RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

by Michael Lame, posted April 15, 2010

One reader of an earlier blog post commented that there are only two choices in the world: the law of nations or the law of the jungle. Not so. Long before the modern era of international law, European nations had reached certain extralegal understandings amongst themselves regarding the rules of behavior in wartime.

In Shakespeare’s Henry V, when Captain Fluellen learns that the French have killed the boys in the English camp, he protests “’tis expressly against the law of arms: ’tis as arrant a piece of knavery … as can be offer’t; in your conscience, now, is it not?” Fluellen appeals here both to a wartime code of conduct and to individual conscience. Both these appeals deserve our attention.

I believe that appealing directly to Israelis’ moral conscience will be more effective in the long run than accusing Israel of violating international law. One can speak of the rights of Palestinians not to be mistreated. One can also speak to Israelis of their responsibility to treat Palestinians decently and humanely: moral suasion versus a legal brief.

Not all unacceptable behavior must be criminalized in order to be rejected. Many professions have codes of conduct, just as many industries have customary practices that are not codified in law. We live in an age that is so legally-minded, however, that efforts are made to mandate every desired form of behavior and to outlaw every harmful activity. Yet despite near-universal acceptance of the UN Charter and the Hague and Geneva conventions, in the last 20 years alone the community of nations failed to prevent the most publicly flagrant human rights abuses – the massacres in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

The delusion of relying on international law

What about the role of international law in the Middle East? In practical efforts to resolve Palestinian-Israeli conflict, international law is a sideshow.

In 1947 Arabs were convinced that the proposed division of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state were actions so unjust and so inconsistent with the principle of self-determination enshrined in the UN charter that the United Nations would certainly reject the idea of partition. Arabs deluded themselves then and paid dearly for it.

I’m afraid they are deluding themselves once again. The danger for the Palestinians is that they may come to believe so firmly in the righteousness of certain demands that they will be unwilling to settle for less, which position could well result in no settlement at all. They cite arguments based on interpretations of international charters, conventions, and covenants, according to which all Jewish presence on the other side of the green line must be deemed illegal, Jerusalem must be re-divided as it was in Jordanian days, and Palestinian refugees must be allowed to choose, in their sole discretion, whether or not to return to their pre-1948 ancestral homes in what is now generally considered to be Israel.

When principles of international law clash with state power, a party that stands on principle rather than compromises on practicalities can doom the prospects for a negotiated peace.

Despite a widely-held belief that the development of international law is a giant step forward for humankind, the fact remains that the world’s armed conflicts are not resolved by courts and legal interpretations. Rather, they are resolved by direct negotiations between the parties in conflict or by battlefield victories followed by dictated or negotiated peace agreements. At the end of World War II, for example, the map of central and eastern Europe was significantly redrawn by the victors, following the losers’ unconditional surrender. Regardless of the fairness or justice of the new borders, no appeal to international law will undo the military and political results of that war.

Though it is not a global conflict panacea, international law, if well formulated and appropriately applied, can be a useful addition to the toolkit for maintaining and restoring peace among nations. The establishment of some norms of behavior in war and in peace – when they are the right norms – can present a model of proper behavior for the nations of the world. An essential distinction, however, should not be overlooked: sovereign states not only have laws, they have enforcement mechanisms. But by the Great Powers’ design, the global community of nations, as a collective, is quite weak in enforcement options and capabilities.

Palestinian statelessness

The notion of cosmopolitan man first emerged in Hellenistic times, and ever since then, the pipe dream that individuals can be “citizens of the world” periodically resurfaces. Some of us may experience global consciousness, but we are not really citizens of the world. It is still a very good idea to be a citizen of a state that issues passports.

The most egregious and unconscionable aspect of Palestinian suffering is statelessness. Far worse than to be a member of a minority group within an existing state is to be without citizenship of any formally-recognized state. Statelessness is a condition of fundamental weakness in a world that values strength. The nightmare of Palestinian statelessness should be addressed now. It should not wait for the prospect of proximity talks to turn into the possibility of direct negotiations which could result in a peace agreement which might conceivably be ratified by both sides and eventually implemented.

International law will not solve the problem of Palestinian statelessness. Nor will international law remove road blocks, prevent further construction of the barrier, or stop Israelis from building more subdivisions in east Jerusalem. (You may call them what you will – settlements, colonies, neighborhoods, communities – but finding a politically correct designation does not alter the reality of these “facts on the ground.”)

