RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

by Michael Thomas, posted March 29, 2010 

Michael Lame argues that international law is irrelevant, outdated, unfair and can properly be ignored.  He offers no alternative basis for regulating the conduct of states during armed hostilities or belligerent occupation.  He would apparently have the world depend on the consciences of political leaders for any constraints on the use of force.  History suggests that the result would be painful to witness. 

His only suggestion for a way forward in the conflict is negotiation.  But this is negotiation between a belligerent occupier – a regional hegemon – and the protected persons whose land it occupies.  Without respecting the internationally accepted law of occupation, it is a negotiation where only one side has the power to force change unilaterally, and to take beneficial control of increasing amounts of the land for its own citizens. Extended occupation then means there is less to negotiate, but also less chance of peace.  Changed conditions are products of illegal activity; abandoning the law because of passage of time or changed conditions would reward the lawbreaking occupier with the ill-gotten spoils. 

This is clearly what the Netanyahu government hopes it will be allowed to do.  In what it erroneously call “East Jerusalem,” Israel insists that Jewish homes forced into Arab towns and a parade of new colonies occupying hills never before built upon are part of the “eternal capital of Israel.”  This is a myth (see Juan Cole’s piece in Salon, 3-23-10), but it is a myth backed by the lawless power of a state protected by the United States.

Michael’s analysis goes badly astray in the first two paragraphs.   The United States emphatically does not have “a long and venerated tradition of breaking laws…”  It does have a tradition, exemplified by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, of civil disobedience.  That doctrine, however, carries with it the obligation of accepting the penalty of the law thought to be wrong, and working to change it.  President Obama criticized the recent holding of the Supreme Court on corporate campaign financing.  He does not counsel ignoring or disobeying the decision, but seeks to soften its impact through democratic means. 

King and Obama respected the law but sought to improve it.  Michael applauds disrespect for the law.  That course serves only those who seek impunity, works against the possibility of a just and lasting peace, and impairs the ability of the United States to induce cooperation in the region and around the world.

Michael is right when he says that changing international humanitarian law (IHL) takes sustained effort, and that application of the law has often failed.  But he sees only the difficulties and failures.  The international community did not cover itself with glory in the former Yugoslavia, and did worse in several parts of Africa.  But war crimes trials plus EU inducements finally reconfirmed IHL standards in Europe.  With the help of the African Union, some of the worst African war criminals have been brought to book.  The political process has been restarted in some states that lived through horrors. 

After World War II, Israel rushed to join the 1949 conventions as an earnest of its new membership in the international community, and adopted its own war crimes statute (with the unseemly addition of an offense of crimes against Jews only).  It, like the U.S., shied away from later efforts to update the conventions, and has run from the law it did agree to.

However, most of the core commitments in the 1949 Conventions remain relevant: Consistent with military necessity, civilians are to be protected; certain weapons and certain tactics are prohibited, or are not to be used in civilian areas; and after hostilities end civilians are to be safeguarded and provided for, and property in occupied territory is to be managed (with very limited exceptions) in trust for the inhabitants.   These are reasonable, even minimal, constraints, and since they have been agreed to by every state, there are political consequences when a state abandons them, even if few offenders are perp-walked.    

There is not room here to weigh all the arguments about which standards the parties to this conflict have violated.  Clearly, some Palestinian groups have violated the law by targeting civilians, among other delicts.  The allegations against the Israelis, as the dominant military power in the region and 43-year occupier of Palestinian territory, are more numerous and varied.  The IDF has used cluster bombs and white phosphorus in civilian areas, and has destroyed vast amounts of civilian property in Lebanon and Gaza.  Israel has for over two years brutally starved occupied Gaza, to the point where Gazans, who are talented and resourceful people, are overwhelmingly dependent on international handouts, and their children are so malnourished and traumatized that they are increasingly failing in their Arabic studies.  A generation of impoverished, embittered Gazans is being grown, imperiling the future of the region.  And in the West Bank, the “protected persons” under the Fourth Convention are shoved aside for exclusive Jewish colonial towns sponsored by the Israeli state. 

From everything I have seen, read, and heard, I believe that many of these allegations are in fact provable violations of core provisions of the 1949 conventions, and that as a result protected persons have been harmed, killed and stolen from.  Every authoritative analysis of the occupation of which I am aware – by the Department of State, by the ICJ, and by the Israeli courts – accepts that Israel is a belligerent occupier and subject to the obligations of the Fourth Convention.  A few, including Nicholas Rostow, dispute the facts or argue implausible interpretations of the law to avoid that conclusion.  (Rostow may be genetically predisposed to his minority view that Israel should be allowed to pursue its chosen aims without legal constraint; that was also the widely discredited view of his father Eugene).

