Jackson Diehl broke some important news in today’s WaPo:
- As the U.N. General Assembly meets in late September, Obama aims to announce the opening of a new negotiating process between Israelis and Palestinians, along with “confidence-building” steps by Israel, the Palestinian Authority and a number of Arab governments. Though Obama will not offer a specific American “blueprint” for a peace settlement — as a number of Arab governments have urged him to do — he will probably lay out at least a partial vision of the two-state settlement that all sides now say they support, and the course that negotiations should take. More significantly, he intends to set an ambitious timetable for completing the peace deal — something that will please Arabs but may irritate Israel.
This is not new. At Annapolis in November 2007, Pres. Bush also “announce[d] the opening of a new negotiating process between Israelis and Palestinians, along with ‘confidence-building’ steps by Israel, the Palestinian Authority and a number of Arab governments.”
And there, too, Bush, “set an ambitious timetable for completing the peace deal.” It was by the end of his presidency.
Now, here we are, seven months after the expiration of that deadline, and not even one concrete step has been taken along the path back to securing the final peace agreement.
Also, in the nearly two years since Annapolis, Israeli settlement construction has continued apace– quite in defiance of what Bush requested of the Israelis there.
So forgive me if I’m not yet impressed by what Diehl is reporting.
David Ignatius– whose political savvy I trust a bit more than I trust Diehl’s– confirms that there are big peace-diplomacy moves being planned. But he described them a bit differently:
- The Arab-Israeli breakthrough that Obama has been seeking since his first day in office will near the make-or-break point this week as his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If they can agree on terms for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, that would open the way for talks on creating a Palestinian state.
But along the way, there’s politically draining haggling…
The White House is debating whether Obama should launch his initiative with a declaration of U.S. “parameters” for a final settlement. The Arabs favor such a statement, as do many U.S. experts such as Brzezinski. But Mitchell is said to favor a more gradual approach, in which Israelis and Palestinians would begin negotiations and the United States would intervene later with “bridging” proposals.
So according to Ignatius, the settlement freeze is still in active play as a gateway to be traversed before Obama gets the parties back to the final-status talks. That’s a bad strategy, in my view.
Ignatius is also telling us that the administration is divided on whether to present a US peace plan now, or not.
Diehl ends his piece with some serious– and I would say quite possibly deliberate and ill-intentioned– mistakes of both facts and analysis.
He writes:
- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who turned down a far-reaching peace proposal by Israel’s previous government less than a year ago, is still insisting he won’t begin talks without a complete settlement freeze. And Hamas, which governs 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, remains implacable in its refusal to recognize Israel.
The recalcitrance that Obama has already encountered is a reminder of the famous maxim of former secretary of state James A. Baker III, considered a master of Middle East diplomacy. The United States, he said in 1991, “can’t want peace more than the parties.” In taking on the issue now, Obama is, in essence, trying to prove that wisdom wrong. If he succeeds he will probably deserve to be called a president who can do everything.
Here are the mistakes of analysis:
- 1. Diehl says that the peace proposal Olmert made to Abbas was “far-reaching”. The implication is that it was also “generous”, and that Abbas was foolish or recalcitrant to turn it down– and therefore can’t be expected to be flexible today. From everything we know about the peace proposal Olmert made to Abbas (e.g. from the end of this article) it didn’t look at all “generous”– and by most standards it was not at all “far-reaching.” But Diehl’s echoing of the old “Palestinian leader turns down a generous Israeli offer” trope is intended once again– as after the whole Camp David 2 debacle in 2000, to paint even the most “moderate” Palestinians as intractable.
2. Diehl writes that Hamas remains implacable in its refusal to recognize Israel True. But no-one in Israel or the west is recognizing them, either– or, recognizing and being prepared to respect the victory they won in the 2006 elections. In a successful peace negotiation, exchange of recognitions usually comes as part of the end of the peace agreement. It should not be required upfront– and certainly not only in a unilateral way…. And meanwhile, Diehl says nothing at all about the serious moves that Hamas has made to communicate its very real interest in supporting negotiations for a two-state outcome. Once again, Diehl’s lazy shorthand here lays an inappropriate amount of blame on Palestinians.
But finally, there was Diehl’s most egregious and most telling mistake– a mistake of raw fact. That was when he attributed to Sec. James Baker the terrible little dictum about “the United States can’t want peace more than the parties.”
That was not Baker. That was Clinton and Pres. George W. Bush.
This mistake matters.
Why? Because as Diehl wrote, Baker was indeed a master of Middle East diplomacy. But he won his very real achievements in that field by pursuing a policy based on the very opposite of the quite irresponsible sentiment expressed in that phrase.
