Long past time for the architects of Middle East failures to be quiet - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Longtime State Department peace processors who helped wreck the region under Clinton or Obama, and are now the first to criticize the Trump plan, lack credibility.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS,org..
30 January '20..

Disdain for President Donald Trump and the people who work in his administration runs deep in the media, as well as the foreign-policy establishment. At the core of this attitude is the current administration’s rejection of the conventional wisdom about diplomacy and the Middle East that governed American policy for decades.

Trump’s critics frame the debate about the administration as one that pits experts against amateurs. In this telling, Trump and his aides are a pack of bumbling ignoramuses. They are depicted as foolishly ignoring the advice of people who are more experienced and much smarter than they are, and thereby making already bad situations, such as the ongoing confrontation with Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, worse.

It’s true that Trump had no foreign-policy experience before becoming president. The team that he appointed to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was similarly lacking in diplomatic credentials. In particular, the trio of presidential adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East special envoy Jason Greenblatt and America’s ambassador to Israel David Friedman were essentially Trump’s real estate industry cronies rather than the sort of veteran policy wonks who would have been expected to fill such important slots in a more “normal” administration.

That’s why the critiques of Trump’s actions—his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposition of sanctions on the regime, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Jewish state’s right to the Golan, as well as his attempts to force the Palestinian Authority to cease funding terrorism—didn’t just elicit strong critiques from the ranks of those who had served in past administrations. The tone of the analyses that poured forth from liberal think tanks where alumni from the Clinton and Obama administrations, as well as some from the two Bush presidencies, now serve has been not so much harshly disapproving as dripping with contempt.

The same attitude is present in the commentary from establishment types about the Middle East peace plan that was rolled out this week in a White House ceremony. In an odd echo of the rage at Trump being heard from the leadership of the Palestinians, foreign-policy veterans have, for the most part, responded to the plan with a mixture of incredulousness, anger, predictions of doom and, most of all, with sneering condescension.

(Continue to Full Column)

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The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace - by Michael Mandelbaum

...Telling the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would affirm American support for international law, democracy, the peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the principle of equal rights for all peoples. It would also affirm American opposition to aggression and terrorism. It would, that is, put the United States—to use a term favored by recent administrations—on the right side of history.

Michael Mandelbaum..
Commentary Magazine..
14 April '16..

The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace. And it always has been, because its premises are false


The American presidency has accumulated a number of traditions that anyone holding the office is expected to perpetuate. Examples include delivering the State of the Union address to Congress, lighting the national Christmas tree, and presiding over the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The next president will no doubt continue all three. If he or she follows the pattern established by the most recent incumbents, however, the result of the peace process will be failure. Indeed, the continuation of the peace process as it has been practiced will not simply be futile: It will be positively harmful. The conduct of the peace process has made peace less likely. If it is to continue at all, a fundamental change in the American approach is needed.

Successive administrations have failed at the peace process because they have not understood—or not admitted to themselves—the nature of the conflict they have been trying to resolve. In the eyes of the American officials engaged in this long-running endeavor, making peace has been akin to a labor negotiation. Each side, they have believed, has desired a resolution, and the task of the United States has been to find a happy medium, a set of arrangements that both sides could accept. In fact, each side has wanted the conflict to end, but in radically different and indeed incompatible ways that have made a settlement impossible: The Israelis have wanted peace; the Palestinians have wanted the destruction of Israel.

At the core of the conflict, standing out like a skyscraper in a desert to anyone who cared to notice, is the Palestinian refusal to accept Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East. This attitude has existed for at least a century, since the Arab rejection of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. While much has changed in the region over those 10 decades, the conflict’s fundamental cause has not. The Palestinians’ position is expressed in their devotion to what has come to be called incitement: incessant derogatory propaganda about Jews and Israel, the denial of any historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem and its environs, and the insistence that all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Arabs, making the Jews living there, in the Palestinian view, contemptible interlopers to be killed or evicted. The Palestinians’ attitude has expressed itself, as well, in their negotiators’ refusal either to accept any proposal for terminating the conflict or to offer any counterproposals of their own. The goal of eliminating Israel also lies behind Palestinian officials’ glorification as “martyrs” of those who murder Israeli civilians, giving their families financial rewards to encourage such killings.

American officials have either ignored or downplayed all of this. They have never emphasized its centrality to the conflict, instead focusing on Israeli control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, which the Israeli army captured from Jordan in the 1967 War and on which Israel has built towns, villages, and settlements. American officials have regarded the “occupation,” as the international community has chosen to call it, of the West Bank as the cause of the ongoing conflict. In fact, the reverse is true. It is the persistence of the conflict that keeps Israel in the West Bank. A majority of Israelis believes that retaining control of all of the territory brings high costs but that turning it over entirely to Palestinian control, given the virulent Palestinian hostility to their very existence, would incur even higher costs. A withdrawal, they have every reason to believe, would create a vacuum that anti-Israel terrorist groups would fill. Ample precedent supports this view: When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and Gaza, two terrorist organizations—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—took control of the vacated territories and proceeded to launch attacks against the Jewish state.

France, Symbolic Votes and Anti-Semitic Incitement

...French President Francoise Hollande can distance himself from the vote all he wants, he’s done nothing to change course. When the last bout of anti-Semitic violence broke out, the French Jewish community mobilized to defend itself, since the state wouldn’t. The state then moved to disarm the Jews. Hollande is overseeing the further disintegration of civilized French society. I’m sure he and others would love to believe that, as the Times claims, “the strident tone of parts of the parliamentary motion and the wide margin of passage reflect Europe’s growing impatience with the breakdown of negotiations over a two-state solution,” rather than the truth, which is a far greater indictment of European society and its leaders.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
03 December '14..

Yesterday (Tuesday) the French parliament voted to recognize the nonexistent state of Palestine in a nonbinding move, in keeping with France’s firm commitment to base its foreign policy on delusions, appeasement, and surrender at the first sign of trouble. My initial instinct was to dismiss it, both because of France’s general irrelevance to the defense of the free world and because of its symbolic nature. But I was wrong to do so. In fact, the symbolic nature of France’s action is precisely what makes it so deadly, so dangerous, and so utterly indefensible.

