There's a bit of a fracas today just below Michael Crowley's astute Plank, "Obama v. Netanyahu," about whether or not I had ever criticized the settlements. Well, the truth is that I have, actually from early on when they were creations facilitated by peace icons like Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. Just to test me, take a look at my writings from Hebron during the summer of 2005.
Having said this, let me make clear that in the 42 years since the Six Day War, the Palestinians haven't shown any serious readiness to make peace with Israel that would encourage Jerusalem to make any more one-sided concessions in advance that experience proves will just be pocketed and not be reciprocated at all. In the exchange of demands between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Netanyahu government has asked that the P.A. recognize the State of Israel and also that it is the state of the Jewish people. One would think that there would be nothing simpler than this. It was the basic presumption of the League of Nations mandate to the British in Palestine, starting in 1921-1922. And most significantly from the point of view of international history, the United Nations General Assembly sanctioned and provided for a "Jewish state" in Palestine and an "Arab state" in Palestine already in late 1947. I will make my not-at-all-pedantic little point again: The imagined Arab state was not denoted as Palestinian because no one in their right mind at the U.N. saw a Palestinian people on the horizon. The local Arabs were mostly satraps of the surrounding Arab countries. They defined themselves within tribes and clans, extended families and gangs of ruffians There was no national vision with which to see the lost opportunity.
They now apparently do really want a state and they even call themselves Palestinians, which is a promising start. Mazal tov. When the Zionists aspired to statehood they built national institutions, and they were building those national institutions ever since World War I, at least. Not so the Palestinians who have supped for almost 60 years at the penurious gruel fed to them by UNRWA, which is the U.N.'s instrument for keeping them dependent. And their case for a state was made by waves of successive organizations whose identity was tied to distinctive forms of terrorism. Still, Israel has committed itself to withdrawing from the 92% of the land it captured in 1967, plus compensation in Israeli territory abutting an envisioned Palestinian state. No, no, said the Palestinians. We'll take nothing less than 100% of the very territory Jordan had ruled after annexing it in 1949. It was Yassir Arafat, after all, who walked out of Bill Clinton's Camp David talks in 2000 and not Ehud Barak who actually gave and gave and gave. Now, the Obama administration is engaged in another try at the peace process, egged on presumably by the preposterous idea that, if Bibi only utters the magic phrase "two-state solution" and halts construction even for natural growth in every single one of the settlements, America's troubles in the world of Islam will not only ease but be transformed. Not surprisingly, Hilary Clinton, our martinet secretary of state, has enthusiastically rushed to formulate these instructions to Israel in the harshest possible terms. This has been a long detour to coming back to my view of settlements. From my point of view, there are settlements and then there are settlements. I'll get to the differences soon. But the idea of stopping all construction in all settlements means that once again the Israelis will be ceding something in advance and for nothing in return. This is a destructive negotiating tactic and will encourage the same kind of intransigence -you give me, I take- that has marked the Palestinians in all of the talks. After all, the West Bank is one of the prime subjects of the parleying. Telling the Israelis that they can't build another house in this settlement and in that one, too (in all of the settlements, in fact) means that no one can marry and no one can have children and no one can add a room to the house. This is not diplomacy; it is the smothering of ordinary life. Since there is an ongoing demographic race in Jerusalem, which is also one of the subjects at any future conference, why doesn't the administration also demand from the Jews and the Arabs that they cease pro-creating? In fact, the 2003 "road map" made distinctions among settlements, envisioning that most would be vacated by Israel but that the largest would remain sovereign Israeli territory. The very largest happen to cling to Jerusalem. I wouldn't withdraw from them in a million years. Not even the crankiest peacenik in Israel would pull out from Ma'aleh Adumim, virtually cheek by jowl to Jerusalem and with more than 35,000 inhabitants. There are other smaller towns close to Jerusalem that will not be given up. This is a matter of the security of the city, its breathing room and, yes, its centrality in Jewish history and in contemporary Jewish life. There is a price to be paid by the Palestinians by their suicidal politics over the decades. In fact, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert withdrew from four West Bank settlements. But that was before the Gaza settlements and the entirety of the Strip which Israel vacated became a war front with missiles and rockets regularly fired into Israel. Jerusalem had prepared for a much wider retreat from Judea and Samaria so that Palestine could emerge as territorially intact. If Netanyahu is reluctant now to utter the "two-state solution" mantra it is