1. It was reported way back in July
2013 in the Sunday Times (and quoted in the Jerusalem Post) that “The Palestinian
leader, Abu Mazen, said to President
Peres that "we should complete the peace process that we initiated
together many years ago," adding, "There is hope; we will continue to
build the future and I hope we will reach a good end." Citing unnamed Israeli and Palestinian
sources, the Times reported that
Peres met Abbas in Amman for secret talks in
which he convinced the PA President to accept that "West Bank settlers and
Jewish residents of East Jerusalem could
remain in their settlements but be subject to the Palestinian state."
According to the sources, Peres pressured the Palestinian leader to accept this
condition "as the minimum that he needed to convince Netanyahu to give his
blessing to the talks." We need now to pray to God to keep these two old
men alive to avoid another decade of mutual bloody conflict causing disintegration
from within of the two States that have no other choice but to live next to
each other in peace.
2. Now the cat is out of the bag,
Kerry's patience is being rewarded. And as with his Iranian cry wolf
Netanyahu's messianic vision of the future is yet again facing the rock of
realities. And the winner is crafty Abu Mazen who all his life was watching the
Israelis and learning how to manipulate their tactics to his advantage playing
one faction against the other within Israel's political establishment. By now Netanyahu must have realized that it
was not clever to talk about a Referendum. Once
Netanyahu said he would submit any settlement to a referendum Abu Mazen rushed
to offer a similar procedure for his people. He understood the implication for
him of such an unexpected gift. Netanyahu does not need a Referendum because he knows fully
well that the majority of the country is behind him anyway in seeking peace and
the survival of Israel
and so is the Knesset. But Abu Mazen can now keep his options open and use this
pretext as a powerful chip. It will be up to him to ask which Palestinians should
vote and when and where: the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria,
Lebanon
or wherever there are Palestinian Refugees. And here therefore lies another problem
of our own making handing it a gift to Abu Mazen!.
3. And then comes the
question of the Jordan
Valley. Here there are
two issues, the security and the settlements created there. As part of any
final status agreement the Jewish Settlers can continue living there as Israeli
citizens living as residents in Palestine.
The commercial enterprise created by them will continue to need Arab workers
and can therefore contribute to a continued successful commercial cooperation
in the future under Palestinian sovereignty. As for the security issue; in
modern age warfare and weaponry is it really vital for Israel to hold
on to it? Even some top Israeli security experts think not. Any Israeli force
stationed there will be vulnerable and become in the hands of extremists
provocative in the future. Meantime it can only serve to protect Jordan from a future Palestine instead of facilitating letting the
two merge into one State. At the time of the disengagement in Gaza
we protected Egypt by
insisting on the Philadelphi line separating them and Gaza to Mubarak's delight. We are repeating
the same mistake now, this time protecting Jordan. No wonder King Abdullah
rushed to register his interest meeting Netanyahu to give him support on this
issue. Abu Mazen of course will oppose any Israeli presence or sovereignty on
the Valley and insist on stationing an international military presence for the
time being. And Kerry might offer an American proxy from Europe.
But for how long? By default it will be Abu Mazen's successors who will decide,
not Israel.
There are many precedents for that.
4. And then the question
of recognizing Israel
as a Jewish Democratic state. For the life of me I don't understand why do we
need this recognition. It is up to any sovereign state to define and redefine itself democratically
and by consensus of its citizens. In the
case of Israel
it was decided way back by the UN in 1947. But now Israel
says that once Abu Mazen recognizes Israel Jewish
status that will be the end of the Palestinian Refugees' claims. This is
another gift, a bargaining chip to Abu Mazen. So what will Abu Mazen do now? I
bet he will continue to resist such recognition using his resistance to gain
concessions. At the end he will agree and sign. But what is the value of his signature
when Hamas does not follow and even if it does declare its recognition, another
group of Palestinian Refugees somewhere could in time raise the same question
and demand the return of the refugees to their original villages and
towns. Are we not playing with useless
semantics? Irridenta claims are open ended which only close neighbouring
cooperation can put stop to it.
