RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

Michael Lame, posted September 22, 2009

George Mitchell successfully facilitated the negotiations between Catholics and Protestants that led to the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland in 1998. He was rightly hailed for completing that difficult assignment. But Northern Ireland is not the Middle East, and the success that George Mitchell found in Belfast has eluded him in Jerusalem – twice.

In October 2000, President Clinton sent Mitchell to the Middle East as the head of a fact-finding committee, with the hope that his efforts could help stem the bloodletting unleashed by the failure of the Camp David talks. But Mitchell failed on his first Middle East go-round. He and the other four committee members eventually issued a thoughtful and well-intentioned report, like so many other reports going back to the 1920s on troubles in the region. They reached conclusions on the causes of the recent fighting and the way to end it. The Mitchell Report (officially the “Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee Report”) called upon the Palestinian Authority to “make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations” and called upon the government of Israel to “freeze all settlement activity, including the ‘natural growth’ of existing settlements”.

This report produced no visible results on the ground. The fighting did not stop, nor did the construction of new housing in the West Bank. Mitchell left the region.

Two years later the Bush Administration and the other Quartet members (EU, UN, and Russia) picked up on a Jordanian-proposed process idea which came to be known as the Middle East Road Map. It consisted of actions to be taken by both sides in three phases. “In each phase, the parties are expected to perform their obligations in parallel…” Phase I specified that “Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI [the government of Israel] freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).”

Palestinians and Israelis reluctantly agreed to the Road Map’s terms, although the Israeli government issued a list of 14 reservations about the plan. And so, the Mitchell Report call for a settlement freeze, which might otherwise have been forgotten, received a new lease on life – temporarily. The following year prime minister Sharon announced his Disengagement Plan from Gaza, stealing the thunder of the Road Map and replacing it as the center of international peace-making attention.

For a year, off and on, after the Annapolis conference in late 2007, PA president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Ehud Olmert negotiated on some of the key issues of the conflict. During that time, ongoing settlement expansion constituted a serious bone of contention between the parties – and rightly so – but it was not the reason those talks failed, nor was it to blame for the lack of agreement at Camp David or subsequently at Taba.

With or without a settlement freeze, critical issues – borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security, water – must still be dealt with. Even with a settlement freeze, the atmosphere in which talks take place will be fraught with skepticism and distrust.

Fast forward to the start of the new Obama Administration. Washington DC is teeming with Middle East experts, scholars, activists, ex-ambassadors, former negotiators and policy planners. Why, from all this genuine wealth of resources in the nation’s capital, did Obama select as his envoy George Mitchell, the former judge and senator who had so noticeably failed to make an impact on Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning of the decade?

For whatever reason, it seems that George Mitchell picked up in 2009 where he left off in 2001, that is, with a call for an Israeli settlement freeze. My suspicion (admittedly an unsubstantiated one) is that Mitchell pushed for the administration’s insistence on a building freeze. And right from the Cairo speech, if not before, Obama spoke of adherence to the Road Map. In other words, the failed and unproductive efforts of recent American Middle East diplomacy were re-established and reinforced as the basis for any future negotiations.

Once the official U.S. position called for a settlement freeze, Abbas could make a similar demand of the Israelis without fear of alienating his new friend in the White House. So the Palestinians insisted that they would not return to the negotiating table until Israel stopped building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

But Netanyahu said no, repeatedly. Mitchell returned to the U.S. this month without having reached an agreement with the Israeli government. This may be only an intermediate step in the negotiations. Perhaps Netanyahu is holding out for a deal-sweetener. Perhaps he is looking for linkage between cooperation with the administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and coordination on the Iranian issue.

A face-saving formula for a partial, temporary freeze can still be found that will allow Obama and Abbas to descend from the tree they foolishly – or courageously, depending on your politics – climbed up. And I would look for Mitchell to leave his position (or to allow the position to fade into inactivity) in the next few months. Why? Because he will have failed twice to have his policy recommendation implemented. One reason for this double failure is that Mitchell never persuaded the president – neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama – to put his office’s considerable political capital on the line in a confrontation with Israel. [Prediction-making is a dangerous business. If I turn out to be wrong, I’ll say so.]

The Obama Administration got into a fight with the government of Israel when it didn’t need to, and once the confrontation began, it didn’t fight to win. This represents a net loss for the Obama presidency in the Middle East. The mistake was both strategic and substantive, but it is not a fatal error for the new administration. Rather, it is a setback for Obama’s peace-making efforts – months lost, trust with Israel diminished, and an all-too-public false start made in an area of the world that is used to false starts but is tired of them.

