{"id":57540,"date":"2020-07-15T11:04:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T01:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=57540"},"modified":"2020-07-15T12:20:53","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T02:20:53","slug":"a-doomed-israeli-palestinian-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-doomed-israeli-palestinian-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"A doomed Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Twenty years ago this month, US President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to a peace summit at Camp David, in a bold effort to resolve one of the longest-running conflicts of modern times. Though no agreement was reached, the summit, in which I participated, wasn\u2019t a failure: the framework it produced became the foundation upon which Clinton built his \u2018peace parameters\u2019\u2014the most equitable and realistic rendition of a two-state solution ever created. Why did nothing come of them?<\/p>\n

Under the so-called Clinton parameters<\/a>, a large swath of Israeli settlements would be dismantled, in order to create a Palestinian state encompassing 100% of the Gaza Strip and 97% of the West Bank. Territories would be transferred from Israel, in exchange for the land the Palestinians conceded in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian state would include the Arab sections of Jerusalem, which would serve as its capital, while the Jewish sections of the city would become Israel\u2019s capital. That split would give the Palestinians sovereignty over al-Haram al-Sharif<\/em> (which Jews call the Temple Mount), though Israelis would retain control over the Western Wall and its surrounding area.<\/p>\n

A corridor would be created between Palestinian lands\u2014Clinton called it a \u2018permanent safe passage\u2019\u2014making the new state contiguous. Finally, Palestinian refugees would be able to choose to return without restrictions to the new state of Palestine, to return to the state of Israel with restrictions (as part of a family-reunification scheme), to resettle in a third country, and\/or to receive financial compensation, funded by the international community.<\/p>\n

Israeli negotiators wanted to translate the parameters into an official settlement. That would have been a deal significantly better for the Palestinians than the one on offer at the Camp David summit. In fact, the improvement in terms vindicates Arafat\u2019s decision to reject Barak\u2019s proposals at Camp David.<\/p>\n

But the Palestinians also resisted the parameters, arguing that they shouldn\u2019t be allowed to constrain future negotiations. During a last-ditch attempt to clinch an agreement in Taba, Egypt, Abu Ala, the chief Palestinian negotiator, admitted to us that Arafat was no longer interested in the offer. That was a devastating mistake, the consequences of which Palestinians suffer every day.<\/p>\n

Arafat\u2019s decision can be explained less by a particular demand or concession than by the overarching, delusional and self-defeating worldview to which many Palestinians cling. As the late Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford University\u2019s Hoover Institution, wrote in a 2001 article, the Palestinians suffer from \u2018an innate refusal to surrender to the logic of things, a belief that a mysterious higher power will always come to their rescue, as if the laws of history did not apply to them\u2019.<\/p>\n

In a 2002 letter<\/a>, one of Arafat\u2019s former ministers, Nabil Amr, condemned this approach. \u2018There is something other than conspiracy that has made the whole world either stand against us or incapable of helping us. Because we have a just cause does not mean we are entitled to do what we want.\u2019<\/p>\n

Throughout history, repressed nations have achieved liberation not because they had the right\u2014human, legal or divine\u2014or because they held the moral high ground. Rather, they succeeded through a combination of wisdom, mettle and restraint. Their emancipation rested on their ability to balance force and diplomacy, tenacity and compromise.<\/p>\n

Energised by the scale of the Palestinian tragedy and the indulgence of the international community, Arafat never accepted that. Instead, he sought a deal that he knew was politically impossible for his Israeli interlocutors. This compulsive indifference to the political and strategic context destroyed the Palestinians\u2019 chances of securing a realistic, fair and viable peace agreement\u2014and not only in that moment. In fact, it may have doomed the Palestinian cause altogether.<\/p>\n

\u2018How many times\u2019, Amr continued in his letter, \u2018did we accept, reject, and then accept? Our timing in saying yes or no was never good. How many times were we asked to do something that we could do but we did not do it? When this something became impossible, we begged the world to re-propose it to us.\u2019 Amr seemed to recognise that the world would reach its limit, and the proposals would stop coming. Two decades after the Camp David summit, that is exactly what has happened.<\/p>\n

Today, the Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict barely registers on the regional, let alone global, agenda. US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration put forward its own peace plan, but it is heavily tilted<\/a> towards the Israelis. The rest of the world barely responded.<\/p>\n

As for Israel, there are virtually no forces for peace to be found among its leadership. On the contrary, Israel has abandoned any semblance of empathy or compassion for the Palestinian plight. Instead, emboldened by his rogue alliance with Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now pursuing<\/a>, more aggressively than ever, his hypernationalistic dream of effectively annexing Palestinian lands, by unilaterally \u2018applying sovereignty\u2019 over them.<\/p>\n

Palestinians in these areas\u2014including up to 30% of the West Bank\u2014would be left stateless or, at best, \u2018politically undefined\u2019. As Hannah Arendt wrote<\/a>, it is \u2018only with stateless people\u2019 that one can do as one pleases\u2014though, of course, she had the Jews in mind.<\/p>\n

The Clinton administration did not fail to clinch peace 20 years ago only because of Arafat\u2019s intransigence. The US negotiators viewed an agreement as a sentimental cause, rather than a security imperative. This came through in the talks, weakening their position. Now, as Netanyahu entrenches an apartheid state, Palestinians don\u2019t even have sentimentality going for them. And anyone who thinks that Russia, with its growing regional clout, can supplant America as a peacemaker should think again.<\/p>\n

The two-state solution is dead and buried. Whatever \u2018solution\u2019 may be found in the future will emerge not from an orderly peace process but from chaos, the precise nature of which is impossible to predict. It could be unilateral annexation. It could be a sudden violent Israeli disengagement from parts of the West Bank. Or it could be direct conflict. This is the iron law of unintended consequences at work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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