J’lem ‘Summit’ fails: What’s the alternative?

Today’s three-way meeting in Jerusalem seems to have failed even more seriously than I and many others had been expecting. AP’s diplomatic writer Anne Gearan reports that,

    Talks between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, initially billed as a new U.S. push to restart peace efforts, ended Monday with little progress other than a commitment to meet again.
    … Neither Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nor Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joined Rice as she delivered her statement [which had lasted precisely 90 seconds], and she left the room without taking questions from reporters.
    …State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there is no date for another three-way meeting.

Gearan also wrote,

    Speaking later, Olmert said he and Abbas agreed to maintain an open channel of communication “which would focus primarily on the need to improve the lives of the Palestinian people in various areas, and of course a continued war on terror by the Palestinian Authority — in practice — to bring terror to a complete halt.”
    Abbas and Olmert also discussed possibly extending a 3-month-old cease-fire covering the
    Gaza Strip to include the West Bank, said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

I will just note, regarding the avowals one repeatedly hears from Israeli leaders that they intend to work “to improve the lives of Palestinians”, that

    (1) This has long been a code whereby Israelis signal that though they may– or may not– be prepared to talk about a few surface economic issues with the Palestinians, still at the same time they continue steadfastly to refuse to discuss the central political demands the Palestinians raise regarding their sovereignty, national independence, national borders, the status of Jerusalem, etc. I recall that at one “track two” gathering between Israelis and Palestinians that I helped organize back in 1991, one of the (Likudnik) Israelis trotted out this line and the Palestinians were already furious. One of the Palestinians there exclaimed, “You consider us just like animals in a pen who might require some feed from time to time, but you never think of us as humans with full political rights!”
    It’s still the same today. (And of course, in the interim, the Israelis have succeeded in implanting additional hundreds of thousands of their citizens into the illegal settlements in the occupied territories, and have furthered the project of the systematic economic de-development of the Palestinians.)
    (2) Despite the fact that we’ve heard all these Israeli avowals that they will try to improve the Palestinians’ daily lives so many times before, their track record on following through by attending to even the Palestinians’ basic humanitarian needs is atrocious.
    It was Secretary Rice herself who “brokered” the “Karni Agreement” back in November 2005, under which the Palestinians of Gaza were to have assured passage for goods through the Karni crossing with Israel, plus the rapid organizing of convoys of buses for people to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, etc, etc.
    What came of that one?? Almost nothing. What price did Rice and her boss impose on Israel for its anti-humanitarian foot-dragging on that? Absolutely none! So why should anyone take seriously these even vaguer avowals of concern for the Palestinians’ wellbeing being made by Olmert today?

Regarding the prolongation of the ceasefire: Yes! That would be great! But please let it be reciprocal, monitored by a trusted third party, and be considered as a gateway to the swift convening of a final-status peace conference between the two governments.
Approximately 39 years and six months of time that should have been used to broker a final peace between them has already been wasted. The world– and especially the hard-pressed Palestinians both inside and outside their historic homeland– should not be expected to wait for very much longer.
A final-status peace conference. That is the best alternative to failed attempts at (highly coercive) summitry.

10 thoughts on “J’lem ‘Summit’ fails: What’s the alternative?”

  1. Has there ever been a more incompetent, discredited or pathetic Sec of State as Rice?
    The whole world is a more dangerous place because admin officials just don’t see the need for dialog. They believe the APPEARENCE of dialog is enough.
    I read this stuff and I just get plain scared for our future.
    .

