Is the Two-State Solution in Palestine Dead?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Washington last week with a tremendous tactical victory. By skillfully marshalling sympathetic Americans through AIPAC, he managed to deflect the speech by President Obama two days before he arrived that had argued for–even demanded–the resumption of Israeli-Palestine peace talks aimed at creating separate Jewish and Arab states (the 1948 UN mandate for the area) based on the pre-1967 boundaries (nowhere addressed in 1948) in the area as a starting point. “Indefensible,” Bibi roared, and the U.S. Congress dutifully rose from their seats at his address and cheered. Obama was left out on a ledge by himself politically, and Bibi flew out of town a hero to the political right in Israel. In the process, Bibi even appeared to capture the high road of being conciliatory and convincing the political right in the United States that his government indeed did favor peace–just not the one the President proposed. Neat trick, that. Score one for Natanyahu.

The Israeli tactical victory does, however, come with a price. In all likelihood, the real result of Bibi’s tour de force was  to drive the last nail into the coffin of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Neither the Palestinians or the Israelis, much less the Americans (who seem more enthused about the prospect than either of the principals), are publicly admitting this consequence, but it looms nonetheless.

Why such a gloomy prognosis? Let’s start by stripping away a bit of the generally pious rhetoric on both sides of the dispute. Both sides argue publicly that they want peace based on “two state for two peoples,” but it is by no means clear that either in fact do. Each begins by saying it is the side that truly wants peace but that the other side does not. It then issues what it argues are not preconditions for successful negotiations but which are in fact deal-breaking conditions it absolutely knows the other side wil not accept (which is the real reason for proposing them in the first place). This allows the other both sides to argue, fingers probably crossed behind their backs, that they want peace but the other side does not. Neither side is exactly lying, but neither side is exactly telling the truth either.

This works out in the current environment. Bibi proclaimed that Israel was willing, even anxious, to see peace, and had made numerous proposals without preconditions on which to proceed. Well, not quite. Netanyahu prefaced this apparent generosity by saying that, of course, the Israelis could not be expected to negotiate with terrorists intent on the destruction of the state of Israel (Hamas) and that Israeli security must be honored in any agreement. Those sound like reasonable positions (members of Congress certainly seemed to think so), but they are also effective deal-breaking preconditions that insure no Palestinian government can possibly enter into negotiations on their basis. Why? The exclusion of Hamas (with which the Abbas government has now entered into a working agreement with) means the Palestinian Authority must turn its back on a political body that has considerable support in the Palestinian population. Fatah might want to do that (just as the Obama administration might like to exclude the TEA Party from negotiations on the deficit), but they cannot. The guarantee of Israeli security operationally translates into a permanent Israeli military presence on the West Bank (Bibi admitted that in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, as reported here last week), which is roughly like saying Mexico will agree on a border security arrangement with the United States as long as it can maintain permanent security forces in Dallas. Palestinian demands regarding the disposition of Israeli settlements on the West Bank offer a parallel.

I am not arguing that either of these Israeli positions in unreasonable or indefensible from a strictly Israeli view–especially at the tactical level of security today for the Israeli state. Simply raising these to the public eye in the United States (although not in Israel, where such critiques are much more open) brings squeals of indignation about “pushing Israel under the bus,” in Mitt Romney’s shrill, thoroughly unimaginative term, which I suspect is the exact reaction for which Bibi hoped (and was rewarded). 

The real concern is what this kabuki by the Potomac means for an eventual peace settlement between the antagonists based on the two-state principle, and here, the landscape is bleak. There were no peace talks before the recent visit and exchange occurred, of course, and it was Obama’s state purpose to reinvigorate them. This was probably impossible under any circumstances because, as I have tried to argue here, it is not clear that either side truly wants such talks to progress to that end. The Israelis may be right that the Palestinians ultimately will agree to no outcome that does not entail the disappearance of Israel, and the Palestinians may be correct that the Israelis will never allow a fully sovereign West Bank Palestinian state. Both sides certainly act that way (pious rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding), and the Netanyahu visit was certainly congruent with the thesis that a peaceful settlement will not occur because neither side is willing to make the honest concessions and compromises to create one.

