The Third Way: A Different View of the Middle East

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…)

The Knesset has passed the first of three readings of a bill which would allow the Israel Land Authority (ILA) to hold leasing for lands it administers for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) for Jews only. This would bypass a ruling by the Attorney General Menachem Mazuz earlier this year barring such discrimination and also would pre-empt a case coming before the Supreme Court challenging such discrimination.

Mazuz was actually trying to save the JNF’s ability to hold land for Jews. His compromise was that the state would give an equal amount of land directly to the JNF for all land leased or sold to Arab citizens of Israel. This, however, did not satisfy some Knesset members.

The initial vote in the Knesset doesn’t necessarily portend ultimate passage. Only 80 of the 120 Knesset members voted on this bill at all and, while the vote was 64-16, it is not unusual for votes on bills in the Knesset to change sharply in subsequent readings. Thus, this is a case where a real impact can be made by those who believe that Israel must not be a discriminatory state. You can start by signing a petition I helped review here. (more…)

My piece, co-authored with Chris Toensing, a response to the John Mearsheimer-Steven Walt paper, “The Israel Lobby” can be found at the Middle East Report web site, or you can purchase the magazine, which would be even better.

One of the main concerns I hear from people reluctant to pursue any kind of peace process with the Palestinians and the larger Arab world is that people believe that any withdrawal from the Occupied Territories will only strengthen the resolve of the Palestinians to pursue the destruction of Israel. Indeed, the former Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, gave concrete voice to this view on July 4.

Similarly, in an article in the latest issue of Tikkun Magazine, Roger Gottlieb condescendingly paints an image of Israeli peace activists as being not only naive but insensitive to the fact that they really don’t know what will happen if the occupation were ended.

There are issues here, both real and illusory. Ya’alon’s claim that the withdrawal from Gaza led inevitably to the takeover by Hamas omits numerous key facts. As many of us, including myself, warned before the withdrawal, the unilateral nature of that withdrawal as well as its timing in light of the state of affairs in Gaza in 2005 rendered it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to establish control in the Strip. That situation was exacerbated by the Strip’s collapsed economy and its isolation even before the elections that brought Hamas to power. Out of such a state of affairs only chaos can emerge, and once that reigns, the next outcomes are entirely unpredictable.

Ya’alon similarly obscures the facts about Camp David, which I have already recounted in this space. Yet despite his propagandistic distortions (or, perhaps one might say, because of them), Ya’alon is giving voice to the belief of a majority of Israelis, Jews and many concerned people around the world. (more…)