because the mistakes of his three predecessors -Ehud Barak, Sharon and Olmert- have taught him that Israel should not give by declaration in advance what is properly the subject of a treaty and of its enumerated and believable guarantees. And if I were Netanyahu, I would expect also to be able to increase defensive settlements in the Jordan Valley rift as a protection against Palestinian terror flowing east to west and west to east between the kingdom and the new Palestine. The regions populated by Palestinian Arabs would still be coterminous and coherent. And if he has to give a little more of the Negev to the Palestinian state, so be it. As the Israelis have demonstrated, the desert also produces...If you will it is no dream. A peace process should not be an invitation to mayhem. I am afraid that the Obama administration has embarked on a perilous journey. It should stop trying to orchestrate what Israel does in the (vain) hope that the Palestinian Authority will come around and say something realistic. P.S.: The Yale University Press has recently published a book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by the brave and truthful historian Benny Morris. He is also a frequent contributor to TNR. I've learned from every piece of writing he has done, even when some of the material shocked me. One of the original "new historians" of Zionism, Morris writes in this book about a possible solution to the "problem." It is a federation between Palestine and Jordan. OK with me; not OK, I believe, either with the king or the politicians of Palestine. The National Interest has had this book reviewed in its current issue by Walter Laqueur, certainly the most distinguished living historian of almost every aspect of the subject. A clear headed Zionist, he is not a patsy for anyone. He also thinks that the settlements, if held too indiscriminately and too long, would ruin Israel. But he knows well the intrinsic impediments to the Palestinians actually dealing with real realities on the ground. Here and there, I disagree with Laqueur (as with Morris). But it would be a good deed for someone to slip either Morris' book or Laqueur's review essay, at least, into the president as he starts off on a trip to wherever. And it better be soon, before he flies to Cairo and promises the impossible and gets nothing in return.
Posted: Friday, May 29, 2009 10:27 AM with 50 comment(s)
Must you lash out at Hillary Clinton every time you invoke her name, Mr. Peretz? Here you are again with a pejorative adjective linked to Ms. Clinton's name - "martinet". I don't need to remind you that it is your paramour, Barack Obama, who is the president and who makes policy. On the matter of the settlements, you are quite correct. It is the airiest fantasy that if all of the settlements were razed, sweet peace would break out. I have loathed the settlements - and not a few hard-hearted settlers - for the longest time but still it is not immoral or unwise to use them as bargaining chips. To do otherwise is to cave into the Palestinians' every demand, which is, as you note, all give and no receive. Another airy fantasy is that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff would help remake the attitudinal map of the Middle East. Good luck with that. Benny Morris is a superb historian and I highly recommend his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.
Here I am reading another Marty Peretz post. I have yet to read a single post from Marty that didn't make my blood boild, but here I am. I am going to second liberal reformer that calling a woman a martinet is pretty awful. I would also point out that Hillary Clinton did not call on Israel to unilaterally dismantle all the settlements. What she demanded is that since the settlements are part of the dispute between the two sides it is not reasonable for Israel to be expanding them. From the Palestinian perspective Israel is trying to shift the facts on the ground so that any final agreement will be more in their favor. We want an agreement which everybody in the region accepts and which allows both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace. We should not care too much about the details of the agreement as long as it is final and can be enforced. The expansion of settlement activity is a sign that Israel is not in this frame of mind.
I fully agree with Marty that, after the fiasco of the Gaza withdrawal, dismantling existing established settlement communities in the West Bank is not in Israel's interest without real and reciprocal concessions from the Palestinians (such as fully stopping terror attacks, including ones from Gaza, and conceding Israel's status as a Jewish state). I also see the point of not stopping "natural growth" of existing settlements, if only for the reason that doing so would effectively begin to depopulate those settlements and would become another one-sided concession by the Israelis. What Israel should do -- and what the Obama administration should pressure it to do -- is to actively dismantle unauthorized settlements and actively prevent their formation and re-formation. This is simply an Israeli counterpart to requiring the Palestinians to fight their own terror groups, and it should be done without requiring reciprocal concessions from either side. The Israelis don't have to close down Kiryat Arba and the Palestinians don't have to shut down the PFLP or Hamas and jail all their members, but they do need to prevent further expansion of terrirory by settlements (on the Israeli side) and terrorist acts by terror organizations (on the Palestinian side).
