Miller:
There’s a reason why Israelis and Palestinians haven't made true and lasting efforts for peace — their conflict is now the status quo.
Shortly
after becoming secretary of state in 2013, John Kerry spoke to the
American Jewish Committee and made it clear that the status quo between
Israelis and Palestinians was simply “not sustainable.” A year later, at the
Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum, Kerry made his point again. “The
status quo between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not sustainable,” he
said, “and the alternatives to peace are neither acceptable nor viable.”
Much
like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Kerry has issued
perennial warnings to the Israelis and Palestinians — though more the former,
actually — that if they don’t change their ways, and soon, a variety of
disasters will befall them.
When
Kerry repeated his message once again late last year in another speech at the
Brookings Institution, he noted that
the status quo — including “violence, settlement activity, demolitions” — was
“imperiling the viability of a two-state solution.”
Some,
of course, might argue it already has. Others, including Kerry himself, have
predicted even worse disasters are ahead: a third intifada, the collapse of the
Palestinian Authority, or a permanent one-state reality that would all but
guarantee constant violence.
And yet
over the course of the past 16 years, we have witnessed one full-blown
Palestinian intifada (2000-2004); three bloody wars between Israel and Hamas
(2008-2009, 2012, and 2014); an intense eruption of Palestinian lone-wolf
stabbings and shootings of Israelis (October 2015-present); and what has become
the daily indignities inherent in the relationship between the occupier and the
occupied.
It
would seem, then, that this unsustainable status quo (and the pain and misery
that it carries) to which Kerry constantly refers has proved well … quite
sustainable.
Surely
Kerry is correct in his analysis that keeping things exactly as they are is
unnecessarily costly and potentially disastrous. But his calls for change are
falling on deaf ears. Why isn’t anyone listening?
The
politically inconvenient truth is that not even a solution-oriented or
peripatetic U.S. secretary of state will be able to scare or persuade
hard-edged Israeli and Palestinian leaders — through either threats or appeals
to their enlightened self-interests — into real and actionable change.
Israelis
and Palestinians have their own agendas and their own concerns. Call them
excuses, rationales, or self-perpetuating delusions if you will, but these
rationales and fears have trumped American arguments to move beyond this
conflict “status quo.” And they will likely continue to do so. Here’s why.
Changing the status quo is just too risky
Almost
50 years after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it’s stunningly
clear that the fear of dramatically changing the status quo outweighs the risks
of managing it.
It’s
hard for big powers to appreciate fully the way in which small ones calculate
risks and gains, particularly in a conflict that is perceived to be existential
in nature. But it shouldn’t be. This isn’t just a real estate deal. It’s a
brutal and bloody struggle that stirs up hatreds and passions among those who
don’t want it resolved. Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin were murdered for their
peacemaking.
At the
Camp David summit in July 2000, I heard Yasser Arafat say several times that he
wouldn’t give the Americans the chance to walk behind his coffin. Translation:
Don’t think I’ll sign a deal that will get me killed. Arafat was happy
(ego-wise) to be at the summit, but he also knew that Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat had been at Camp David, too, in 1978 with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin and that despite getting 100 percent of Sinai back and all Israeli
settlements there dismantled, the Egyptian leader had been murdered. Arafat
didn’t negotiate seriously at Camp David, but he certainly wasn’t going to risk
his life and legitimacy by settling for the 92 percent of the West Bank that
then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered at the summit.
Whether
a gloomy Barak (who had, by the 2000 summit’s end, taken to dressing in all
black) was thinking about Rabin’s murder at the hands of an Israeli terrorist
is unknown. Barak did go further on a deal with the Palestinians than any other
Israeli leader had before. But no Israeli leader — certainly not in what was
the first serious negotiating session with a Palestinian counterpart — was
willing or able to meet Palestinian requirements. And the Israeli leader was
surely thinking about his political survival. Barak had arrived at Camp David
with a shaky government that collapsed while he was there. Once it was clear
there would be no deal, the Camp David dynamic became very much a gotcha game
of domestic politics. Who was going to be blamed for the failure of the summit or,
to use former Secretary of State James Baker’s notion, on whose doorstep would
the dead cat be left? Nobody has ever been assassinated or discredited by their
constituents for not making peace and blaming the other side. Barak blamed
Arafat for the failure of Camp David and tried to discredit him and
Palestinians as negotiating partners. Bill Clinton, who believed Barak had made
historic compromises, agreed and criticized Arafat. We left the summit with no
agreement and very little prospect of achieving one in the six months that
remained in Clinton’s presidency.