Bright ideas on how to address Middle East conflict are frequently hatched in the White House and the State Department, but they rarely come to fruition. Notable exceptions can be found. Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and James Baker’s Madrid conference come to mind. One hopes that the administration will learn from its mistake.

This initial misstep by the Obama team regarding the settlement freeze – first insisting on it and then trying to finesse a way out – will be seriously compounded if the same crew of advisors persuades the president to issue his own “bridging” proposals for closing the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating positions. That approach didn’t work for Clinton and it won’t work for Obama.

The Middle East neither needs nor takes kindly to “parental supervision”. Indeed, the parental analogy too often employed nowadays misrepresents all the parties. Arabs and Jews are not children. The United States is not a model adult (nor is Europe) and its parenting skills are in question around the world.

An imposed settlement obviously appeals to the imposer but not necessarily to those imposed upon. And the outside party that twists arms to get an agreement doesn’t have to live with the provisions of that agreement on a day-to-day basis or with its unintended consequences.

Peace between Palestinians and Israelis, just as peace between Syrians or Lebanese and Israelis, will only last if the direct parties to the dispute take responsibility for ending it. If, instead, the solution is imposed from outside the region, then the parties will be able to blame the Quartet or its members for dictating an undesirable solution. If the local parties are allowed to pose as victims of Great Power bullying, the stage will be set for attempts to rectify the perceived injustice, and those attempts may well unleash another round of explosive violence in the Middle East.

[The news service at Search for Common Ground recently requested an op-ed piece for its international newsletter. It was to be written on the same theme as the recent series of blog entries entitled “Words Matter”.

Below you will find the new article in English. An Arabic translation is available at http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=26301&lan=ar&sid=0&sp=0&isNew=1, and a Hebrew version is at http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=26306&lan=he&sid=0&sp=0&isNew=1.]

Michael Lame, posted September 17, 2009

Words as well as deeds are required to bridge the gap between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Words matter. They have power. They carry consequences. In the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the words we use are seldom value-neutral. If we speak without awareness of that fact, we will diminish our capacity to be heard.

One type of word power is the power to give offence. If we call Jews Nazis, Jews will be upset. If we speak disrespectfully of Muhammad, Muslims will be upset.

So we take care with our choice of words, especially with names. For decades Arabs spoke of “the Zionist entity” but refused to utter the word “Israel”. Notice how rare it still is for Jews to use the word “Palestine” but commonplace to speak of “Palestinians”. The people are acknowledged but not the land.

Some key terms have changed their meaning over time. “Occupied Palestine” once was generally used by Arabs to denote pre-’67 Israel. Nowadays, the “Occupied Territories” refers to the West Bank and Gaza. “Refugees” was the name given to those who fled or were driven from their homes. Today, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Palestinian refugees of ’48 are themselves called refugees.

We think in words, and the words we use shape our thinking. The world of words in which we think about the Middle East is constructed of and constricted by specific phrases, slogans and terms of art: the peace process, land for peace, 242 and 338, the right of return, refugee camps, settlements, occupation, terrorism, confidence-building measures, the two-state solution and, of course, two famous slogans long since discredited: A land without a people for a people without a land, and Zionism is racism. Perhaps more than we consciously know, these and other phrases determine how we see the future of Israelis and Palestinians.

Consider the term: “the peace process”. Peace is not a process, and the problem with thinking of it as a process and turning it into a process is that it becomes about perpetuating the process. The question is no longer: “What will bring peace?” but rather: “What will enhance the peace process?” Yet what could be more disruptive of an orderly process than a discontinuous change, such as a breakthrough, which might actually produce peace?

Here’s another well-worn phrase: “You don’t make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.” It sounds good, but it’s not true. In World War II, the Allies never made peace with the Nazis. Their demand was unconditional surrender. The truth is that you make peace with those enemies with whom you can make peace. The rest you must deal with in other ways. America did not make peace with the Taliban, nor will it make peace with Al Qaeda. While the Fateh-led Palestinian Authority appears willing to negotiate a final agreement with Israel, it is still unclear at this moment whether Hamas and Israel can ever make peace with each other.