Under Clinton and Bush II, by contrast, those leaders’ easy reliance on the “can’t want a peace more.. ” mindset meant that they never vigorously pushed for anything in the diplomacy on the basis that securing a fair and durable peace was in the strong interest of Americans.
That was what led to the reliance of those two presidents on the idea that “the parties” should just be left to negotiate the terms of a peace settlement just between themselves.
In the context of the Palestinians, whose entire country is under Israel’s military occupation, that approach is crazy. The very best it could ever lead to would be something like the deals that Marshall Petain or Vidkun Quisling struck with the occupying Nazis.
Did anyone expect the Emir of Kuwait simply to sit in a room alone with Saddam Hussein in August 1990 and “negotiate” a peace with him, with no other parties or considerations of international law intervening?
Small wonder that first of all Arafat and then even the very pro-peace-minded Mahmoud Abbas turned down the extremely pusillanimous and demeaning deals that were all they were ever offered under those circumstances.
And thus, small wonder than neither Clinton nor Bush II ever presided over the securing of a final peace.
And meanwhile, throughout all those 16 years, Israel’s implantation of additional Jewish settlers into the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) continued apace… And so did the anger of Muslims and others around the world who saw the US as continuing to bankroll and support every action of the Israeli government.
Where was international law in all this? Where were the resolutions of the United Nations? Where was firm and principled US diplomacy?
Out of the window!
So please, Jackson Diehl, let’s have no more of your mendacious re-writing of history.
A fair and durable peace in the Arab-Israeli region is certainly in the interests of Americans and everyone else in the world who upholds fairness and international law, and is offended to see it being flouted on a daily basis by Israel in the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan.
And if any particular “party”, such as the Netanyahu government in Israel, does not see such a peace as being in its own interest?
Then the US, whose fate and reputation in the world is necessarily tied very closely to Israel’s behavior, will just have to “want” the peace more than that party; and should proceed with the policy steps that are necessary in order to win it.
Those steps would certainly not include continuing to give Israel generous financial, political, and military help that is quite unlinked to Israel’s behavior in the occupied territories.
And yes, it was James Baker and his president who were the most recent US leaders
to make that point clear, and to establish that conditionality quite firmly within US policy.
Helena,
The end of the article you link to was short on details about the supposed offer. But assuming that an offer as outlined in both Missing Piece by Dennis Ross and Innocent Abroad by Marten Indyk is increased to a 100% land swap, what more do you think needs to be offered?
The offer is unimportant: what matters is to whom the offer is made. Abbas is simply not credible, his term as ‘President’ ran out eight months ago, and that is the least of his disqualifications. He is simply compromised, a complete puppet, sustained in power by US money and thuggery.
No doubt he will accept any offers dictated to him. But to what does that lead? Nothing more than a part in a false narrative. The basic problems will remain.
They are: millions of people dispossesssed of their lands. Millions of people treated as untermenschen.
And, on the other hand, millions of settlers just passing through, on a Defence industry/AIPAC dole which cannot last much longer.
This is a classic case of fantasy outliving reality: the fantasy is that Israelis desperately want to retain their ancestral lands; the reality is that all manner of shiftless colons see extraordinary opportunities as extras in a Zionist epic.
And then there are the Americans: bringing Peace to the Middle East.
Repeat that three times without bursting into laughter if you can.
But doesn’t a deal require bringing Hamas and Fatah together first? Or the idea is to strike a three way deal?
Do the pundits have a view on how or when a Hamas/Fatah agreement can be reached?
My bet is that Obama fails on his Middle East initiative. We all know that settlements are just table stakes, the hard issues are hard.
Here are the mistakes of analysis:
1. Abbas does not represent the Palestinians. Hamas represents the Palestinians. Abbas represents the Neocons in Washington and Tel Aviv.
2. Israel not only does not recognize Hamas, it doesn’t recognize the Palestinians as a people or Palestine as a place.
3. Obama is going to do nothing but talk until the Israelis have “settled” every square inch of Palestine. And the MSM is going to continue to talk of a “peace process” and of Obama’s “peace plan” as though either one actually existed right through to the end.
Peace Now: Settlement building continues
JERUSALEM, Aug. 24 (UPI) — A Peace Now report for January to June says West Bank settlement construction continues as usual, despite U.S. demands to impose a freeze.
Details of the Israeli non-government organization’s report published Sunday accused officials of turning a blind eye and said 596 new structures were built in the first half of 2009 in West Bank settlements and outposts.
No one in the world pays any attention to what Obama has to say on any subject, except the MSM and the pwogwessive movement in the US. The world knows Obama is a fraud, Americans don’t want to know. In fact the emperor has no clothes.