  2. Helena,
    What makes you think that “a final-status peace conference between the two governments” would be meaningful? So they sit to discuss the “final-status” issues, so what? even if there are decisions made and agreements reached, who cares? You are perfectly aware of the thousands of peace conferences that have been held by academics, politicians, business people, citizens…, there is no absense of ideas and no need to have discussions. It seems to me that you are putting the cart before the horse. So, say they have a conference, and even come to agreements on serious issues like refugees, water, “borders”… it will make no difference. You can’t just have a conference and assume the conference itself is powerful enough to make serious decisions stick under the current conditions. The Israeli people would not accept any decision made by the current government, nor would the Palestinians accept an agreement made by their “government”. The Israelis and Palestinians are farther from peace today then any time I can remember. Not just politically, but practically as well. I just think you are wrong in thinking that a peace conference can solve that.
    You know, in 1917 Gandhi was in a perfect position to defeat the British government in India. His movement was strong and unified, the British had their hands full in WWI, there was very little stopping him from increasing the pressure and forcing the British out. Even with everything going his way, he declined to force it, ended up in jail, and had to wait 30 years for his country to gain independence. His reason (basically) was that he did not want to force the British to leave when they(the British, and the Indians) were weak, but wanted to win independence on the merits of India’s own strength. More or less, I think Gandhi was right and the same principle applies to Palestine.
    There is more to peace then just having an agreement that tries to address some political questions. I mean, based on that general conception, Oslo was a perfect example of what happens when two groups put their faith in agreements for the sake of it, rather then on the basis of respect and equality. basically the same thing would happen today, there would be a lot of politicians praising the end of the conflict while nothing substantial would be accomplished in reality. There is only one way for peace to happen, and it is for the Palestinians to become powerful enough to force Israel to respect them. That could be militarily or non-militarily, but there will never be peace until the Palestinians themselves have the capacity to enforce it. Under the current conditions, a deal from a “final-status peace conference” will be worth about as much as the paper it is signed on.
    I will just add that I support a one-state solution and believe that by advocating such a solution the Palestinians could gain enough moral force to level the playing field. Right now there is no reason for the Jews to respect or negotiate with the Palestinians, but if they demanded equality and exposed Israel’s racism directly, it would significantly strengthen them.

  3. I’m not sure why a highly coercive peace conference is better than a highly coercive peace summit.
    But again, I think Helena misses and in fact inadvertently reinforces the point. No American government, of either party, is going to stick their necks out to help the Palestinians if this is what they get in return.
    The last time America sponsored final status talks, Bill Clinton did everything he could to bring the parties to an agreement. Yasser Arafat spit in his face, left and crowed to his people that he stood up to the nasty Americans, and launched the 2nd intifada. Given the overwhelming amount of coverage the whole conflict has since received in the media, and how it is regularly used as a flash point to insight “the street,” it is not surprising that American politicians of all stripes think that trying to broker peace just isn’t worth it.
    Since then, the U.S. has been told, time and again, that they have to provide support for the “moderate” Palestinian elements like Abbas. So what does Abbas do? He goes to Mecca, and brokers an agreement with Hamas that is filled with so many weasel words that Hamas can easily retain power and abide by its genocidal charter. What the hell does Abbas expect when he comes back to Rice and Olmert?
    Yes, I am well aware that Abbas is there to lead the Palestinians, not serve the Americans or the Israelis. All fine and well. But if you demand territorial concessions and “ending the occupation” from Israel and it’s ally, you better not pull the kind of crap that he’s trying to pull. Both Rice and Olmert are individuals who, despite the lambasting they get by some people, would be inclined to make territorial concessions if they thought it would bring peace. They’re not convinced, and with good reason. And you know very well that the people most likely to replace them, particularly in Israel, will be even less inclined to work with the Palestinians.
    The reason why Israeli attempts to improve the lives of Palestinians are not fulfilled is because, the second Israel tries to let up, the Palestinians take advantage of it to wage more war against Israel. For all of Helena’s talk of “hundreds of thousands of settlers” being implanted into the West Bank, Helena ignores that in Gaza, the Palestinians received their demand of a Judenrein piece of territory. And they got those wealthy American Jews (they of the “Israel lobby”) to spend millions of dollars to GIVE them the greenhouses that were used for productive agriculture by the Israeli settlers.
    The result was bringing the explicitly racist and genocidal Hamas to power, the repeated launching of the Qassam rockets, the prompt conversion of the greenhouses into smuggling tunnels, and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier whose location the Palestinians still refuse to disclose (just curious Helena, when’s the last time you called for Gilad Shalit’s Geneva Convention Rights to be respected?).
    Under such circumstances, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. or Israel is looking to make many significant concessions to the Palestinians, much less engage in further “peace conferences.” The issue isn’t incrementalism vs. a comprehensive “peace conference.” The issue is that the Palestinians have given absolutely, positively no reason for either the Israelis or the Americans to trust them or have faith in them no matter which route they take.