On another matter, I think we should all put a moratorium on proposals for merging the Palestinian territories with Jordan, or snide remarks about Palestinian history and national ambitions. This is just a lot of water under the bridge, as Marty acknowledges himself later in the post. The fact is that, whatever they once were, the Palestinians today (i) consider themselves to be different from other neighboring Arab peoples, such as the Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and those Jordanians whose ancestors did not come from the West Bank , (ii) have no interest in living under Israeli political control and (iii) have absolutely zero interest in being ruled by the Hashemite monarchy, and the Hashemite monarchy has absolutely zero interest in ruling the West Bank or East Jerusalem. If we are happy to grant those kinds of rights of self-determination to the Kosovars, the Timorese or the people of Darfur (and hold protest marches in their name), let's just be grownups and grant them to the Palestinian Arabs.
In my opinion, it is proper for the administration to request Israel to shut down illegal settlements and to avoid exoanding territory for settlements. It is not propoer to request no further construction within the existing territoral barriers of the settlements, p[articularly those, like Maale Adumim which are effectively annexed and for which, additional territory was or would be offered in return as part of an overall settlement.
As for Right of Return, I would agree to it if it were mutual, whereby Israelis could move to the West Bank but keep Israeli citizenship and Palestinians could move to Israel but keep their Palestinian citizenship. This removes the existential demographic threat from the Jewish point of view and encourages Jew and Arab to live peacefully side by side. Call me naive.
"martinet"? How, where, why?
So when the Israelis began building the settlements, what did the Palestinians get in exchange for that? Or does the principle of getting something in exchange for nothing only run one way...
It is, to me, one of the great mysteries of liberal group think that "settlement building" is an egregious human right violation and legitimate grounds for violent resistance. This is construction. Bricks and mortare. That's all. As we have seen with Gaza, these settlements can be evacuated and handed over to new occupants, under the right condtions (which, clearly, were not present in Gaza, but that's another story.)
The murder that goes on in the name of Palestinian statebulding, meanwhile, is an oozing pile of human rights violations that hardly gets mentioned by the bien-pensants, unless in the form of a "yes, but" formulation to attack Israeli settlements.
The bomb-thrower and the construction worker are NOT two sides of the same coin.
It's the same old moral-equivalency nonsense re: arsonist and firefighter.
rhorath, The Palestinians had nothing to offer the Israelis but unremitting hostility at the time the Israelis opted to build the settlements. In other words, the Israelis had nothing to lose by building them. Hardly something for nothing. I challenge you to show one Palestinian peace initiative prior to the building of the settlements.
Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court specifies the following to be a war crime:
-- (viii)The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory;
In the context of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories the word "settler" is a polite euphemism for "war criminal."
This post partially, but not entirely, addresses what I raised in Crowley's thread. Or maybe it does, but by implication.
The settlements, to my reading of international law wrt occupied territory, are illegal. Accordingly they shouldn't be viewed as a "bargaining chip" -- intentionally creating "facts on the ground" by breaking the law isn't something we should support. To have that opinion doesn't mean, as dkreiger implies, the Palestinians are thus entitled to violent resistance (either in the OT's or within Israel). But as I wrote about Marty in Crowley's thread -- if there's NO consequence to Israel's expansion of the settlements, lip service that they are bad is meaningless. And from this post I infer that's Marty's position. Moreover, Israel doesn't need the settlements for bargaining chips -- it has enough of them as it is. The settlements aren't about bargaining with the Palestinians, they're about caving to a special interest group -- the universal toxin of democracies.
Ironically the Benny Morris book, at least from Jeffrey Rosen's review of it, seems to be all about objective principles. The PA's recognition of Israel even as "just" an entity is suspect -- a rushed voice-vote which Arafat likened to some treaty Mohammed allegdly made and broke as a strategic matter to buy time (this is controversial within Islam but Arafat clearly meant it that way). That's why in the Crowley post thread I said it's time to end the kabuki on all sides. Israel has to stop violating the law and taking more Palestinian land. The Arabs have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in their midst.
"But the idea of stopping all construction in all settlements means that once again the Israelis will be ceding something in advance and for nothing in return."
Actually, the Israelis would get something in return... the moral high ground.
Maybe that's not enough (maybe not nearly enough), but it's considerably north of "nothing."
"In the context of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories the word "settler" is a polite euphemism for "war criminal.""
What do you call a duly elected body, that deliberately targets innocent civilians if not "war criminals"?
Nd never met a Palestinian war crime that he (or she) didn't approve of.