The
fact is negotiating political agreements, let alone implementing peace treaties
that reshape public attitudes and change the way adversaries think and behave
toward one another, isn’t for the faint-hearted. It takes big, bold leaders who
are willing to risk separating themselves from their respective tribes at
considerable risk. Indeed, one reason that status quo prevails is that these
leaders are so rare. And the deals they can do equally so. The Egypt-Israel
peace treaty combined strong leaders and issues much less complicated and
sensitive than those like Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. That was also why
King Hussein and Rabin were able to negotiate an Israel-Jordan treaty. Weaker
leaders without that kind of authority and strength and who lack the capacity
and motivation to do a deal (see: Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, the
current Palestinian Authority president and Israeli prime minister,
respectively) cannot be expected to produce those kinds of historic
achievements, particularly when the issues they’re negotiating are so
explosive.
Managing is easier … and safer
Israelis
and Palestinians may not be adept conflict resolvers, but despite their ongoing
dysfunctional relationship as occupier and occupied, they actually have found
ways to avoid pushing one another past the brink or the proverbial point of no
return.
For
example, in frustration with dealing with Israel, Abbas has, since 2008,
repeatedly threatened to
dismantle the Palestinian Authority and turn over the proverbial keys to
Netanyahu so he could “be responsible for the Palestinian Authority.” Of
course, that’s never happened. Nor have Palestinians or Israelis permanently
terminated security cooperation. For its part, Israel has built settlements,
walls, and annexed Jerusalem, but it has avoided annexing the West Bank,
thereby leaving open the possibility of an agreement — at least theoretically.
So while Israelis and Palestinians can’t seem to solve the two-state problem or
stop fighting, they can’t stop cooperating either.
Paradoxically,
while close proximity drives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it also helps
mitigate it. Palestinians have a crippling dependency on Israel for water,
electricity, access to the outside world, and a range of goods and services —
including employment opportunities. Indeed, unlike during the Second Intifada,
Israel recently decided to grant 40,000 additional work permits to Palestinians.
As long
as Abbas and the Palestinian Authority want to govern the West Bank — and
there’s no indication that desire is going to end — the Palestinians need
Israeli help in handling security, particularly in checking Hamas’s influence.
Abbas has said many times that security cooperation is in the Palestinians’
interest. And it also frees the Israelis from having to reoccupy large areas of
the West Bank. Palestinian intelligence chief Majid Faraj estimates that his
security forces have stopped 200 attacks since last October. And Israel’s internal security service
— the Shin Bet — and chief of general staff, too, confirm that the problem
Israel faces on security would be much worse without the Palestinian Authority.
Analyst
Neri Zilber describes the
Palestinian Authority as Israel’s secret weapon in its war against terrorism.
Abbas is walking a fine line. He doesn’t want his 30,000-man security force to
appear to be Israel’s police force. He seems to be succeeding. Since last fall,
only three members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have been implicated
in the current violence. In a remarkable admission to Israel’s Channel 2 last
in March, Abbas admitted that
without security cooperation, a “bloody intifada would break out.”
Washington is a status quo enabler
Much of
that security cooperation is funded by the United States and plays a
significant role in helping maintain stability and, yes, the status quo. It is
a cruel irony that Kerry warns of an unsustainable status quo that Washington
plays a big part in sustaining. U.S. technical and financial assistance to the
Palestinian Authority helps keep Abbas in power. Indeed, since the Palestinian
return to the West Bank in 1994, the United States has been key to the
international donor effort on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and the key
crisis manager in defusing violence and getting both sides out of bad
situations that could have easily escalated to worse ones. I spent much of my
life in the 1990s helping keep the Oslo process alive and prevent and preempt
big explosions. The United States is in a perverse investment trap: It wants
Israelis and Palestinians to grasp the dangers inherent in the status quo. Yet
it seems to have no choice but to shelter them from it.
Add to
that America’s enduring special ties with Israel (unlikely to wither anytime
soon), its willingness to bankroll and arm the Israelis, and its readiness to
defend the country from international criticism and pressure, and it’s easier
to see how the status quo ambles along without fundamental disruption. And that
reality has been reinforced in the past five years by a Middle Eastern
meltdown, the rise of the Islamic State, the Syrian civil war, and the Iranian
nuclear deal that have distracted the international community and the United
States from seriously focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. And there’s
little to suggest a change in that focus.
It’s
tempting to suggest that if the United States applied real pressure on Israel
by threatening to cut its military aid, Israel would have no choice but to be
more compliant on the Palestinian issue. There’s, of course, no way to know. No
Democratic or Republican administration has ever even hinted at such an
approach, let alone tried to implement one. And it’s hard to imagine such a
scenario.