Michael complains that the law is useless because it is unenforceable.  It is unenforceable when the United States (or Russia in the case of Chechnya or China in the case of Tibet) prevents its enforcement.  Our response should be: Stop doing that.  It is disingenuous and unseemly for Israel (and her apologists) to avoid the jurisdiction of the ICJ, block enforcement through the Security Council, and fight to keep the UN from taking up the Goldstone Report, and then complain that the efficacy of the law is not tested. 

Adherence to these minimal standards would engender greater confidence that a negotiated agreement could be reached, and that the stronger parties would not simply ignore the agreement as they have the law.  Insistence on these standards by the United States would go a long way toward rebuilding the trust of the rest of the world that we will use our great power only in ways that are broadly seen as just. 

General David Petraeus recently caused a stir when he described the impediments to his CENTCOM mission created by America’s identification with Israel’s policies toward Arabs.  Arabs and Muslims are bombarded with coverage of Gaza and Jerusalem.  They identify with the Palestinians and are outraged by their treatment, and they know that what they are seeing is inconsistent with standards the United States fought to establish and sometimes still aspires to uphold elsewhere.  The “Israel exception” sticks in their craw.  It should stick in ours, as well.

by Michael Lame, posted March 25, 2010

Throughout history, legality and morality have often been at odds. Actions can be legal and immoral. Actions can be moral and illegal. In the United States we have a long and venerated tradition of breaking laws which we consider to be wrong or simply wrong-headed. Whether the issue has been taxation, slavery, unions, alcohol, drugs, civil rights, abortion, immigration, or the speed limit, millions of Americans have disagreed with the law, protested it, disobeyed it, or simply ignored it.

Reverence for the law is not a requirement for being a good American. Just last month the President of the United States publically took the Supreme Court to task for what he considered to be a misguided ruling on the constitutionality of certain election laws. Laws can be wrong; courts can be wrong.

Following the law – local, state, federal, or international – is not always the right thing to do. And if Americans have been ambivalent about adhering to domestic law, we have been far more skeptical about the wisdom and practicality of international agreements.

Although President Woodrow Wilson enthusiastically supported the creation of the League of Nations at the close of World War I, he could not persuade the US senate to ratify the treaty. The US never joined the League. The Convention against Genocide, completed in 1948, was not ratified by the US until forty years later, under President Reagan. With the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement among newly-independent third world countries during the Cold War, anti-Americanism increased across the globe, and with it, America’s reluctance to participate in global legal structures that might adversely affect the nation and its citizens.

Why should we be any less skeptical of the process and outcome of international legal rulings than we are of state and federal laws? Why this new reverence for international law? Is it deserved?

Many hard-working, lofty-principled men and women from around the world have met in conferences over the last hundred years to hammer out the Hague Conventions, the League of Nations Covenant, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Genocide, and several other global agreements aimed at decreasing man’s inhumanity to man.

But good intentions don’t necessarily make for good law. And there are fundamental differences between international and national law. Obtaining agreements among nations is terribly difficult. We saw that just recently in Copenhagen. The formulation of international agreements is so problematic that the documents are often drafted in language which is intentionally loose and generalized, leaving room for different interpretations on fundamental matters, with conspicuous silences on those important issues where accord is not possible.

Once an international agreement is reached and ratified, it becomes exceedingly hard to revisit and revise it. Reaching global consensus for changing international covenants and treaties is far more complex than having the House and Senate reach agreement on health care reforms. Witness the stalled Doha Round of WTO talks.

Enforcement of International Law

Another way in which international law differs from the law of sovereign states is in its enforcement, which is uneven, often ineffectual, and frequently impossible.

Decisions reached by the General Assembly do not have the force of law, including the 1947 partition plan itself. The International Court of Justice, a UN-affiliated body, issued a 2004 ruling against Israel’s building of the barrier/fence/wall, but that was a non-binding advisory opinion, without teeth. International sanctions have rarely proved effective. South Africa was an exception. Iran is not.

Since the five permanent members of the Security Council can exercise an overrideable veto, the SC will never take action against China’s oppressive activities in Tibet or Russia’s in Chechnya. And, yes, as long as the US is willing to veto anti-Israel SC resolutions, Israel will remain immune to punishment by that body.

