T. Belman. I strongly disagree with Abrams on the need to keep the TSS alive because it should never be achieved. Israel should never permit another Gaza to occupy the highlands of Samaria overlooking Tel Aviv. He wants to keep the TSS alive forever. This is the same position of the EU and the US. Instead, Israel should make it clear that it is dead so that work can begin on something that is achievable. The sooner we get off the slippery slope of the TSS the better.
Israel’s allies won’t support an out-and-out renunciation of the two-state solution.
Like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, the “peace process” may die unless we all clap loudly and say we believe in it. In “The Two-State Solution Is in Stalemate,” Evelyn Gordon tells us to keep our hands down and embrace that terrible danger. In fact, she argues, we’d all be better off acknowledging that, whatever the fate of Tinkerbell, the “peace process” is already defunct.
As she rightly says, the notion that the parties are an inch apart, and that all the outlines of a final status-agreement are well understood, is nonsense. There is no chance of a comprehensive peace in the foreseeable future—because the issues are too hard and the disagreements too deep, and because today’s Palestinian leadership is illegitimate and unable to make the difficult decisions and compromises peace would require.
What then should Israel do? Gordon outlines some steps, especially in the realm of economic development, that would make life better for the Palestinians regardless of the nature and timing of any future agreement. I’m in agreement with most of these, but not with one she mentions but does not explain: “even the resettlement of some Palestinian refugees.” Starting down that road would be a mistake. But there are other practical steps Israel can take to make life easier (and Netanyahu has already taken quite a few, though he gets no credit for them), and Israel should allow more Palestinian economic activity and political control in substantial parts of the West Bank.
Gordon is right to point out the costs to Israel of endlessly repeated but unsuccessful negotiating sessions. I would add that there are considerable costs to the United States as well. To try and try and fail and fail makes the U.S. seem incompetent, powerless—or deceptive in its repeated statements of commitment to the goal. But I think she underestimates the costs of appearing to give up entirely on a comprehensive agreement. To many audiences, primarily in Europe but even in the United States, Israel is either trying for a peace deal or—as Haviv Rettig Gur has quoted an influential Israeli—is “asking its liberal allies to come to terms with indefinite occupation.” As Gur argued in Mosaic last year, “It is not Israel’s enemies who will be repelled by a de-facto decision to cease seeking a two-state solution, but its most important friends. For these friends, it is one thing to struggle and fail to achieve peace, quite another to renounce the struggle altogether.”
Perhaps this argues for hypocrisy, or at least what diplomats like to call “nuance”: a stated policy of seeking a two-state solution combined with pragmatic efforts to improve Palestinian life. Under Netanyahu, Israel isn’t very far from that policy anyway. Moreover, Netanyahu’s continuing (if silent and, except by settlers, little noticed) efforts to restrict settlement expansion to the major blocks suggest that while he isn’t prepared to take the security risks of removing the IDF from the West Bank, he also isn’t keen on having small Israeli settlements all over the area and well beyond the part of it that will be kept by Israel in any final peace deal. In other words, Israel isn’t “gobbling up the West Bank” with new settlements that “make peace impossible,” as its critics charge—a fact that Israel’s liberal allies should be forced to acknowledge.
They should also be forced to acknowledge that everything happening in the Middle East these days makes Israel-Palestinian peace harder. The risks from creating a new, small, weak state of Palestine terrify the king of Jordan as much as they do the prime minister of Israel. The collapse of Syria and the rise of IS make establishment of a Palestinian state a danger to all its neighbors—and to the security of Palestinians. Putting this case—which Arab leaders already understand full well—should help persuade Western diplomats that attending to the daily needs of Palestinians is a far smarter path right now than another round of fruitless peace negotiations.
In brief, then, I would not have Israel abandon the “two-state solution” as a goal, but I agree with Gordon that Israel (and the United States) should not pretend that a peace deal is close or that the issues are anywhere near resolution.
Gordon puts fortha policy model for Israel to emulate in today’s circumstances: the model of America during the cold war. In several ways this works—the United States confronted the Soviets ideologically and militarily while burying them economically, and kept it up for decades. And we negotiated with the Soviets while never saying that peace was at hand. But I think she exaggerates the “bipartisan consensus” in America over how to conduct the cold war. That lasted for a while after World War II, but later decades saw an internal war over foreign policy. George McGovern won his party’s nomination with the slogan “Come Home, America.”
