Israel Matzav

'The peace process has died'

A 'Palestinian' official interviewed by YNet on Tuesday told the web site that the 'peace process' has 'died' because Israelis have chosen to give power to the Right.

"Given the government that is going to lead Israel, it's clear that there won't be any serious process and that, at the most, it will be a process for appearances' sake only that is intended to quiet the international community and primarily to let the Palestinians know that the option of peace still exists," he said.

According to the official, the Palestinians understand that the Oslo process no longer exists. Those close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas don't think there is any way to salvage it.

If the 'peace process' is dead - and as far as I and many Israelis are concerned, it has been dead (if it ever was truly alive) since Yasser Arafat declared war on us in September 2000 - the 'Palestinians' need to ask themselves why it is dead.

"People are thinking of how to prevent the PA from humiliating itself in a process that is not serious and will not bring peace. More and more voices are saying that the Palestinian Authority and Abbas must strike preemptively and dismantle the Palestinian Authority," he said.

Here's one reason the 'peace process' is dead. The 'Palestinians' view political bargaining as a game of honor in which the winners set off fireworks and shoot AK-47's in the air, and the losers go home humiliated. From the opening bell of the 'peace process,' the 'Palestinians' main concern has been how not to be 'humiliated' by accepting anything less than 100% of their demands - and how to humiliate Israel by getting it to agree to a 'Palestinian' state reichlet AND to allow hundreds of thousands of 'Palestinians' to 'return' to Israel and vote the Jewish state out of existence.

But negotiations - real negotiations - are not about winners and losers and humiliating one side at the expense of the other. Negotiations are about two sides finding common ground and reaching the best solution for both sides, which by definition will never be 100% of what one side or the other wants. Consider the following framework for a negotiated solution from Professor Roger Fisher of Harvard (yes, I took his crash course on the subject).

You will note that Professor Fisher's process has no mention of winners and losers. But it does mention other things that the 'peace process' has never had. In the fifteen plus years since the Oslo Declaration of Principles, the 'Palestinians' have never conceded a single point and have never upheld a single agreement or commitment. They have never allowed for a solution that would satisfy Israel's interests anywhere close to 'acceptably.' They have never allowed more than one option - the option of a 'Palestinian' reichlet with a 'right of return' to what's left of Israel for the 'refugees' - to be discussed. They have never accepted the legitimacy of the Jewish state and they have never viewed the 'peace process' as anything other than a way for the Jewish state to be 'taken.' In the 'Palestinians' minds, the 'peace process' has never had anything other than the 'obvious solution' (the one they want). Therefore, the 'peace process' has never included a true negotiation. Instead, Israelis have negotiated against themselves for fifteen years, while the 'Palestinians' have said nothing but "no." Is it any wonder that so many Israelis have tired of the 'peace process'?

The official added that Abbas' advisors, including those who truly believe in peace and in the diplomatic process, understand that this process is over and there is no chance of a political agreement in the near future that will result in a Palestinian state.

Are there any Abbas advisers who 'truly believe in peace and in the diplomatic process? Who are they and where have they been - at least since Arafat died in 2004?

Wherever those advisers have been, believing in the 'peace process' is not enough. You also have to have the ability to execute and fulfill your commitments. Abu Mazen has no ability to execute - he has no support for peace from his 'people.' The 'Palestinian people' don't support peace because they have been conditioned by Abu Mazen - and by Arafat before him - to believe that the 'peace process' is only going to lead to the first 'phase' of the 'phased solution' to vitiating Israel's existence. The 'Palestinian people' don't support peace because they have been conditioned by Abu Mazen - and by Arafat before him - to believe that if they don't get what they want at the negotiating table, they will get it by means of the 'military alternative.' They have been conditioned to believe by the media controlled by Abu Mazen - and by Arafat before him - that Jews are the subhuman sons of apes and pigs, that a reichlet is just a way station on the way to 'Palestine from the River to the Sea' and that terrorists are 'shaheeds' (martyrs). Is it any wonder that Abu Mazen has no support for executing any commitments for peace? Is it any wonder that the 'peace process' is dead?

Even during the last administration Palestinians didn't believe an agreement could be reached, he said, "but at least we could believe in the concept of a political process." Now, however, "even this has ceased."

What point is there to a 'process' if it is a concept devoid of content? What point is there to a 'process' in which one side does nothing but give and the other does nothing but receive, and the most the giving party can give while remaining alive is less than the receiving party is content to receive? How much longer should such a farcical process be allowed to waste time and resources?

"This is an extremist government that, in the best case, won't go crazy building settlements and won't escalate the security situation but will not bring about political progress during the upcoming period. That is why we need to prepare ourselves to mitigate the damages so that the idea of a two-state solution won't sustain a fatal blow in comparison to the approach of 'all or nothing' or the concept of a binational state," he added.

Given that Netanyahu entered into the Why Why Wye agreement during his first term in office, the 'Palestinians' are awfully pessimistic. And they should be. But not because of Netanyahu (who sees them for what they are) or because of who else might be in the government. The 'Palestinians' should be pessimistic because of what the election results show about Israelis' thinking. The 'Palestinians' should ask themselves - but probably won't - why Israelis now think the way they do.

While I have always been cynical about the 'peace process,' many other Israelis believed in it for far longer than I did. In this election, 65 seats went to the Right. If we make the reasonable assumption that the eleven seats that went to Arab parties were exclusively the result of Arab votes, we discover that among Israeli Jews the Right (the people who wanted an 'extremist government') won 65 seats, while the Left won 44. That means that just shy of 60% of Israeli Jews voted for an 'extremist government.' That's considered an overwhelming majority in just about any national election (Barack Obama had far less than 60% of the popular vote in the US). Are we fools? No, we're not fools and we knew exactly what we were doing. We were clenching our fists. This is part of what Herb Keinon of the JPost wrote the day before election day:

Palestinian actions over the last 15 years have transformed Israeli society, and the country has gone from believing in the 1990s that it had reached safe shores and had been accepted in the region, to believing in 2009 that no matter what it does - be it negotiating a peace deal based on ceding some 95 percent of the territories, or unilaterally evacuating settlements - it will not be accepted in the region.

While the pundits were warning about the radicalization of Palestinian society and overlooking what the Palestinians were doing to Israeli society, they were also calling unceasingly for Israeli confidence-building measures - steps they calculated were needed to shore up Palestinians' confidence that Israel was indeed genuine about wanting a peace deal, as if the withdrawal from Gaza and evacuation of more than 9,000 Jews was not enough of an indication.

But how about the confidence of Israelis? What were the Palestinians doing to build that up? Suicide bombing attacks, homemade rockets, and tunnels meant to kidnap soldiers don't exactly do the trick.

So as a result, we are facing a situation where regardless of whether it is Likud or Kadima that wins Tuesday's elections by a seat or two, the right-wing bloc will most likely be strengthened considerably, as the Left is simply melting away.

If the 'peace process' is truly dead, and the 'Palestinians' want to bring it back to life or start a new one, they must start by growing up and finding the national maturity to acknowledge their own role in killing it. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen: The Arabs and Muslims have a long history of blaming their problems on others rather than examining themselves. That history goes back to the 8th century.

The 'peace process' - if it ever existed - is now dead. The 'Palestinians' killed it.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:23 AM