Setting aside a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main impediment to peace, to work on the region’s other priorities, marks a fundamental shift that just might work
By Michael Oren, TOI
President Donald Trump announces an agreement to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in the Oval Office of the White House on August 13, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images/AFP)
The impending peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is more than just a stunning diplomatic breakthrough. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of peace-making.
For more than 50 years, that paradigm has been based on seemingly unassailable assumptions. The first of these was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core dispute in the Middle East. Resolve it, and peace would reign throughout the region. The premise was largely dispelled by the Arab Spring of 2011 and the subsequent civil wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Still, a large body of decision-makers, especially from Europe and the United States, continued to regard a solution to Israel-Palestine as the panacea for many, if not most, of the Middle East’s ills. Then-secretary of state John Kerry’s intense shuttle diplomacy, which paralleled the massacre of half a million Syrians in 2012-14, proceeded precisely on this assumption.
The next assumption was that core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settlement-building in Judea/Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Freeze it and the dispute would be easily mediated. This, theory, too, collapsed in the face of facts. Israel withdrew from Gaza, uprooting 21 settlements, in 2005, and then froze settlements for much of 2009-10. The conflict nevertheless continued and even worsened, but that did not prevent foreign policymakers from persisting in the belief that peace is incompatible with settlements.
And, in addition to ceasing construction in the territories, Israel was expected to give virtually all of them up. This was the third assumption — that peace with the Arab world could only be purchased with Israeli concessions of land. This belief is as old as Israel itself. The first Anglo-American peace plans — Alpha and Gamma — were predicated on Israeli concessions in the Negev and elsewhere. After 1967, the principle applied to areas captured by Israel in the Six Day War and, after the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982, to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The same secretary of state Kerry repeatedly warned Israel that failure to forfeit those areas would result in its total international isolation.
Yet another assumption held that “everyone knows what the final agreement looks like.” With minor modifications and territorial swaps, this meant that a Palestinian state would be created along the pre-1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would give up the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, agree to end the conflict with Israel and to cease all further claims, and to accept the formula of “two states for two peoples.” Israel, in turn, would remove dozens of settlements, redivide its capital, and outsource West Bank security either to the Palestinians or some international source. Of all the assumptions, this was the most divorced from reality. Not a single aspect of it was achievable. In fact, no one knew what final agreement looked like.
Finally, successive peace-makers assumed that the Palestinians, as the weaker party, had to be rewarded, especially when they left the negotiating table. The Palestinian Authority could promote terror and reject far-reaching peace plans and in return receive major increments of aid, as well as increased international recognition. Not surprisingly, this reinforcing behavior merely incentivized the Palestinians to ramp up their support for terror and to keep rejecting peace.
But now comes the Israel-UAE agreement and overturns each of these assumptions. It shows that resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict is nowhere near as important as countering the Iranian threat and stimulating Middle East development. It proves that, in order to achieve peace with a powerful Arab state, Israel does not have to uproot a single settlement or withdraw from a meter of land. It opens the way to alternative approaches to addressing the dispute, one that is not dependent on Israelis and Palestinians offering concessions that neither can ever make. And the agreement punishes, rather than rewards, the Palestinians for leaving the table. It will not be surprising if, in the coming weeks, the Palestinian Authority begins to intimate its willingness to return.
For more than half of a century, the paradigm of Middle East peace-making has proven highly resistant to change. Yet even the fiercest advocates of that belief-system must recognize the seismic shift that will take place once the UAE-Israel treaty is signed. Some will no doubt insist on adhering to disproven assumptions. Those who care about peace will abandon them.
Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and a member of Knesset, is the author of Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide(Random House, 2015).
Dhimm is a historical[1] term referring to non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection.[1][2]:470 The word literally means “regulated person”,[3] referring to the state’s obligation under sharia to regulate the individual’s life, property, and freedom of religion, in exchange for submission to the sharia state and payment of the jizya tax, which complemented the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects.[4] Dhimmis were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims, and did not enjoy equal protection under the law such as freedoms reserved for Muslims.
Jews were dhimis in Muslims countries. There houses had to be built lower than Muslims. They needed ride lower than Muslims. In Israel Muslims are free citizens with full civil rights. Muslims in Israel do not need to pay a special tax to live in Israel like Jews did as Dhimis in Muslim Countries.
So when someone says Muslims in Israel live as Dhimis in Israel they are ignorant of the facts or knowledge of what a Dhimi status actually is.
@ Marsha .roseman:
Hi, Marsha
The Bible predicts war for Israel, in at least two places: Ezek 38 (with Turkey and Iran) and Zechariah 14 (with everyone). While Adam overstated the “strength” of the Palestinians, he was correct in saying that virtually the whole world is against Israel.
The UAE is in the process of normalizing relations with Israel. That makes three Arab nations who have done so, to some extent: Egypt, Jordan and now UAE. Before Obama came to power, there were also three, the third being Mauritania; so the situation today is largely the same as it was in 2008. Meanwhile, respected voices in the UAE are saying that recognition is only a first step, to be followed by Israeli recognition of an independent Palestinian state in YeShA and Jerusalem.
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, has correctly been saying for years, that there will not be anything resembling “peace” between Israel and the Arab minority until the Arabs acknowledge defeat. I think that’s a “Pipe dream” (pun intended).
I’m glad the UAE has recognized Israel: It should be good for both parties, just as it is good today with Egypt-Israel-Jordan. It should also be good for President Trump’s re-election campaign. Beyond that, I’m not very bubbly.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The minority population in Israel are effectively dhimmis — which, in their own eyes, makes them losers. The Muslims are in a stronger position in many parts of Europe and Canada, where they are allowed to live under Sharia Law and effectively subjugate their non-Muslim neighbors in no-go zones.
What a great day for Israel, Arabs, Peace, and President Trump. One can hope for future Peace Treaties with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain.
The assumption that the Palestinians were the “weaker party” has never been true. That is because they have the support, in one form or another, of nearly the entire “international community,” while Israel has been largely isolated from the outside world, at least in terms of political support. Hundreds of anti-Israel resolutions are routinely passed nearly every year by various United Nations bodies, with nearly unanimous support from the 180 or so UN members. There is even a UN “Committee on the UNalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” which spends several hundred million dollara a year on anti-Israel propaganda. The European Union actively promotes Palestinian Arab settlement in areas of Judea-Samaria that had no population at all before 1967. Israel is afraid to promote settlements in Judea-Samaria because of great-power, including American, opposition.
The Arab states allied with the Palestinians are armed to the teeth, as is Iran and Hezbollah. THe PLO is armed by the United States and Europe..They receive hundreds of millions of dollars every year
in aid from the EU. Iran , Turkey, and Qatar supply Hamas with additional hundreds of millions, as well as thousands of missiles and other advanced weapons. Before 1991, Russia supplied the PLO, Syria and Egypt with hundreds of millions of dollars of armaments. The U.S. continues to arm Jordan, which remains allied to the PLO and Hamas (provided they don’t actually station terrorist forces within Jordan).
Israel has substantial armed forces, but the great powers, even including the United States, won’t permit them to use their army and weapons to crush the Palestinian terrorists or occupy their sanctuary territories.
On balance, the Palestinian terrorist groups are the stronger party in the conflict.