For his part, Ronald Reagan was vilified for calling the USSR an evil empire. In 1982 a million people joined a nuclear-freeze demonstration in New York City; dozens of cities and more than a dozen states passed nuclear-freeze resolutions; and the Catholic bishops endorsed the movement. On their own home front, the Israelis are doing better and are more united than Americans were, presumably because they face not only threats but constant attacks. The intifadas, it has often been explained, killed the Israeli peace movement.
But Gordon’s basic point is right: this is a long war, and waging it will require patience, military strength, ideological struggle, a resilient populace, and a vibrant economy. And she’s also right in her optimistic conclusion that Israel, like America, has all these attributes. What has been lacking recently is an American government that understands the dangers Israel faces and fully supports its actions in prevailing over them; this, we can hope, will be supplied in January 2017.
the real “peace process” has been going on behind the scenes, under the table, between Israel and the GCC. before POD Qatar had negotiated with Israel the approval to develop gaza. since that time, possibly even before, one can see the effect of the “understandings” with the GCC on most of BB;s decisions which seem odd: suddenly aborting the invasion of gaza in POD and instead agreeing to qatar hamas truce; entering into the 9 mos talks with PA; the regular sitcom of PA threats followed by Israeli withholding taxes; the release of prisoners by BB which is the only thing that could allow abbs to enter talks which both sides knew would go nowhere; the restraint at Protective edge; the support of the the GCC proxy of egypt; the support of the GCC for Israel in the PE war;…..
If we evaluate BB’s actions and decisions in the light of the existence of understandings such as these then BB’s behavior is explained. Going further, take note that even though the public image of Qatar was portrayed as morphing from one side of the spectrum to the other, everything in fact never changed but returned back to the center. during all this morphing Israels relation with qatar never changed. In my view most of the rhetoric is a show for fools put on by those who already know where its going.
To understand BB at this moment wrt settlement and the lynch mob of settlers by the fake right wing of Yaalon, rivlin and BB we should watch the movie “Breaker Morant”. The settlers are “Breaker Morant”
Polls indicate that in Gaza and in the territories there are significant numbers of Arabs who would emigrate if they received some money and a job offer in another country. Moshe Feiglin even calculated that such a policy would be cheaper than the cost of dealing with a hostile Arab population. Unfortunately the Israeli government is too corrupt and too stupid to think clearly about real solutions.
Just look at the map of Israel with Judea and Samaria carved. It out look like a cancer patient with important parts of the body amputated.
Such patient will dies rather sooner than later.
Israel with Judea and Samaria is 1/2 the size of Denmark or Holland.
Surely Jewish people deserve to have our tiny country. If Danes think that we should share Judea and Samaria with Arabs, perhaps they should give part of Copenhagen and a couple of their islands to Arab and see how happy they’ll be.
Israel has no allies, so don’t bother worrying what the EU, the UNO, NATO, the Roman papacy, or the US departments of State and Defense think of the Jewish State, the Jewish nation, any two-state solution of dividing Eretz-Yisrael.
Instead, Israel should concentrate on a plan that would simultaneously break up the Fatah/PLA ghost “state” into relatively small and geographically separated autonomous Arab cities which constitute Area A of the Oslo Accords, each under control of their main local blood-related clans, with Israel annexing Area C and extending its authority over the Area B villages.
Only the relatively small number of Arabs residing in Area C would be offered Israeli citizenship, and only with stringent conditions. The rest of them would live under the rule of their local hamoula bosses.
As part of this process, large-scale Jewish urban, industrial, commercial, agricultural and related development would forever seal control of most of Eretz-Yisrael to restored control of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation.
Would any of today’s array of foreign powers recognize such changes? Probably not in the short-term. But who among us should really give a damn about foreign recognition of Jewish national rights? In any case, as he decades and centuries deflate to the status of pages in mostly unread history books, de facto controls over land almost always become de jure. Unless and until some other power comes along to take your rights away and changes the maps.
In the end, there is power and no consideration other than power. And the time has come for the Jewish state and he Jewish nation to understand that the world holds you in contempt unless you have power. Real power, and none of the we-will-fix-world bullshit that clouds and befuddles the minds of too many Jews.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
Israel needs to educate its own left plus the outside world why the Oslo process can not work and come up with an alternative “Israeli Plan”.
Abrams has a vested interest to cove up failure.
We must not any longer defer to the Oslo architects at any level.
The TSS is dead.
Israel should move on and accept a hostile Arab state in its heartland is not in its best interests.
The iniquity of the Iranian capitulation has obviously not yet registered with Abrams, as he continues to advocate that Israel placate the implacable anti-Semites who have just signed its death warrant.