What specifically changed my mind was the story accompanying this headline in the Algemeiner yesterday: “Paris Jewish Community in Shock Over Rape, Home Invasion ‘Because You Are Jews’.” On Monday, anti-Semitic thugs robbed a Jewish family in a Paris suburb and raped the 19-year-old woman, telling them it was because they were Jewish. I was far from alone in making the connection between the two stories–not because one caused the other (the vote happened after the rape) but because it makes clear the French government has no interest in protecting its Jews and no intention of combating–when it isn’t promoting it itself–the anti-Semitism that courses through the blood of French society.

The barbaric has become the prosaic in France today, and the parliamentary vote on “Palestine” is a good indication of why that is and will continue to be the case. Of course such votes against Israel are not victimless crimes, since Israel does suffer in the court of world opinion and subsequently at home: two more Israelis were stabbed today by an Arab terrorist who knows the world won’t muster outrage at the targeting of Jews simply for being Jews. After all, that’s how it is Western Europe today.

Yet aside from the impact on Israel’s diplomatic isolation, it’s also not a victimless crime at home. Indeed, the fact that the votes are symbolic is no justification at all. If the “Palestine” vote were replaced with something more than symbolic, if the French were playing some constructive role in an active (and actual) peace process, they could at least claim they were helping all parties take steps toward peace. The Israelis make sacrifices for peace all the time.

But the French are admitting that they are not doing anything of the sort. The vote is symbolic, meaning that it’s simply a case of the French government yelling again about the Jews and how the French government believes they must be blamed.

During this past summer’s Gaza war, France saw an uptick in anti-Semitic violence. This is because bigots draw no distinction between the Jewish state and the Jewish people. When they are angry at Israel, they start a pogrom; they aim their violence not at embassies but at synagogues. And when the French government makes a show of standing against Israel, it serves only one purpose: incitement.

Has the Post-Abbas Mideast Already Arrived?

...Just what is Abbas actually doing, as leader of the PA? Getting the Palestinians closer to a peace deal? Certainly not; he walked away from it (more than once). Preventing Hamas from setting the terms of the debate? Hardly. Keeping a lid on an angry Palestinian polity inclined to violence? Not anymore. Abbas may or may not get swept away by a new uprising. It’s ironic that what could save him from such a fate is the fact that, increasingly, it might not even be worth the trouble.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
05 November '14..

Hamas celebrated an act of suicide terrorism in Jerusalem today that mirrored both late October’s attack at a Jerusalem light rail stop and another attack later today in the West Bank. It is not suicide bombing, but more like a form of Islamist suicide by cop. Terrorists are driving cars into civilians–a tool of attack not new to the conflict but which is currently happening with some regularity–and in the first two attacks the terrorist killed a civilian and the terrorist was also killed, in each case by Israeli police arriving at the scene to stop more violence. In this afternoon’s attack, the third in the last two weeks, the driver of the vehicle sped away.

Hamas and other Palestinian “resistance” groups have not, apparently, abandoned suicide terrorism after all and are now engaged in a renewed campaign. This type of violence is, of course, reminiscent of the second intifada, which is why it has Jerusalem on edge. The Palestinians have responded to each attack by rioting, so they are basically in a consistent state of violent agitation.

There is something more concerning about this latest round of Palestinian violence, however. Though it is perpetrated in some cases by members of Hamas, it has a spontaneous quality to it, and the riots in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem are keeping the atmosphere that engenders it going seemingly around the clock. And as much as it is reminiscent of past such campaigns of violence, there is indeed something a bit different about this one: it is heralding the arrival of the post-Abbas Palestinian polity.

Machinations and the Settlements Dodge

...We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
15 October '14..

Responding to Monday’s Palestinian statehood vote in Britain’s parliament, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz penned an op-ed provocatively titled “It’s the Settlements, Stupid.” Horovitz argues that the erosion of Israel’s diplomatic standing that made Monday’s vote possible has in large part been on account of Israel’s settlement policy. If true, then we live in strange times, where building homes for Jews can cause more outrage than Hamas stockpiling rockets and Iran developing nuclear weapons with which to murder those same Jews. And yet the following day, Sir Alan Duncan, Britain’s envoy to Yemen and Oman, gave a shocking speech asserting that those endorsing settlements should be considered on par with racists and hounded from Britain’s public life. The reality is, it is not the settlements that have eroded Israel’s standing, but rather the completely warped narrative that now surrounds them. And what’s worse, many Israelis have in no small part helped to create that narrative.

As Horovitz points out, settlement building was referenced some 40 times during the Westminster debate. That is certainly testament to the extent to which this issue has been turned into the weapon of choice for those looking to pour scorn on Israel. Horovitz also gives examples of the kind of talk about settlements that he’s referring to. One Conservative MP, who began by professing his deep friendship for Israel, went on to say that the recent “annexation” by Israel of 950 acres of West Bank land had outraged him more than anything else in his entire political life. He explained that, given all his support for Israel in the past, this move had made him appear the fool. But the truth is, many people had been fooled by the way that this event was willfully misrepresented, first by the Israeli left, and then by the international media. For as Eugene Kontorovich pointed out here at the time, there had in reality been no annexation whatsoever. Israel had simply come to a factual administrative finding about the status of the land in question (much of it purchased by Jews before Israel’s founding), but the world was encouraged to imagine privately owned Palestinian property being appropriated for colonization.

This sense of alien colonization of Palestinian land sits at the core of what many feel about the settlements. That was certainly the notion promoted in the other statement referenced by Horovitz, this time from Labor’s Andy Slaughter. “Who can defend settlement building — the colonization of another country? We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

There is of course an argument for turning the West Bank into a Palestinian state one day, but like the misbelief that the green line holds some sacrosanct status under international law, it is hard to understand why the territory seized and occupied by Jordan for just 19 years represents the precise boundaries for any future Palestinian state. Besides, long before anyone starts trying to determine exactly which areas should constitute a Palestinian state, someone has to come up with a model for making the land-for-peace transaction workable. So far this exchange has proved catastrophic. Gaza is the most obvious example, although there are several others. But in Gaza the Israeli experience has been one of removing settlements and getting a security nightmare in return.