  4. I should perhaps have made clear that when I referred to a “trusted third party” I was specifically intending that to mean some body other than the US, which has no iota of credibility or reputation for trustworthiness on this issue. Thus, imho, it should be the UN– which provided Israel its birth certificate as a state in the modern world and which remains the greatest manifestation of a rules-based international order in the world– which should provide both monitoring for a ceasefire and sponsorship of the final-status peace negotiations.
    I admit that the UN lost a great degree of credibility by hitching itself to the failed and now long out-of-date approach of the “Road Map.” However, it could certainly find a way to escape from that approach and return to the basic principles stated in SC resolutions 242 and 338.

  5. The UN has indeed lost credibility, but not because it passed the road map.
    The UN lacks credibility because it has allowed itself to be hijacked by the Arab League who passes meaningless resolutions issuing one-sided and inaccurate condemnations of Israel. The UN also lacks credibility because bodies such as its human rights committee are filled with some of the worst human rights violators on the planet.
    When Israel’s attempts to defend itself are met with more condemnation than actual genocide in Darfur, you know something is greatly wrong.

  6. It is not just the Americans (under President Clinton, for example) who have been frustrated in their efforts at mediation. Exactly 60 years ago, the UN voted in favor of a partition plan that would have divided the disputed land between the two peoples. It is instructive to recall which side was the rejectionist and which was prepared to accept the verdict of the international body and settle for half a loaf.
    And today one Palestinian faction would like to recreate boundaries more or less along the lines of the UN verdict that its grandparents’ generation rejected (a do over as we used to call it on the playground) and the other, learning nothing from history, insists on it all.

  7. Actually, Truesdell, what the Palestinian side is seeking is noticeably less than what its grandparents’ generation rejected, since in the war of 1948 the Jewish/Israeli forces succeeded in taking and holding large areas of land that the UNPP had allocated to the Arab State in Palestine; and in all the formulations currently discussed/proposed by the Palestinians and the Arab states it is ONLY the land occupied by Israel in 1967 that they seek.
    Re relative credibility, the US has exercized hegemonic control over all aspects of Arab-Israeli peacemaking since 1974– that is, for the past 32 years– and has shown itself incapable of making any lasting further gains in peacemaking since the conclusion of the Egypt-Israel peace in 1979.
    Prior to that, the UN had tried and, yes, also failed. Though when the US and UN worked energetically together in 1956 they managed to roll back the wave of Israeli-Brit-French aggression of that year very rapidly… But of course, they notably failed to succeed in addressing the Palestinians’ claims at that time (as the US diplomacy did in 1978-79)and thus the conflict continued to fester

  8. I don’t think any of the current ideas for a forum (Rice-mediated, Quartet, UN, Saudis, etc.,) are going to work.
    My suggestion?
    Lean on Israel to release Marwan Barghouti from prison with the understanding that there will be new Palestinian and Israeli elections…Olmert is pathetic (Livni would be a big improvement) and Barghouti is not weak like Abbas, has considerable credibility in the Palestinian street and has already successfully brokered an agreement in principle with his fellow inmates, including Hamas adherents.
    A long shot? Certainly, but beats the other ideas on the table.

  9. Truesdell
    A long shot? Certainly, but beats the other ideas on the table.
    Its for first time Arabs states agreed on one a complete peace offer backed with the approval of Arab League, the Saudi king Abdullah peace offer, Israelis of course rejected before bother to look at it.
    The problem its more with Israeli side than the Arab, Arafat, Abbass or Barghouti, Israelis use them put them down and step by step marginalizing them made them weak by their behaviours with them, Israelis have no interested in a long peace agreement as such, this is clear, Israelis counting grabbing the Palestinians land from on different bases and claims, if peace deal done today Israelis will be surrounded by the new boarders that they don’t like and will never like to be a fix boarders for Jewish state.
    The Holly land “Jewish state” is borderless state (Till now Israeli teaching their kids with text books in their schools without definite boarders for the state of Israel) this is the Zionist ideology and it’s well demonstrated from 1948 till now whatever we hear from Israeli about their willingness for peace with their neighbours the reality they are not.
    I don’t see or there is no faith that Palestinians case will be resolved, this Palestinians will continue for feasible future and may taking many generations to be resolve if there is a well from Israeli elites to solve which I doubt it.

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