The only certainties about the 'peace process'
In the peace process nothing can be said to be certain, except Israeli confidence measures and blaming Israel for failure
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, July 24 with more.
I agree with one aspect of Jeffrey Goldberg's,
Kerry's Mideast Fool's Errand Ignores Reality. The title. Much of the rest of it is out of date, or simply wrong.
Goldberg writes:
But as I've written before, I think Kerry is on a fool's errand, and I
think the collapse of these talks, which is almost inevitable, could
have dangerous consequences. Remember what followed the collapse of the
Camp David peace process in 2000: years of violence, including horrific
bus-bombing campaigns.
This is true. Possibly, but not likely. A lot has changed since 2000 for
Israel. We are not talking about Gaza, because I can't imagine Hamas
getting involved in a war to bail out Fatah. But also, Israel degraded
many of the terrorist groups operating in Judea and Samaria and built a
security fence. It's important to remember, that the so called "Aqsa
intifada" wasn't a spontaneous outbreak of violence but a
war started by Arafat. Abbas may not be committed to peace, but I don't think he's capable or willing to go to such lengths.
The first is that Hamas exists and is in control of the Gaza Strip,
whether we like it or not. Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which will be
bargaining with Israel, will represent at best half of Palestine. How do
you negotiate a state into existence that is divided between two
warring factions? It isn't even clear if the Palestinian Authority is
fully in control of those parts of the West Bank that Israel deigns to
let it control. (I will save for another time the deeper discussion of
whether the maximum an Israeli government could offer the Palestinians
represents the minimum the Palestinians could plausibly accept.)
Goldberg's correct here on both counts, but then he writes:
You also have to blind yourself to the reality that the Jewish
settlement movement on the West Bank is now the most powerful political
force in Israel. This is a movement whose leaders and Knesset
representatives and cabinet ministers will subvert any peace process
that would lead to the dismantling of even a single settlement,
including any of the dozens of well-populated ones far beyond Israel's
West Bank security barrier.
Is he talking about the "settlement movement" that stopped the
withdrawals from Judea and Samaria in 1995 and from Hebron in 1997? Or
is he referring to those who stopped the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005?
Goldberg ascribes political powers to the settlers that they just don't
have. They make a convenient bogeyman, but when have settlers stopped
Israeli withdrawals in the past?
So what does Goldberg suggest?
With the Israelis, Kerry (and his boss) should talk about the
demographic, security and moral challenges of governing a population
that doesn't want to be governed by Israel. He would be pushing on a bit
of an open door -- the increasingly centrist Netanyahu (who is becoming
more and more alienated from his robustly right-wing Likud party),
seems to understand now that continued occupation (an occupation that
exists at this point mainly to support the settlers) is undermining
Israel's international legitimacy and its future as a Jewish-majority
democracy.
Kerry is understood in Israel as a true friend; his lobbying could be
effective. If the Israelis would take small, unilateral steps on
settlements, they could change the Palestinian calculus and improve
Israel's reputation (which has become a genuine national-security
concern).
This is condescending beyond belief. He just noticed that Netanyahu's a centrist? After Netanyahu agreed to the Hebron Accords,
Charles Krauthammer observed:
The Hebron agreement was historic for Israel. It was the first time that
Likud agreed to give up a piece of Eretz Yisrael -- the land of Israel.
Netanyahu not only signed on to Hebron. He got a majority of his
rightist coalition to sign on as well. And he brought the majority of
Parliament along with him.
Remember: Netanyahu may have campaigned personally as one who would
retain Oslo while making it more reciprocal, but this was not the
unanimous view of Likud. There are many in Likud and, more generally, on
the Israeli right who view Oslo as so fundamentally flawed that it
needs to be rejected at whatever cost.
Netanyahu recognized that the cost of this approach would have been far
more than Israel could bear. He then proceeded to bring his half of
Israel into the peace process. Signing Hebron meant retroactively
signing Oslo, and Netanyahu got his "national camp" cabinet to sign,
11-7. In the Knesset, he got his own Likud party to vote more than 2-1
in favor. When Menachem Begin brought Camp David back to the Israeli
parliament in September 1978, almost half the Knesset members of Begin's
own Herut party failed to support him.
