Reasons why these signs of hope may be extinguished:
Hard-line militants ignore Palestinian popular opinion, Palestinian police unwilling/unable/too bombed-out to stop them.
Israelis choose the “no-exit, more of the same” option, re-elect Sharon.
America attacks Iraq, throws the whole thing into the sh*tcan.
Americans, not only Jews but also Fundamentalist Christians, have caused much mischief in the Middle East with their financial and political support for the most hard-line Israeli politicians and policies, and their “targeting” of Congressmembers who criticize Israel. (Regarding the current conflict, there is greater tolerance for diversity of opinion in Israel itself than in America.) Maybe it’s time for all peace-loving Americans to be a counter-weight to that, by sending a campaign contribution to Amram Mitzna. I might do that myself. We have nothing to lose by taking advantage of this small window of opportunity. We have peace and a possible reduction in anti-American terrorism to gain.
Maybe you have it backwards, tclouie. Maybe a majority of Palestinians now oppose attacks on Israeli civilians because of stern reprisal measures, not in spite of them.
Arafat had his best chance for a lasting peace when Ehud Barak was PM of Israel. He blew it.
Though I’d like to see another serious attempt made for peace, I don’t see it happening anytime soon until/unless the Palestinians abandon Arafat and violent rhetoric.
Yeah, stern reprisals and re-occupation of the West Bank is a good idea. It has been so effective in the past, and it prevents future terrorist attacks. Right?
Sheesh.
It continually dismays me how the pro-Sharon hard-liners offer no hope and no solutions except “more of the same.” If you really want the current situation to end, you have to indulge in some creative thinking and take some risks, including the ultimate risk of hope.
Even if it doesn’t happen in this election, one day the Israeli and Palestinian people will lose patience with their leaders and demand solutions that “break the box.” But a lot of that depends on how much flexibility American lobbyists and politicians are willing to permit. Hence, the title of this thread.
BTW, milroyj, I strenuously object to your premise. Negotiating with a population that has legitimate aspirations for political self-determination and economic independence does NOT equal “negotiating with terrorists”. And if you want to take your premise one step further by saying ALL Palestinians are terrorists, well, I’ll just say that maybe Chumpsky is right when he labels your side with the r-word.
december: surprisingly, I may agree with you for once. It may very well be that two years of suffering has caused this shift in Palestinian opinion. However, I am very much afraid that this new attitude may be short-lived. If the current window of opportunity for peace is not taken advantage of, the majority opinion may go back to supporting suicide bombings.
(This has happened before. In other threads, I have given cites that show the hardening of Palestinian opinions from 1993 to 2000, when more settlements than ever were being built in the West Bank.)
Repression can either harden people or make them more complacent; the difference depends on what they think will happen in the future.
Bryan Ekers: it is time to put to rest once and for all the myth of the “last, best offer.” Barak’s solution was unacceptable because it left the settlements in place, and the settlements are most of the problem. By the year 2000, Palestinians had less freedom of movement than before the Oslo accords. Most major roads in the West Bank are now for Israelis only, and the Palestinians are hemmed in and restricted to isolated bantustans. Under Barak’s proposal, Palestinians would have had to ask permission from Israel every time they wanted to travel to another part of their own country, and that is not a basis on which to build a viable independent state. The only Israeli proposal that will be acceptable to the Palestinians will be the one that deals with the issue of the settlements.
tclouie
IMHO you miss the point about Arafat. Barak’s offer may have been great, it may have been mediocre, it may have been poor, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it went far further than any other Israeli offer to date. What matters even more was that Arafat rejected both the Camp David offer and the Taba offers (which by all accounts went even farther) with out a counter offer.
This act – slapping Israel’s outstretched hand (after all they were going far further than ever before) – along with a maybe-coincidental-maybe-not upswing in violence was enough to shatter the Israeli Left. They clung to whatever fragments of power they could in Sharon’s Likud government. Labor placed the onus for peace-making in Arafat’s hands, and he turned away from it. This is nothing unexpected – Arafat has only made peaceful gestures when he felt that he (rather than his people) could gain from it. They gambled on Arafat and they lost.
I believe that unilateral withdrawal is the way to go. I support Mitzna. But I can’t see how cynical Israeli voters will be able to support that message. They are still in seige mentality, they can’t lift their heads up and see how the ever-present violence and uncertainty will be reduced by making themselves more militarily vulnerable. They can’t see how an act which will certainly be interpreted as a reward for terroristic tactics will serve them well in the long term.
Mitzna and Labour will lose seats in the election. Likud and hard-line right parties will gain. It is possible that Sharon will be able to form a religious-right coalition, which IMHO is the worst possible thing for the long term survival of Israel. But I think it is inevitable, as there has been no real change in attitudes on either side since the beginning of the intifada.
Are the Palestinian people terrorists? No. But the Palestinian leadership, with whom negotiations would presumably take place, are. So where does that leave us?