“The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside.
Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems.
The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews — whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel — are citizens of the state of Israel.”
Writes Neve Gordon, Ben Gurion University Faculty memeber in Counter Punch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon08242009.html
But is it really Israel’s fault that the Palestinians are stateless? Weren’t they citizens of Jordan? Or did Jordan withdraw that statehood? Or are they still actually citizens of Jordan? Or are they more or less (obviously less in your mind) citizens of a Palestinian state in all but name? Under what passport do they travel? They pay taxes to a Palestinian government, office or whatever? Their schools are run by a Palestinian something?
Actually David the Palestenians were originally Moldavain citizens.
and the Jordanians were originally all Israelis even before Israel was created by the UN in 1948.
for further proof you really aught to link Dr. Neve Gordon’s commentary in counterpunch;
here it is again :http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon08242009.html
Omop, I love your last comment, it is all what Ms. Cobban asks the comments to be – fresh, helpful, courteous but with such a wonderful sense of irony, masterful. The same for Helena’s retort to other diatribes.
This blog is in my view the best source for good information on Palestinian issues.
Living Israel’s History
Greg Waldmann
1948: A History of the First ArabIsraeli
War by Benny Morris
Yale University Press, 2008
David, I’m assuming your questions are sincere, and they reveal a sad depth of ignorance about the deeply broken nature of the Palestinian polity– which i guess is pretty widespread in the US.
“Under what passports do they travel?” etc.
Well, sadly many of them CAN’T travel at all– like the 1.5 million who are cooped up in Gaza with Israel controlling all entry or exit of persons (including through its agreements with Egypt on this matter.)
Some Palestinians who can travel do so on “PA passports” (not well recognized in many parts of the world, and not offering any effective consular backup anywhere.) Many Palestinians have a form of Jordanian citizenship that allows them to travel on Jordanian passports, but confined them to a distinctly second-class form of citizenship inside Jordan. Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria have no passports but are sometimes able to obtain special “laissez-passers” from those governments by virtue of their status as refugee residents within them.
… Anyway, the situation of Palestinians wherever they are is tragic. Deep splits inside families, caused by the geography and geopolitics of dispersal, are one deep continuing wound for just about all Palestinians. Then there are the wounds of living under active siege (Gaza), foreign military occupation (WB), or in forced exile.
You can find out a lot more about these situations if you read widely and intelligently, or if you ask your Palestinian friends some questions about their own families’ circumstances.
Since the source is the Israeli government website, I’ll assume you’ll discount it, but this is from Secretary Baker’s speech at Madrid in 1991.
As I have said from the beginning of this effort, we can not want peace more than you, the parties most directly affected by its absence.
Diehl did not make a mistake attributing this sentiment to Baker.
I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to get out of the statement that “Actually David the Palestinians’ were originally Moldavian citizens. And the Jordanians were originally all Israelis even before Israel was created by the UN in 1948.” Except that at least you recognize the historical roots of the Jews to the land. But in terms of the topic “Hints of Obama Peace Plan …” it’s lost on me.
I did however at your second prompting go and read the linked article by Neve Gordon. He suffers from a delusion common to a lot of people including many Israelis like himself.
The delusion is that Israel is at fault for the lack of a Palestinian state. Which n his mind is very easy to achieve, he even gives a broad outline of the plan. “Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.”
This outline is almost exactly what was offered at Camp David and Taba and rejected. It is almost exactly what was described in the article that Helena linked to that Abbas turned down. It’s a deal that is frequently derided at this site as wholly unacceptable – something only a Neocon would accept.
I asked Helena above and I’ll throw it out as a general question: Short of Israel disappearing, What would be acceptable?
Helena,
My questions are very sincere. While I am not the most informed commenter at your site I don’t agree about my sad depth of ignorance.
My frustration comes from what I see as a conflation (if that’s a word) of causes. You can blame Israel for the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria but they’ve been there for 60 years. Their currect sad plight is due to the callous attitude of the Lebanse and Syrian governments, not Israel. Decency would have demanded that at least the children of those original refugees be allowed citizenship. To get jobs and try to raise their lot in life.
Yes, Israel has Gaza under strict military control and severly restricts any movement in or out. It wasn’t that way starting day one after the Israeli withdrawal. It got that way after hundreds (or is it thousands) of rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, I think a few just a few days ago. Israel would be nuts to allow the free flow of people and material to sustain that attack.
You made a comment not too long ago chiding Israelis for claims that they don’t have a peace partner with the statement that if Israel made a sensible offer there would be a partner. I don’t see what offer Israel could make that would be considered acceptable because you blame everything on Israel. Israel can’t fix everything.
