RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

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 They are out of date and out of juice.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 19, 2009

Hussein Agha and Rob Malley caused quite a stir with their New York Times op-ed piece earlier this month entitled “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything”. In the final paragraph, the authors wrote that “the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is … how to define the state of Israel.” This is a provocative statement, though less than fully accurate. The debates over definitions of both Palestine and Israel are themselves crucial battlegrounds, critical conversations in the search for peace. The Agha-Malley article makes an important contribution by refocusing attention on the unresolved issues of 1948:

“the conflict… can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 — Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.” [Emphasis added.] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html

Question: from a Palestinian perspective, when did “the occupation” begin – in 1948 or in 1967? Or, to ask it differently, what land is occupied?

In a conflict situation, when there is no meeting of the minds about the definition of a key term, mischief can ensue. And so it has with usage of the word “occupation”.

“Occupation: taking or holding possession, esp. of country or district by military force (army of ~, left to hold occupied region till regular government is set up”) [from The Concise Oxford Dictionary]

Especially for those who have lived under occupation, a discussion of this subject is far from academic. Occupation is often accompanied by gross crimes against persons and property. Occupation brings with it fear, pain, loss, brutality, incarceration, expulsion, exile, death. Occupation is a structured relationship designed far more for the benefit of the occupier than the occupied, sometimes exclusively for the benefit of the occupier.

Yet occupation was not always a dirty word. At the end of World War II, the United States participated with its military allies in the occupations of Germany and Japan. A case can be made that these occupations – which lasted for years in both instances – greatly benefited the population of the defeated countries. Most will concede that this is the exception, not the rule. Some claim that a “benign occupation” is an oxymoron and that any occupation is inevitably oppressive by its nature as well as its practices.

“The Israeli Occupation”
I have never met a Palestinian who thought the Israeli presence in Gaza or the West Bank was benign. But from my personal experience and conversations with many Israelis on the subject, I’ve concluded that the vast majority of Israeli Jews don’t know and don’t want to know about Palestinian life under occupation.

In the business world, a company does not implement a major new course of action without first evaluating whether it will likely result in an improved competitive position. As much as West Bank and Gazan Palestinians suffer under Israeli occupation – or even as much as Israelis might suffer in a third intifada – the occupation is unlikely to end until and unless the Israelis conclude that they would be better off without it. They need to see a more desirable alternative.

No legal argument about the Geneva Conventions will supersede Israelis’ view of their national interest. Ethical arguments against the ugliness of occupation are often offset, in the minds of Israelis, by the countervailing “what if” moral concerns that deadly attacks on Jews might result from Israeli forces withdrawing or even easing up on restrictions imposed upon Palestinians.

The weighing of such options is not part of the Palestinian moral equation. For those living under occupation, the goal is to end it, not to improve it, and not to wait until a clear-cut superior alternative emerges.

For decades, until the premiership of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli government denied that it was an “Occupying Power” in Gaza and the West Bank, while the rest of the world came to describe these very areas as the “Occupied Territories”. (The Golan Heights is considered by the international community to be “Occupied Syria” and, prior to its return to Egypt, the Sinai was also deemed to be “Israeli-occupied” foreign soil.)

Having evacuated all its citizens and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel still retains control over most of the Strip’s borders as well as its airspace. Palestinians contend – and the international community concurs – that as long as it maintains its stranglehold on Gaza, Israel remains the Occupying Power.

As it applies to Israel/Palestine, occupation is a term whose meaning remains geographically as well as conceptually ambiguous. In the Arab world, all of Israel was considered “Occupied Palestine” before 1967. (By contrast, in the aftermath of the ’48 war, the rest of Palestine was not considered occupied, even though none of it was under sovereign Palestinian rule: the Gaza Strip was militarily “administered” by Egypt; the West Bank was “annexed” by Jordan.)

But beginning in 1967, and especially after Fatah and the PLO accepted a two-state solution some twenty years later, The Occupation came to refer to Israeli control over those portions of Palestine which Israel conquered in the June War/the Six Day War: namely, Gaza, east Jerusalem, and the West Bank.