When The Rubber Man Meets the Peace Process

...But if the main barrier is Palestinian unwillingness to end their war on Israel, the problem is unsolvable and peace is unachievable. And to most of the world, blaming Israel unjustly is infinitely preferable to acknowledging that unpleasant truth.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
21 May '14..

As I noted yesterday, there’s no lack of evidence that even “moderate” Palestinians aren’t interested in ending their war on Israel. Yet most of the world will go through contortions worthy of the rubber man rather than admit it. A classic example is the interview a “senior American official” (widely reputed to be special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian talks Martin Indyk) gave to Yedioth Ahronoth earlier this month.

The official spent about 3,000 words blaming the talks’ breakdown on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and specifically its authorization of settlement construction during the negotiations. Only then did he describe what actually happened during those crucial final months when Secretary of State John Kerry was trying to broker a framework agreement:

“In February, Abbas arrived at a Paris hotel for a meeting with Kerry … He rejected all of Kerry’s ideas. A month later, in March, he was invited to the White House. Obama presented the American-formulated principles verbally – not in writing. Abbas refused.”

Then, in the very next sentence, came this astonishing defense: “The claim on your side that Abbas was avoiding making decisions is not true. He wasn’t running away.”

So long before the announcement of 700 new housing units that Kerry later termed the “poof” moment when everything blew up, Abbas had rejected all Kerry’s ideas and all President Barack Obama’s ideas. Yet he wasn’t “avoiding making decisions” or “running away”; he was a committed and engaged peace partner. Then who is to blame for his serial rejections? Why, Netanyahu, of course: Those “announcements of new housing tenders in settlements limited Abbas’ ability to show flexibility.”

In other words, if Netanyahu is intransigent, it’s Netanyahu’s fault. And if Abbas is intransigent, it’s also Netanyahu’s fault. Under this administration’s definition of “honest brokerage,” only one side is ever to blame; the Palestinians have no agency of their own.

The Palestinian Authority, Refugees, the Holocaust, and Peace

...As long as the “moderates” of Fatah are unwilling either to accept the basic responsibilities of sovereignty, like helping their own refugees, or to acknowledge basic historical truths like the Holocaust, they are no more “peace partners” than Hamas is. And by peddling the fiction that they are, Israel and the West aren’t bringing peace closer. They’re merely ensuring that Fatah has no incentive to change.

Evelyn Gordon..
CommentaryMagazine..
20 May '14..

Haaretz reported yesterday that if the Palestinian Authority’s planned Fatah-Hamas unity government actually arises, the U.S., like the European Union, will probably recognize it. Since Hamas has repeatedly said it will neither recognize Israel nor renounce violence, Israel is understandably upset at American and European willingness to peddle the fiction that a government in which Hamas is a full partner complies with those requirements. But Israel itself has helped to peddle a no less outrageous fiction for years–that PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, unlike Hamas, is a “partner for peace.” To understand how ridiculous this claim is, consider two recent developments: last week’s Haaretz op-ed by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and a decision by Al-Quds University’s academic union two weeks earlier.

Erekat’s op-ed consisted mainly of standard Palestinian lies and half-truths about the Nakba–like omitting any mention of the five Arab armies who invaded Israel in 1948, thereby starting the war that created the Palestinian refugees. Nevertheless, one sentence stood out: “In my own home town, Jericho, there are two refugee camps where thousands continue to live in miserable conditions.” That happens to be completely true. What Erekat neglected to mention, however, is that Jericho was the first city Israel turned over to Palestinian rule, way back in 1994. In other words, Jericho has been under Palestinian rule continuously for the last 20 years, during which time the PA has been the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid in the world. Yet not one cent of that money has been spent on improving conditions in Jericho’s refugee camps. Instead, 20 years later, Erekat is still blaming Israel for the “miserable conditions” in those camps.

This is not a trivial issue, because the entire peace process is predicated on the theory that Fatah actually wants a Palestinian state. Yet having a Palestinian state means taking responsibility for the Palestinians’ problems, including the refugees living in those camps, rather than continuing to blame Israel for them. And as Erekat’s statement shows, the Fatah-led PA has no interest in doing any such thing: It prefers leaving the refugees in their misery as a way to score points against Israel with international public opinion. In other words, it would rather pursue its war against Israel than actually exercise sovereignty by improving its people’s lives.

Kerry’s Debacle and Its Continuing Fallout

...The Israeli leadership’s decision to share that information was apparently made in response to the Palestinians’ attempt to blame Israel for the stalled negotiations. Leaking the letter to the press is also a good way to push back on the craven and self-discrediting efforts by Martin Indyk’s team to blame Israel in order to settle old scores. The blame game is, of course, far better than an intifada, which was Arafat’s answer to an offer of peace and mutual coexistence. But that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
07 May '14..

The violence initiated by Yasser Arafat after his rejection of the Clinton-brokered peace deal was a worst-case scenario not only for those whose lives were now in danger in the Middle East but for Western negotiators and supporters of the peace process. It presented them with the nightmarish lesson that there is risk in negotiating; the failure of talks could mean years of war.

But this year’s failed talks pushed by Secretary of State John Kerry are demonstrating another way peace talks aren’t necessarily risk-free: the deterioration of relations between the PA and Israel. As the talks collapsed, Mahmoud Abbas went ahead with a unity deal with Hamas, which immediately raised questions about Israeli support and the sharing of intel with the previously Hamas-less government. And today Haaretz sheds light on the nasty business of the blame game, with a letter apparently written by Israel’s national security advisor to Western governments:

Attached to the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by Haaretz, is a 65-page document that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat submitted to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on March 9, three weeks before Israel was to release the final batch of Palestinian prisoners. In it, Erekat proposed a strategy for the PA during the final month of negotiations and after April 29, when the talks were originally scheduled to end before their premature collapse.