With the Hebron Accords and the withdrawal from most of Hebron,
Netanyahu did more to advance the peace process than anyone from Peace
Now or J-Street. He did more for the peace process than Thomas Friedman
or Jeffrey Goldberg did. And he certainly did more than either Yasser
Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas ever did.
The problem with the peace process now, isn't Israeli ideology, but
Israeli practicality. Israelis know that when they withdrew from
territory, they strengthened their enemies and paid significant prices
for those withdrawals. But there is no occupation now. Israel doesn't
rule over the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. The only question - and
this has been the case since the end of 1995 - is what the formal
borders will be. Goldberg conflates Palestinian demands with reality and
assumes that only if all Palestinian demands are met does Israel
deserve peace and to be declared occupation free.
Why should Israel's reputation be a concern? Israel played by the rules
made the concessions and was rewarded with terror. When Israel fought
back, Israel was condemned; not Fatah who violated its word that it
given up terror, not Hezbollah even though Israel was fully withdrawn
from Lebanon and not Hamas even though Israel no longer occupied Gaza.
Really, is Kerry really going to convince Israel: just make a few more
concessions and the world will stop believing Arab propaganda? The world
didn't credit the past 20 years of Israeli concessions, will it start
doing so now?
On the other side, Kerry might want to try a bit more aggressively to
help the Palestinian Authority become a viable governing body with a
functioning economy and a bureaucracy that is reasonably free of
corruption. Strengthening the Palestinian Authority (and working to
weaken Hamas) while cajoling the Israelis to wean themselves from their
addiction to settlements are two steps Kerry could take to advance
negotiations.
Earlier this year, Abbas had two prime ministers quit on him. What makes
Goldberg think that the PA under Abbas want to "become a viable
governing body?" Note that unlike Israel, the Palestinian Authority has
no "moral challenge" in front of it. Does the Palestinian Authority
lionize terrorists?
Of course it does. Is Abbas increasingly authoritarian?
Of course he is.
Goldberg by insisting on moral imperatives for Israel but not the
Palestinians, shows the fundamental imbalance that he applies to the
peace process. Israel must make concessions for its own moral health,
but not the Palestinians. This gives the PA veto power over Israel's
legitimacy. By this calculus, as long as the PA isn't happy, Israel
isn't legitimate. Thus Israel has every reason to comply and the PA has
none.
Finally we get to:
It's true that Kerry has gotten the Israelis to agree to release some
Palestinian prisoners. And he may convince the Palestinians to cease,
for a while, their campaign to delegitimize Israel in the international
arena. But these developments, by themselves, won't advance the larger
cause.
That campaign to "delegitimize Israel in the international arena" is a
violation of the premise of peace process, which called for the PLO to
eschew terror and engage in bilateral negotiations. It was based on
these premises that the PLO was declared to no longer be a terrorist
organization. It has not done either. (If the PLO or Fatah is no longer a
terrorist organization it has less to with its having reformed itself
than with Israel having defeated, at great cost, the terrorist elements
within Fatah.)
But let's say that Israel's release of murderers does get Abbas to deign
to talk with Israel again. And let's say that Israel and the PA come to
an agreement. Would everything be great? The Middle East would have
peace. Israel would be legitimate. Kerry would have his first Nobel
Prize and Obama his second. What a wonderful world!
Wait.
What did the
PA's minister of religion say?
On the eve of the renewed peace talks with Israel, PA Minister of
Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash said in his Friday sermon that when
PA leaders signed agreements with Israel, they knew how to walk "the
right path, which leads to achievement, exactly like the Prophet
[Muhammad] did in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah." Al-Habbash's sermon was
delivered in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and was broadcast
on official Palestinian Authority TV.
