NOVANEWS
Everyone, except for the people running our most important paper, agrees that failure is inevitable in the current round of peace talks [and see this excellent post for a sum-up]. Here’s a conservative Haaretz columnist:
Therefore, there are good reasons to believe that detailed proposals published this year by the hawkish Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs more or less reflect Netanyahu’s position, particularly because the center is associated with Moshe Ya’alon, Netanyahu’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, and Uzi Arad, his security advisor.
Their claims are as follows: the international assertion that any future peace agreement must be based on 1967 borders is unacceptable, because it fails to address Israel’s security needs. Hence Israel must to return to a security based diplomacy in which the parameters of any peace agreement must be defined by Israel’s security needs.
For Abbas to gain support for a final status agreement, he needs some sizable gains with high symbolic value. The most important would be Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, and at least some form of international sovereignty over the holy basin. Even under these conditions, it would be an uphill battle for him to sell the final agreement to the Palestinian people.
If Abbas has to make concessions regarding borders, it will make his task nearly impossible. This is why he insisted that the talks need to presume some understanding about borders. But if Netanyahu’s views are more or less reflected in the presentation of the Jerusalem Center of Public Studies, there are very good reasons why he refused to agree to such an understanding – his best offer falls far short of the 1967 borders.
Therefore, there are good reasons to believe that detailed proposals published this year by the hawkish Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs more or less reflect Netanyahu’s position, particularly because the center is associated with Moshe Ya’alon, Netanyahu’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, and Uzi Arad, his security advisor.
Their claims are as follows: the international assertion that any future peace agreement must be based on 1967 borders is unacceptable, because it fails to address Israel’s security needs. Hence Israel must to return to a security based diplomacy in which the parameters of any peace agreement must be defined by Israel’s security needs.
For Abbas to gain support for a final status agreement, he needs some sizable gains with high symbolic value. The most important would be Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, and at least some form of international sovereignty over the holy basin. Even under these conditions, it would be an uphill battle for him to sell the final agreement to the Palestinian people.
If Abbas has to make concessions regarding borders, it will make his task nearly impossible. This is why he insisted that the talks need to presume some understanding about borders. But if Netanyahu’s views are more or less reflected in the presentation of the Jerusalem Center of Public Studies, there are very good reasons why he refused to agree to such an understanding – his best offer falls far short of the 1967 borders.
Note that they don’t bother re-writing Barak’s proposals and parameters anymore to pretend that they were anything close to the ’67 borders either. Not there’s a frank acknowledgment: Israeli society is incapable of providing peace.
The only scenario that could conceivably lead to positive results is the option that Fayyad has been working toward in the last years by improving enormously on Palestinian governance and creating a viable Palestinian security force. After the talks fail, Palestinians will unilaterally declare a state along the 1967 borders next year, and seek international recognition while implementing de facto sovereignty over the territories currently under Palestinian control.
Even Fayyad’s option will only bear fruit if he succeeds in the difficult task of running Palestine without major security incidents for a few years. The question is whether this will change the state of mind of Israelis sufficiently to regain the lost belief that they will see peace in their lifetime.
Despite these caveats, Fayyad’s option is the only one that offers a glimmer of hope. His success might wake up Israel’s disempowered liberals to restate the case for peace. But both Israel’s liberals and Fayyad must be aware that such a turnaround may take the better part of the coming decade. And in the Middle East, a decade is more than enough for catastrophe to derail anything.
In other words, a decade of apartheid–that’s what the “territories currently under Palestinian control” amount to. After that? In some vague way, a decade of peaceful, resistance-free apartheid, which will never happen, “will [perhaps] change the state of mind of Israelis sufficiently to regain the lost belief that they will see peace in their lifetime.” Whatever that blubbery formulation means. My only question is when will Israeli liberals and their Western apologists start calling for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions on their own society, a call that the picayune Israeli left has already made? The glib answer is that some, in a uselessly attenuated form, already are.
When Israel turns into an open apartheid state and is regarded as such by its liberal class? After the next Cast Lead, while in the interim they wait and struggle and suffer and die, while another generation of youth loses its youth? There’s only one way forward for us. Recently, the Nation published two juxtaposed articles, with Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz arguing for BDS and that intolerable twerp Bernard Avishai against BDS. Soon it’ll be just for, and it’ll be an editorial. Then the rest of American liberalism will fall into line. But not without being pushed, in one way or another. Why wait?
Technorati Tags: Adam Horowitz, BDS, Bernard Avishai, peace process, Philip Weiss
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