Palestinians hope that the introduction of international law issues will help balance out the disparity in bargaining power between Israelis and Palestinians. It won’t. Nothing will. Rarely in the real world are two parties to a negotiation equal in strength. Every day, the real power differential is factored into political and business negotiations without necessarily resulting in one party dictating terms to the other.

Attempts to “level the playing field” between strong and weak parties inside the negotiating room are misguided precisely because they fail to reflect the regnant reality outside the negotiating room, which is that not all players are equal. Economically, technologically, militarily, even diplomatically, Israel is far stronger than Palestine. It was yesterday and it will be tomorrow. Any agreement reached between these two parties will only survive if it reflects that reality.

Palestinian negotiating advantages

Yet Palestinians are far from helpless in negotiations with Israelis. They possess several critical bargaining strengths: connections to Arab countries and to the broader Muslim world; international support that is widespread, if not particularly deep; a high birthrate and a relatively low infant mortality rate; a highly literate population with large numbers of well-educated professionals and industrious entrepreneurs; steadfastness in the face of Israeli pressure; ingenuity in coping with constantly changing Israeli restrictions and regulations, and, if all else fails, a proven ability to resort to violence in ways that can hurt Israel and Israelis. The threat of a third intifada is not a trivial matter, though the costs of the last intifada were far more devastating to the Palestinians than to the Israelis.

Law has not replaced power as an arbiter of international disputes, nor does international law trump national interest among nations large and small. The world has not entered some golden age when all international conflicts will be peacefully resolved by impartial judges on the basis of indisputable rights.

It is true that law is one basis for international order, but not the only basis, and not even the most important one. Customary behavior plays a role. Economic power and military power are always significant. The international order is maintained largely through diplomacy. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ever resolved, that resolution will come about – and should come about – through negotiations between the parties, not by mandates from an international court or the Security Council.

by Michael Lame, posted on December 29, 2009

At the end of my last posting, I wrote that in Part 2 “ I’ll suggest a few, hopefully provocative, specific do’s and don’ts for the new year.”

Each and every one of the following suggestions has a downside to it. Each can be dismissed as “unrealistic” because one or another side currently finds it objectionable. That is also true of the most popular ideas now in circulation. A two-state solution, for example, has major downsides for both peoples.

So far, no proposal or process has succeeded in resolving Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Nothing has worked. That fact alone should give us pause, providing the basis for some humility and a wee bit of uncertainty about the likelihood that anyone knows the answer to the problem.

So let’s start the new year by examining, newly and freshly, different ways of viewing the conflict, different ways of addressing it, and different proposed solutions for it.

For what they are worth, here are my 2010 suggestions to President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Special Envoy Mitchell for re-thinking and re-tooling America’s approach to this conflict. No attempt has been made to insure that this list is either comprehensive or balanced.

What Not to Do

Let’s start with what not to do, or rather, what not to say:

1) Stop talking about 242 and 338. They are out of date and out of juice.

2) Stop talking about the Road Map. It’s a map that neither side wanted and neither side has followed.

3)  Stop talking about land for peace. The Palestinians need more than land in order to build a state. The Israelis need more than a peace treaty in order to sleep soundly at night.

4)  Stop talking about a commitment to a Palestinian state, but don’t stop working towards it. It’s still unclear if that circle can be squared. To be so publicly committed to such an iffy proposition is not wise foreign policy. This is the United States. We don’t get points internationally for trying. We should commit ourselves to what we can deliver, and we cannot guarantee success in forcing two unwilling peoples to make peace.

5)  Stop talking about getting the parties back to the negotiating table as soon as possible. As we saw with the collapse of the Camp David II talks in 2000, talks that aren’t well prepared for and that don’t have a reasonable likelihood of success can lead not only to failure but also to the outbreak of deadly violence.

What productive actions could the U.S. take in 2010?

Refugees

An unconscionably large number of Palestinians have no citizenship or passports. The United States should explore constructive ways to address this problem without waiting for it to be dealt with in final status negotiations. After all, no one knows if or when such negotiations will take place or prove productive. The Palestinian refugees and their descendants should no longer be held hostage to the “peace process”.

The United States could create a taskforce – completely separate from the Mitchell team – to work towards ending that condition of statelessness. The idea here is to directly tackle perhaps the most tragic aspect of the conflict. In doing so, it must be made clear by the U.S. government that Palestinian acceptance of citizenship from any country in the world will not adversely affect the political or economic rights of Palestinians regarding their status as Palestinians or their original homes in Palestine.

The West Bank

The settlement freeze issue was so mucked up by the administration this year that it’s probably best not to make it a focal point of its efforts in 2010.

