Another president, another (futile) peace process
MIAMI – When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “hope springs eternal” seems to be the byword of every recent U.S. administration. Bill Clinton struggled unsuccessfully to secure an agreement until his last days in office. George W. Bush started by wanting nothing to do with any peace process and carried out a policy so one-sided no one could have mistaken him for an honest broker. Yet even Bush, toward the tail end of his second term, made a pathetic, doomed attempt to bring the two sides to an agreement.
Enter the Obama administration. It too waited until the second term to get involved in the tried and failed U.S. practice of helping the Israelis and the Palestinians make peace. This pattern of second term peace efforts itself suggests a fundamental reason why this one is almost certain to fail too.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict plays a significant role in U.S. domestic politics. That politics is all on one side, Israel’s. Politicians seeking to reach or retain the White House don’t want to face the wrath of the hard-line pro-Israel political interests, Jewish and non-Jewish, that in this country largely shape the debate on Israel and Palestine. During a final term, American presidents have more degrees of freedom to prod Israel into offering the Palestinians a viable and sovereign state under conditions that don’t trample upon the Palestinian pride and dignity. But not enough: the problem then is that despite daunting U.S. power and the colossal economic, military and diplomatic support the U.S. government provides Israel, Israel’s influence on U.S. politics reduces American leverage on Israel to puny proportions.
This wouldn’t be an obstacle if successive Israeli governments, including this, one had a sincere willingness and the political power and will needed to allow Palestinians to have a real state. They don’t. Both relative dovish Israeli governments and hard-line ones like the coalition currently in power led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have proclaimed their support for a peace process and a two-state solution. But their acts belie their words.
The Israelis are happy to negotiate about when and how to negotiate to advance the “peace process” while at the same time gobbling up more and more Palestinian land and water. This mushrooming occupation, illegal under international law, has created “facts on the ground” in the form of settlements inhabited mostly by political and/or religious fanatics quite willing to fight Israeli security forces in order to stay put or to kill any Palestinian who dares cross land that used to belong to the Palestinians.
For years Israeli governments have been talking peace and undermining any possibility of it through settlements and various military actions, but the current ruling coalition may top them all. Shortly after Netanyahu stood shoulder to shoulder with Kerry and pledged to work with the U.S. to resolve the conflict on the basis of a two-state solution, another member of the government, quoting an old speech by the Prime Minister, proclaimed: “Yes to a Palestinian state is No to the Jewish state, and No to the Palestinian state is a Yes to a Jewish state.” In other words, the existence of a Jewish state or a Palestinian state precludes the existence of the other, just the opposite of Kerry’s and Netanyahu’s position. And a Cabinet member said a few months ago that “the idea that a Palestinian state will be formed in the land of Israel has come to a dead end.”
Ironically, the massive and virtually unconditional U.S. support for Israel decreases the incentive for the Jewish state to agree to a fair deal for the Palestinians. With as many as 200 nuclear weapons and the most modern and best-trained military in the Middle East, Israel is not the region’s David but its Goliath. With American dollars and military muscle standing solidly behind them on top of that, why would gentle prods and jawboning from American diplomats convince them to yield an inch? In the short run, the Israelis are definitely in a position to run circles around the Americans with endless talk about peace talks and two-state solutions while acting to make a two-state outcome impossible.
But there is another dynamic at work that really should worry the Israelis more than any conceivable two-state solution. That’s the certain prospect that in a few decades Arabs will become a majority in the land now effectively controlled by Israel in the absence of a Palestinian state. In that case, Israel would be forced to choose to abandon democracy and develop a permanent repressive colonial relationship with the Palestinians or keep democracy and give up the Jewish character of the state.
The Israelis should be able to outfox the Americans and crush the Palestinians for some time to come. But will they be able to withstand the demographic time bomb?
