Settlements– or the final peace?

There has been a lot of chirping and noise in the media about whether Sen. George Mitchell and Israeli PM Netanyahu might be close to some kind of a deal on a cutback in the Israeli settlement construction, and on what terms.
See Haaretz, the Jewish Daily Forward, the Guardian, etc.
Mitchell and Netanyahu met in London yesterday, and issued a terse statement that made clear that the “conversation” between them will continue. (As Laura Rozen also noted.)
But surely, what all of us should focus on and press for at this point is not the settlement freeze but rather the central goal of speedily securing a final peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis (and FPAs between Israel and Syria and Lebanon, respectively, as well; though those can be far easier to nail down.)
Yes, I know that Israel’s continued perpetration of the grave breach of the Geneva Conventions that’s constituted by its implantation of civilian residents into the occupied West Bank is an impediment to the resumption, let alone the completion, of the negotiations for an Israeli-Palestinian FPA.
But let’s keep some perspective. Any FPA will include a detailed map of the final border between Israel and the long-overdue Palestinian state. At that point, Israel can presumably build anything it wants– consonant with not infringing anyone’s rights– in the area that will lie on its side of the border. But on the Palestinian side of the finally delineated border, Israelis should expect that not only will there be no new settlement construction, but beyond that, the settlers already living there will have to either leave or, if they remain, to do so as law-abiding residents under Palestinian sovereignty.
Problem solved.
According to some reports, Obama is planning to have won final agreement on the FPA within the two years. These very condescending– and actually, inaccurate– writers in the Guardian claim that this timetable is “viewed as unrealistic by Middle East analysts.”
Well, I’m a Middle East analyst of lengthy experience, and I don’t view this timetable as unrealistic, at all. Indeed, given the huge volume of preliminary work that’s been done on all the issues connected with the FPA, I think it could be completed within nine months or less– if Obama has the backbone to really push for it.
That would involve him working closely with all the partners in the international community who want to see this peace concluded. In the first instance, all these pro-peace forces should reach and declare their agreement on the basis in international law and diplomacy on the basis of which the peace talks will be convened. This includes, of course, all the relevant resolutions of the United Nations and other provisions of international law.
All relevant parties, including of course both Israelis and Palestinians should then be invited to participate in the peace talks to be convened on the internationally agreed basis. And if one party– Israel, say– should balk at the terms of reference for the resumed peace talks, then the Security Council would be apprised of that and would proceed as it sees fit.
Israel’s unilateral reluctance to take part in a diplomatic effort that is based on well-known norms of international law and practice cannot be allowed to impede the progress of the peace effort.
This is the battle that Obama needs to be prepared to fight, if he really wants to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict– not a shadow “battle” over whether, in the interim before the securing of the FPA, Israel would be “allowed” to build 200 or 300 settler housing units here or there.
Remember that these “battles” over a possible settlement freeze have already eaten up the first seven months of Obama’s current term. And they have achieved little, except perhaps to educate a few additional members of the US Congress about the harsh reality of Israel’s ongoing, quite illegal land-grab in the West Bank.
These “battles” over a settlement freeze are real time wasters! Obama should go for the FPA right now.
And yes, I do fully understand that the participation of every Israeli government since 1967 in the project to implant settlers, illegally, into East Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank, and Golan, has continued without a break through all of those years. And that it even accelerated after the Oslo “interim” accord of 16 years ago.
I understand, too, how deeply the presence of the always pampered settlers and the continued, government-fueled growth in their numbers offends the Palestinians of the OPTs and sows ever deeper despair in their hearts as they watch the territorial base of their longed-for state being eaten up and concreted over before their very eyes.
Danny Rubinstein had a great quote from a Palestinian in 2006: “I look out of the window and see my death getting near.”
I understand, too, how hard it is for Mahmoud Abbas, or Salam Fayyad, or any Palestinian leader to agree to sit down and talk with an Israeli government so long as Israel’s perpetration of these atrocities continues day by day.
But that is why, if the peace talks are to succeed, they need to be held on the clear basis of UN resolutions and international law and practice. Having those principles as the basis for the negotiation will give Palestinians some of the assurance that they need that the international community will be supporting their legitimate rights in the negotiation.
Because we all need to understand, too, that continuing to describe the negotiation only— or even mainly– as a bilateral encounter between Israelis and Palestinians, one in which perhaps the Americans play only a very thin role as “mediators” or “facilitators”, is a sure recipe for diplomatic failure. And the US government, if it acts in such a “facilitating” role, would be fully complicit in all the conflict that would inevitably ensue.
So let’s have international law restored to its rightful position as the basis of this negotiation. Let’s get the negotiation for the FPA started.
And most important of all– 16 years after the briefly flickering “promise” of the Oslo “interim” accord– let’s get the final peace agreement between these two long war-battered peoples concluded.