The Third Way: A Different View of the Middle East

The Middle East peace conference, announced with much ballyhoo over the summer and convened by the Bush Administration, is struggling, with good reason.

The easiest obstacle to overcome is the one that’s gotten the most publicity: the talks between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert attempting to devise a joint Israeli-Palestinian agreement on some framework before the conference. There are many problems here, but both parties have a vested interest in making this agreement happen. Olmert needs to do something concrete to support Abbas, both in the eyes of Palestinians and of Israelis. Abbas needs to show he can get something accomplished with Israel, or his ability to hold control of the West Bank will be seriously diminished.

Yet both sides are facing increasing pressure, both internal and external, against any real progress being made. Saudi Arabia, for instance, remains noncommittal about its attendance at the conference. This is no small point. The Saudis’ absence form the conference will significantly diminish the credibility of any agreement reached in the eyes of the Arab world. But they are not going to give their imprimatur to a conference that doesn’t seem serious about addressing the Palestinians’ rights. The Saudis are also committed to try to bring Fatah and Hamas back into one unified government. This is now a long-range plan, as the Saudis surely recognize that Fatah has little inclination or incentive to pursue this goal right now. That means the Saudis have to be concerned about building relationships with both sides. Fatah is, at best, ambiguous (one might say divided) over the conference, and Hamas is strongly opposed to it. While Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon has opened the discussion about sharing Jerusalem in Israel, an aide to Mahmoud Abbas has made the explosive claim that the Palestinians must retain control over the holiest Jewish site, the Western Wall, an obvious non-starter. This illustrates the splits within Fatah more than anything else, as the aide, Adnan Husseini, surely knows that such a claim will never be supported even by the Arab League. Thus it should be seen as an attempt to scuttle the conference more than anything else. The Saudis need to tread carefully here.

While Hamas and Hezbollah have been vocal in calling on Arab leaders not to attend the conference, the reality that a failure of this conference will have severe repercussions, including repercussions beyond Israel and Palestine, is a much more significant force in casting a shadow over the proposed meeting. One of the purposes, from the Arab point of view, of this meeting is to put together some sort of united front to counter increasing Iranian influence in the region. For the Arab states, it is imperative that this be accomplished without military action, either by Israel or the United States. But both of those countries are not so kindly disposed to a diplomatic initiative, especially the US. (more…)

Virtually any article, except for unusually long ones, necessarily narrows its focus and leaves out important aspects of the broad subject it is discussing. In facile, pseudo-intellectual attacks, those who disagree with such articles often point out what is not there, as if it is possible, in just a few pages, to consider the breadth and scope of any problem, much less one as complex as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In the new edition of the London Review of Books, there is a pair of articles, however, which, when taken together, give a fairly rounded view of the situation as it stands now in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Making them perhaps more valuable and credible, the article criticizing Israel is written by a Jewish former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman; while the article criticizing the Palestinians is written by an American of Palestinian ancestry, Prof. Rashid Khalidi.

Khalidi continues a theme explored in his superb book, The Iron Cage:The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Palestinians are often portrayed, by themselves and others in very distorted ways. By pro-occupation zealots, they are depicted as far more powerful than they are, and powerful enough to constitute a substantial threat to Israel. That characterization is absurd on its face, and it is a measure of the hysteria this subject can generate that there is a significant, albeit minority, number of people who actually believe it. But they are also often portrayed by their own supporters, and even at times by themselves, as completely helpless actors who are pure victims and have no role in creating the situation they now find themselves in. Khalidi’s valuable self-criticism paints a more realistic picture.