Hmmm…and I suppose it’s just a coincidence that this just so happens to be the post-Oslo period, when the Palestinians had just been offered something close to a state (and hence more power than previously)? Or that it was soon after Israel and the US brought back Arafat from Tunisia, turning his image from isolated, abandoned terrorist to international statesman? Cum hoc != propter hoc.
Strangely enough, before reading your post, and just a couple hour ago, I was precisely considering making a donation to the Israeli labor. Which is a very unusual thought for me, since I never made any donation to a political party in my own country.
I was wondering if Israeli law allowed donations from foreigners to political parties. I would suspect it does, since most probably many foreign Jews would want to do so. Does someone know?
I wish this man would be elected. Though unfortunately, I strongly doubt he will be.
edwino, if you read the cite I provided, an article which is itself very heavily referenced, you will find that even if Barak’s offer was the best offer ever up to that point, the Palestinians had to reject it. Barak wanted an “end-of-conflict” statement from the Palestinians, whereby they would have waived all further claims against Israel, forever. The Palestinian people would never have been able to go back to the table for a better deal, and the settlements would have been locked in forever. A lousy offer that precludes the possibility of any future offers is no offer at all.
Furthermore, my cite demonstrates that even after the rejection of Barak’s offer, things were still quiet in the Palestinian areas for a few more months. The Second Intifada, when it finally came, was the result of Israeli troops shooting Palestinian demonstrators at the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa site. It was not the result of Arafat rejecting Barak’s offer.
If anyone is directly responsible for the Intifada, it’s not Arafat. It’s Sharon, with his ill-advised and provocative visit to Al-Aqsa. And it worked for him, didn’t it? It made him Prime Minister after all.
Fang, it is certainly NOT a coincidence that Palestinian attitudes hardened during the post-Oslo period. According to opinion polls (cited in my other thread), Palestinians started this period with a great deal of hope for the peace process and co-existence with their Israeli neighbors. However, conditions actually got worse for the Palestinians, post-Oslo! More settlements were built than ever before, and the Palestinians ended this period with less freedom of movement and less material prosperity than before Oslo.
Therefore, when the current conflict began, most Palestinians supported the suicide bombers. The fact that they no longer do so, presents a window of opportunity which must not be squandered. I’m afraid that re-electing Sharon may slam shut this window of opportunity and cause Palestinian attitudes to harden again.
This makes no sense. First of all, the Palestinians would have gotten a state and about 97% of the land they wanted. That’s pretty good, given that in a compromise settlement, neither party gets all that they want.
Furthermore, Arafat had the option of making a counter-offer. That’s what normally happens in negotiating.
He certainly has no excuse for responding to the most generous offer ever with a new intifada. Arafat’s response made it clear that he will never agree to any final settlement. Chances are he prefers permanent war, since it serves him personally.
tclouie
Your rebuttal did not address my point. I conceded that 1) Barak’s offer may have been poor and unacceptable by the Palestinians and 2) that the negotiation results may or may not have been causative to the intifada. I have read that FAIR site before, and I am familiar with their arguments. My argument is irrespective of their views on Camp David and the intifada.
The Israeli Left was shattered by Arafat. This was done by something between direct design (rejection of negotiation followed by an order to start violent protests) and negligence (walking away from negotiation because he thought he could still get a better deal followed by a blind eye turned to increased violence). This is really unfortunate because Israel was at the point where they could have accepted painful compromise for a lasting peace. I believe their best hope is still unilateral withdrawal, and I still strongly support Labour because of it. But, since Arafat is still around and since the violence continues, IMHO the cynical Israeli is far less willing to make painful compromises for peace. So Labor will lose big.
Why? Because the intifada did nothing to the cynical Israeli except reinforce old, painful stereotypes of the Palestinian As A Terrorist. The intifada following the greatest progress on peace does nothing except summon images of the Mufti of Jerusalem in 1948 calling to push all Jews into the sea, of Nasser in 1967, of the 1972 Munich Olympics, of the PLO charter, of the Phased Plan, ad infitintum. This is not to say the Israelis are innocent or that the Palestinians don’t deserve a homeland. It just reinforces a stereotype.
The stereotype needs to be broken. IMHO what is needed is a sea change in the Palestinian governance. There needs to be actual compromise – dropping the unrealistic demands for full right of return and compensation, agreement to compromise on borders, agreements on giving Jews control over the Western Wall, etc. Meaningful change, not just verbal agreements to drop clauses from the Palestinian charter. It could start small – public statements in Arabic supporting Israel’s right to exist in peace, desire for a Palestinian homeland on the West Bank of the Jordan and Gaza and not in Haifa or Tel Aviv. Arrests of “engineers” and known ringleaders. Make Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and PFLP illegal. Arrest leaders. Free and fair elections. Finally, a return to the negotiating table with an agreement to compromise. Then, we will see the Left in Israel return. Or we’ll even see the Right make peace. Even the hawkish Likud prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, made lasting peace with land exchange when real overtures to peace were initiated. It is not so complicated.