Both sides would considerably improve their position if each did the following:
Palestinians: Resisted with aggressive NON-violence (e.g., laying their bodies down in front of new settlement building, etc...), a la Gandhi.
Israelis: Truly arrested settlement expansion.
Disgust for Israel grows when they expand illegal settlements, disgust for Palestinians grow when they blow up a buncha innocent people.
Another thing: Marty says that Obama believes if Bibi says the "magic words" of two state solution and halts "even" the "natural growth"of the settlements then the Arab hearts will be moved. But maybe after 8 years of George W. Bush's seeming one-sideness, Obama believes that if he has *something* to show the Arabs, *some* talking point, it will at least mute their reaction when he cracks down on the Palestinians. Maybe it will empower some of the more moderate Arab voices.
dkrieger said: "The bomb-thrower and the construction worker are NOT two sides of the same coin."
Exactly.
Here goes mackenzie again with his one point:
"ndmackenzie said: Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court specifies the following to be a war crime...."
It's not clear that this article applies to the presence of Israelis on the West Bank.
There are good reasons not to build there and better reasons to evacuate most settlements as part of a real peace agreement, but to say that the settlers are violationg international law is pure fiction.
Of course, the resistance to making yet another major unilateral concession like a cessation of all settlement growth is understandable in the wake of what happened after the withdrawal from Gaza. So I wonder what sort of reciprocal action on the part of the Palestinians it would take. I haven't heard Bibi (or anyone else) say: "Okay, if you recognize Israel as a Jewish state and say so in Arabic as well as English, we'll stop settlement growth." I also haven't heard Obama or Hillary suggest anything like this. My belief is that it wouldn't happen anyway. Any Palestinian politician who did this would be, just as Arafat feared, assassinated forthwith. We are in the realm of Kibuki theater, making gestures for temporary tactical advantage and the obscuring of our embedded cynicism that anything basic will change, a cynicism which, to my deep sadness, I fully share.
lymon1 said:
"The settlements, to my reading of international law wrt occupied territory, are illegal. Accordingly they shouldn't be viewed as a "bargaining chip" -- intentionally creating "facts on the ground" by breaking the law isn't something we should support."
On what basis do you judge the settlements to be illegal under "international law?"
What "international lwe is being violated?"
As for what is and what isn't a bargaining chip can't be predetermined in advance. Usually hostile parties use all the weapons in their arsenal as bargaining chips. Here, this would include everything from acts of terrorism and antisemitic propaganda by the Palestinians, as well as settlements and the use of retaliatory raids by the Israelis. This along with other issues should be on the bargaining table.
To suggest that Israel needs to dismantle the settlements before the Palestinians cease their terror attacks on civilians and use of antisemitic propaganda will not lead to a negotiated peace but to more and more demands on the part of the Palestinian Arabs in their drive to delegitimize the Jewish State.
"Disgust for Israel grows when they expand illegal settlements, disgust for Palestinians grow when they blow up a buncha innocent people."
How can disgust for expanding (allegedly) illegal settlements be the equivalent to disgust for blowing up a buncha (most certainly) innocent people?
It is a wonder anyone can make this statement and not pause for a second to reconsider the rationality of their words.
Yes, yes, what JackR said!
Marty-
have u no shame? This was soooo predictable. Barack Obama had few defined views before election, but one of them was lack of sympathy for Israel, the one issue you care about most. But yet you shilled for this man, mostly for recomponse for TNR's outcat status among the left for backing the Iraq war. You reap what you sow. Of course I know that you secretly voted for McCain. There is now way you let Lieberman hang out to dry.
I didn't say they were equivalent noga.
I doubt that Peretz voted for Sarah Palin (I even kinda doubt Jackson did also.... but maybe I'm wrong).
"To suggest that Israel needs to dismantle the settlements before the Palestinians cease their terror attacks on civilians and use of antisemitic propaganda will not lead to a negotiated peace but to more and more demands on the part of the Palestinian Arabs in their drive to delegitimize the Jewish State."
That's a strong argument.
Each side has 'weapons,' can't ask one side to lay theirs down for not enough in exchange.
I think Palestinians say: Land and economics first, then security.
I think Israelis say: Security first, then you get land and economics.
What's to be done? A count of 3? Doesn't the Mitchell Plan or some such thing lay this roadmap out?
"Each side has 'weapons,' can't ask one side to lay theirs down for not enough in exchange.
I think Palestinians say: Land and economics first, then security.
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