Buying "Peace," Buying the Palestinians

JINSA
Report #: 1,041
23 November '10

The United States is offering Israel a variety of gifts and promises in exchange for a 90-day building freeze that includes eastern Jerusalem (according to a U.S. official, as reported by Ha'aretz) to induce the Palestinians to negotiate with Israel for the Palestinian state to which President Obama appears committed.

The Palestinians should be thrilled!

The President of the United States is on their side - the discussion is about establishing Palestine, not about securing Israel. The President didn't ask for Palestinian concessions, just Israeli concessions that can be interpreted as responsive to Palestinian demands. He is not asking that the Palestinians stop supporting terror and hasn't repeated President Bush's demand that they find, "new leadership untainted by terror." He doesn't seem to notice that the Palestinian prime minister is leading a boycott of Jewish businesses. He doesn't demand that the Palestinians recognize the historical ties of Jews to the land or that they give legitimacy to Jewish sovereignty there. He demands instead that the "occupation" end. Jewish history in Jerusalem is ignored, as is the promise to Israel made explicit in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." UNESCO calls the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of Machpelah - which even historical Arab writings call Jewish places - "Palestinian sites" and the President doesn't seem to notice.

But wait, there's more.

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If Israel Won’t Say It, Who Will?

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
24 August '10

In yesterday’s post, I discussed some of the negative consequences of Israel’s habit of treating its own negotiating demands as unimportant. But there is another devastating consequence: its effect on international public opinion.

Take the latest Israel Project poll, which found that even in America, normally a pro-Israel bastion, only 45 percent of respondents believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is committed to peace, and only 51 percent — down from 63 percent last year — think America should support Israel.

The second finding isn’t due solely to the first, but neither is it unrelated: even Americans who realize that peace isn’t possible now expect Israel to be committed to it in principle.

So why do Americans think Netanyahu doesn’t want peace? Well, everyone knows the Palestinians have demands that he refuses to meet (like a pre-negotiations commitment to the 1949 armistice lines); they say so constantly. But few people realize Israel has demands the Palestinians have consistently refused to meet because Israel doesn’t say so.

To understand how deep this Israeli pathology runs, consider official Israel’s response to a New York Times editorial earlier this month. The editorial urged Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to begin direct talks with Israel but sympathized with the fear he “no doubt” feels that Netanyahu “will use the process to give the illusion of progress while never addressing Palestinian concerns about borders, security, refugees and the future of Jerusalem” — and that despite this, “the Palestinians will be blamed if negotiations fail.”

Based on past experience, the reverse is far more likely: in previous talks, Israel made massive concessions on these issues while the Palestinian made no concessions at all to Israel’s concerns, yet most of the world still blamed Israel. The Times, however, neglected to mention that possibility.

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The Blackmailer’s Paradox

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
23 August '10

With direct negotiations about to begin, Israeli negotiators should enroll in a crash course with the country’s Nobel laureate in economics, Prof. Robert Aumann. Aumann, whose specialty is game theory, offered valuable advice in an interview with Haaretz last month, in which he described a game-theory concept known as “the blackmailer’s paradox.”

“Someone offers Reuven and Shimon NIS 1,000 together, if they can manage to agree on the question of how to split the money between them. Reuven says to Shimon: ‘Great, let’s split it half and half.’ Shimon says: ‘No. I am not leaving here with less than NIS 900. You will get 100. Take it or leave it.’ Reuven says to him: ‘Be rational. What is the difference between us? Why should you get more?’ Shimon says: ‘Rational or not, do what you want. Either I leave here with 900 or with nothing. You decide.’

“Reuven thinks and says: ‘Okay, NIS 100 is money nevertheless. What am I going to do with this irrational mule? I myself am rational and I will take the 100. I need to advance my goal of getting as much money as possible, and my choice is between zero and 100. One hundred is still something.’

“What is the paradox? That the irrational person gets more than the rational person.”

The problem with Israel’s negotiations with both the Palestinians and Syria, Aumann said, is that the Arabs have successfully played the role of the blackmailer: they have convinced both themselves and Israel that their demands are sacred and must be met fully, whereas “we don’t manage to convince ourselves that anything is sacred.” And because Israel can’t convince itself, “there isn’t anything that we can convince the other side is sacred to us, that we’re willing to ‘be killed for it, rather than transgress.’”

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