The State of the Jews

Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, continues his effort to punish and pressure Israel into more concessions toward the Palestinians. Writing in The Nation, he warns:

Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement,” one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.

Don’t believe it. Siegman’s vision suffers from a disparity between the real Israel and the Israel he believes he knows.

For example, he argues that “it is now widely recognized in most Israeli circles–although denied by Israel’s government–that the settlements have become so widespread and so deeply implanted in the West Bank as to rule out the possibility of their removal (except for a few isolated and sparsely populated ones) by this or any future Israeli government unless compelled to do so by international intervention, an eventuality until now considered entirely unlikely.”

Really? When over 80% of settlers live on 5% of the West Bank, most of it adjacent to the Green Line, when the popular reaction to the Disengagement from Gaza was an overwhelming yawn – no Galilee bed-and-breakfast and no Tel Aviv beach was empty during those two ostensibly traumatic weeks in August 2005.

The settlements can be removed, and the vast centrist Israeli mainstream that has so far escaped the notice of an ignorant world media will implement this removal. But only when it knows that the Palestinians won’t use the withdrawal from the West Bank the way they used the one from Gaza.

In short, Siegman is not a serious observer of Israel.

In 2008, he wrote another piece in the Nation seeking to prove Israel’s dishonesty in peacemaking. His sole proof: the settlements. Always the settlements.

It would be one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain security concerns had been dealt with. But no government serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued, without letup, the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands, which even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.

I’m a big fan of American Jews taking Israel to the cleaners. I am genuinely mystified at their failure to protest the corrupt Israeli rabbinate’s efforts to define who is Jewish, or the complete absence of education about the Diaspora in all 12 years of an Israeli’s schooling, or the lack of Israeli support for Diaspora education while Israel joyfully drinks up American Jewish love and money with barely an acknowledging nod.

But the criticism on the peace process is not serious, and is repeatedly disproven by events. To insist on punishing Israel at this stage, Siegman must ignore the simple glaring fact that the Palestinians are refusing to prove the Israelis’ intransigence through, um, negotiating.

Yes, there are settlements. And yes, the settlement movement is a serious constituency with a resonant narrative. So it would be excruciatingly difficult for Netanyahu to take on the entire far-right unless he can show the mainstream that there is a reason to do so.

But it is also true that the settlers have lost every time they were challenged – in Sinai, Gaza and the current extra-Jerusalemite freeze. The broader culture war within Israel over the past two decades has left them marginalized politically. It is only Palestinian brutality that has left the majority of the settlements intact.

To seriously suggest further punishment of Israel without giving even casual consideration to the simple fact that the Palestinians have yet to concede anything in 17 years of negotiations – not even simple rhetorical gestures such as recognition of the Jews’ right to self-determination – is either stupid or willfully disingenuous.

You don’t trust Netanyahu? Fine. But right now, it isn’t Netanyahu that has to prove his good faith and capacity for peacemaking.

Pressure Israel all you want. As Obama has discovered in recent months, the Palestinians will only up their demands and push off the inevitable compromise.

I have written about the automatic credibility gap that Israeli leaders face in the international arena, where the world questions the Israeli commitment to peace even when it is demonstrable – and often fails to take the Palestinians to task when they flatly work against accommodation and reconciliation.

But what more can Netanyahu do to overcome this distrust?

Ha’aretz’s Ari Shavit points out:

Unlike Rabin [in 1995], Netanyahu now accepts the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Unlike Rabin, he is issuing orders prohibiting construction throughout the Jewish West Bank. Netanyahu has crossed the Rubicon, on both ideological and practical levels, and reinvented himself as a centrist.

All this just to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, which they still refuse to do.

In a must-read in today’s Wall Street Journal, British analyst Tom Gross explains the results of Netanyahu’s pro-peace policies, especially the recent dismantling of hundreds of roadblocks and other measures to jump-start the Palestinian economy.

(True, Keith Olbermann once called Tom “the worst person in the world” for basically supporting military action against Iran’s nuclear program – for what it’s worth, Olbermann misquoted him – but Tom is also a passionate supporter of Palestinian independence and democracy.)

The piece is worth reading in full. Here are some choice parts:

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets…

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring…

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently…

Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe…

Palestinian economic growth so far this year—in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere—has been an impressive 7% according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11%, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel…

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don’t clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one.

As many have noted following Binyamin Netanyahu’s June speech at Bar Ilan University, it’s not a crazy demand on the part of the Israelis that the new state of Palestine be disarmed. Besides the traumatic experience of the Gaza withdrawal, where land vacated by Israel quickly became the launching pad for incessant attacks on Sderot, there is actual precedent for disarmament in the international arena – both Costa Rica and Iceland have no militaries, and it has served them well.

Now, Costa Rica’s president Oscar Arias, a Nobel peace laureate and supporter of Palestinian independence, agrees.