The League of Nations fell apart largely because of its inability to deal with fascist aggression in Europe and Africa. Its successor organization, the United Nations, in its very first attempt at nation-creating botched the job so badly regarding Palestine that the world is still dealing with the aftermath of the UN partition plan of 1947, sixty-some years later.

The Hague Conventions of 1907 failed to prevent the atrocities of World Wars I and II. The 1949 Geneva Conventions were designed to strengthen and broaden those earlier efforts to make the world safer from state-sponsored barbarism, with mixed results to-date.

In fact, we have no world government capable of enforcing international decisions. Some are pleased with that situation; others lament it.

But law is only one tool for tackling conflict between people. Arbitration, mediation, and other forms of dispute resolution are commonplace today. In the international arena, war, diplomacy, and negotiations between parties in dispute have much longer lineages than do legal systems in establishing or restoring peace. War is not obsolete. Diplomacy still works. And negotiation between parties, regardless of legal rulings by international courts or councils, is still the best way for Israel to settle differences with her Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese neighbors.

The solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if it is ever found, will not come through the courts or references to legal precedents. The designation of suicide-bombing as a violation of human rights changes nothing. Prefacing the term “settlement” with the modifier “illegal” does not move the two parties closer to resolving their differences. (Nor is such a legal finding required for America to lean on Israel regarding the settlements, if it so chooses.)

Settlements and the Law

Some have argued that Israel has not violated international law in the construction of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. (See, for example, Nicholas Rostow’s recent analysis at http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=782.)

But even if there was no wholesale illegal activity by the Israeli government, there has certainly been massive government collusion in employing a variety of techniques resulting in the alienation of hundreds of thousands of acres from Palestinian villagers. Somehow this land has found its way into the possession of Israeli settlers.

These are tougher issues than many people would like to acknowledge, morally and practically as well as legally. Not all settlements are created equal. To consider any Jewish habitations beyond the green line to be illegitimate requires a willful blindness to the history of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City or the Gush Etzion pre-1948 kibbutzim.

Even when an activity is legal and legitimate, it might not be wise. Exclusively legal concepts do not take into account the neighborliness factor. A few hundred Jews now live in the center of Hebron, an ancient center of Jewish life which is today a city of more than 100,000 Arabs. Neither side wants the other there. Both sides have employed lethal violence. Without a modicum of good will and common sense, no legal determination of pre-1929 home ownership can solve the problem.

Consider this: What if everyone were to agree that the existence of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank violates international law? What then? Must we accept such a determination as a basis for action? Or is it possible that the law in this case is wrong?

The argument for the illegality of settlements relies primarily on Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The debate continues as to the intention of the writers of this sentence. Was it designed to protect occupied civilian populations from any changes to the land under occupation except those required by military necessity or was it meant to prevent the occupying power from forcibly shifting populations around – moving the occupied out and/or moving their own people in? Does Israeli government support for settlement activity constitute “transfer” of its civilian population rather than simply aid to voluntary decision-making by the settlers themselves? Is this a distinction without a difference?

Even if we accept that any movement of settlers beyond the green line violates this Geneva Convention provision, does the provision itself make sense? Time does not stand still. An occupation of four months is fundamentally different than an occupation of forty years. Things are guaranteed to change during that length of time. And in this case, where the 1949 armistice lines were never legally recognized as borders, Israel was far from a disinterested occupier.

Look at Jerusalem. The future of that city is shaped by every baby born there – to Muslims or Christians, to religious or secular Jews – and by every business started or expanded there and by every building constructed or remodeled there. These are all “facts on the ground.” The idea is ludicrous that either the Israelis or the Palestinians – even if they wanted to, which they don’t – could refrain, for decades, from taking actions that might prejudice the final status negotiations over Jerusalem.

You may not want one side to take particular actions. Many people around the world believe that dividing Jerusalem and designating east Jerusalem (Al Quds) as the capital of a Palestinian state and west Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) as the capital of the Jewish state, is the best, the just, the right, and the only possible thing to do.

Whose Land is it?

Whose land is it anyway? Ask the land. It won’t answer. Ask a geologist, geographer, or historian and you will not receive a single definitive response. Land ownership is a cultural and legal construct. Ownership is not inherent in the land. There is no such thing as Israeli soil or Palestinian land or Arab earth, no Jewish birthright or Muslim patrimony.