The Hudaybiyyah peace treaty was a 10-year truce that Muhammad, Islam's
Prophet, made with the Quraish Tribe of Mecca. However, two years into
the truce, Muhammad attacked and conquered Mecca. The PA Minister of
Religious Affairs stressed in his Friday sermon that Muhammad’s agreeing
to the Hudaybiyyah treaty was not "disobedience" to Allah, but was
"politics" and "crisis management." The minister emphasized that in
spite of the peace treaty, two years later Muhammad "conquered Mecca."
He ended his comparison by expressing the view that the Hudaybiyyah
agreement is not just past history, but that "this is the example and
this is the model."
Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, there have been senior PA
officials who have presented the peace process with Israel as a
deceptive tactic that both facilitated the PA's five-year terror
campaign against Israel (the Intifada), and which will weaken Israel
through territorial compromise that will eventually lead to Israel's
destruction.
These declarations go back to the beginning of the peace process when, Yasser Arafat,
made the claim in a South African mosque in 1994.
In the latest taped excerpt, which rekindled the dispute today, the
P.L.O. leader compares his agreement with the Israelis to a 10-year
peace arrangement in the seventh century between the Prophet Mohammed
and the Quraish tribe. That accord was broken two years later. Muslims
say the violation was commited by the Quraish, not Mohammed, who went on
to capture Mecca.
Many Israelis interpreted the ancient reference by Mr. Arafat as a
signal that he had no intention of accepting his agreement with Israel
as binding.
"Many Israelis?" How about "any sentient being?" Well the interpretation
of "many Israelis" was correct as Arafat violated the Oslo Accords on a
regular basis.
The problem isn't Netanyahu. It's not the settlers. It's the Palestinian
mindset that they won't accept Israel until they achieve all of their
demands. And if leaders of the Palestinian Authority are to be believed,
maybe not even then.
If Jeffrey Goldberg wants to give useful advice, maybe he should
recommend giving one of those "morality" lectures to the Palestinian
Authority. About the imperative of negotiating in good faith and
sticking to its commitments.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Fatah, Hamas, intifadeh, Middle East Media Sampler, Middle East peace process, Palestinian terrorism, Soccer Dad, Wye Accords, Yasser Arafat
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, October 28 (sorry - I missed this earlier).
1) A brief history of prisoner releases While the trade of 1047 Palestinian prisoners wasn't, strictly speaking, a prisoner release, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times wrote, when he reported that a deal had been reached:
He said he had told his negotiators to hold the talks “under the guidelines important to Israel: the need to bring Gilad home and the need to keep Israel’s citizens safe.” For Palestinians, the plight of thousands of their sons in Israeli prisons has been equally traumatic, and the possibility of their release drew enormous attention.
First of all the equivalence between Shalit and the Palestinians released is outrageous. Among other things the Palestinians currently in Israeli jails were convicted of crimes, of varying severity up to multiple counts of murder. Still Bronner asserted that the incarceration Palestinian prisoners in Israel was "traumatic," so the question is how did this "plight" come to be. In
Annex VII of the Israeli Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo II) the conditions for prisoner releases were specified.
2. The following categories of detainees and/or prisoners will be included in the abovementioned releases: a. all female detainees and prisoners shall be released in the first stage of release; b. persons who have served more than two thirds of their sentence; c. detainees and/or prisoners charged with or imprisoned for security offenses not involving fatality or serious injury; d. detainees and/or prisoners charged with or convicted of non-security criminal offenses; and e. citizens of Arab countries being held in Israel pending implementation of orders for their deportation.
3. Detainees and prisoners from among the categories detailed in this paragraph, who meet the criteria set out in paragraph 2 above, are being considered by Israel to be eligible for release: a. prisoners and/or detainees aged 50 years and above; b. prisoners and/or detainees under 18 years of age; c. prisoners who have been imprisoned for 10 years or more; and d. sick and unhealthy prisoners and/or detainees.