In an interview with the Israeli news website YNet over the weekend (The English article is here, but the Hebrew one has the full quote I translated below), he says:

“In my conversations with the Palestinians, I’m trying to suggest a crazy idea – get rid of your army. In practical terms, this isn’t really a crazy idea, because we did it 61 years ago, and we have only benefited from it. In my opinion, a small state, a poor state like Palestine doesn’t need an army. Clearly not everyone will agree with me, but it takes a bit of courage to make such a decision and I hope the Palestinian Authority will have the courage to take this step.”

YNet’s Netanel Shlomovich adds:

The Costa Rican president’s position [on disarmament] will likely make the Netanyahu government happy, but not on all issues. During Arias’ term, Costa Rica established diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority and even recognized a Palestinian state. Yet President Arias doesn’t understand why these actions constitute a controversial decision.

“Over a hundred nations have recognized a Palestinian state. This was the vision of the United Nations from the partition agreement of 1947 that called for the establishment of two states. Very few people will disagree with the idea of two states,” [Arias said].

Am I the only pessimist left standing on this business of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood?

The Atlantic Wire, the blog section of the Atlantic magazine, juxtaposes my view on this with three other commentators extolling the idea. For the record, I wrote that unilateral statehood would give the Palestinians nothing while freeing Israel’s right-wing government from its standing obligations.

The other commentators, on the other hand, didn’t even try to deal with the question in strategic terms.

Yossi Sarid, as is his wont, is hopeful and optimistic to the point of irrelevance: “When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions.”

Juan Cole is inexplicably paranoid: “Since the Netanyahu government is about the least likely government to negotiate a Palestinian state within 1967 borders you could imagine, the Palestinians are giving up any hopes that talks will lead anywhere. Moreover, since Netanyahu has secret plans to thousands of further Israeli houses on Palestinian land in the next few years, time is short.”

This is just plain weird. First of all, Netanyahu doesn’t need “secret plans.” There are perfectly non-secret construction plans available for public viewing in the Housing and Construction Ministry. Second, the non-negotiable Palestinian demands aren’t just about borders, but also about refugees, Jerusalem and other issues. Third, on Cole’s doubts about Netanyahu’s intentions, he would do well to remember that both Sinai and Gaza – two withdrawals that included dismantling settlements and resettling thousands of Jews – were carried out by right-wing governments.

Finally, Chris Hedges seals the debate by comparing Palestine to all sorts of non-comparable places: “It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine.”

But it didn’t work in Chechnya or Kurdistan, and worked only partially in Scotland and the Basque country – because these are all completely different situations.

Consider: Unlike in Kosovo, Israelis have been willing to withdraw from Palestine for over a decade (according to Tel Aviv University’s annual Peace Index). Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Palestine has Hamas waiting in the wings to take over. Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Israel is neither Russian nor Serbian in its intentions or in its political capacity for brutality.

Besides, supporting unilateral independence implies a trust in the current Palestinian leadership to get it right – to build institutions, to construct a national economy. Does Hedges trust them to do this?

The occupation is bad, undemocratic and temporary – even according to Israel’s own laws. But should the PA, which has suffered for almost two decades mainly from its own corrupt and incompetent leadership, unceremoniously jettison the entire Oslo process in the hope that more UN pressure will give them independence and prosperity? Will the need to negotiate over Jerusalem, refugees and borders disappear because Cuba, Sweden and Russia recognize Ramallah and Nablus as a “state” rather than an autonomous “authority?”

David Horovitz thinks Netanyahu is maneuvering brilliantly between all the different parties trying to pressure him – whether the right edge of his party, the left, the Obama administration or the PA. I agree. And so do most astute Israeli observers I know.

But more importantly, David (full disclosure: my boss) lays out the near-universal opinion of Israelis at the end of 16 years of peace-processing:

With a series of astute political gambits in recent days, Netanyahu has defused right-wing criticism, found a workable middle-ground with the US, and attracted center-left support. But the strategic challenge of peacemaking with the unbending Palestinians remains as daunting as it ever was.

Nine years [after Camp David], Netanyahu is drawing closer to another attempt at negotiation, with Arafat’s successor. Unlike Rabin and Barak, and unlike Olmert, he comes from the center-right, heads a relatively stable coalition, and can fairly claim to speak for a sizable Israeli majority. He seems to have finessed many of his right-wing critics, impressed some in the center-left, found a workable arrangement with the US administration, and embraced a potentially viable two-state solution.

What hasn’t changed, at least not for the better, is the Palestinian position – the same maximalist stances, the same relentless anti-Israel incitement, and the same refusal by leaders to acknowledge and convey to their people the legitimacy of Israel. If Obama and Netanyahu have found a middle ground, there is sadly no evidence that Abbas is traveling in the same direction.