One
might ask Kerry that if things are as bad as he describes them, why he and the
administration haven’t adopted a remedy more in keeping with the severity of
the disease. Though I think the answer is already pretty stunningly clear: Like
its predecessors, this administration lacks both the will and the capacity to
take on America’s close Israeli ally on the peace process’s most crucial
sticking points — settlements, forcing Israel to change its position on borders
or Jerusalem, among others. And even if those within the Obama administration
could summon up the necessary courage, they know in the end it still wouldn’t
be sufficient.
I
worked on this issue in various capacities under four administrations — from
Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush — and none of them seriously believed that
American pressure or a U.S. peace plan could move the two sides closer to
resolving their conflict, let alone delivering a deal without the willing
participation of the parties themselves.
No surrender
After
50 years of violence, terrorism, and conflict, one might reason that Israelis
and, particularly, Palestinians have experienced more than enough suffering to
compel a resolution. And one could argue that because the suffering (on both
sides) has spanned generations, it has only stiffened the resolve to resist and
fight on. After 50 years of Israeli occupation, Palestinians are not about to
abandon their national narrative. And unlike a traditional colonial situation
where the occupying power could leave and sail home (see: the British in India,
France in Algeria or Vietnam), Israel isn’t going anywhere and will remain a
permanent part of the neighborhood — whether the West Bank situation is
resolved or not.
Since
neither surrender nor victory is a realistic option, both sides have no choice
but to operate in the status quo — shifting between conflict and accommodation.
In that vein, the Palestinian Authority works pragmatically with Israel on
issues like security and water. And, as a February poll by the Awrad research
firm reveals, only
42 percent of the Palestinians surveyed supported a third intifada — a drop
from the survey
conducted just a few months earlier that saw 63 percent support. Overall, the
findings saw that there is now little desire for the kind of mass uprising of
the First Intifada or for the kinds of suicide attacks that were carried out in
Israel during the second. Indeed, it’s been seven months since the outbreak of
the so-called “intifada of knives,” but those attacks didn’t lead to surging demonstrations
or more shows of violence, signaling, possibly, that there is clearly an
appetite for broader engagement on the part of the Palestinian public. Indeed,
the status quo is further reinforced by a Palestinian national movement that is
divided and dysfunctional and lacks anything resembling the unity, will, or
capacity to articulate a coherent national strategy to create a Palestinian
state through force, diplomacy, or a combination of the two.
As for
the Israelis, a combination of factors reinforces the inertia of a seemingly
unchangeable status quo. Prime Minister Netanyahu, now an apparent constant in
Israeli governance, has no interest in negotiating an endgame deal with the
Palestinians. The continuation of Palestinian violence, a still hostile Hamas
government in Gaza, a Middle East in meltdown, an Arab world distracted by Iran
and the Islamic State, and Israel’s growing closeness with Egypt all create
very little chance that there will be an intense focus on negotiations to
create a Palestinian state. Even with the surge of lone-wolf attacks (now
abating somewhat), the normalcy and vitality of life in Israel proper results
in zero pressure on the government to do anything about the Palestinian issue.
Indeed, Israel, according to the global happiness index, ranked the 11th-happiest country in the world in 2015 — a stunning fact, particularly when
you look at the preceding 10. The very real danger that the continuing
occupation will erode Israel’s character as a Jewish democratic state, increase
its international isolation, and strain relations with its friends, including
the United States, is present but simply not felt immediately or severely
enough to overcome the risks of taking bold steps to end that occupation.
Is there anything left to do?
Perhaps
the most compelling reason that the status quo continues is that no way has
been found of fundamentally altering it to the benefit of Israelis and
Palestinians alike.
This
may seem tautological. But it makes an important point. Fifty years on, many
different options have been tried: quality of life and the Jordanian option in
the 1980s; the Oslo interim accords of the 1990s; the Camp David endgame
efforts (2000); the Annapolis negotiations (2007-2008); Ariel Sharon’s
unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (2005); the Kerry peace effort (2013-2014).
None has worked. And the cumulative impact of these failures has begun to
seriously undermine the notion that there is in fact a solution that’s workable
and acceptable to both sides.
But no
matter. The same proximity that creates conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians will also guarantee that they will continue to look for these
kinds of solutions. Whether they find them is another matter. Indeed, even as I
write this column, Israelis and Palestinians are coming off yet another
seemingly hopeful but apparently failed effort to negotiate Israel’s turning
over of more control to Palestinians in parts of the West Bank.
And I’m
certain that before the year is out there are three things you will be able to
take to the bank. John Kerry will again be talking about the unsustainable
status quo and the dangers it presents. The Obama administration will have
launched some effort to leave its mark on the peace process, and the
unsustainable sustainable status quo and the headaches it portends will still
be around to plague the U.S. president lucky enough to sit in the White House
next year.
