Israel: For Palestine, not even a symbolic state
It’s that time of the year when everyone writes about the most important events of the last twelve months. The more audacious may go out on a limb and predict what will happen in the coming year. I don’t like to tread over trampled ground nor do I own a crystal ball.
Besides, I still remember the day many years ago at the University of Miami when a frequently cited Cuba “expert” unloaded a series of predictions– leading off with “the Pope will never go to Cuba because Castro won’t let him–” all of which turned out to be disastrously wrong. I would have been greatly embarrassed, but he wasn’t fazed at all. The next time we spoke at another roundtable, he let loose another series of predictions. Then again, why should he fret about having gotten it all wrong; a couple of years later UM named him to head Cuban/Cuban American studies.
My subject today is instead something that didn’t happen in 2014 but should have. Palestinians didn’t get their long-promised state. And, here is one of only two predictions I will make in this piece: despite their best efforts there is little chance Palestinians at long last a will achieve statehood in 2015.
For years people of good will on both the Palestinian and Israeli side, along with the United States and most other countries in the world, hoped a fair and mutually satisfactory agreement could be reached through direct talks between the adversaries. But for a long time it has been clear that it was a vain and naive hope. There are many reasons for this, including the many extremely contentious issues that divide the two sides. But there is one topic that trumps all the others and which becomes more difficult to resolve with each passing day: land.
Since the end of the 1967 war, successive Israeli governments have been illegally taking possession of more and more Palestinian land and building Israeli settlements on it. This is the very land that is to be the site of a Palestinian state, should there ever be one. The fact that Israeli governments have continued to build settlements even as they were supposedly engaged in a peace process with the Palestinians is a brazen exercise in bad faith. It seems calculated to act as a deal breaker, a slap in the face at the Palestinians, and a scheme to create “facts on the ground,” including not just housing tracts but an ever-growing constituency of fanatical settlers so as to make a Palestinian state impossible.
Frustrated and angry, Palestinians have basically given up on talks that have accomplished nothing except allowing Israel to buy time to grab more Palestinian land while casting an image of reasonableness and willingness to negotiate. The Palestinian Authority is instead appealing to the United Nations to pass a resolution calling upon Israel to end the Occupation within two years.
Israel’s bombastic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went ballistic. How dare the Palestinians appeal to the world body. Netanyahu says the only way Palestinians will get a state is through one-to-one negotiations with Israel. That amounts to a negotiation between a hungry lion and a house cat over the shares of a carcass. And the lion has an elephantine friend who always has his back.
Netanyahu is also furious with the European Union, which recently gave the arrogant Israeli PM a series of hard slaps. The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted to recognize a Palestinian state in principle. Signatories of the European Parliament voted to condemn the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territory. Finally, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg decided to remove Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations.
On the surface, all this looks like growing isolation of Israel and some progress toward a Palestinian state. That’s true to a degree. But there are also very powerful counteracting forces.
One is Netanyahu’s sheer radicalism and obstinacy. Israel is pulling out all the stops to prevent a symbolic UN recognition of Palestine as a state. What would they do faced with the prospect of a real state? It’s clear that at least Netanyahu and the ruling Likud party have no intention of ever granting the Palestinians a state.
On the Palestinian side, the rift between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas also creates problems. For one, it’s clear that Israel would not tolerate a Hamas-led state even if Hamas won 100 percent of the vote. The violent acts and words of Hamas also allow Israel to portray itself as the aggrieved party engaged only in self-defense.
Finally, the United States is a huge factor in the entire equation. The United States has tried to portray itself as a “good broker” in negotiations. In reality, U.S. politicians bend over backwards to show their support for Israel. Senator Lindsey Graham is even threatening to withhold U.S. funding for the UN over the Palestinian resolution. And recent U.S. administrations invariably have used their Security Council veto to protect Israel, even in cases of outrageous Israeli actions and despite the opinion of the rest of the world.
Netanyahu is again counting on the United States to shoot the Palestinian resolution out of the water. The relation between the United States and Israel is a curious one. The United States is the only true- blue friend of Israel in the world and an astonishingly generous monetary and military benefactor. But listening to Netanyahu you might think the roles are the reverse. According to a recent news story, “Israel put the United States on notice that it expected Washington to exercise its U.N. Security Council veto against any resolutions setting a time frame.” The sardine puts the shark on notice. Something is quite wrong with this picture.
On Cuba, President Obama showed that he was willing to change long-established but universally reviled policy and confront powerful vested interests. So here is my second prediction. On Israel, it won’t happen.