Erekat recommended applying to join various international conventions, informing the U.S. and Europe that the Palestinians wouldn’t extend the talks beyond April 29, demanding that Israel nevertheless release the final batch of prisoners, intensifying efforts to reconcile with Hamas to thwart what he termed an Israeli effort to sever the West Bank from Gaza politically, and various other diplomatic and public relations moves.

Over the past month, the PA has implemented most of Erekat’s recommendations. This, Cohen wrote in his letter, shows that even while the Palestinians were talking with Washington about the possibility of extending the peace talks, they were actually planning to blow them up, and had been planning to do so even before Abbas met with U.S. President Barack Obama on March 17. …

The document also shows that the Palestinians planned in advance to take unilateral steps in defiance of the commitment they made when the talks were launched in July 2013, he wrote.

The Israeli leadership’s decision to share that information was apparently made in response to the Palestinians’ attempt to blame Israel for the stalled negotiations. Leaking the letter to the press is also a good way to push back on the craven and self-discrediting efforts by Martin Indyk’s team to blame Israel in order to settle old scores. The blame game is, of course, far better than an intifada, which was Arafat’s answer to an offer of peace and mutual coexistence. But that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Farewell Mahmoud, Mon Amour by Rick Richman

...Somewhere along the line, the means and the end got confused. Perhaps it was after the Gaza disengagement produced not peace but new rocket wars. Perhaps it was after the Palestinian failure to complete even Phase I of the three-phase Roadmap, when Condoleezza Rice responded by deciding to “accelerate” it and skip the first two phases. Perhaps it was after President Obama ignored the written and oral promises to Israel from prior peace processes and made new demands on Israel, but none on the Palestinians. Perhaps it was when Kerry decided that, notwithstanding the refusal of Mahmoud Abbas even to endorse a Jewish state as one of the two states in the “solution,” the U.S. should proceed with the process anyway.

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
29 April '14..

Today marks the official end of the Kerry Process–initiated July 30, 2013 with a White House meeting and State Department press conference proclaiming an effort to achieve a “final status agreement” in nine months; then simply a non-binding “framework”; then just an agreement to talk beyond nine months. The end result: no agreement, no framework, no talks.

The concept of a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas was always a romantic idea, featuring the triumph of hope over experience, the repeated pursuit of a “peace partner” who kept saying “no,” and the failure of peace processors to understand every part of that answer. If there has been any benefit from the Kerry Process, it’s that it has made it clear that the Palestinians do not want a state–not if it requires recognizing a Jewish one, or releasing the specious “right” of “return” to the state they repeatedly tried to destroy, or an end-of-claims agreement that would actually resolve the conflict. You can’t have a “two state solution” when one of the parties refuses to acknowledge “two states for two peoples” as the goal.

The romance has been a bad romance not just for nine months but ten years. In 2003, Abbas accepted the Roadmap and then later that year bragged to the Palestinian Legislative Council about refusing to dismantle terrorist groups, as the Roadmap required. In 2005, he was given Gaza without a single settler or soldier remaining, announced “from this day forward, there will be no more security turmoil and weapons chaos and abductions, which are not characteristic of our culture”–and then did nothing as Gaza turned into Hamastan in one week.

In 2006, after his corrupt party lost the election, he cancelled all future ones, including his own. In 2007, after Hamas took over half of the putative state, he was reduced to being the mayor of Ramallah. In 2008, he was offered a state on land equivalent to all of the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in Jerusalem, and he walked away. In 2010, after Netanyahu became the fourth Israeli prime minister to endorse a Palestinian state and implemented an unprecedented ten-month construction freeze, Abbas did nothing for nine months, had to be dragged to the negotiating table in the tenth, and then simply demanded the freeze be continued.

In 2013, he demanded pre-negotiation concessions to return to the table to discuss the Palestinian state that is purportedly his goal, got a promise of prisoner releases as long as he stayed at the table, and made it clear he would leave the table as soon as he finished collecting them. Now he has come full circle, agreeing again to form a government with the terrorist group he promised to dismantle in 2003.

You don’t have to have been a Jewish mother to know this guy was not going to be the guy.

A Groundhog Day That Never Ends. Why Hamas and Fatah Carry on the Charade

...Abbas knows he does not have nearly enough control over the Palestinian polity to claim to be a legitimate head of state even if he were to sign a deal with Israel. Hamas’s inclusion can potentially make him president of a failed state instead of failed president of a non-state. The benefits to Hamas are obvious...

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
23 April '14..

Progress in Hamas-Fatah unity talks may appear to be fertile ground for jokes at Secretary of State John Kerry’s expense, since it seems the one divide he hasn’t been feverishly trying to bridge is the one place where prospects for reconciliation have improved. But Kerry can rest easy on this score: whatever Kerry’s diplomatic faults (and they are many), he is not going to be outdone on the peace score by the terrorists of Hamas.

In fact, the Hamas-Fatah unity talks–a staple of those truly dedicated to wasting everyone’s time–are worth watching, but not for the reason the region’s idealists think. Instead, the Palestinian civil war and attempts to end it demonstrate, for those paying attention, why Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have so often been a fool’s errand. Even the Western media’s most excitable Palestinian boosters–Israel’s leftist daily Haaretz–can’t quite conceal the contradiction at the heart of the internecine compromise we are told is within reach. The paper reports:

The headlines were all referring to a meeting expected to take place Tuesday between the Fatah delegation to the reconciliation talks and the Hamas leadership, with the participation of Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy to Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal. Will reconciliation come about this time between the factions, which have been at loggerheads since 2007? Will the reconciliation agreement they signed in 2011 be implemented?

That last sentence is quite the red flag. The two sides have signed agreements in the past: not only does signing a new one concede the fact that the last agreement hasn’t been honored, but the new agreement might not even require the last agreement’s implementation. The concern by Israelis has always been that even if Mahmoud Abbas signs a peace deal with them, his successor might not honor it. But the history of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation suggests it won’t get that far: the Palestinian signatories themselves are unlikely to honor it.

