The International Crisis Group came out Tuesday with a report on the Israel-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine crises. It concluded with four recommendations, of which the first one is:
- First, the Gaza and Lebanon crises need to be dealt with separately. Though related both chronologically and in terms of the sparks that triggered them, the reasons behind Hamas’s action have little to do with those motivating Hizbollah’s. Bundling them together only complicates efforts at resolution.
I disagree strongly with this. Since the beginning of the Israel-Lebanon crisis I have urged that this regionally explosive situation can be successfully addressed only if an urgent, authoritative international (UNSC) effort is launched to rapidly find a final resolution to all dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This means peacemaking to finally resolve the Palestine-Israel, Syria-Israel, and Lebanon-Israel disputes.
This is do-able, since everybody involved (except a small handful of Jewish-extremist and Arab-extremist diehards) basically knows, understands, and accepts what a sustainable final diplomatic outcome would look like.
And given the continuing, unacceptable loss of human life and the extreme precariousness of the current political/strategic situation throughout the whole region, finding a final, comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Arab conflict is now more urgent and necessary than ever.
The Crisis group’s report urges (as the other three of its four recommendations) that:
- Secondly, resolution of the Palestinian crisis should rest on a simple equation: governance in exchange for a cessation of hostilities…
Thirdly, an immediate Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire is necessary: pursuing a military knockout is unrealistic and counterproductive….
Fourthly, to be sustainable, the ceasefire needs to be urgently followed by intensive diplomatic efforts to tackle root causes – all of them…
I note that points 2 and 3 there only call for partial, interim measures. (I would, however, have put: “securing an immediate ceasefire on all fronts” as Number 1 on any list, not number 3.)
Under four, the report urges these actions:
- * resumption of an urgent internal Lebanese dialogue on full implementation of the 1989 Taif Accords and Resolution 1559 items;
* swift return of displaced persons to the South as prolongation of the current untenable situation risks producing an internal explosion;
* urgent donor and especially Arab commitments to help with Lebanon’s reconstruction;
* resolution of pending Israeli-Lebanese issues so as to dry up the complaints that feed Hizbollah’s militancy;
* engaging Syria and Iran as a means of inducing Hizbollah cooperation; and
* reinvigorating the whole Israeli-Arab peace process.
[The rport continues:] This last point is key. The accelerated plunge into the abyss is the price paid for six years of diplomatic neglect; without a negotiating process, regional actors have been left without rules of the game, reference points or arbiters. In this respect, although their dynamics are different and they need separate solutions, the Palestinian and Lebanese crises clearly intersect. Only through a serious and credible rekindling of the long dormant peace process can there be any hope whatsoever of addressing, and eliminating, root causes.
Their mentioning– even if only in “fourth” place– of the need for a broad Arab-israeli peacemaking effort is welcome. But the actual approach that they urge is very different (and much more segmented and incremental) than what I think is necessary. Surely, what’s needed is a full-press effort to convene an authoritative and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace conference. The populations of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Israel have suffered for far too long from the international community’s failure to help them resolve this dispute.
I totally do not understand the reasoning behind the stress the Crisis Group has put on trying to “deal with” the Lebanon and Gaza crises “separately” in the short term, and to deal with Arab-Israeli peacemaking in such a segmented way thereafter. It looks suspiciously like a continuation of the international community’s (read, the US’s) very shopworn and harmful old policy of trying to play divide and rule among the Arabs…
This is do-able, since everybody involved (except a small handful of Jewish-extremist and Arab-extremist diehards) basically knows, understands, and accepts what a sustainable final diplomatic outcome would look like.
Could you say a little more about what this outcome is? Is it really just a handful of extremists opposed to it? Will the government militarists in Israel and in the US really accept a just peace? It seems to me that any time there is a significant movement toward such a solution, Israel starts assasinating, raiding, shelling, provoking (with US encouragement). Finally, what about the big settlements, water rights, and some resolution of the right of return for refugees? Thanks.
When a peace group I was part of met with Joost Hiltermann of the ICG in Amman in June, he was very insistant that ICG deals in suggestions to achieve what they adjudge to be the “possible,” not the “desirable.”
In that light, I read this report as indicating that they do not believe that any meaningful progress can be made toward a settlement between Israel and Palestine. The measures they suggest are simply more ways to put off dealing with the central issue in the region; we’ve all seen how commitments for “future discussions” lead nowhere. At this point most of the rejectionists seem to be on the Israeli side. Being stymied in its Lebanon adventure will not, in the short term, ween the ordinary people of Israel from seeking security in force. It may even lead to support for greater atrocities.
In this context, the ICG prescription seems not “possible” or reasonable, but fantastical.
The question here is their will inside Israel for long lasting peace with their neighbouring Arab states build on respecting these neighbouring states not build on “surrender Terms “?
If this not changes in the minds of Israelis we will never ever see any peace in the region.
I see bleak prospects as long as the prevailing attitude in the West is not to talk to the protagonists. As Mark Perry and Alistair Crooke from Conflicts Forum concluded: Western governments are frighteningly out of touch with the principal political currents in the Middle East.
We’ve already been through the two separate tracks approach, and it doesn’t work. It gives too much incentive to Israel and the U.S. to try to be too clever and play one track off against the other.
America should be more involved in fashioning a comprehensive final status peace agreement by bringing the protagonists together?
Perhaps President Bush should invite Abbas and Olmert to Camp David where they could be secluded from distractions and posturings. Bush could serve as a mediator prodding both sides to narrow the gaps in their existing positions and take risks for peace. In view of the critical nature of this problem, he would drop everything else he’s working on and spend all the time that is necessary hammering out a Camp David agreement.
The parameters of such an agreement would be as follows: Israel would turn the West Bank over to the Palestinians (with a land swap to compensate for the 5% of the territory they would retain), land bridge between West Bank and Gaza, reasonable timetable for implementation, compensation for refugees, sharing Jerusalem, international security presence, etc.
Wait a minute! Clinton already tried that but the Palestinians turned down the proposed agreement and made no counteroffer.
“This is do-able, since everybody involved (except a small handful of Jewish-extremist and Arab-extremist diehards) basically knows, understands, and accepts what a sustainable final diplomatic outcome would look like.”
Unfortunately, among that “small handful” is the Israeli government.
“America should be more involved…”
America should stay the hell out of it – completely. Everything America touches in the Middle East it manages to turn to s***.
Wait a minute! Clinton already tried that but the Palestinians turned down the proposed agreement and made no counteroffer.
So having no other option left, the Israeli’s are now doing in Lebanon what the Americans did so succesfully in Iraq: winning the hearts and minds of the grateful population, by reconstructing the country into one huge ruin, and liberating it from security, prosperity and well-being. Great strategy!
Wait a minute! Clinton already tried that but the Palestinians turned down the proposed agreement and made no counteroffer.
I’m sorry, I’ve seen the maps of the supposed 95% of the West Bank and read the non-offer of refugee rights and it just wasn’t acceptable. What has always struck me as tragic is not some mythic Palestinian rejectionism, but the lack of serious US pressure on Israel in those talks back in 2000.
“What are we fighting for?
We are fighting for our most valuable possession: our freedom. We are fighting for our land and our skies. We are fighting so that our children will not be slaves of foreign rulers. That is in no way an exaggeration or empty phrase.”
-“Warum und wofür?,” Die Wehrmacht, 3 (1939, Nr. 19), p. 2.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/wehr02.htm