Note especially items 2b) and 2c). In 1995, Israel had only recently declared the PLO not to be a terrorist organization since Arafat had made a declaration (albeit an insincere one) renouncing terrorism as a tactic. There were still people in jail who had been arrested for belonging to Fatah. It was mainly these people that prisoner releases were meant to free. So what happened a few years later when then (and now, current) Prime Minister Netanyahu followed these terms to the letter? Arafat
incited riots against Israel!
With every day, until the relative calm of today, the unrest has gained momentum, threatening the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort. In response to the violence, the Israelis have frozen the land-for-security plan, and it appears increasingly unlikely that they will carry out the second of three withdrawals from the West Bank as scheduled by Dec. 18. And with every day, the prisoner issue has assumed greater importance. Some youths are referring to the riots as ''the prisoners' intifada,'' evoking the Palestinian uprising of 1987-1993. The anniversary of that uprising's outbreak will be celebrated on Wednesday. Israeli officials have seized on the label to paint the unrest as a breakdown of the peace effort.
Further reporting showed little outrage over this violence.
Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post reported:
When Israel released the first batch of 250 last month, the Palestinians were outraged that they included 150 common criminals. The deal, said Arafat and his aides, was for political prisoners to be freed. Surely they did not bargain for days at Wye for the liberation of car thieves, said Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian spokesman. Not so, said Netanyahu, and the State Department concurred: Nowhere in the agreement does it specify that the freed detainees be political prisoners. But the American stance has done nothing to defuse the anger among Palestinians, for whom the issue of prisoners is visceral. This weekend, it burst into the open with demonstrations throughout the West Bank, which were put down by Israeli troops firing lethal rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. The scenes of the wounded being carted off, bloodied and grimacing in pain, were reminiscent of the Palestinian uprising that ended six years ago. At the same time, hundreds of the prisoners began a hunger strike that was joined by some of their families.
The
LA Times reported:
Arafat, in a meeting this week, asked Clinton to resolve the dispute, according to Ahmed Tibi, a senior advisor to Arafat. Tibi accused the Israeli government of misleading the Palestinians on the releases and of deceptively padding the release rosters with car thieves and other common criminals. Of about 2,100 Palestinian "political prisoners," Tibi said, about 300 killed Israelis and an additional 1,000 are members of Hamas or similar militant Islamic organizations and not eligible for release. That would leave at least 700 supporters of Fatah and other pro-Arafat organizations who Tibi said should be freed. "These are the soldiers of Yasser Arafat," Tibi said. The Israeli government disputes those figures, however, saying that only 200 or so inmates meet the criteria for release.
Note that neither report includes the important detail that Arafat was changing the deal from what was written in Oslo. Two weeks later in an op-ed Peter Edelman of Americans for Peace Now
complained:
Why is the latest peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in danger when both sides started off largely meeting the terms of their commitments? As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens to delay implementation of the Wye memorandum for the umpteenth time, it's clear that mere compliance with the letter of the accord is not enough. The agreement is threatened because the deep distrust that evolved between the two sides over the past few years did not dissipate when Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat signed the deal. Almost from the moment he returned to Israel from the Wye summit, Netanyahu has antagonized the Palestinians as well as his American allies. Until the Israeli government changes its attitude, it will be difficult to resolve issues that have evolved outside the text of the agreement, much less move forward to productive final status negotiations.
Later on Edelman apportions blame to Arafat too, but of course his main target was Netanyahu. Charles Krauthammer, as usual,
observed something important:
The administration did, in the famous "Note for the Record" requiring the Palestinians to end anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement, to change the Palestinian charter to eliminate clauses rejecting Israel's existence, to reduce the size of the Palestinian police, etc. Every single one of these promises remained a dead letter. How do we know? Because they reappear--as Palestinian commitments--in the Wye accord negotiated 21 months later. This time, said the State Department, we really mean it: Israel will get these reciprocal gestures--in return for another 13 percent of the land. Indeed, the U.S. proposed a three-stage deal so that Israel would not be stiffed again. Rather than withdrawing in one chunk--as it did in Hebron, then finding that the Palestinians, land in hand, simply ignored their obligations--Israel would give up 2 percent first, then wait for Palestinian compliance; then another 5 percent, with a pause for Palestinian compliance; then a final 6 percent.