Haaretz continues:

If the parties reach agreement, Israel might view this as intentional Palestinian abandonment of the negotiations with Israel, and use reconciliation as a pretext to halt the peace process. This, despite the fact that Hamas had agreed at the time to allow PA President Mahmoud Abbas to continue negotiations without Hamas committing to accept their outcome, and the fact that in 2010, Hamas made clear that it does not oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state within in the 1967 boundaries.

At the same time, Abbas can present himself as the legitimate representative of all parts of the Palestinian state and thus bolster his demand for international recognition for the state.

It is unclear from the agreements attained so far what the status will be of the accords signed between the PLO and Israel, whether the PA will be able to continue implementing them and what will happen to security cooperation with Hamas still supporting armed struggle. For Hamas, which is in deep economic trouble and in a hostile relationship with Egypt, reconciliation could be an indispensable way out. The funding sources that reach the PA could then be used to cover civil activities of government ministries that would be under Hamas control. Abbas could then ask Egypt to change its position toward Hamas and also open lines of communication for Hamas with other Arab countries.

The tone of that section is typical of the Israeli left: the Israeli government would use the talks as “pretext” to skip out on their own negotiations with a government quite different from the one they were negotiating with. How unreasonable. Additionally, even Haaretz notes that this is “despite the fact” that Hamas is allowing Abbas to continue talks with Israel “without Hamas committing to accept their outcome.” So they are meaningless.

The “Right of Return” Is Not About “Refugees”. Not Now, Not Ever.

...The half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state … For those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue — you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people. That is a core issue, the core issue …

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
23 March '14..

In “A Jewish State,”the Wall Street Journal notes that “the right of return, with its implicit promise to eliminate Israel, is the centerpiece of the conflict” between Israelis and Arabs. The Journal observes that it is a “right” recognized “for no other refugee group in the world,” and that its acceptance by Israel would risk “a demographic time bomb that could turn the country into another Lebanon, sectarian and bloody.” The Journal explains the Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state as follows: “As to why Mr. Abbas won’t accept a Jewish state, it’s because doing so means relinquishing what Palestinians call the ‘right of return.’”

The Journal’s otherwise excellent editorial confuses a tactic and a goal. The reason the Palestinians won’t accept a Jewish state is not because it means relinquishing the “right of return.” It is the other way around: they won’t relinquish the “right of return” because it would mean accepting a Jewish state. Nor is this simply a matter of substituting the converse for the Journal’s formulation. Rather, it reflects a fundamental point that Ron Dermer (then one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest aides and currently Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.) made in a May 2009 AIPAC presentation. Dermer’s point was that the “core issue” in the conflict was not refugees, but recognition:

The half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state … For those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue — you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people. That is a core issue, the core issue …

The Palestinians use a definition of “refugee” that makes their “refugeehood” hereditary. Other refugees get resettled; Palestinian refugees get born. They may have never lived in Israel, but they are classified as “refugees” at birth, on grounds that their grandparents (or great grandparents) were refugees 65 years ago. This is why each year the number of Palestinian refugees increases, while the number of other refugees in the world decreases. The Palestinians have been repeatedly offered a state to which their refugees could “return,” but they repeatedly reject it, clinging to a specious “right” of “return” to Israel not because it is necessary for the “refugees,” but because it is a tool in the fight against the Jewish state.

Surprised? Kerry Caves on Jewish State Demand

...In these negotiations, Israel has made relatively few demands, simply insisting that an agreement must mean an end to the conflict and Palestinian claims, and that as such the Jewish state be recognized and that its security be assured. Yet Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, whose own demands multiply and mutate endlessly, has proven incapable of even agreeing to these basic requirements. Aware that this will mean the end of their shambolic peace process, Obama and Kerry are now putting pressure on Israel so that without the Palestinians having had to concede anything of any substance, an agreement will appear to have fallen into place nonetheless.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
14 March '14..

It was only ever a matter of time before Secretary of State John Kerry–desperate to hold together some semblance of a peace process–caved to Arab pressure and turned against Israel’s primary requirement that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state as part of an end to the conflict. Speaking to members of Congress on Thursday, Kerry made it clear that he thought that such a demand on Israel’s part was a “mistake.” Once again the administration is trying to set the bar for an agreement so incredibly low that even the intransigent Palestinians can slip beneath it, whether they wish to or not.

Kerry’s reasoning on this point was as shoddy as ever. He explained that since international law already confirmed Israel’s status as a Jewish state, there was no need for the Palestinians to give their recognition to this fact. Yet this is an unbelievable proposition. If Israel’s status as a Jewish state is mandated by international law, which it most certainly is, then it is hardly any great ask to require that any emerging Palestinian state comply with international law and recognize this fact. A meaningful end to the conflict clearly requires that the Palestinians confirm a cessation of any further claims against Israel, by accepting that they will no longer attempt to extinguish the Jewish state either by trying to flood it with the descendants of Arab refugees or by continuously demanding further territory.

In these negotiations, Israel has made relatively few demands, simply insisting that an agreement must mean an end to the conflict and Palestinian claims, and that as such the Jewish state be recognized and that its security be assured. Yet Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, whose own demands multiply and mutate endlessly, has proven incapable of even agreeing to these basic requirements. Aware that this will mean the end of their shambolic peace process, Obama and Kerry are now putting pressure on Israel so that without the Palestinians having had to concede anything of any substance, an agreement will appear to have fallen into place nonetheless.

Yet, it will indeed only ever be the appearance of a peace agreement. In recent days southern Israel has been hit by a barrage of rockets from Gaza. Israel struck back, then a ceasefire was reached. The only problem is the rockets have kept falling on Israel anyway, as if the ceasefire had never existed. It is quite possible that the leaders of Islamic Jihad who agreed upon the ceasefire have upheld their part of it, but that would not necessarily prevent splinter groups from carrying on. This tells us a couple things about the agreements that Israel can make with its enemies. First, there is no guarantee that those who sign agreements one day will not just break them the next. Second, making agreements with Palestinian leaders is meaningless if those they claim to represent actually want no part in accepting Israel.