I know that partisans on both sides will heatedly dispute this assertion and pepper me with evidence of the sincerity–even magnanimity–of their efforts to move toward a peace that would be possible if only the other side was not treacherous on the subject. Such denials (since they generously include condemnations of the honor of the other) do not move the situation toward peace, and I am personally not convinced they are intended to do so. The tactical game is decidedly status quo-loaded.

So, is peace based on a two-state solution dead? For the time being and in the short run, the answer is yes. For the president to try to follow up on his initiative at this time would be an exercise in futility (which was almost certainly Bibi’s intent to demonstrate to him, at which he succeeded) meeting Einstein’ definition of insanity. The only thing that can revive peace based on a two-state formula that represents a reasonable compromise for BOTH sides is a drastic change in power on both sides: a Palestinian leadership that is strong enough to resist and reject its extremists, and an Israeli leadership that accepts the long term demographics of the region and accepts losing part of “greater Israel” as the price for a long-term peace. In the meantime, the sounds of continued construction on the West Bank narrow the possibility that any two-state solution remains physically possible.

Will time run out before the preconditions for a two-state solutions are completely dead? If peace is the patient, the prognosis is not promising, but the patient has not quite expired. If, however, the two-state solution does die, that fundamentally changes the parameters of the game in ways that could very much disfavor those Israelis who have done their level best to derail the two-state solution. Game, and maybe set, to Netanyahu. Match? Not so clear.

Politics and Policy in the Middle East Debate

The visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington this past week and the firestorm that surrounded it pointed, among other things, to a fundamental if largely underpublicized distinction mostly of interest to political scientists but occasionally to wider audiences. That distinction was the difference between politics and public policy, including their interaction and the junction between them. Usually, debate about this distinction does not make much difference to citizen observers of the political process; last week it did.

The distinction is reasonably straightforward; political scientists disagree about some of it in detail, but political scientists disagree about just about everything. Politics is generally concerned with the political process: who is part of it, how people gain access to and control of it, and how they use their access to affect the actual policies of the government on various issues. Policy, on the other hand, deal with so-called outcomes of the process–the decisions that are made by political authority concerning how political issues will be determined, e.g. what will be the American position on global warming, or immigration, or Israel, or whatever.

The two concerns are obviously related to one another. Politics affects, even determines, policy, and vice versa. The heart of the realm of politics is who has political power, and in democratic systems, that means who wins elections. The heart of American politics is who gains control of the electoral process and gets elected and thus who can seek to implement different policy choices. At the same time, the policy positions that elected officials and aspirants espouse are basic data on which aspirants and office holders campaign for sontinuing support.

Both aspects have become intensely controversial. Particularly in the realm of foreign policy, there used to be an unwritten rule that political disagreements should be muted in public so that the country maintained a single, united face toward foreign governments. The basic statement of this philosophy was that “politics ends at the water’s edge.” At the same time, the historical ideal has been one wherein politics was conducted with a certain level of decorum, civility, and restraint, particularly in terms of partisan invective. These conventions have not, of course, always been honored in American history, and they certainly are not today: there is no apparent effort to assume a common face toward the world, and common restraint and good manners are almost archaic concepts.

Policy disagreements have become an inflamed part of the hyper-partisan environment in which politics is played out. This is most clearly evident in the childish, superheated debate about medical care, and it extends to foreign policy as well. Historically, once again, foreign policies (the policies of the U.S. government toward different places and over different issues) were normally debated quietly within policy elites and among decision-makers, who might disagree, sometimes vehemently and fundamentally, about these matters, but generally confined their disagreements to debates among themselves. That is also clearly not the case today.