Instead, insist (and verify) that the Israelis significantly accelerate the pace of reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints and take other measurable, substantive actions to ease personal travel and commercial transportation in the West Bank. These are some of many steps needed to promote economic development and personal freedom for the Palestinian community in the West Bank.

Gaza

The Gazan population is largely cut off from the rest of the world. Travel is severely restricted. A very limited list of foodstuffs and other products is allowed in by the Israelis. Under these conditions, reconstruction is impossible. Hamas and Israel have been stalemated since January. The people of Gaza are the losers. The winners are the Israeli residents of Sderot and other nearby communities that are no longer shelled from Gaza.

Once the prisoner exchange is completed, the US should insist that Israel significantly relax the siege of Gaza, provided that the shelling of Israel does not begin again.

Re-Assess the Likelihood of a Negotiated Settlement

Through discussions with the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government, and other Palestinian and Israeli players, U.S. officials should delineate as precisely as possible the remaining gaps between Palestinian and Israeli positions on all issues (not just the “big four” of security, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem). These sticky issues include, among others: the disposition of West Bank settlements and settlers outside the areas which will likely be retained by Israel; economic relations between Israel and Palestine; water management; Gaza-West Bank links; and ending incitement.

Act on the Assessment

Based on the current gaps between the parties and the history of those gaps, assess whether any meeting of the minds between Israelis and Palestinians is a real likelihood by 2012 or by 2016. If not, switch gears from conflict resolution mode to conflict management mode.

If the assessment results in the conclusion that a deal is a real likelihood in the next few years, then formulate a set of questions for each side regarding a range of compromise options most likely to bring about a resolution of the conflict. (This is distinctly different from the US preparing a set of bridging proposals of its own on how to end the conflict.)

Formally and publicly ask these questions of both sides.

Encourage the Israelis to open up more public debate in Israel regarding these questions and regarding the specific likely sacrifices that will be necessary to reach a deal with the Palestinians.

Encourage the Palestinians to open up more public debate within Palestinian communities across the Middle East regarding these questions and regarding the likely sacrifices that will be necessary for reaching a deal with the Israelis.

Israelis and Palestinians live in highly politicized communities. If their leaders are to make painful concessions for peace, the groundwork must be laid with the populace. For the US to make an appeal to the people on both sides to grapple with the most difficult issues is an attempt to engage the two nations in moving towards a mutually beneficial arrangement – at least a modus vivendi, if not a peace treaty.

Deal Breakers

If there are areas in which no compromise is likely to satisfy minimum requirements of both sides, then that fact should be acknowledged publicly.

Many people already suspect that finding a mutually acceptable division of Jerusalem is a chimera. The question of the “right of return” of Palestinians to their pre-1948 homes may likewise be unsolvable within the paradigm of a two-state solution. Trading off an unpalatable bargain regarding Jerusalem for an equally repugnant result regarding refugees may not be the answer either. Stateless Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon need to have their personal, familial, and communal concerns addressed. Having a Palestinian flag fly over the Dome of the Rock does not accomplish that.

If Jerusalem, the right of return, or some other issue does turn out to be a deal breaker, then a conflict management strategy should continue to claim the full attention of a special envoy to the region. However, a secretary of state’s time or certainly that of the president should be sparingly used if the problem turns out not to be ripe for resolution.

Forcing it, as President Clinton tried to do at Camp David II, won’t work. By contrast, pressing parties that are anxious for a deal did work for President Carter at Camp David I, and it just might work for President Obama at a Camp David III.

An Interview with Bashar Masri

by Michael Lame, posted on Nov. 3, 2009

Bashar Masri is a Palestinian, born and raised in Nablus, educated in Egypt and the United States. Trained as a chemical engineer and with a background in management consulting, Bashar moved back to the West Bank from the Washington DC area in the mid-1990s, establishing himself in Ramallah. He was the founder and first publisher of the Palestinian daily newspaper Al Ayyam. A successful businessman, Bashar is CEO of Massar International, which engages in a variety of business activities across the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. He is married, with two teenage daughters.

By far, Bashar’s largest undertaking to-date is the project of planning and building a new Palestinian city from the ground up. It’s called Rawabi, and it’s located north of Ramallah.

I interviewed Bashar regarding Rawabi, the economic conditions in the West Bank, and the evolution of his own thinking about the future of Palestinian-Israeli relations. The interview was conducted by phone on October 24^th. Bashar spoke with me from his home in Ramallah.