The Facade of a Process and the Rising Cost of Kerry’s Peace Charade

...With Abbas having contributed nothing useful to the conversation, it seems that the State Department is now trying to bribe him into remaining in negotiations by pressuring Israel into making yet more concessions. As with their floundering negotiations with Iran, and indeed Syria, the administration is attempting to appease the unappeasable. Unwilling to take the tough actions necessary to achieve concrete end results, all that Kerry can do is keep up the facade of a process.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
19 February '14..

Listening to Palestinian officials bemoan the condition of the peace process can be disorienting, given that that they are the ones who have played no small part in sabotaging that very same process. Ahead of Secretary of State Kerry’s meeting with Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, an unnamed PA official has been warning that the peace talks are in “real crisis.” The two are due to meet in Paris today, but to suggest that the negotiations are in crisis now would be to falsely imply that they were in a happier state at some previous point.

If they have taken on a particularly unpromising appearance in recent weeks it is because Abbas keeps issuing lists of demands so outlandish as to threaten the entire proceedings, which is precisely what such demands are intended to do. Ironically, despite this, Kerry is seeking a way to have the negotiation period extended for up to another year.

All of this, however, creates a serious headache for Israel. Since the Palestinians are currently saying that they will not remain at the negotiating table unless a framework is agreed upon by the end of April—while themselves saying that they reject Kerry’s current framework—it is likely that Israel will come under further pressure to concede still more. The Israeli press is reporting that as part of the framework the State Department is to request that Israel implement a partial settlement freeze on those Israeli communities in isolated parts of the West Bank.

Some might argue that this demand is not a particularly unreasonable one, although the families living in the communities in question can hardly be expected to see it this way. Yet, this is beside the point. The point is that yet again, the Obama administration is moving to pressure Israel to make real concessions in return for nothing more than the Palestinians continuing to maintain the veneer of participating in the charade of negotiations. And as has now been pointed out by so many, one of the primary beneficiaries of keeping up appearances on the peace front is Kerry himself.

An Unpopular Proposal and Its Illuminating Reactions

"...Of course, one has the right to say: “I am a Palestinian whose Israeli ID card was forced on him, and I prefer to be subject to an apartheid regime, an oppressive, fascist, racist and colonialist regime. I prefer all this to having to live under Palestinian rule.” A person who exercises his or her democratic right to express such a position cannot prevent others from exercising their democratic right to find such a statement ridiculous."

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
18 February '14..

With Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas having retreated so far from previously agreed positions that he now even rejects Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall (he’s willing only to let Jews pray there under Palestinian sovereignty), one might reasonably think any further discussion of final-status proposals is pointless. Yet some proposals are still worth discussing–not because they could, or even should, be adopted, but because reactions to them are so enlightening. A prime example is the Yisrael Beiteinu party’s much-maligned proposal to transfer certain Arab-Israeli towns to a Palestinian state in exchange for Israel’s retention of the settlement blocs.

Since both Israelis and Palestinians generally oppose this plan, it clearly isn’t realistic. Yet the Arab-Israeli reaction to it speaks volumes about two key issues related to the “peace process”–the nature of the future Palestinian state, and the nature of the existing Jewish state.

In an op-ed defending her party’s plan last week, Yisrael Beiteinu MK Faina Kirshenbaum noted that the UN itself explicitly condones swaps of populated territory: General Assembly Resolution 55/153, adopted in 2001, states that “When part of the territory of a State is transferred by that State to another State, the successor State shall attribute its nationality to the persons concerned who have their habitual residence in the transferred territory and the predecessor State shall withdraw its nationality from such persons.”

Moreover, almost every peace plan ever proposed demands that Israel do exactly that: quit East Jerusalem and transfer its inhabitants, all of whom are either Israeli citizens or permanent residents, to Palestinian rule (the same goes for the persistent demand that Israel return the Golan Heights to Syria). In short, there’s no barrier to the plan under international law; the objection is purely practical: Arab Israelis themselves vehemently oppose the idea.

That they don’t “want to become part of a failed, corrupt and poor new state” is perfectly understandable, Kirshenbaum continued. But a successful peace process, she argued sensibly, shouldn’t create such a state to begin with. Indeed, such a state wouldn’t even be viable: It would likely “break apart in a bloody conflict like so many of our neighbors,” and Palestinians themselves would be the main victims.

What to Call a Man Whose Belief is Undeterred by the Facts

...So what exactly does it mean that Palestinians “support a two-state solution”? The same thing it has always meant, as an unusually honest 2011 poll revealed: not two states living side by side in peace and security, but two states as a stepping-stone to Israel’s ultimate eradication. That’s why they insist on resettling millions of Palestinians in Israel; that’s why they reject any Jewish connection to Jerusalem; and that’s why they can’t recognize Israel as “the state of the Jewish people.” And as long as that remains true, Kerry’s belief in “the prospects for peace” really is “messianic”–however unwise it was of Moshe Ya’alon to say so.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
16 January '14..

After the Israeli defense minister’s undiplomatic skepticism about the peace process prompted a diplomatic flap earlier this week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced yesterday that he is “undeterred,” explaining, “I believe strongly in the prospects for peace.” In that, Kerry isn’t alone: An entire industry has arisen around the belief that Israeli-Palestinian peace is imminently attainable, and it is consistently “undeterred” by the facts. For a classic example, consider the joint Israeli-Palestinian poll released in late December under the unequivocal headline, “The majority of Israelis (63%) and of Palestinians (53%) support the two states solution.”

That sounds very promising, until you read the fine print. And then it turns out that most Palestinians don’t support the two-state solution at all–or at least, not the one whose terms “everyone knows.” In fact, when presented with the elements of that “everyone knows” package, defined by the researchers as based on the Clinton parameters and the Geneva Initiative, 53 percent of Palestinians opposed it, while only 46 percent supported it.

Moreover, several specific clauses were rejected by both Palestinians and Israelis, though Israelis supported the overall package by 54 percent to 37 percent.