The Netanyahu visit flap exemplifies the system tun amok. It began with a policy address by President Obama at the State Department in which he enunciated as U.S. policy one of the two basic policy positions that policy advocates who study the region put forward. Substantively, it was a position with which one could disagree, but it was certainly nothing radical or unusual. The fact that Obama made the address on live television just before the arrival of Netanyahu in the country politicized it, however, especially since Netanyahu is the champion of the alternative policy within those same debates. The hinge of that disagreement is whether the pre-1967 West Bank boundary should be the basis for negotiations between Israel and Palestine; Netanyahu voiced his side (also for TV) in his address to Congress. The two men pouted their way through a final press conference and publicly maintained that there was no fundamental difference between them and that they remained respectful friends. Hardly anyone believed that.

This whole circus mashed politics and policy together. Beyond simple policy preference, it is unclear why the president made such a public show of highlighting what had been U.S. policy for three administrations (at least), but the effect was a political more than a policy firestorm. Republicans leaped at the opportunity to attack a president whom they want desperately to defeat in next year’s election (a process that is not going well, to put it mildly). Former Governor Mitt Romney declared the president had thrown Israel “under the bus”, an open pander to sympathetic Jews and their social conservative supporters in the United States, and the Netanyahu speech before Congress–complete with standing ovations–was orchestrated as much to embarass Obama as it was to support the Netanyahu hard line (which he tried, unconvincingly, to argue is actually conciliatory) on peace negotiations. The political debate was not so much about policy as it was about 2012 election-year politics, pure and simple.

Policy, and particularly calm debate about it, of course, was the (intended?) victim of all the politics. Obama insisted the Israelis must offer conciliatory concessions to get talks started again, with the 1967 borders as a starting point. The Israelis (the Netanyahu government, that is) is absolutely opposed to that position, and fied back that it is willing to make many concessions, but it is the Palestinians who refuse to negotiate. Lost in Netanyahu’s profession was an arguable unwillingness to make concessions to which the Palestinians might agree. In all his visit, it seemed to me that the most telling statement he made (in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer) was that a sine qua non for any final agreement establishing a Palestinian state must include provision for a permanent Israeli military presence along the west bank of the Jordan River. Regardless of whether that it is good Israeli security policy, it is an absolute deal breaker in terms of peace negotiations.

The politics and the policy intertwined. The politics replaced a dialogue on policy with an attempt to gain political advantage from the policy disagreement. In the end, both sides slinked away from the political interchange with the sides of the debate intact and no progress made on resolving the policy issue. Politics, as is so often the case, trumped policy–probably to the detriment of both.

Netanyahu’s Speech and the U.S. Congress

Prime Miniaster Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a combined session of the U.S. Congress yesterday was a thoroughly surreal experience. In the speech, Netanyahu pretended to be putting forth major concessions toward Palestine that could lead to the resumption of peace talks between the two parties, but the speech in fact was nothing more than standard Likud boiler plate that broke no new ground and was–as Netanyahu knew as he delivered it–totally unacceptable to the Palestinians (who promptly rejected it as “disappointing”). Everyone in the room or watching on television should have known that th speech was simply Bibi’s standard stump speech, but the U.S. Congress, interrupting him two dozen times with standing ovations, seemed to respond as if they were listening to a Churchillian oration. It was not, and the Congressional response was, in a word, unseemly.

Netanyau wasted no time demonstrating that he was not carrying an olive branch. Citing standard right-wing Israeli talking points, he reiterated that Judea and Samaria (J&S), as the Israelis like to refer to what the Arabs (and most of the rest of the world) refer to as the West Bank, was Israel’s, given to them by God in the Old Testament, and that the Israelis, despite this proper ownership, would be generous in making concession to carve out a Palestinian state somewhere on this piece of disputed ground that would include the abandonment of some of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank (oops, J&S). Those concession would not, however, include any part of Jerusalem, which he declared was the sole possession of Israel and its capital in perpetuity.