Contrary to Edelman's false charge (later in the op-ed) that Netanyahu had delayed withdrawals outside of the framework of Wye, Krauthammer points out that the stages were an essential part of Wye. What's important about this incident is how it demonstrated a trend of Palestinian demands becoming etched in stone - regardless of what was actually agreed to. Netanyahu
once again found himself cast as the bad guy for insisting the agreements meant something. One footnote to this prisoner story is this report, a month later:
Arafat Releases Prisoners to Mark Holiday; Israel Protests Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat released 54 jailed prisoners, including members of the Islamic militant group Hamas and other opposition organizations, to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A Palestinian police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those freed included both criminals and political detainees, among them some low-level members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Leading Hamas figure Abdel Aziz Rantissi and Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami were not among those released. ... Israel called the move a "violation" of agreements.
The prisoner release was a pretty clear violation of Arafat's commitment at Wye to fight terror, and the LA Times puts violation in scare quotes! The Israel Project has a
list of prisoner releases that Israel has undertaken as of 2008.
2) $110,000 a month The New York Times offers a rofile of one of the released prisoners,
Making the Uneasy Transition From Prisoner to Celebrity Mr. Taqatqa, 38, was among the first group of 477 Palestinian prisoners freed in return for an Israeli tank soldier, Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit, captured five years ago when Hamas militants crossed through a tunnel to raid an Israeli military base. Mr. Taqatqa had served 18 years of a life sentence in an Israeli prison, with a lot of time spent in solitary. While Sergeant Shalit has remained largely out of public view, Mr. Taqatqa and many of the other freed Palestinian prisoners are living in the full glare of near constant publicity. The transition and unceasing attention have made Mr. Taqatqa a bit uneasy as he tries to learn to deal not only with freedom but also with the unfamiliar trappings of modern life, like cellphones and laptop computers. “He still feels that he is in prison; he does not believe that he is out,” a sister, Zeinab, said during one evening visit to a family friend’s house. She has come to Gaza to help him find a wife.
The profile shows a man who may really want to do something with his life, other than terrorism. There was a fascinating detail in the article.
He is among 60 former prisoners living at Gaza’s newest hotel, Al Mashtal, which looks out over the Mediterranean seafront. Featuring marble floors, palm trees and a swimming pool, it would not look out of place anywhere along the Mediterranean and usually charges $140 a night. Hamas is paying $110,000 per month to house the prisoners until they find homes.
For an impoverished government in an impoverished region, $110,000 sounds like quite a lot. And of course, Taqatqa has a computer and a cellphone. Gaza is not, apparently, the
portrait of poverty that many like to paint. But if Mohammed Musa Taqatqa is interested in moving beyond the violence, other recently released terrorists are not so inclined.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3156.htm Muhammad Abu Ataya: I was arrested for being a member of the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and for killing traitors and spies, and killing traitors and spies, as well as going after the herd of settlers and the Israeli army. Interviewer: Brother Muhammad, as you regain your freedom, you carry the gun of the rebel, the gun of the fighter, and you wear the fatigues of the Al-Qassam Brigades, even though Netanyahu warned that any released prisoner rejoining the resistance would be severely punished. Muhammad Abu Ataya: He can make as many warning as he likes. His warning and threats will not deter us from continuing the journey of resistance, on which we embarked decades ago.
and
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/815/3157.htm Interviewer: If you could go back in time, would you carry out such a large-scale attack? Ahlam Tamimi: Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner.
As I wrote yesterday, these terrorists are honored not for the time spent in Israeli jails but for their efforts to kill Jews. And it's
not just Hamas that supports these efforts, the
"moderate" Abbas does too. There will be no peace until terrorism is no longer rewarded by the Palestinians.
Labels: Ahlam Tamimi, Ethan Bronner, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad, terrorists for Gilad trade, Wye Accords
