George Bush graces the cover of this week’s Economist with the headline, “Mr. Palestine: The only man who could make it happen.”
This is part of a news cycle that’s about to begin around the upcoming Middle East peace summit. The conference begins tonight in Washington, D.C. and then moves to Annapolis, Maryland. Top American, Israeli and Arab officials including President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and representatives from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries will attend.
My concern about the Economist’s coverline is that it is based on flawed logic. The world loves to blame the Bush administration’s lack of engagement on the Middle Eastern conflict as the major barrier to peace. Roger Cohen of the NY Times, said, “While the Bush administration looked away, Israelis and Palestinians lost sight of each other.” But an understanding of the conflict’s history leads me to believe that no American – specifically, no American President – could mediate peace as did Teddy Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War.
American lack of engagement is not responsible for the historical “No” that the Arab world has delivered each time peace was in the balance. In 1937 the Peel Commission report offered a two-state solution. The Jews said yes, the Palestinians said no. In 1947 there was another offer of a contiguous Palestinian state and a non-contiguous Jewish state. Again, the Jews said yes and the Palestinians said no. And in the fall of 2000, with Bill Clinton toiling for peace at Camp David, Israel offered 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, a capital in Jerusalem, control of East Jerusalem, control of the Temple Mount, 30 billion dollars in a compensation package, and symbolic return of several thousand refugees. Again, the Palestinians said no and launched wave after wave of suicide attacks. Clinton, perhaps the most engaged president we’ve ever seen on this issue, wrote that after Arafat decided to walk away from the summit and suspend negotiations, the PLO leader paid him the following compliment for his efforts: "You are a great man." Clinton responded, "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one."
The Economist states that, “Mr. Bush has it in his power to turn Annapolis into a significant step towards peace. All he has to do is pluck up the courage and make the right speech.” The problem here is that the right speech is not going to stop Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Arab world from believing that Israel does not have the right to exist. This is a fundamental chasm that no amount of negotiation can gap.
Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said recently that the Palestinians would never formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
"Israel can define itself however it sees fit; and if it wishes to call itself a Jewish state, so be it," he said in an interview with the satellite station Al-Arabiya. "But the Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity."
When this type of sentiment comes from the “moderate” side of the negotiating table, one wonders how peace will ever be possible. In my mind, it can only be possible when the Palestinians and the Arab world decide to make it happen. They must choose: Is this a land dispute or a challenge to Israel’s existence? If the issue is the existence of Israel, no amount of negotiating, bullying, or interim trust-building measures are going to solve the problem.
Of course, in the hope that it is truly a geographic disagreement, Israel and the U.S. need to be willing to negotiate. But let’s understand the issues before setting the Bush Administration up for inevitable failure. In December of 2006, Thomas Friedman wrote an op-ed in the NY Times called Mideast Rules to Live By. The list is an insightful and world-weary take on the Middle East maelstrom and offers the following as its final rule:
Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.
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But you don't address the issue of Israel's having taken Palestinian land in the first place. Maybe if Israel acknowledged that they are basically squatters, the Arab world would be more likely to negotiate and make concessions of its own. What's your take on this?
ReplyDeleteThis argument is faulty on many levels, but let’s start with a brief historical timeline of the land with help from “The Case for Israel” and Wikipedia: Israel:
ReplyDelete1. For more than 1,000 years (1000 BC – 70 AD), the Jews formed the main settled population of Palestine.
2. In 70 AD, the Romans captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and the city, and took many Jews as captives to Rome.
3. Thus began the Diaspora, and many Jews fled across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
4. During the six centuries that followed the Roman conquest, some Jews still remained in Palestine, mostly near the four “Holy Cities”: Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and Jerusalem.
5. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim Arabs in 637 AD and held until 1099 AD.
6. From 1099 AD – 1291 AD, the Christian Crusaders took over. They were a merciless bunch, persecuting and slaughtering the Jews of Palestine.
7. The Mameluks (Muslims) then took over and ruled until 1516.
8. In 1517, the Ottoman Empire (also Muslim) took Palestine as its own, and many Jews of Europe sought refuge in their former homeland to escape Christian persecution and expulsion.
9. In 1881 and again in 1904-1914, two large waves of Jewish immigration occurred, bringing tens of thousands of Jews from across Europe.
10. Around 1918, as the Ottoman Empire was in collapse, the British Empire assumed control of the former Jewish homeland.
11. During World War I, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued what became known as the Balfour Declaration, which favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
12. In the early part of the 20th century, more waves of immigration took place. And with the rumblings of WWII, hundreds of thousands of Jews continued to seek their historical home. With many countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, Jews who could escape came to British Palestine.
13. By the end of World War II, Jews accounted for 33% of the population of Palestine, up from 11% in 1922.
The Case for Israel states, “The reality is that the Palestine to which the European Jews immigrated was vastly under populated, and the land onto which the Jews moved was, in fact, bought primarily from absentee landlords and real estate speculators.”
This is not to say that there were no Arabs, but it was hardly as geographically valuable as we know it today. Its boundaries and political identity were ever shifting. When the British tried to fairly partition the land into both Jewish and Arab nations, the Arabs said no. The Jews said yes to a non-contiguous area without Jerusalem, but still the Arabs said no. Eventually, the United Nations voted to create a Jewish Homeland in the aftermath of WWII.
According to Wikipedia, the UN Plan “divided the country into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to be designated an international city, administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status. The Jewish community accepted the plan, but the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected it.
“Regardless, the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiration of the British Mandate for Palestine. Not long after, five Arab countries – Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq – attacked Israel, launching the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
“After almost a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on May 11, 1949. During the course of the hostilities, 711,000 Arabs, according to UN estimates, fled from Israel.”
These Arabs were not absorbed by their Arab brethren and were forced to live in poor conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt never worked to help create an independent homeland in either of these areas. In fact, there was no Palestinian cause (as we no know it) until Israel took the West Bank and Gaza in a war of self-defense in 1967.
I cover the rest in my 11.26.07 post.