A few days ago, the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said that chances to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the issue of permanent borders would be modest. He argued that whatever happens, parties will be left only with “managing the crisis.” Difficult as it may look, Liberman has articulated what many observers already know. Ever since the peace process has run aground following the advent of Sharon’s first government, events unfolded have only reinforced what Liberman had said.
For many, the ongoing conflict seems so intractable that even a peace leaning government in Israeli will find it hard to push forward the peace process. In an interesting article, a leading Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar referred to a book, “Border between You and Us: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and the Ways to Resolve It,” which was written by Shaul Arieli to address the issue of the intractability of the problem. Other conflicts around the globe were addressed successfully but not the Palestinian-Israeli one, he argued.
The reasons for the failure to get a deal signed are well documented by Israelis. You always hear Israeli arguments like: Barak offered Arafat a lot and the latter responded by launching an intifada; Israel cannot evacuate some half million settlers; and Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad to target Israel as a response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. For many Israelis, these are not facts but lies. Once Yossi Belin picked on traditional Israeli excuses for not making peace. He wrote that Israeli leaders missed an opportunity in the 1970s of making peace by saying that there was “nobody to talk to.”
These arguments help obstruct the possibility of reaching a deal with the Palestinians and would prejudice the desired outcome. The problem on border is the real one. Each side, according to Shaul Arieli, approaches negotiations with a zero-sum mentality. The outcome is unsurprisingly failure! He proposes a road map of how to reach a final settlement. He said that the two sides should reach an understanding on the border reference line. While the Palestinians — backed by the international community — seeks the 1967 borders as the basis for a solution, Israeli governments over the last 10 years have not yet accepted this and never negotiated this in good faith. It is not as if the two sides do not know the requirements of a solution, but neither side to the conflict managed to ditch their self-righteous discourse. Short of doing that, Shaul Arieli argues, a solution to the conflict will not be possible.
The question that neither Akiva Eldar nor Shaul Arieli answered is: How can Israeli leaders put aside their positions when they are elected based on these positions. Far from being moderate, the Israeli society has shifted toward the right over the last 15 years. When all Israeli leaders seek political survival and reelection, it is almost impossible to transcend the internal political constraints. In fact, not a single Israeli prime minister has pushed forward peace since Oslo and survived politically and sometimes physically as in the case with Rabin.
I believe that both Palestinians and Israelis have been down the same road and peace is yet to materialize. It is not about resuming negotiations! To go to the bottom of issue, I argue that there is no peace camp in Israel. Over the last decade, right-wing candidates, after all, resoundingly won successive elections. Therefore, nothing short of undergoing internal shift within the Israeli society, the Israeli side will keep managing the crisis or keep the ball in the air for fear it falls and touches the ground.
When Obama became president in 2008, many argued that finally there would be an American president who could put a price tag on Israeli procrastinating tactics thus changing the Israeli society. This was easier said than done. Obama proved to be ineffective and the Israelis picked Netanyahu again. Now, though the Palestinian issue is on the American administration’s back burner, Obama is expected to do something. It remains to be seen whether President Obama will invest personally in the process and whether this will make any difference. Until this happen, I think Lieberman’s argument that it is all about “managing the crisis” is unfortunately accurate.
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