The Obama administration is reported to be laboring strenuously this summer to restart the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Jackson Diehl reported in the Washington Post that “Obama is attempting to strong-arm Israelis and Palestinians into beginning negotiations on the parameters he set.” One can attribute this drive to a renewed desire to curry favor with the Arab Street. However, White House sources frame the new urgency rather differently. They hold that a revival of the peace negotiations is essential to amass a sizable block of votes against a UN resolution that greatly worries Israel, one that several observers have referred to as a “train wreck” in the making.
Many in Israel are deeply concerned by a Palestinian Authority initiative that seeks a General Assembly resolution that would recognize an independent Palestinian state. The vote is expected to lead many world governments to recognize a Palestinian state and formally declare Israel an occupier under international law. If it then does not withdraw the settlers and troops to beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines, Israel would be subjected to sanctions and, worse, to delegitimation.
Critics fear that renewing the Israel-Palestine negotiations is a nonstarter because neither side is ready to make major concessions. The Israelis learned that trading land for peace in Gaza and in Southern Lebanon (where one can argue they should not have been in the first place) turned these areas into major bases for attacks on Israel. They fear that a Palestinian state on the West bank would turn into a “Hamastan” and serve as a basis for attacks from one end of Israel to the other, an assault the country could not survive. Additionally, the current turmoil in the Middle East raises serious questions about the ability of a peace deal made with one Palestinian government to hold when the next one—say, one dominated by Hamas—takes over. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority feels, not without reason, that it may gain more from a UN vote than from dealing with the Netanyahu government and that while negotiations keep dragging on, Israel keeps expanding its settlements.
A creative idea to prevent this train wreck is for the United States to preempt the September vote of the General Assembly by initiating a vote in the more authoritative Security Council. Such a vote, Tom Friedman explained in the New York Times, would reaffirm a 1947 UN decision that called for a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Friedman points out that by reaffirming that one of these lands is Jewish, a very major Israeli goal will be served. Indeed, even the current right-wing government has stated that such a recognition “would be a game changer.” The reaffirming resolution would also serve a very major Palestinian goal by stating that the border between the two states will be based on the 1967 ceasefire lines, following agreed-upon adjustments and proper security arrangements.
As for the refugees, many observers have pointed out that having lived for more than two generations in places such as Lebanon and Jordan, they must realize that they will not return to their homes in Israel as long as it survives, and that its destruction is unlikely. The refugees, though, observers argue, are entitled to some compensation.
An international commission, which I suggest could settle this matter, ought to take into account that while about 630,000 Arabs left or were driven out of Israel in 1948 (and another 100,000 were added by the Six-Day War), 820,000 Jews left or were driven out of Muslim states in the same period. Hence, whatever compensation is due to one side—even if one assumes that the Palestinian refugees’ entitlement claims are stronger because some of the Jewish refugees were able to sell their properties before they left—the net amounts are not likely to be enormous and surely could be raised from Jewish donors and oil-rich Arab states.
If the train can be prevented from derailing in the UN in these ways this September, it may make time for less pressured negotiations—and for preparing to prevent the next train wreck, which in the Middle East is never far behind.
Comments
Amitai, I fail to understand why you think that Palestinian claims to compensation are stronger than Jewish claims. Even those Jews who managed to sell their properties got peanuts for them.The Jewish lossess have been estimated by Sydney Zabludoff at 50 percent greater than Palestinian losses. This is not only because there were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian refugees, but because Jews lived in all the great metropolises of the Middle East and North Africa and some were fabulously wealthy. (Take the Smouhas, who owned a whole section of Alexandria.) The Jews were the engine of the economies in these countries and owned not just homes, but businesses, clubs, schools, tracts of land. At one point Jews were 40 percent of the population of Baghdad.I fail to see why Jewish donors should compensate refugees, if anyone should do the compensating it is the Arab states who caused the Arab refugee problem by going to war, and also caused the Jewish exodus from Arab countries.
If it is ever reached, the current and any other artificial “peace agreement” will be illegitimate before it is ever signed because (1) all people living in Palestine regardless of religion, race, origin, etc. (hereinafter “All People of Palestine”) were never given a choice on how they want their land to be governed, and (2) all contracts signed under duress are null and void.The biggest problem in Palestine is that the Zionist regime never offered a choice to All People of Palestine on how they want to govern their land because the Zionist regime cannot exist as a democratic entity. If there was ever any democratic process in Palestine, Zionists would have been outvoted and the Zionist regime would have never existed. That is why the Zionist regime is the occupier because it does not offer choice (i.e. democracy), but instead imposes its regime (i.e. occupies). Imagine if Russians would simply occupy a town in the U.S. where they are in significant numbers and attempt to create a Russian state there without giving the rest of the Americans living there a choice. Imagine then if they would try to institute a “peace agreement” that would attempt to legitimize their occupation. The “peace agreement” would logically and legally be illegitimate because the Americans were not given a choice.Under all countries’ laws, any contract is null and void if it is signed under duress. The current Palestine “peace agreement” process reminds me of The Godfather movie where the mafia boss (i.e. the Zionist regime) made a guy “an offer he could not refuse” by placing a gun (i.e. Zionist conventional and nuclear arsenal) to his head and making him sign the contract. Like the mafia boss’ offer, any “peace agreement” other than the choice for All People of Palestine is a crime, and the contract is legally null and void.The bottom line is that All People of Palestine never wanted to divide their land into artificial two states the way the occupation and this “peace agreement” attempt to divide it. From the beginning of the Zionist regime to its unavoidable end, All People of Palestine and the region never wanted the Zionist regime and they do not want it even more after all the atrocities the Zionist regime committed. I just cannot believe how the Zionist regime can be so ignorant to think that this or any other “peace agreement” that does not allow people to choose how they want to be governed will last and ensure its people’s survival. The Zionist regime fails to realize that no matter if it succeeds in muscling this “peace agreement” by unspeakable historic coercion tens of millions of moral people around the world will oppose it until it is corrected, and until justice and free choice prevail. Also, ever increasing number of Jewish people are realizing that Zionism is becoming a destructive force for them and are leading the global resistance to it.