“This outline is almost exactly what was offered at Camp David and Taba and rejected.”
What was offered at Camp David and Taba lacked a great many of the critical requirements of an independent, sovereign state. If you are unaware of this, then you should, as Helena suggested, try reading more widely and intelligently than you have done up until now.
“This outline is almost exactly what was offered at Camp David and Taba and rejected.”
The Palestinians did not simply “reject” what was offered at Taba. One could just as well, or even more accurately, say the Israelis rejected the Palestinian offers. Ehud Barak ended the conference on the eve of Sharon’s accession, and the negotiators said they had never been closer.
I think that history is clear that the main reason for the lack of a Palestinian state or a resolution to the conflict is the Israeli desire for land acquisition.
Shirin,
My impression is that you are probably one of the more informed commenters at this site. Could you please tell me or point me to a source that will explain how it “lacked a great many of the critical requirements of an independent, sovereign state”
David – The Camp David offer was deficient in several respects. First and foremost, it gave Israel complete and total control over the entire Jordan Valley and the entire boder with Jordan. This would have meant the Palestinians would have to get Israel’s permission for everyone and everything entering or leaving the west bank. That is not sovereignty.
Second, the offer was only for a little over 70+% of the West Bank. There was a vague stipulation that Israel might turn over a big chunk of the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians in some 20-25 years but the conditions for such a concession were never stipulated and totally subject to Israel’s control. This is how the 70+% turned into 92% but the higher percentage was always iffy. At no time was the border with Jordan conceded to the Palestinians.
Third, the result of Israeli control of Ma’ale Adumim and the territory all the way to the border with Jordan south of Jericho meant the entire south of the west bank would be cut off from the reset. As a result of incorporating Ariel and the settlements of Eli and Shiloh all the way to the Jordan Valley meant that Ramallah and central west bank were cut off from the north and south. What the Palestinians would have had is four open air prisons (Gaza, Northern, Central and southern west bank) or “reservations”.
Fouth, Israel would control the air space, and airwaves and water resources in the west bank. I’m Jewish and I even think this offer was ridiculously one sided.
Thanks, jdledell. You summed up very well the most egregious aspects of the “generous offer”.
David, a state must have, among other things, control over its own borders, its resources (e.g. water), its airspace, its coastline and coastal waters, and the right to control entry into and exit from its territory. Without all of those things it is a state in name only. Under the “generous offers” of Camp David and Taba allowed none of those things. Plus, as jdledell pointed out they very dishonestly used a bit of political sleight of hand to make 70% – and a very disjointed, non-viable 70% – look like 92% to people who were not listening past the sound bytes.
In fact, one of the Israeli negotiators later conceded that he would never have accepted such an offer. Would you?
Oh, and as for your remark that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria have been there for 60 years, why do you suppose that is? Could it be that they have been barred for 60 years from even seeing their family homes, lands, and businesses? And it is not the responsibility of other countries, who have problems of their own, to take care of or absorb the refugees that Israel so callously expelled in 1947-48 and after. The plight of the Palestinian refugees are Israel’s responsibility.
Oh – and if you want to know something about Syria’s generosity toward refugees, talk to any Iraqi who fled to Syria. And do some research and inform yourself about just exactly how costly it has been to Syria and its people to accommodate all those refugees, including a great rise in the cost of living in general, and housing in particular.
Let’s just make one thing clear, I didn’t use the phrase “generous offer”. I made no such claim.
Thanks for the information. Now let me do some fact checking, particularly on that “sleight of hand” thing because I can easily understand that making it a lousy offer.
PS. I have a day job so as much as I might like, it can’t get my undivided attention. If possible I will post a comment.
jdledell and Shirin,
Cannot find your figure of 70+ percent. At the http://www.nad-plo.org/inner.php?view=facts_nego_cmp_ncampdavid1p they give slightly different figures but no real source to verify them.
In general your claims are correct just not in the specific (numerical values) you gave. Even Dennis Ross in Missing Peace states that Israel was going to control a strip of land along the Jordan river for a specific period of time and then an additional period of time, control of the border crossings.
Yes, these things are contradictory to the definition of a sovereign state. And I know you’re going to jump down my throat at this but restrictions on sovereignity are not unheard of. I’m not so sure Japan is fully sovereign yet following WWII.
Bottom line, and I know this is easy for me to say sitting here in my comfortable home here in the US, but if control of border crossings, airspace and airwaves (I agree Palestinains need control over their water resources) is a must have, then there isn’t going to be a deal in the next few years.
If you want to give me a source for the 70+ figure, please do.
Well, David, then there isn’t going to be a deal. Those things are red lines.
And there is no valid comparison with Japan – none.