocs.

However, Israel has not offered a single concession on any of

the issues in dispute. On every one, whether borders, territory,

Jerusalem, refugees, water or security, it wants the concessions to

be made by Palestinians. Not a single concession has been offered

by Netanyahu on Israel’s side of the 1967 border.

As to the alleged “gift” of the settlement blocs to Sharon,

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this at a joint press

conference with Israel’s then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni in

February 2006:

“The United States position on [unilateral changes in the border]

is very clear and remains the same. No one should try and

unilaterally predetermine the outcome of a final status agreement.

That’s to be done at final status. The President did say

that at the time of final status, it will be necessary to take into

account new realities on the ground that have changed since 1967,

but under no circumstances should… anyone try and do that in

a preemptive or predetermined way, because these are issues for

negotiation at final status.”

Netanyahu has famously accused Palestinians of demanding

that Israel “give and give, while they only take and take.”

This comes from the head of a government that has already

helped itself to more than 60 per cent of the West Bank. Here

is what Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, had to say on the subject.

When challenged to defend his claims for the importance of

the 1993 Oslo Accords (and for which he was awarded the Nobel

Peace Prize), Peres said, “Before Oslo, the Palestinian state’s

size should have been according to the 1947... UN map. In Oslo,

Arafat moved from the 1947 map to the 1967 one. He gave up

on 22 per cent of the West Bank. I don’t know any Arab leader

who would give up 2 or 3 per cent. He gave up 22 per cent.” (But

instead of acknowledging that this concession was a gut-wrenching

one-sided Palestinian contribution to peace, Peres described

it as “our greatest achievement.”)

If Netanyahu and his new government are not to continue on

their certain road to apartheid, President Obama would have

to leave no doubt in their minds that the “special relationship”

between the US and Israel has its roots in shared values, and an

Israeli government that acts in egregious violation of those values

undermines that special relationship. International law grants

native populations of former colonies the right to national selfdetermination.

An Israel that denies Palestinians that right—in

this case, in the territories beyond the pre-1967 border—while at

the same time denying them full and equal Israeli citizenship is

not a democracy but an apartheid state.

Is President Obama up to that challenge? Nothing in his

performance during his first term in office would indicate that

he is. However, two recent developments hold out some hope.

The first, as indicated above, is his nomination of Senator John

Kerry as Secretary of State and Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary

of Defence—two men who have few illusions about the reason

for the failure of the peace process and the courage to speak

the truth.

The second are intimations of a new European initiative to

present to Israel’s new government a set of clear parameters

that establish the pre-1967 border (with provision for equal land

swaps to compensate Palestinians for Israel’s retention of the

large settlement blocs) as the starting point for resumed peace

talks. It is a parameter that by definition precludes Israel’s unilateral

annexation of all of East Jerusalem. Another parameter

would preclude a large scale return of Palestinian refugees to

their previous homes in Israel.

Because the UK, France and Germany are reportedly all on

board, it is likely this initiative will also receive the backing of

most—perhaps all—EU countries. More important, its sponsors

are likely to have received assurances that even if Washington

will not lead the effort, it will not block it. If so, that

would indeed be a significant change of direction. Ironically,

the chances of this initiative’s success will only be strengthened

if the new Israeli government proves even more rigidly opposed

to Palestinian statehood.

But no one should be deceived about the chances of such

an initiative if it does not contain the one condition that is the

litmus test of its seriousness. That is that if the parties do not

accept the parameters or are not able to reach an accord by a

certain date, the terms for an end to Israel’s occupation of the

West Bank will be determined by the UN Security Council, acting

under Chapter VII of the Charter. If it lacks that provision,

or the provision faces the threat of an American veto, the initiative

will be as phony as Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state

solution in his Bar-Ilan speech.

For nothing short of the threat of being turned into a pariah

by the entire international community because of its apartheid

regime will persuade Israel’s electorate to bring back a government

that will safeguard the country’s democratic character and

accept a viable and sovereign Palestinian state along its border.