For instance, Palestinians opposed the “everyone knows” plan for dividing Jerusalem (Israel retains Jewish neighborhoods, including the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall, while Palestinians get Palestinian neighborhoods, including the rest of the Old City and the Temple Mount) by a whopping 68 percent to 32 percent. That’s consistent with their longstanding refusal to recognize any Jewish connection whatsoever to Jerusalem. But Israelis also rejected it overwhelmingly, 56 percent to 37 percent, consistent with their longstanding opposition to ceding Judaism’s holy site, the Temple Mount. The shared opposition also reflects both sides’ understanding of the proposal’s sheer impracticality (as I explained here).

By an even larger majority, 71 percent to 28 percent, Palestinians opposed the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state (Israelis, unsurprisingly, supported it). Yet this has long been recognized by international mediators as an essential security element of any deal.

On refugees, the researchers managed to craft a proposal that both parties rejected. Palestinians opposed it by a relatively narrow margin, 52 percent to 46 percent, which initially surprised me: Most polls show much stronger Palestinian opposition to abandoning their dream of eliminating the Jewish state by resettling millions of Palestinians there. But after reading the fine print, I understood why: On this issue, the researchers ditched the Clinton parameters in favor of the Geneva Initiative, which no Israeli government ever has accepted or will accept.

A guy not shy about publicly threatening Israel with Palestinian violence

...Even before his latest intervention, there was a good chance the Palestinians would use the eventual collapse of these talks as an excuse for more violence. But now they more or less have Kerry’s seal of approval for such behavior. While American diplomats have made some terrible mistakes in the last 20 years in pursuit of Middle East peace, it’s hard to recall a precedent for this sort of incompetence.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
07 November '13..

The slow-motion failure that is the revived Middle East peace process sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry is stumbling along with no sign of anything that might be considered progress by anyone’s definition. That this is so was eminently predictable, given the fact that the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas and unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, while under these circumstances the Israelis are loath to allow the West Bank become another Gaza. Indeed, just about everyone other than Kerry knew this was the case and pushing the parties back to the table at this point was bound to cause more trouble than any good that might come from it.

But the fact that his critics are being proven right seems to be angering Kerry, and he vented his spleen about this today in an interview on Israel’s Channel 2. But rather than seeking to jolt the Palestinians into a realistic view of their options or even giving a “plague on both your houses” approach in which he sought to preserve his status as an honest broker, Kerry threw caution to the winds and launched into a full-bore attack on the Israeli government and even the Israeli people for refusing to obey him by making concessions to the Palestinians.

Kerry’s main concern remains Israeli settlements, a term by which he clearly means not only Jewish towns in the West Bank but Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem. He rejected the idea that by agreeing to come back to the negotiating table without an Israeli building freeze in these areas the Palestinians agreed to accept any incremental increase in the number of homes or Jews located there. More than that, as the Times of Israel reported, he seems to be placing all of the blame for the lack of peace on the settlements:

We do not believe the settlements are legitimate. We think they’re illegitimate. And we believe that the entire peace process would in fact be easier if these settlements were not taking place. …

“Let me ask you something. How, if you say you’re working for peace and you want peace, and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say we’re planning to build in a place that will eventually be Palestine? So it sends a message that perhaps you’re not really serious.

This is significant not just because it places all the emphasis on the existence of settlements and none on the need of the Palestinians to renounce a “right of return” for the descendants of the 1948 refugees or their non-recognition of Israel as the Jewish state—moves that would signal an end to the conflict rather than merely a pause in it. It is also important because although later in the interview he said the formula for peace would involve land swaps, here he is speaking as if all of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem is, in principle, part of the putative state of Palestine. This illustrates the danger of using the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations since both the U.S. and the Palestinians are clearly taking any deviation from the dangerous borders that led to the Six-Day War as the given rather than a point to be negotiated. Moreover, in doing so he’s claiming that all of the areas that every peace processor has always assumed would stay within Israel will be Palestine.

In fact almost all of the building plans that he is complaining about are in Jerusalem neighborhoods and settlement blocs close to the old border where hundreds of thousands of Jews live and that no Israeli government will ever surrender. By speaking in this manner, Kerry seems to be undermining the entire idea of land swaps that peace advocates have counted on.

But Kerry is not only tilting heavily toward the Palestinian talking points; he’s also not shy about threatening Israel with Palestinian violence if they don’t do as he says.

The Deserved Anti-Israel Peace Partner Title

...In short, by the ADL’s own criteria, any list of anti-Israel bodies ought to be headed by Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. The only question that remains is why both Israel and the world are instead dignifying them with the undeserved title of “peace partners.”

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
25 October '13..

The Anti-Defamation League issued its list of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups this week. In compiling the list, the ADL used various criteria, including how active the groups are in sponsoring anti-Israel activity, how vicious their slurs against Israel are, and whether their accusations are “balanced with an acknowledgement of Israel’s repeated efforts to make peace with the Palestinians or the legitimate terrorism concerns faced by Israeli citizens,” as ADL National Director Abraham Foxman put it.

While I have no quarrel with either the ADL’s criteria or its choices, the list inspires an obvious question: How can you blame fringe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace for doing exactly what Israel’s so-called “peace partner”–a man feted in capitals the world over, including Washington–does every single day?

The Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, are world leaders in sponsoring anti-Israel activity and promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns. Just this week, for instance, Abbas toured European capitals to urge the EU to step up sanctions against Israel, while the PA took the bizarre step of asking the French government to strip French nationals living in Israeli settlements of their citizenship. A few weeks ago, Palestinian legislators asked the Inter-Parliamentary Union to approve a motion urging national parliaments to boycott Israel. Last month, the PA sent letters to 50 countries urging them to impose commercial boycotts on Israel. And all this anti-Israel activity is taking place while Israeli-Palestinian talks are ostensibly at their height, with negotiators meeting several times a week.

Failure of Talks Is Foreordained as Palestinian Leaks Continually Show

...In short, the Palestinian claim of “no progress” is evidently independent of whatever actually happened in the talks, and Palestinian officials don’t even care who knows it: They have no problem espousing mutually contradictory explanations.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
23 September '13..