The 242 debate continues to this day over the meaning of a UN Security Council Resolution adopted after the 1967 war. Among other provisions, it calls for Israeli withdrawal from lands seized during that war. The French version of the resolution states that Israel should withdraw from “des territoires” (the territories), whereas the English text calls for withdrawal from “territories” – without the definite article. Israel asserts that by leaving some of the territory occupied in ‘67 it satisfies the requirement of the resolution. The Arab argument is that Israel is obligated to leave all territories occupied in ’67. The resolution allows for both interpretations. Diplomats call that “constructive ambiguity”, but when there is no meeting of minds about the definition of a key term in a disputed situation, mischief can ensue.

If we are serious about discovering a way out of recurring violent conflict in the Middle East, then we must examine the language we use to describe that conflict. When we find ourselves repeating over and over again the exact same words that have been pronounced for decades, perhaps the time has come to find new ways of speaking about Palestinians and Israelis. We can either feel imprisoned by language or empowered by it to create new realities.

This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). Source: Common Ground News Service, 10 September 2009, www.commongroundnews.org. Copyright permission is granted for publication.

Michael Lame, posted September 12, 2009

“No Pre-Conditions”

Once the mental and emotional threshold of being willing to meet with “the enemy” has been crossed, there remains the question of pre-conditions. Each party to a difficult negotiation would like to force the other party to make unreciprocated concessions prior to the start of talks. If you can make the other party fulfill your pre-conditions without having to fulfill theirs, then you have obtained something for nothing. You have successfully hoarded your bargaining chips.

The imposition or attempted imposition of pre-conditions is a bargaining tool. Yet, just as many people become exercised about speaking to “the enemy” at all, some will hold high the banner of “no pre-conditions” and call it a moral stance.

Whenever politicians – Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Palestinians, or others – call for talks “without preconditions,” you can be confident that they believe themselves to be in a strong bargaining position at the moment. It may sound like a principled stand, but it can also be explained in more Machiavellian terms. If Ahmadinejad calls for talks with the U.S. “without preconditions,” in effect that means that Iran will not slow down or stop its nuclear development program while it talks. The relevant sports term for that sort of behavior is “running out the clock.”

The stronger party will often insist on pre-conditions and will hold out for their fulfillment, if it can, by refusing to talk until and unless these conditions are met. But if the negotiation is of critical importance to the stronger party and the weaker party won’t give in, then some way needs to be found for the stronger party to climb down from its untenable position.

That is my interpretation of the current status of negotiations between Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell and the Netanyahu government. Mitchell and Obama went out on a limb to insist that Israel freeze its settlement activity. If Israel agrees, then Obama wins points with one of his target audiences: Arab and Muslim nations.

As you may recall, in his Cairo speech Obama stated that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

The Palestinian Authority (PA) government of Mahmoud Abbas is refusing to resume negotiations until and unless the Israelis cease all building activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If, through U.S. pressure, Israel agrees to a freeze, even a partial one, then Abbas’s stock goes up in the Palestinian community for having stuck to his guns and produced results. Strengthening Fatah and the PA makes for a weaker Hamas, at least in the West Bank. But the PA only rules in the West Bank, and a settlement freeze there does nothing to help the people of Gaza. (More on this later.)

In negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israelis almost always have the upper hand. And they will use that power differential to try to extract as many concessions as possible before negotiations begin, e.g., Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, renunciation of violence, a commitment to arrest terrorists, an end to media incitement, a stop to smuggling, disarming militants, giving up the right of return.

As best they can, the Palestinians will resist giving up anything without a quid pro quo. Nor are the Palestinians completely powerless in this game. Hamas still has many potential recruits for martyrdom missions/suicide bombings as well as an arsenal of missiles which can be launched into Israel. And Abbas says he will not participate in talks while the settlements continue to expand. Therein lies his leverage: Israel wants normalized relations with a wide circle of Arab countries, especially in the Gulf. An Arab pre-condition for expanding such commercial dealings is progress on the Palestinian track.

Negotiations currently in process with the Israelis will apparently soften the U.S. stance. Given the opposition to a building halt in Netanyahu’s coalition government, a full-out freeze is unlikely to occur. Some temporary semblance of a partial freeze may be agreed upon to allow Obama and Abbas to publically assert that they got what they wanted. Then the talks can begin again, without anything fundamental having changed.

To Talk or Not to Talk: That is the Question

For Israelis, the simple way of answering the question of whether to talk to Hamas is to dismiss all counter-arguments: “You don’t make peace with your friends; you make peace with your enemies, so let’s talk.” Alternatively: “They want us dead, so why talk?”

Talking has consequences, and one consequence is the perception of enhanced credibility and legitimacy bestowed by the act of formal contact. When delegates of a previously-shunned party – whether a state or a non-state actor – are photographed shaking hands with or sitting at a table opposite U.S. diplomats, that party’s international prestige rises. Its ability to recruit new members increases. It now has “a seat at the table.”