To the extent that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real estate dispute – and I believe it to be much more than that – we need to find a context within which to address the land ownership issue for all of Israel/Palestine, for Gaza and the West Bank, for east and west Jerusalem. It is not simply an issue of legal title to a parcel of land held by an individual or a family. Nor can this complex matter be resolved by reference to who lived where at a particular point in history – in the days of Abraham/Ibrahim, the First Temple period, Roman times, 1600 years of Muslim rule, 1947 or ’67.

What is to be done? What can bring about, if not closure, then at least a modus vivendi that both sides will find tolerable? The answer to this question is not a legal one.

by Michael Thomas, posted March 18, 2010

Israelis and Palestinians and their partisans engage in many ways.  Some of the most important battles are fought over the conceptual frameworks within which the issues are analyzed.  Such frameworks define the interests at stake, and determine what evidence is sought or recognized, what presumptions are indulged, and what solutions are considered.  Strangely for a country that prides itself on its respect for, and advocacy of, the rule of law, one conceptual framework the United States has increasingly abandoned is international law.  That is a costly mistake.

Other frameworks have been preeminent:  the religious/historical/national myth; the ethical/moral; and the political/strategic.  For Americans, the predominant framework began with our founders’ concept of America as the New Zion, and their commitment to restoring the old Zion, Israel.  This “restorationist” sentiment is deep, and has been reinforced by Holocaust guilt; by the portrayal of Israel as stout ally against the Soviets and terrorism; and by effective political action by Jewish and dispensationalist Christian groups to reward loyalty and punish deviance.  As a result, “support of Israel” has become the default political choice, often blocking discussion of other ways of seeing these issues.

Earlier, Americans had seen commitment to the rule of law as both a fundamental value and a practical advantage.  After World War II, the United States engaged in a sustained effort to reach binding agreements, and to establish international institutions, that would set standards by which the world would conduct its affairs.  Led by the U.S. and its wartime allies, the international community established the United Nations, added the Geneva Conventions to earlier efforts to control the means and effects of war, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention against Genocide and other international agreements as universal standards.  Together with the Bretton Woods organizations, these efforts demonstrated America’s “soft power,” the ability to shape the international environment in ways that evidenced American idealism and promised justice, and at the same time empowered America to protect and advance its own interests.

Law should be an important part of the policy framework for the U.S., because it incorporates lessons learned from history, moral standards with which America identifies itself, and strategic advantages derived from America’s role in defining the standards.  But the advantages dissipate if fidelity to law is seen to be ephemeral or opportunistic.

By the 1970s, the United States began to act as if it were either above the law or afraid of it.  Even after negotiating detailed protections against threats to its own freedom of action, the U.S. refused to join several treaties, including the 1977 Geneva Protocols and the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court.  In the first decade of this century, the United States became increasingly unilateralist and willing to ignore or abandon the standards and institutions for which it had earlier fought.

With respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American officials, including the current administration, have been unwilling to apply in a straightforward way the principles of international law, or even of bilateral agreements, at least when to do so would require criticism of Israel.  That visible trend has cost America dearly in credibility and has eroded our ability to insist on the standards of international agreements when dealing with other states.  It has also not accomplished what “pro-Israeli” loyalists seek, the security of Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank provide the best-known (but not the only) example.  The law is clear: Under 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, state-facilitated settlements for the exclusive habitation of Jewish citizens of Israel in occupied territory are illegal.  That was the finding of Herbert Halsell, Legal Counsel to the State Department, in a 1978 written opinion that has never been withdrawn or overturned, and it was the conclusion of the ICJ in the Wall case.  [Editor's correction: Herbert Hansell] The Israeli Supreme Court accepts that conclusion as a basis for its decisions on settlements.

Ronald Reagan said at a press conference in 1981 that he thought settlements were an impediment to peace but not illegal.  Since then, the United States has been the only major power that talks about Israeli settlements as though they were just inconvenient, rather than major violations of the rights of occupied populations.

President Obama, who taught law, knows better.  In his Cairo speech last June, he said that the U.S. “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”  What does that mean?  Something is “legitimate,” say the dictionaries, if it is authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law; but an alternative definition is “in accordance with reason or logic.”  Close, Mr. President, but you still seem afraid to call a spade a spade.  (The recent “condemnation” of Israel’s announcement of more settler housing in Jerusalem, by Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton and the Quartet, show growing impatience but still shy away from the legal standard.)

