How Obama Must Deal With Israeli Avoidance Methods
Published in Counterpunch
April 16-18, 2010
Difficult and More Likely to Succeed
How Obama Must Deal With Israeli Avoidance Methods
By NADIA HIJAB
As Barack Obama seeks leadership of the nuclear nonproliferation cause this week, the long shadow cast by the Arab-Israeli conflict is close by. And a proliferation of peace plan advice is coming his way, inspired by reports that his administration may be planning to issue its own plan.
So far, the heaviest hitters' advice is that from former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Congressman Stephen Solarz, in their jointly written editorial in The Washington Post. They call on Obama to make a dramatic gesture: To travel to Jerusalem with world leaders and declare a four-point plan. This would, they argue, make it possible for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to deal with their recalcitrant elements.
I hope the president doesn't listen to them. On the face of it, the Brzezinski-Solarz plan-for-Obama's-plan looks eminently reasonable and even-handed, with bitter pills dished out to "both sides." But it puts the United States in a needlessly exposed position.
It is one thing for former government representatives to airily dismiss international law as regards Palestinian refugee rights in exchange for an Israeli agreement to share Jerusalem, which is not legally Israel's to share. It is quite another for the highest American official to do so.
The United States should indeed have a clear idea of its bottom line because it simply cannot leave the matter to be negotiated by the two sides, given the vast imbalance of power. But it should not publicly announce a peace plan. What it should publicly announce is that it will not recognize any changes Israel has made beyond the Green Line, and that it will encourage its partners to do the same.
For starters, Obama could dust off that 1979 State Department ruling that Israeli settlements are "inconsistent with international law." Never revoked, it peeps through the verbiage every now and then. Now it needs to be rearticulated forcefully.
Further, the Administration should begin public investigations of how much of its own aid -- and that of U.S. non-profits -- supports settlement activity, with a view to stemming that flow.
This will send the clearest message yet to the Israeli government -- and to the settlers -- to stop settlements and begin to pull back. Buying property there will become unattractive while supporting settlements would be a risky enterprise for law-abiding Americans.
Concurrently, the Obama administration should continue the steady if unglamorous task of pushing for a final and comprehensive agreement, albeit at a much, much faster pace and backed by clear costs for Israel for not ending its occupation. And it should call on Europe -- Israel's largest trading partner -- to help make the costs of occupation clear. This will lessen the heat on the Administration and present Israel with a determined united front that says: Yes, to security for the citizens of Israel, No to occupation, injustice, and inequality.
There is a pressing reason to go public with such a stand. The Israeli government and settlers are rapidly changing the nature of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by expanding settlements, roads, and barriers, according to the people impacted by them. And it is becoming increasingly untenable for Palestinians to hang on to their lands and homes or to a decent living, in spite of the happy spin sometimes spun about the occupied territories. Only U.S. pressure can put a stop to this, and it needs to be done now: Post-November's midterm elections may be too late.
Any attempt to cajole Israel into better behavior and to seek incremental improvements will be met with well-honed Israeli avoidance methods, as the Administration discovered over the past year. Here are just three examples of such methods.
First, they keep everyone on the run. For example, as Ha'aretz just revealed, a new Israeli military order will enable the deportation of thousands of West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians. Israel benefits even if the order is never implemented: Attention will undoubtedly shift to this new emergency, sucking up time and energy now spent on Jerusalem and settlements.
Second, they dig in their heels for as long as possible, and only offer minor concessions while carrying on business as usual -- as with the unconscionable siege of Gaza.
And third, they use diversionary tactics -- lately, it is the Iranian 'nuclear threat', which even defense minister Ehud Barak said is not an existential threat to Israel.
So, as Obama sifts through the peace plan advice coming his way, he would do well to keep his intentions tucked up his sleeve, go public on what America will not support, and in other ways put a brake on Israel's fast creation of facts on the ground -- while remorselessly pushing the process to a conclusion. This approach won't be easy. But it is more likely to succeed.
To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip
The Washington Post
By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz
Sunday, April 11, 2010; B04
More than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that controlled Israel's only outlet to the Red Sea, declared that he would rather have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, is conveying an updated version of Dayan's credo -- that he would rather have all of Jerusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem.
This is unfortunate, because a comprehensive peace agreement is in the interest of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resentment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objectives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel's future, greater even than an Iranian bomb. And an agreement is in the interest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of statehood.
However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal, as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historically significant setting can generate the political and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat's courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades ago accomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.
Similarly, President Obama should travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah to call upon both sides to negotiate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusalem's Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace.
Such an effort would play to Obama's strengths: He personalizes politics and seeks to exploit rhetoric and dramatic settings to shatter impasses, project a compelling vision of the future and infuse confidence in his audience.
The basic outlines of a durable and comprehensive peace plan that Obama could propose are known to all:
First, a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel. This is a bitter pill for the Palestinians, but Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.
Second, genuine sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of each state, and some international arrangement for the Old City. This is a bitter pill for the Israelis, for it means accepting that the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine.
Third, a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.
And fourth, a demilitarized Palestinian state with U.S. or NATO troops along the Jordan River to provide Israel greater security.
Most of these parameters have been endorsed in the Arab peace plan of 2002 and by the Quartet. And the essential elements have also been embraced by Barak and another former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
For the Israelis, who are skeptical about the willingness of the Palestinians and Arabs to make peace with them, such a bold initiative by Obama would provide a dramatic demonstration of the prospects for real peace, making it easier for Israel's political leadership to make the necessary compromises.
For the Palestinians, it would provide political cover to accept a resolution precluding the return of any appreciable number of refugees to Israel. Palestinian leaders surely know that no peace agreement will be possible without forgoing what many of their people have come to regard as a sacred principle: the right of return. The leadership can only make such a shift in the context of an overall pact that creates a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital -- and that is supported by other Arab countries.
For the Arabs, it would legitimize their own diplomatic initiative, embodied in the peace plan put forward by the Arab League eight years ago. Moreover, their support for Obama in the effort would be a vital contribution to the resolution of the conflict.
Finally, for Obama himself, such a move would be a diplomatic and political triumph. Bringing Arab leaders and the Quartet with him to Jerusalem and Ramallah to endorse his plan would be seen as a powerful example of leadership in coping with the protracted conflict. Since it is inconceivable that the Israeli government would refuse Obama's offer to bring Arab leaders and the Quartet to its capital, most of the American friends of Israel could be expected to welcome the move as well.
Of course, the proposal could be rejected out of hand. If the Israelis or the Palestinians refuse to accept this basic formula as the point of departure for negotiations, the Obama administration must be prepared to pursue its initiative by different means -- it cannot be caught flat-footed, as it was when Netanyahu rejected Obama's demands for a settlement freeze and the Arabs evaded his proposals for confidence-building initiatives.
Accordingly, the administration must convey to the parties that if the offer is rejected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council's endorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party.
Fortunately, public opinion polls in Israel have indicated that while most Israelis would like to keep a united Jerusalem, they would rather have peace without all of Jerusalem than a united Jerusalem without peace. Similarly, although the Palestinians are divided and the extremists of Hamas control the Gaza Strip, the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution, and their leadership in Ramallah is publicly committed to such an outcome.
It is time, though almost too late, for all parties -- Israelis, Palestinians, Americans -- to make a historic decision to turn the two-state solution into a two-state reality. But for that to happen, Obama must pursue a far-sighted strategy with historic audacity.
Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman from New York, is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.