Not everyone should have a seat at the table.

The U.S. government has its own set of pros and cons regarding dialogue with Hamas. In 1975, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger committed the United States not to recognize or deal with the PLO until it met three conditions: acceptance of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and renunciation of terrorism. Thirteen years later, in December 1988, after years of messages passed back and forth and internal PLO debate, Arafat expressly met these conditions. Secretary of State George Shultz acknowledged it, and an official dialogue opened between the PLO and the U.S.

Might the same happen with Hamas? Could the pre-conditions insisted upon by the Quartet – Russia, the E.U., the U.N., and the U.S. – provide some impetus, along with other factors, to spur a transformation of Hamas’s political position? And, if so, how long might that take and how much suffering must the people of Gaza endure while the U.S., Israel, and Hamas play out this waiting game?

Or will Hamas’s ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and its own interpretation of Islam prevent it from ever accepting one square inch of sovereign Israeli territory in any part of Palestine?

We don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but as long as the stalemate on the ground continues, we should keep asking.

Several writers have recently argued that Hamas has already significantly evolved and that it no longer espouses the harsh ideology expressed in its notorious charter of 1988. It has become a pragmatic political party, they assert. Others say: Don’t be fooled; Hamas leaders are merely putting on a more moderate face for western audiences.

My guess is that schizophrenia reigns in Hamas circles, though not of the clinical kind: Yes, all of Palestine is ours, yet Israel is here to stay. No, Israel cannot be accepted, yet Israel cannot be defeated. Belief in such apparently contradictory positions can easily result in emphasizing different themes at different times, without any of the statements being false.

Gaza and the West Bank

Of course, there is a cost of not talking to Hamas, and that cost is largely borne by the people of Gaza, trapped by an Israeli blockade, subsisting on a limited diet, unable to repair the extensive damage from Israel’s incursion during Operation Cast Lead in January.

Israel will not allow the building materials necessary for reconstruction to be brought into Gaza. It claims that at least some of those supplies could be diverted to support Hamas’s arms’ buildup and construction of tunnels and bunkers. So, one purpose in initiating a direct U.S. dialogue with Hamas would be humanitarian – to help alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Strip.

A second purpose for talking to Hamas might be to encourage Hamas to reconcile with Fatah, join a unity government and jointly agree to hold open elections in both Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-controlled West Bank.

Many commentators insist that a unity government is the only way in which negotiations with Israel have a chance of success. They claim that Hamas as Fatah’s partner in a single Palestinian polity is far preferable to a Gaza/West Bank split or to Hamas remaining outside the government, where it could snipe and undermine any deal reached without its participation.

There is a counter-argument: Negotiations have proven difficult enough between the Fatah-dominated PLO and Israel. The inclusion of Hamas in a Palestinian government would seriously complicate the process and likely move the Palestinian negotiating position further away from one which any Israeli government could accept.

If the Quartet talks to Hamas without Hamas first meeting the pre-conditions, then Hamas will be seen to have won a battle of principled steadfastness in the face of severe international pressure. It will be strengthened as a result. Fatah will be weakened. The Quartet will look irresolute and fickle.

If Hamas meets the pre-conditions and then the talks begin, Hamas gains international recognition and credibility. But by acquiescing to the West’s demands, its reputation for refusing to compromise on matters of principle will be tarnished in the eyes of many Palestinian erstwhile supporters. And as we have seen recently in Gaza, Hamas needs to be concerned not only with fending off Fatah on one side of the political spectrum but also with threats from more radical Islamist organizations on the other. Just last month, Hamas used lethal force to suppress a challenge from one such group, Jund Ansar Allah.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli and American officials work with their Palestinian Authority counterparts on both a political and a military level. With Mahmoud Abbas as president and Salam Fayyad as prime minister, the PA is making significant strides forward on economic and security fronts. Whether this path will lead to Palestinian statehood, either de facto or de jure, is another matter. It is too soon to say.

Certainly this is a process that the Obama Administration wishes to encourage, and if a Palestinian election is to be held in January, 2010, as currently scheduled, then the U.S. would not want to take any action that could adversely affect the chances for Fatah to defeat Hamas at the polls. One such prejudicial action would be to open a public dialogue with Hamas, especially if Hamas did not first agree to the Quartet pre-conditions. Since the election, if held, is only a few months away, the argument for the U.S. holding its course probably outweighs all others.