These two provisions alone gave away the seriousness of any peaceful intent that Netanyahu brought to the forum. Haaretz, the Israeli paper that opposes the Netanyahu regime across the board, referred to the speech as the “same old messages”  that included endless conditions that have no relation to reality.” If reality entails meaningful concessions that will reactivate the peace process, their assessment is exactly correct, since the Netanyahu conditions leave very little territory to be negotiated as the basis of Palestine and set the context that any concessions will be the result of Israeli largesse.  The speech effectively slammed the door not only on President Obama’s proposals of last week; they effectively end any prospects of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for as long as Netanyahu is in office. Haaretz concludes that Netanyahu “is leading Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of violence, along with Israel’s isolation and deep disagreement with the American administration.” I find it hard to argue with that conclusion.

Then there was the Congressional response. The assembled Senators and Representatives hung on and cheered every hard-line word that Netanyahu spoke, and one can assums that there will be lots of Israeli TV commercials documenting that support when the next Israeli election is held. Did they know what they were cheering? Does the United States Congress reject the idea of meaningful dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians, which is the inevitable result of Netanyahu’s speech? Or were the collected members, ever vigilant to instant polls, election prospects in 2012 and how full their reelection coffers would be, simply pandering to what they assume was American opinion on this subject?

It is incoceivable to me that the 500+ rpresentatives and others in attendance did not recognize Netanyahu’s speech for what it was: a basic, if nicely presented, reiteration of the standard right-wing, pro-settler Israeli position that broke no new ground and was not intended to be a diplomatic outreach but a simple statement of political position. Recognizing that politics no longer ends at the water’s edge, the speech was also a condemnation of the position of the government of the United States, and like that position or not, those Congressional “spring butts” (a term I learned at the US Aifr Force Command and Staff College as the reflexive response of some officer “brown nosers”) were cheering against their own government. Where was the “America, Love It or Leave It” crowd on that part). If you are a Palestinian today, you can only conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the Congress of the United States is your enemy. Is that what the members sought to convey?

Those who support the Netanyahu position, both here and in Israel, will no doubt respond negatively to these words. That is fine: the heart of dialogue is accepting contrary views and working from them. Having said that, I find it shocking, and yes, surreal, that this event occurred the way it did. To put it simply, a foreign official was invited to speak to the legislative branch of another country, where he berated and openly opposed the foreign policy of his closest ally to the cheers of that legislative body. Simply unbelievable!

Democracy, Islamism, the U.S., Egypt, and Israel

Although the Libyan civil war is the current focus of most of the world’s (and certainly John McCain’s) attention, that blooldletting is a sideshow on the greater stage of the revolutionary movement that has swept across parts of the Middle East since January and which may spread even further in the upcoming months or years. The central stage of this drama is a two-act drama. The key element in that drama is the shape that post-uprising political systems in the region will take, and it is a contest widely portrayed in terms of democracy versus religious extremism (Islamism). The outcome of that contest may reshape the geopolitics of the Middle East region, and especially the critical triangular relationship between the United States, Egypt, and Israel that is a linchpin of American foreign policy in the region.

The common denominator of the Middle East revolutions has been popular uprisings against repressive, authoritarian regimes by suppressed peoples. These movements were virtually unanticipated in the West, which saw regimes like that of Egyptian Hosni Mubarak as pillars of stability in the region. That they were anti-democratic conflicted with the on-again-off-again U.S. policy of democracy promotion in the region, but that policy impulse (and it is hard to think of it as much more than that) always had as its alter ego the comfort of dealing with predictable regimes who cooperated with American policy emphases such as moderating anti-Israeli sentiments among Arab populations and participating in the American war on terrorism.

American policy toward Egypt demonstrated the American ambivalence on the subject particularly clearly. Everyone knew that Mubarak’s regime was nothing to be proud of in human rights or economic matters, but he was enduring (it lasted over 30 years, after all), and Mubarak was a staunch supporter of peace with Israel and a champion of anti-terrorist activities. But there was always an irony involved: the same prisons where he jailed and even tortured his political opponents were also available for the “rendition” (i.e. torture) of suspected terrorists captured by the United States and from whom the Americans wanted to extract information that it would be embarassing for us to obtain otherwise. Good old Hosni would take care of them for us. Gee, some of us may actually miss him.

