Israel Matzav

Why the 'peace process' can't work

This past week, I re-ran a clip of Professor Mordechai Keidar explaining on al-Jazeera the 3,500- year old Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Here, Keidar explains why what he calls the 'Washington process' cannot work.

It is naive to think that a conflict that has lasted more than 60 years can be resolved in two years of negotiations, however direct and continuous they may be. A real end of the conflict cannot be achieved for at least another generation, and for several reasons related to those core issues.

Israel is perceived by many Palestinians, as well as many other Arabs and Muslims, as an illegitimate entity. Israel demands that its neighbors recognize it as a Jewish state or at least the state of the Jewish people, whereas Islam generally views Judaism as having ceased to be a relevant religion since the advent of Islam. Jews are merely religious communities that belong ethnically to the peoples among whom they live, while the Land of Israel from the river to the sea is Islamic "waqf", holy endowment. Accordingly, Muslims and Arabs cannot recognize Israel as a legitimate state--a sine qua non for a successful peace agreement.

The issue of the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa mosque is the hardest to resolve. Jews consider the mount a holy place and insist on maintaining their sovereignty over it, even though many avoid entering the site due to its sanctity. The destruction of Jewish antiquities by the Palestinian Waqf authorities in 1996 proved to Israelis that Palestinians attach no significance to the remains of Jewish culture on the Temple Mount. For their part, the Palestinians' goal is to locate their capital in Jerusalem even though it was never the capital of Palestine and was never the seat of an Arab or Islamic khalif, amir or sultan.

Turning to the refugee issue, a mass return of Palestinians to their 1948 homes is perceived by Israeli society as a formula for national collective suicide. Israelis are united from left to right in rejecting massive return. So is the world: the European Court of Human Rights ruled in March 2010 that Greeks who fled or were expelled from northern Cyprus when the Turks invaded in 1974 do not enjoy a "right of return"--a relevant precedent. But among the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, the narrative of return remains dominant; return is expected imminently. Any attempt by the PLO leadership to compromise on the right of return will bring it into conflict with both the refugees and their Arab state hosts.

There are also reasons why the Israeli leadership does not seek progress in final status negotiations. One concerns borders and settlements. The events that followed the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria in 2005 and the removal of 26 settlements and their occupants have prompted a reassessment of the utility of withdrawal among many Israelis. No Israeli government today can persuade the Knesset and the public to carry out a mass evacuation of settlers from communities that were established in Judea and Samaria on the basis of government decisions and on land purchased legally from Palestinian Arabs.

Secondly, Israelis fear that if a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity is established in Judea and Samaria, nothing will prevent it from, at some point, falling under Hamas rule--whether by dint of an election, as in January 2006, or through a military takeover as in Gaza in June 2007. Neither the White House nor the United Nations can promise Israel this won't happen. Accordingly, Israel is wary of proceeding through negotiations to the establishment of such a state. Further, the failure of UNIFIL in southern Lebanon to prevent the rearming of Hizballah deters many Israelis from relying on an international force to effectively separate Israelis and Palestinians.

Read the whole thing. It's spot-on.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:31 PM