As a personal note, I should mention that I have great respect and affection for Bashar. He and I have been friends for almost 25 years. We worked closely together in the latter half of the 1980s when he served as vice president of the Foundation for Mideast Communication and I served as the organization’s president. Twice we traveled together to Tunis, in 1987 and 1988, to meet with Yasser Arafat, Khalid al-Hassan, Yasser Abed Rabbo, and other PLO leaders. I attended Bashar and Jane’s wedding twenty-some years ago and I have periodically visited Bashar in Ramallah in recent years, most recently last December.

Bashar’s is an important voice to listen to as Americans, Palestinians and Israelis grapple with a complex set of issues. The first part of his interview focuses on the Rawabi project. The second part deals more with the larger economic, political, and personal dimensions of Palestinian life in the West Bank. To listen to Part One of the interview, CLICK HERE. For Part Two, click HERE.

NOTE: This is the first in a series of Re-Think the Middle East interviews with individuals whose words and deeds demand our attention, whether we agree with them or not. Who else deserves more notice than they have received? Who should we be listening to about the future of the region? RTME invites your suggestions.

Michael Lame, posted August 11, 2009

[Note: This short series, WORDS MATTER, is not designed to answer the questions of what should be done about Palestinian refugees or Israeli settlers. Rather, the author hopes to raise questions in the mind of the reader about the language that we use and the way that we think about these issues.

Anyone who carefully listens to politicians or who reads political columnists knows that certain words and phrases are employed with the intention of eliciting an emotional response from the audience. Do you want a negative response to an idea? Then preface it with an adjective like unfair, undue, immoderate, extreme, unhelpful, old, tired, elitist, sexist, racist, etc. If you want a positive response to an idea, add the descriptor reasonable or prudent, frugal or thoughtful. Good legislation is carefully crafted; poor legislation is hastily slapped together. These characterizations are perhaps simplistic but, apparently, still effective. After all, who doesn’t want good government, efficient administration, and honest officeholders who give careful consideration to the insightful suggestions of senior citizens?

In my youth, I served as press secretary to a congressional candidate. One day a long-serving U.S. senator came through town to campaign for my guy, and in his speech the senator described the candidate as “a courageous, creative man of integrity and great ability.” I’ve never forgotten the phrase; it became a joke among the campaign staff.

Our candidate was a good man, but the senator’s description – especially since the two of them had just met – seemed like such generic political rhetoric that we imagined the senator using it to describe every candidate across the country that he supported that year. After the senator’s visit, whenever staff members were asked their opinion about anyone at all, the answer would come back loud and clear: “He’s a courageous, creative man of integrity and great ability!”]

SETTLEMENTS
The myth of the temporary Palestinian refugee camp mirrors the myth of the impermanent Israeli settlement. Camps and settlements are parallel linguistic constructs. In the context of the Middle East, neither name fits reality. Each name creates a false impression.

The term settlement shapes what we think is there and what we believe should happen to it. Even before defining the term, for those who equate morality with legality or who view Middle East conflict through the prism of international law, the moment the term settlement is prefaced with illegal or unlawful, then it is only natural to think the worst of the place and of the people who live there.

Settlement, when modified by Israeli, is a loaded term, though it doesn’t seem that way from the dictionary:
a: occupation by settlers b: a place or region newly settled c: a small village
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/settlement).
The term settlers summons up images in my mind – history-lover that I am – of Daniel Boone leading a band of hearty men and women into the wilds of Kentucky or of Ward Bond (the 1950’s television star of Wagon Train) shepherding intrepid pioneers across the plains of the Midwest.

Like the term camp, the word settlement often refers to simple dwellings, for a few people, which are temporary or of recent vintage. Settlement, in the context of Israeli housing in the West Bank, can refer to anything from a single caravan on a hilltop with a handful of occupants to an entire suburb of Jerusalem – like French Hill (7,000), Gilo (27,000), or Pisgat Ze’ev (40,000) – to small cities such as Ariel (16,000), Betar Illit (32,000), Modi’in Illit (38,000), or Ma’aleh Adumim (33,000). [2007 population figures]

Today, close to 200,000 Israelis live within the expanded city limits of Jerusalem on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (separating pre-1967 Israel from the West Bank and East Jerusalem). Another 290,000 Israelis dwell elsewhere in the West Bank. To provide a sense of proportion, the Palestinian population of east Jerusalem and the West Bank is approximately 2.5 million.