Ambivalence about what is happening is, of course, rarely put this way. Rather, the great fear is that democratic movements in the countries undergoing upheavals may somehow be highjacked by radical Islamists, who will transform their societies into Iran-like clones and even, at worst, as havens for fanatical terrorists. This is a fear that beleaguered tyrants like Muammar Gadhafi have raised with particular vehemence (his charge that westerners and Al Qaeda–strange bedfellows–are responsible for Libya’s travail), and it raises a prospect that many others, but especially Israel, feels with particularly personal urgency.

But is this fear justified? It is too early to say with absolute certainty, but the early indications are that as democratic processes emerge, the Islamic extremists will not fare especially well. Egypt, which is the largest, most populous, and most strategically located of all the countries undergoing change, is the case in point. It is, of course, the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood, offshoots of which are active in virtually every other Arab country in the region, but all indications are that the Brotherhood will neither be the preeminent influence in a post-Mubarak political order nor will its influence be particularly radical. One can and should never say never about these prospects, but unless things change, the prospects seem manageable.

There are, however, two other possible, even probable, outcomes that are more troublesome for the West, and the United States and Israel in particular. One is that all of these movements are likely to contain fairly strong anti-American elements. In one way this is strange, since it is western inventiveness that has energized the movements (e.g. the Internet) and since the political freedom to which they aspire is distinctly western. At the same time, the peoples involved know that that west, and notably the United States, has been the primary supporter of discredited leaders like Mubarak–the source of the misery to which they have reacted. This dichotomy mainly reflects the schizophrenia of American policy that valued “stability” over our own democratic values in these places, and that it is coming home to roost is probably something we will have to endure and try to make the best of. But one thing is pretty clear, and that it that the United States will have less influence over whoever ascends to power in places like Egypt than it had before.

This recognition brings us to the other outcome, which is a more anti-Israeli stance from post-revolutionary governments. For better or worse reasons, public opinion in places like Egypt is much more pro-Palestinian and thus thus anti-Israeli than the policies of fallen leaders like Mubarak have reflected. In open and democratic settings, it will be impossible for successor governments not to reflect this opposition, and the trick for the United States will be to try to keep this sentiment from boiling over into the destruction of the Middle East peace process which, ironically, has been one of the triumphs of the American policy of supporting regional tyrants.

The Israelis, of course, are well aware of and consequently with this likely outcome of democratization. The process, however, also leaves Israel in something of a bind in terms of how to respond. One of the signal bases of Israeli appeal in the region has been that it is the only legitimate political democracy in the Middle East, and as such, it can hardly oppose the spread of democracy to its neighbors. At the same time, it is also aware of the anti-Israeli tone of democratic politics there, a sentiment largely born of Israel’s obdurate clinging to the West Bank and opposition to completing an agreement creating an independent state of Palestine. These contradictions are part of a lively political debate within Israel, but the Israelis have been very quiet internationally about how they feel. Privately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently strongly advocated muscular American actions to prop up Mubarak (coming out on the stability end of the stability-democracy argument), but that train has left the station, and the Israelis are hunkering down.

From a geopolitical standpoint, the great question that remains is what will become of the strategically triangular relationship between Egypt, Israel, and the United States. Under Mubarak, the three were united to keep the lid on the volatile region by maintaining at least the fiction of a lively peace process leading to some kind of solution acceptable to the Palestinians, but democratic expressions in places like Egypt could undercut that fiction. It is not clear how diminished American influence will be in this situation, but it will certainly be decreased somewhat. The result will be uncomfortable for Israel, because its current policy of expanding the status quo will come under increasingly withering criticism from unconstrained democratizing places like Egypt. How Israel responds to this change will go a long way toward defining the geopolitics of the democratizing Middle East.

“Resetting” the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?