In “Shared Irresponsibility,” Khalidi draws careful attention to the actions of both Fatah and Hamas in creating the split that exists now in the Palestinian political body and which finds its expression in a geographical split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Khalidi writes, “Fatah and Hamas have been fighting for control of a Palestinian Authority that has no real authority. The behavior of both has been disgraceful…In the four decades since the founding of the PLO, there has never been such a gulf between two parts of the [Palestinian] national movement.” (more…)

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there is no solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that can be attained under present conditions. It goes without saying that resolving this conflict requires strong leadership, if not on all sides (Israeli, Palestinian, American) then at least in two out of three. There is no reasonable possibility that significant progress can be made with Bush and Olmert in office and with a fractured Palestinian leadership that doesn’t have mass support in the Occupied Territories. The recent call by George W. Bush for an international peace conference is a grandstanding ploy that has no chance of making a positive impact. What is most important at this time is to re-focus people’s attention on the facts on the ground. The failure of Bush’s policy must be spelled out in specific terms of poor planning, ignorance of the situation and undesirable goals, not just in bad results. Most important, the focus on the settlements in the West Bank has got to be strengthened in a major way.

At this point, few in either Israel or Palestine believe that a Palestinian state is even a possibility in light of the enormous spread of the settlements and their networks (bypass roads, military and police installations, etc.) Moreover, the fact that settlements have grown far beyond even their borders as established by Israel, and the abject refusal of a long line of Defense Ministers to stop the spread of “outposts” means that the entire landscape of the West Bank is covered in settlements, except for the major areas of Palestinian population. The problems with this are obvious as a matter of structure. The problems, however, go deeper because they have already established, in the minds of most Israelis and Palestinians, that the settlements are irreversible facts.

I don’t think they are, but the reversal is only going to come from concerted American action. If the US does not make settlements a leading item on its agenda with Israel, no Israeli leader will be strong enough to act against them, even if they want to. Americans interested in a secure Israel and relief for the besieged Palestinians should be screaming about the settlements, almost to the exclusion of everything else on the Israeli side. If they remain, the two-state solution is dead. And if the two-state solution dies, we are faced with at least 10 years of re-orienting global diplomacy and international law on this issue. Recall, it took nearly 30 years after 1948 for most of the world to come around to two states, and 40 before the US, Israel and many Arab states (on both sides of the question) would accept it. (more…)

In Part 1 of this essay, I addressed Rabbi Ira Youdovin’s characterization of Jewish Voice for Peace as “beyond the pale” because we supported the views of former President Jimmy Carter. Now, I’d like to address his other basis for drawing his arbitrary line between JVP and the Jewish community, divestment.

Simply by saying that “JVP supports divestment,” Youdovin misrepresents JVP’s position. Our stance is explained at length here, but in sum, JVP makes two points about divestment. One, that we support selective and targeted divestment that is aimed exclusively at the occupation, not at Israel itself. Two, that other groups who do support boycotts, divestment from Israel or even sanctions against Israel are not, by virtue of that fact alone, acting either out of anti-Semitism or in an anti-Semitic fashion. Of course, it is possible that such actions can be motivated by anti-Semitic malice, but the holding of those stances is not evidence of it by itself.

JVP is in fact quite scrupulous about ensuring that we target only the occupation with economic actions. These include, incidentally, other means such as purchasing and distributing Palestinian olive oil to help Palestinian farmers, as well as efforts to support Israeli peace groups such as Yesh GVul and New Profile. (more…)

The wonderful Israeli organization, ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), headed by my friend and colleague, Jeff Halper, has worked tirelessly against this part of the occupation. Finally, the Jerusalem Post reports today that Jeff and ICAHD are working with Judge Juan Guzman (the judge who indicted Augusto Pinochet for his crimes against humanity in Chile) to determine if there is some action that can be taken against this abhorrent practice.

The issue of home demolitions has got to be the winner of the most underrated cause of anger and hatred in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Imagine for a moment that you are head of a household that includes several generations as well as siblings and cousins. Your home is impossibly crowded, but in an occupied territory it is virtually impossible to move, you are forbidden to build an extension on your home without a permit, which is just about impossible to get. So, you do what you must, build and hope no one notices. Then your house gets knocked completely down by the occupying power. Not just the new part,but all of it, leaving your entire family homeless.

In Israel, there used to be a pretense that home demolitions were done for security reasons. This was never true–less than 10%, and most years less than 5% of home demolitions had anything to do with any attacks on Israel. This is aside from the fact that punishing the family of a suicide bomber or any attacker of civilians is collective punishment, illegal under international law, and obviously immoral. How would you feel if you were made to suffer because your relative committed a crime? (more…)