When hearing the word settlement, I still think of a make-shift bunch of shelters – tents, shacks, or lean-to’s. I imagine that a well-established, thriving settlement would at some point graduate to a different designation, such as village or town. In reading the word settlement, I certainly don’t think of a decades-old centrally-planned community with parks, playgrounds, and shopping malls, with stone or concrete multi-storey buildings and industrial parks. Yet that is what the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim looks like, just five miles east of Jerusalem, and when I first saw the place, its appearance surprised me. Whether it should be there or not, whether it is legal or not, whether it will eventually become part of a Palestinian state or not, it was clearly built to last. Calling it a settlement can mislead us into thinking of it as something small and easily removable.

The words settlements and settlers hold a different, more ideological meaning for some on the Left. In 1967 (just before the war that year) the French Marxist and Islamic scholar Maxime Rodinson, himself a Jew, wrote a provocative essay, later published in book form in English as Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? For Marxists, anti-imperialists, and supporters of third world liberation movements, the term “settler” has always been highly pejorative. It represents Europe and America at its imperialist-colonialist worst.

The 21st century usage of settlers and settlements often echoes that anti-Western perspective. Settlers and settlements are frequently portrayed in the media and in political discourse as inherently illegitimate, as holdovers from the now-discredited bad old days of colonialism. This meaning of settlement has nothing to do with the size of the community or its longevity. According to this view, settlers are foreigners. Settlers don’t belong. Settlers have imposed themselves on the legitimate and legal residents of the area – the indigenous peoples, the natives, the locals. Looking from this perspective on the Middle East, the term settler is not merely an identification but an indictment. It serves as a validation of the wrongfulness of Israelis’ presence on the West Bank: The Boers of South Africa were in the wrong. The Pied-Noirs of Algeria were in the wrong. The Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Indochina, and the British damn near everywhere were in the wrong. Now it’s the Israelis’ turn, in the West Bank.

For some reason, this pejorative sense of settler is not universally applied to all peoples who “intrude” on others’ long-inhabited lands. For an example of how else “newcomers” can be viewed, compare coverage of West Bank Israelis to the portrayal of the Han Chinese who, with the backing of Beijing, have flocked to the Muslim Uighur-inhabited Xinjiang region of western China and to the rugged plateaus of Buddhist Tibet. They are not vilified by Western media for their settlements but rather are criticized for their treatment of the local inhabitants. Their presence is seen as the result of migration. [See the recent NY Times article, Migrants to China’s West Bask in Prosperity, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/world/asia/07xinjiang.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Chinese%20settlers&st=cse.]

What might you call Israeli settlements in the West Bank if you were to use another term? If you want them dismantled, then you don’t want to use a term that seems benign. If you want them to remain, then you prefer a term without negative baggage. And if you search for a neutral term without clear-cut positive or negative connotations, then you will likely be accused by one side or another of bias.

The suggestion box is now open. . .What else could we call Israeli places of abode on the West Bank and how might we relate to them differently if they had a different name?
Communities? – Jewish Communities? Bedroom Communities? Gated Communities (my favorite)? Towns? Development Towns? Villages? Built-Up Areas?
Or we could go overtly partisan:
Colonies? Imperialist Outposts? Potemkin Villages?

What about the people? What else could we call Israelis living in the West Bank other than settlers?
We could go positive: immigrants or pioneers.
We could go negative: interlopers, usurpers, colonizers, squatters.
We could go neutral: inhabitants, populace, residents.

Small settlements not authorized by the Israeli government are called outposts. They could just as easily and just as legitimately be called camps.

Indeed, imagine if we switched the names and began to speak of Palestinian refugee settlements and of Israeli camps in the West Bank. Or what if we used the exact same words to describe Israeli and Palestinian settlements/camps? Communities could cover both. So could enclaves in many cases, as in Palestinian refugee enclaves in Lebanon or the Israeli enclave in downtown Hebron.

“Enclave: a distinct territorial, cultural, or social unit enclosed within or as if within foreign territory enclaves>”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enclave

Are these terms likely to change? Probably not. Too many people – from the Middle East and from the West – want to continue using words like settlements and camps precisely because such words imply a makeshift impermanence. They want the settlements to disappear. They want the camps to eventually close.

Certainly, vast differences exist between the Israelis’ Ma’aleh Adumim settlement and the Palestinians’ Balata refugee camp, not only in infrastructure but in the rights and privileges, status, income and opportunities of the inhabitants. And, of course, there exists the most fundamental of psychological differences in how the residents view their communities. The Israelis hope to stay and build. The Palestinians dream of going home.