The so-called Green Line dividing the land between the river and the sea is often used to delimit where the occupation begins and ends geographically. But a remarkable phenomenon is that, for Palestinians and over time, the term occupation has shifted completely from referring to everything inside the Green Line (pre-‘67) to referring to everything outside the Green Line (post-‘67).

How did this happen? The meaning of the word occupation evolved as Palestinian political thinking changed. While most Palestinians still don’t accept the right of Israel to exist, increasingly they accept the fact of its existence, a fact that is apparently here to stay. Occupation no longer fits the Arab consensus reality with regards to pre-’67 Israel. On the other hand, Israel never annexed the West Bank and Gaza, and its annexation of east Jerusalem never received support from the international community. The world consensus and the Arab consensus reinforce the Palestinian view of those areas beyond the Green Line as Occupied Territories.

The earlier, pre-’67, usage of occupied has not disappeared, however. For some Palestinians, its meaning has expanded. In the midst of Israel’s withdrawal/
disengagement from Gaza in August 2005, the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat interviewed Mahmoud Zahar, a key leader of Hamas later credited with masterminding the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza:

Q: “Will Hamas resume its operations in Israeli towns after the withdrawal?”
A: “Firstly, there are no Israeli towns. These are settlements.”
(http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=1294)

Settlements, as examined in the last blog posting, is a term often used to portray habitations as temporary, even illegitimate. Settlements and occupation go together. The establishment of settlements is one of the means by which Israel has maintained its occupation of the West Bank and, until 2005, of Gaza. To claim that all Israeli communities on both sides of the Green Line are settlements is an attempt to delegitimize the presence of Jews anywhere in Palestine/Eretz Yisrael.

Just one year ago, on July 19, 2008, the sometimes Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh concluded his speech at a massive Hamas political rally in Gaza by declaring “Jerusalem is ours, Gaza, Haifa, Jaffa, all of them are ours.” If all these cities are, of right, Palestinian and nothing is legitimately Israeli, then the idea of The Occupation has now been extended to include the entirety of Palestine, which includes all of Israel.

Who believes this? Many Hamas members and other Palestinians as well. How many believe this I don’t know. Polling data from early June indicates that 61% of Palestinians support a two-state solution while 23% support a one-state solution. (http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2009/p32ejoint.html) Whether the one-staters also think of The Occupation as covering the entire country is impossible to know without asking that question.

Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based political leader of Hamas, told the New York Times in May that “The central goal is the liberation of the occupied land and regaining our rights, ending the Israeli occupation…” In reading this, we should not assume that we understand Meshal’s intention without his further elaboration.

When Palestinians, Europeans, or Americans call for “an end to the occupation”, we don’t know for sure, without hearing more, whether they want to restrict Israel to the size it had prior to the ’67 war or whether they seek the elimination of the State of Israel altogether (or as they might see it, the liberation of all Palestine). This difference goes far beyond semantics. It also goes beyond a party distinction between Fatah and Hamas.

Choosing One’s Words
The purpose of exploring the meaning of these critical terms is not to play word games. Middle East conflict is serious business. So is language. Words can be deadly. Words can lead to wars. In America, a single usage of the “N” word can end a political career. Designating Hamas a “terrorist organization” can shut down the possibility of dialogue. Hurling the epithet “Nazi” at Israelis is almost guaranteed to produce a viscerally negative reaction.

In the Middle East and around the world, millions of people are willing to fight and kill and die for the ideas behind the words. President Obama, as he draws a distinction between America’s invasion of Iraq as a “war of choice” and our invasion of Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”, is attempting to redefine the nation’s foreign policy in terms that he hopes will find favor with the American people. Will a change in language deliver a change in support for the war effort? We shall see.

The choice of words can make the difference between legislation’s passage or failure, candidates’ election or defeat, peace plans’ acceptance or rejection. If we are serious about finding a way out of endless violent conflict in the Middle East, then we must examine the words we use to describe that conflict and, when necessary, clarify if not replace the loaded terminology that can all-too-easily confuse or mislead.