Why does it matter?  As is often the case, the legal standard is also the standard of “reason or logic.”  Nearly everyone, including some hard-line Zionists, understands that the settlers’ project has nearly fulfilled its potential for killing the idea of a Palestinian state, and that without such a state there is no credible alternative future for Israel that is safe and stable.  The settlements are “legitimate” only within a very specific ideological framework, in which God gave Samaria and Judea to Jews, and Palestinians are impediments to the fulfillment of Zionism, not occupied populations with rights under international law.  That mindset promises lasting conflict.  If, however, the settlements are again recognized by the United States as illegal, that would call for principled steps to stop American dollars from enabling them: Offset settlement expenditures against American aid; bar the deductibility of contributions to settler organizations under U.S. law; exclude settler products from the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Act and require labeling to identify them if they are imported anyway.  These measures would be the natural consequences of recognizing illegality when we see it.  They are also measures which would encourage Israelis, a majority of whom say they favor a two-state solution, to get out of their “comfort zone” and confront the settlers.

The United States should consistently maintain positions that respect customary international law, and refuse to acquiesce in or enable actions that are neither consistent with those principles nor agreed to by the parties.  The parties should be applauded when they do likewise, and called out when they do not.  The parties can take divergent positions on how legal rights and obligations should be interpreted or enforced, but they should be challenged when they ignore core standards or insist on their own made-up facts.  These principles apply to issues as varied as the rights of refugees and the rights of civilians in combat.

Israel constantly argues that international law and institutions are biased against them.  In fact, all Palestinians have paid dearly for terrorism perpetrated by some among them, while Israel has operated with relative impunity.  Given the huge disparity in power, this failure to insist on basic legal standards makes negotiation of permanent arrangements – already difficult when the parties are military occupier and the occupied population – very dubious indeed.

A final status agreement will be a legal document, one which will require an American imprimatur.  We cannot attain such an agreement, or expect one to stand the test of time, if it is not just and seen to be just.  International law cannot draft a final status agreement, but it does provide many of the standards which the parties must take into account in reaching compromises that will be honored.

by Michael Lame, posted March 15, 2010

Everyone is upset with Israel at the moment. While Vice President Joe Biden was in the country on a fence-mending visit last week, the Interior Ministry tore down the entire fence by announcing the award of a contract for the construction of 1600 housing units in east Jerusalem.

The plot thickens. Secretary of State Clinton spent 45 minutes on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Friday, upbraiding him for the recent uproar about Jerusalem during the Biden visit. According to the State Department spokesman, in the call Secretary Clinton asserted that “the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship [with the US] and to the peace process.”

While every Israeli prime minister – even Netanyahu – knows that the relationship with the US is the bedrock of Israeli security, after more than a decade and a half of on-again, off-again negotiations with the Palestinians, a commitment to “the peace process” is an iffier proposition. Perhaps it’s time to drop the term altogether, along with the insistence on nurturing this anachronism.

East Jerusalem was captured/liberated from the Jordanians by the IDF on June 7, 1967. On June 28, with the passage of enabling legislation in the Knesset the previous day, the Israeli government issued an order incorporating east Jerusalem within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. No country has ever recognized this annexation, but that has not prevented Israel from extending Israeli law to the eastern part of the city.

Fast forward forty-some years. The landscape of greater Jerusalem has been transformed by the building of fences, walls, roads, and Jewish neighborhoods/settlements as well as by the vastly increased Arab population in the city.

In response to the Obama administration’s request/demand last year that Israel stop building in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Netanyahu government announced a ten-month moratorium on new private construction in the West Bank. At the same time, it declared that Jerusalem was not included in this temporary building halt. In other words, Israel told the world that it would keep building in Jerusalem, whether the world liked it or not.

This decision was known. At the time it was announced, Secretary Clinton hailed it as “unprecedented.” So why the upset now? Certainly it’s about timing. It might also be about substance and process.

Timing

Of course the timing was awkward, as the announcement of the approved building permit came during the visit of Vice President Biden, thereby embarrassing him. And to the dismay of those who cherish a close American-Israeli relationship, a visit that was supposed to be a love fest turned into something strained and discordant.

Would it have been better if the announcement had been made a week after Biden left the Middle East? A month after? If the building was to go forward, this was the wrong time to announce it. The visit became a missed opportunity to add a bit of warmth to an otherwise chilly connection between Obama’s Washington and Netanyahu’s Jerusalem.