5. Meantime as with Iran
Netanyahu is again misreading American evolving policy changes in general and in
the Middle East in particular. Secretary of
State Kerry is implementing those changes. However as one of the most
consistent friend of Israel
for many years he decided to give time for Netanyahu to sort out his problems
with his Party and Coalition and his electoral weakness reflected in the results
of the last Elections. That is why he came up with the idea of extending the
negotiations to the end of the year but within an agreed Framework. But Netanyahu
is a political tactician. He is not the leader that Ben Gurion, Rabin and Begin
were. Unfortunately for Israel
his moral authority is rooted in vague historical past rather than the future
survival of Israel.
Realities dictate and he lacks the authority or the steel in him to confront it
and convey its grave consequences to our people.
6. The American
President in his second term is dubbed "lame duck" That might be true
in home policy although Obama in his recent Address to Congress came out fighting
even on that front. But one thing is sure, he can be even more defiant on
foreign policy. Having extricated America
out of Iraq and Afghanistan he set his vision on resolving the
two intractable pending issues, those of Iran
and the Arab-Israel conflict to keep American central dominance in the Middle East while turning his attention to the Pacific. Kerry is carrying out diligently and
tenaciously the resolution of these issues. He is not going to give up. It was easier in Iran which found for itself a
strong leader, Rouhani. Unfortunately in
our arena we have two weak leaders. Of
the two the weaker is Abu Mazen, but not
necessarily the less effective. He knows he is weak with nothing to fight with.
So he must have learnt from De Gaulle sitting isolated in his embassy in London during War II
pretending to face Churchill as equal.
7. I wonder if it
occurred to the Extreme-Right Israeli politicians claiming in unison that they
have no Palestinian partner, that in fact the Palestinians were not party to the
6-Day War, they were the victims. Gaza was part of Egypt
and the West Bank part of Jordan.
Israel negotiated the peace
that ended that war both with Egypt
and Jordan
gratuitously choosing to retain and therefore to accept responsibility for both these regions. After the
two peace treaties Egypt and
Jordan
washed their hands of the whole conflict. The Palestinians were left to
themselves and became Israel's
problem and responsibility to the delight and relief both of Egypt and Jordan.
8. Abu Mazen must be
amused to hear Israeli politicians accusing him day in day out of this and that
when in fact he is their captive with nothing to fight with except words. And
luckily for him he is not a good speaker so he does not need even to use
rhetoric against Netanyahu and lose. He waits, letting us do all the running
and all the mistakes. But Kerry needs to find a solution to help the American-Israeli
de facto military alliance while avoiding a failure that would have repercussions
on American new policy in the Middle East and its
world wide leadership. So he came with the idea of a Framework that will enable
the negotiations to continue till the end of the year. But this is going to be
an American Framework no doubt approved by the Quartet. The biggest problem that will face Israel then
will be if Abu Mazen out of desperation applies to the Security Council asking
it to ratify Kerry's framework accepting all the conditions on his side. What
has he got to lose? To him it would be a win-win situation, the end of the
occupation and the legitimization of the State of Palestine. How could America veto
his application? And even if it needs under pressure to abstain, the resolution
will of course be still carried. Abu Mazen knows that through this gate Palestine can be established
and he can speak to Netanyahu with the status of equal, not as the leader of captives
but as head of a state recognized by all the world.
9. Kissinger was right all
that long time ago when he said that Israel had no foreign policy only
internal policy. He repeated this again recently in Munich. Is it not time for us to wake up,
stop using and abusing our past and face
the realities of our present. The new generations in Israel and in
the world at large can't buy our convoluted prehistoric narratives any more
pitching our fundamentalism against Arab fundamentalism. Now that Avigdor
Lieberman no less is echoing the late
Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph that the safe existence of Jews in Israel should come
before possessing this or that piece of land and settlement is it not time for
all of us to get real. May be the time
has come for Israel's
political establishment to face realities and internalize the truth that it
cannot procrastinate any longer. The Palestinian leadership still possesses the
trump card, the joker. It could declare
that the negotiations are leading nowhere and it is too late anyway to set up
a viable State so they have no choice
but to accept living in greater Israel, from
the sea to the river demanding full citizenship. What would Israel's
response be then?
Aharon Nathan, 13th February 2014