Palestinians have killed two Israeli soldiers in planned attacks over the last three days; the armed wing of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party has proudly claimed responsibility for both killings (though Israeli officials are skeptical); and the Palestinian Authority that Abbas heads–Israel’s so-called peace partner–has yet to muster even a lukewarm condemnation of the murders. In a normal universe, this might raise doubts about the prospects of the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But anyone who has been following the negotiations already knows these prospects are nonexistent: Aside from all the reasons I listed three weeks ago, the constant stream of PA leaks about the talks is a dead giveaway.

Ever since negotiations resumed in late July, PA officials having been giving the media gloomy progress reports on an almost daily basis, thereby violating the explicit commitment both sides gave Secretary of State John Kerry not to talk about what happens at the negotiating sessions. That alone attests to bad faith. But what’s really remarkable is that while all the Palestinian leaks agree the talks are going nowhere, they offer blatantly contradictory reasons for this conclusion. In other words, the “facts” on which this conclusion is supposedly based can’t possibly be true.

Over the space of just a few days earlier this month, one Palestinian official said Israel had done nothing for the past six weeks but present the issues it wants to discuss; another said Israel had proposed an interim deal for a Palestinian state with temporary borders on 60 percent of the West Bank; and a third said Israel had made an unacceptable final-status offer that would give Palestinians 90 percent of the West Bank while leaving Israel in control of the border crossings with Jordan. These three statements are clearly mutually exclusive: If, for instance, Israel has done nothing but outline the issues it wants to discuss, it can’t have offered either temporary or permanent borders. Similarly, if Israel has made a final-status offer, then it hasn’t just proposed an interim deal.

Sorry if Israel is a bit more complicated multifaceted country than you thought

...One can practically hear the outrage in his voice: How dare those Israelis elect legislators who care about the same issues American voters do–jobs, cost of living, education, crime, etc.–rather than exclusively about the peace process? The fact that Israelis actually have to live in their country–and therefore must care about those issues, which are vital to any country’s well-being–appears to have escaped him entirely.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
11 September '13..

One of the most pernicious and lasting effects of the Oslo Accords, whose 20th anniversary will be marked this Friday, was to warp the prism through which most non-Israelis view Israel: From a country with the same broad spectrum of concerns as all other countries, it became, in the world’s eyes, a single-issue country, where nothing but the “peace process” could possibly matter. This attitude is epitomized by a 1998 conversation between President Bill Clinton and his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, whose transcript was published in Haaretz two weeks ago. Though the main topic was an impending military operation in Iraq, Clinton also briefed Mubarak on the peace process:

I think the Israeli public is coming along [in regard to the Oslo process]. The problem is, when they have elections there, Israeli society is becoming more complicated, and a lot of people get elected to the Knesset for reasons that don’t have much to do with the peace process. Then we have trouble getting a solid majority to do the right thing.”

One can practically hear the outrage in his voice: How dare those Israelis elect legislators who care about the same issues American voters do–jobs, cost of living, education, crime, etc.–rather than exclusively about the peace process? The fact that Israelis actually have to live in their country–and therefore must care about those issues, which are vital to any country’s well-being–appears to have escaped him entirely.

Having presided over Oslo’s signing, Clinton was perhaps uniquely invested in the Oslo process. Yet his attitude is far from unique. After Israel’s new government took office in March, for instance, a Hungarian journalist called me with a burning question: How could Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid party possibly sit in the same government as Naftali Bennett’s right-of-center Bayit Yehudi? I explained that despite their differences on the peace process, Lapid and Bennett have similar views on many domestic issues, and since the peace process had at that point been frozen for four years and showed no signs of thawing, the election was mainly about Israel’s many serious domestic problems. To which he replied, “But how can they sit together when they disagree about the peace process?” After several iterations of this, we both gave up in despair.

What a viable process might have looked like, unlike the bloody tragedy Oslo was.

...If a Palestinian leadership ever arises that prefers helping its people to perpetuating their misery and teaches its children coexistence rather than anti-Israel hatred, peace might be possible. But until then, any “peace process” will at best be a farce–and at worst a bloody tragedy like Oslo was.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
10 September '13..

The run-up to Friday’s 20th anniversary of the Oslo Accords is a good time to consider not only what went wrong with the “peace process” they launched, but what a viable process would look like. You needn’t look far for answers to either question. As I noted last week, the past month alone has brought numerous examples of the problem that doomed the Oslo process from its inception: the Palestinian leadership’s utter lack of interest in making peace. As for what a viable process might look like, a good example is the new Palestinian city now arising near Ramallah.

The city of Rawabi is entirely the initiative of a private businessman: As the New York Times reported last month, the Palestinian Authority promised financial help but never delivered. And it offers a remarkable contrast to the official PA on two crucial counts. First, it’s actually seeking to improve Palestinian lives–in this case, by providing comfortable middle-class housing and quality municipal services. That’s something the PA has refused to do throughout the 19 years of its existence, despite being the world’s top recipient of international aid per capita. Second, the city’s very name (which means “hills” in Arabic) was deliberately chosen to eschew anti-Israel incitement: Its developers held a competition to name it, the Times reported, but rejected the numerous proposals that glorified anti-Israel terror, like “Arafat City” or “Jihad City.” The PA, in contrast, engages in such incitement on a daily basis.

Ordinary Palestinians feel they’ve gotten nothing from the peace process, and they’re right. That, however, is because the PA deliberately chose to give them nothing. It never used its massive infusions of aid to build, say, better housing for Palestinian refugees living in squalid West Bank camps; on the contrary, it publicly vowed that even if a Palestinian state someday arises, the refugees won’t be given citizenship. Nor did it use foreign aid to upgrade its hospitals: Patients who need state-of-the-art treatment are still routinely sent to Israel. It refuses to cooperate with Israel on mundane issues like sewage treatment that would improve Palestinian lives, and allows anti-normalization thugs from the ruling Fatah party to drive away Israeli businesses that would provide Palestinians with jobs. In short, rather than trying to help its people, the PA has done everything possible to keep them in a state of perpetual misery.