Substance

Others will say the permits should not have been issued at all. Most two-state solution advocates oppose continued Israeli building in both east Jerusalem and the West Bank, so they are disheartened by Israel’s announcement regarding new housing construction.

And regardless of their position on Israel’s claim to east Jerusalem, peace process advocates are anxious that the dim prospect for successful negotiations not be extinguished altogether by Israel’s latest announcement.

Is the Israeli action as detrimental to prospects for peace as the media has reported? No.

Process

The great “accomplishment” of the Mitchell mission has been to extract agreement from the Palestinians and the Israelis for the establishment of proximity talks, i.e., indirect negotiations, with Israelis and Americans sitting in one room, Palestinians and Americans sitting in another. The Americans will go back and forth between the two sides, in the hope of reducing the gaps between them and eventually reaching agreement on at least some of the “final status issues” such as borders, security, settlements, refugees, water, sovereignty, future relations, and, of course, Jerusalem.

Proximity talks now? That recipe has been used in the past to initiate contact between parties that refuse to deal directly with one another. As recently as 2008, Turkey sponsored proximity talks with Syrian and Israeli officials, but the Israelis and Palestinians have been negotiating face-to-face at least since Oslo in 1993. Collectively they have logged many thousands of hours in such talks.

Proximity talks between Israel and Iran would be a major step forward. Proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, at this late date, constitutes a major step backwards.

I see only two reasons now for proximity talks to occur:

1)   After the US government botched its attempt to rein in Israeli construction beyond the green line, the only way the US could get the Palestinians back to the table without the latter significantly losing face was to employ this procedure. It allows Palestinians to refuse to negotiate directly with the Israelis while negotiating with them through the Americans. But remember that we wouldn’t be in this mess if Mitchell and Obama hadn’t initially insisted on an Israeli building moratorium, thus creating unrealistic expectations within the PA leadership.

2)   Perhaps Mitchell & Company believe they will be able to move the negotiations in a positive direction if they are running the show rather than leaving it to the Israelis and Palestinians to have at it with each other as they did most recently in the ‘07-‘08 meetings between then-Prime Minister Olmert and PA President Abbas.

Both of these reasons are based on the notion that talks are better than no talks. But that’s not always true, especially not in the Middle East. Since neither side is anxious for these talks to begin, why is the US so eager to push the two parties into another round of gab sessions? Is there a secret set of Mitchell/Obama proposals that will cause the recalcitrant players to significantly change their positions once the meetings begin?

Carrots and Sticks

It should be obvious by now that in the realpolitik bag of carrots and sticks, sticks don’t work that well with either side. Given the continuing growth in the number of Israelis living in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, one might imagine that this trend would create such fear in the minds of Palestinian decision-makers that they would rush to negotiate a final deal before more land is swallowed up and more roads constructed. But no, that’s not the way Palestinians work.

And given the billions in military aid that Israel receives from the US each year and the tremendous diplomatic support the US provides Israel in the UN Security Council, with the EU, Arab states and others, one might assume that Israel will hop to it in doing America’s bidding. But no, that’s not the way Israelis work. Client-state or no, Israel at times defies its greatest ally. That needn’t be seen as ingratitude. It may simply be perceived self-interest. No two individuals and no two countries ever see the world in precisely the same way.

What Americans consider a reasonable risk for Israel to undertake might be seen by Israelis as an unacceptable existential threat. The American government should certainly make its case and do so forcefully, but it might be best to do so without lecturing the Israelis about what is really in their own best interests since obviously they’re too blind to see it for themselves! And for Americans to tell Israelis that they must fix their “dysfunctional” political system seems particularly rich at the moment, when so many pundits are wondering aloud whether America’s political system is “broken” and our own health care political debate has been a daily TV soap opera for more than a year now.

During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Obama liked to quote Martin Luther King on “the fierce urgency of now.” But not every serious problem needs to be addressed right now, nor should it. One aspect of political wisdom is knowing when the time is ripe for action. Endless rounds of meetings that produce frustration and anger rather than results serve the purpose not of the peace-makers but rather of the rejectionists on all sides.

As form follows function, so process should follow substance. When Israelis and Palestinians have something serious to offer each other, then negotiations will make sense. If America can bring to the table a practical vision for the future and some substantive proposals – not just its “good offices” – then its involvement will make sense. Supporting the peace process by keeping channels open is not a game big enough to claim active participation from the highest levels in the US government.

After all, peace is not a process.