It comes as no revelation to report that the efforts of the Obama administration to move the on-again, but mostly off-again peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is currently going nowhere. Cynicism and pessimism has set in on both sides of the equation suggesting that neither the Israelis or Palestinians are willing or able (or both) to make the kinds of concessions necessary to vitalize the talks (people like to talk about revitalizing them, but when were did they ever have real life?). Over sixty years after the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors (as they were originally designated, not as Israel and Palestine), both sides are deeply suspicious of the motives and sincerity of the other regarding meaningful and acceptable bargains. These perceptions are probably largely correct on both sides.

The Obama administration, with George Mitchell as the not very sharp tip of the spear, has been trying to move the situation toward the two-state solution in some form, with a cessation of additional building and the willingness to abandon some or all Israeli “settlements” on the West Bank as its centerpiece.

The problem is, and has been, that although majorities (smaller in Israel, except among Israeli Arabs) on both sides support a “two state for two peoples” solution, neither can agree on exactly what the parameters of such a deal would entail. The devil is decidedly in the details. Moreover, the political winds regarding solutions are shifting as well. In an article in the current edition (December 2010) of Current History, for instance, Tamar Hermann details these changes, which include a vast weakening of Israeli political parties and a movement to the political right generally among Israelis. The right, of course, has formed the basic opposition to movement toward a permanent agreement with the Palestinians, at least on terms the Palestinians are likely to accept. Within that has become an almost institutionalized atmosphere of distrust and cynicism on both sides, the result has been an enormous inertial force that the Obama administration has proven unable to start moving.

Inertia, of course, serves the purposes of those on the political right in Israel, at least in the short run. The electoral base of Igvador Lieberman’s Beit Yisreal is based on settler (especially immigrant settler) support, which opposes a Palestinian state and backs expanded settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares opposition to negotiating away the West Bank because, as Hermann puts it, “Israel’s control of the occupied territories is in Netanyahu’s view justified by two equally important arguments: the Jews’ historical claim to the promised landand the constant existential threats that faces them.” The validity of these arguments is almost beside the point; the point is that these positions are now the Israeli positions and ones from which the leadership is not likely to budge. The Americans (and certainly the Palestinians) may not like this,but there is little they can do short of threatening a breach of relations with Israel, a position that is politically untenable in the United States.

It is within this setting that a confident Netanyahu has suggested a “reset” of the terms of negotiation between the parties. This position starts from the premise that fundamental territorial adjustments (e.g. abandonment of all or most West Bank settlements) is no longer a viable basis for an agreement, and that some other basis (a “reset”) must form that basis. Neither the Obama administration or the Palestinians are exactly ecstatic about this position, but there it is.

Among the more innovative proponents of a reset has been Lieberman, the controversial Israeli foreign minister. He has suggested, for instance, the cessation of a small amount of occupied territory to the Palsetinians that would leave the larger and more prominent settlements intact. In particular, he suggests ceding an area near the old pre-1967 border within Palestine known as the Triangle and the Arab neighborhoods of East Jeruslaem into the Palestinian state. According to Sergio DellaPergola (also writing in the December 2010 Current History), the Triangle contains an Arab population of 300,000 and 275,000 Arabs live in East Jerusalem, thus adding nearly 600,000 Arabs to the Palestinian state.

Lieberman’s proposal has not gained great traction. Other Israelis consider the ceding of any part of Jerusalem unacceptable, and Palestinians counter that it still leaves much too much of the West Bank under Israeli occupation and control. It is probably as great a concession as the current Israeli government might be willing to make, and it looks like it is not enough.

There seem to be two realities at work here, neither of which bode well for progress toward peace. One is that the current framework for negotiations is not working, mostly because neither of the main proponents truly wants the framework to succeed (or is unwilling to take the steps to make it work, which in effect is the same thing). The other is that some alternative base–a “reset”–appears to be needed to get the talks moving, and nobody has found an acceptable reset button. The simplest and, applying the principle of Occam’s Razor, most likely reason is because neither side wants a permanent settlement worse than the present situation. Until that changes, pushing reset buttons will continue to be an exercise in futility.