In the past two years, nothing has happened. For the most part, neither Labor or the Palestinians have shifted much on their policies. It didn’t work for Barak and it made things a lot worse. So Israelis go with the alternative, Likud and Sharon. So Labor made a minor shift to the left with Mitzna. It is not big enough to convince the cynical Israeli that it actually may work. And you will see that clearly at the next elections.
edwino, I am afraid we are stuck with Arafat for the time being since he is the leader who was elected the last time the Palestinians voted. For better leadership to come forward, there will have to be a new election. The question is, will the IDF permit an election in Palestinian territory, with all the logistical and security arrangements that that implies? In another thread, I provided a link to an article that reports Israeli officials saying they will NOT permit it.
For that matter, Arafat could very well be re-elected. Just like Sharon!!! Cynical Israeli voters and cynical Palestinian voters, working together to keep a better future from coming into being.
With your list of suggested compromises, I can see that you are being creative and solution-oriented. I only disagree with one of your proposals, that of “dropping unrealistic demands for full right of return and [my emphasis] compensation.” In my opinion, the Palestinians will only drop full right of return if there is compensation! There needs to be one or the other.
The Israeli Left: from what I have heard, it still exists. I believe Peace Now and There Is A Limit are still functional, and there are hundreds of refuseniks who will not serve outside the Green Line. Rabbis For Human Rights is still planting trees and dismantling barricades, and there are some young Israelis who have joined the international solidarity movement. One of them was in Arafat’s besieged compound last April, and gave Colin Powell a tongue-lashing when he came to visit. This is what I have heard. Have things changed?
As for other possible solutions: in the most recent issue of The Nation magazine, Professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University says that the possibility of full Israeli citizenship, and a multiethnic state, are no longer taboo topics for discussion among Palestinians. It will be very interesting if that turns out to be true.
In my opinion, the disputing party that has the most power also has the greatest responsibility to end the dispute. Israel has greater power and therefore greater responsibility.
december, it seems you are not reading my posts or my cites very carefully. I don’t know where you’re getting the 97% figure; but even if that were true, the part annexed by Israel would include most of the West Bank’s water resources and arterial highways. Besides which, Israel would still exercise “security control” over the parts it did not formally annex, including the border with Jordan. To the average Palestinian, hemmed in by an uncrossable Israeli highway, unable to get to school, work or the hospital without a daily ordeal at the checkpoints, and deprived of trade and economic opportunities, that (probably fictional) “97%” would seem to be more like 40 acres – the dimensions of a small town.
a-hemm, cough The intifada was not started as Arafat’s response to Barak’s offer. Please see my previous post, and my previous cite.
In any event, it seems clear enough that if Palestine wants a lasting peace and a secure state, they have two choices:
[ul][li]They can conquer Israel.[/li][li]They can negotiate with Israel.[/li][/ul]
Since the first is unlikely in the extreme, their best bet is to negotiate a peace that gives them most of what they want and then after a few years of relative peace, move for looser restrictions to get free access to everything else. So long as the intifadah continues, Israel has very little incentive to make concessions. They have more incentive to make reprisals.
Yes, I’d like to see another Israeli PM elected who would be willing to go to the negotiating table. No, I don’t think anything will result so long as Arafat is on the other side.
The “average Palestinian,” eh? And, where are your cites confirming what you think the average Palestinian believes? In fact, I heard a commentator on TV who was part of those negotiations say that the Palestinian Delegation were very interested in that offer, but Arafat personally turned it down.
I also question your idea about checkpoints. How many Palestinians cross checkpoints every day? Of those, how many do so, because Israel has made jobs in Israel available to Palestinians? Especially because Arafat and the UN have done a piss poor job of creating economic opportunity in the teritories.
tclouie, I suspect that you have never been to Israel, and that your image of life there is different from the reality.
I have not been to Israel or the West Bank or Gaza. Have you? Was it just Israel proper, or did you witness conditions in the Occupied Territories as well?
If you have seen the Palestinian areas, and you have gleaned greater knowledge of the checkpoint situation due to that visit, please enlighten us. Answer your own questions.
Yes, I have been there, but I’m not an expert. I didn’t see many check points. Based on what I’ve seen on TV, the majority of Palestinians undergoing check points did so voluntarily because they are fortunate enough to have a job in Israel.
Of course, if the Palestinians ever stopped attacking and murdering Israelis, there would be less need for checkpoints. When I visited Israel, there was no Intifada in effect, so checkpoints may have been fewer at that time.
Your cite includes the words “right now.” Blaming Israel for the current conditions is an example of what we Jews call “chutzpah.” That is, the Palestinians started an intifada, meaning mass murder and terrorism against Israelis. Israel has reacted with checkpoints. Now UNICEF blames Israel because the checkpoints interfere with Palestinian children. I think the blame should go to the instigators, not those who are dealing with mass murder as best they can.
According to this cite, the Camp David offer would lead eventually to the Palestinians getting 94% of the West Bank, excluding Greater Jerusalem. Also, there would be free passage without checkpoints for Palestinians, except in times of emergency.