Give Them A State...
... in 50% of the West Bank and all of Gaza. That, at least, is the solution that Yossi Alpher deems absolutely impossible in his long (and I mean very, very long) piece in Ha'aretz. And it is the solution that, I think, is the only hope of stemming the bloodshed in Israel.
There's a lot going on in this article, but Alpher's basic argument is that a two-state solution is becoming increasingly unlikely because:
(a) The Palestinians will not accept a state unless it's borders closely follow the Green Line
(b) Israeli settlers will make it politically impossible to give the Palestinians a state with borders that closely follow the Green Line
If a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians does not emerge in the near future, he argues that the situation will continue to deteriorate until it becomes a full-blown regional war that triggers international intervention. However, his recommendations beg the very fundamental question that he is supposed to be presenting a political solution for - specifically, whether there can ever be a two-state solution that is acceptable to the Palestinians. If there is a negotiated settlement that, as Alpher implies, is publicly popular but politically difficult, then he is a lone voice crying out in the wilderness for a solution to the senseless bloodshed. But if there is no solution that the Palestinians will accept short of the eradication of the Jewish state, then Alpher is (for the second time in as many decades) a dangerous siren call of appeasement that will lead to more violence and hopelessness.
For all his left-of-center advocacy, Alpher does occasionally have to acknowledge the reality that has shattered the Israeli Left - the Palestinians really, really, really seem to not want peace.
The Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad - their popularity growing throughout the intifada years to encompass around one-third of the Palestinian population - reject the notion of any non-Muslim sovereignty at all in historic Palestine. At best, they would acquiesce in a negotiated two-state solution as a tactical and temporary measure...
Indeed, nearly all Palestinians, following Yasser Arafat's lead at Camp David and Taba, also insist that Israel accept at least in principle the right of return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees to the Jewish state... And they deny the Jewish historical narrative according to which the Temple Mount
Instead, he falls back into the fetishistic habits that he and his Oslo brethren developed during the 1990s - even while he knows that the Palestinians do not want peace, he wants to act as if they do, and so he'll accept even the barest whisper of a hint as absolute proof. All so that he can blame Sharon for the current impasse:
From 1950 to 1967, a Palestinian state was not even on the Arab agenda, while Israel expressed a readiness to turn the armistice lines (Green Line) with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into official borders within the framework of peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, the two countries occupying those territories. Only in 1988 did the Palestinian National Council, meeting in Algiers, ratify 181 for the first time and endorse a two-state solution.
And...
Within the PLO-led Palestinian mainstream, which still officially advocates a two-state solution, the territorial ideas of Sharon and the settlers are a non-starter.
Reality check -
A White House document obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, in effect blames the Palestinians for the violence which is now moving into its third year, charging that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO have not taken steps to stop terrorism, HA'ARTEZ reported. The failure to stop the violence has thrown into question the Palestinian Authority's acceptance of Israel, the 12-page report says.
Of course, what Alpher won't - perhaps can't - admit is that the PLO never really wanted peace. That what is most fanciful and conspiratorial may be the truest; that Arafat used the Oslo years in order to conduct a systematic induction of Palestinian society and especially of Palestinian youth into a death cult that sees the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews as ends in themselves; and that during the whole time, Arafat was openly proclaiming this plan to the entire world and bragging about how the West was so weak and naive that they wouldn't step in to stop him.
I almost sympathize with people like Alpher - it must be very, very difficult to keep up this mental charade - it must take a lot of energy. Because the stark results - an entire generation of Palestinian youth that openly repeats the death-cult slogans that they heard on Palestinian children's television as they were growing up - is not only staring everyone in the face (as it was during the Oslo years as well), but is now to be found in the charred remains of Israeli busses and cafes. That's much harder to ignore.
And yet he does his best to keep it up:
It is important to note at this point that, according to all available survey data, a majority or at least plurality of both Israelis and Palestinians continues to prefer a two-state solution to all alternatives.
I would like to see the survey data that he's referring to. All of the survey data and reporting that I've seen goes the other way. I wonder if he's thinking of a particular poll, which is why he had to qualify his claim with the weird phrase "at least a plurality" - don't we have data on this?
Alpher is right that a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians is politically impossible, but he's right for the wrong reasons. He thinks that it's impossible is because the settlers in the West Bank will never allow a political decision mandating their evacuation to pass, and that even if one did pass they would fight rather than leave.
Nor are they likely to agree easily to move - in fact, a few thousand of them are so extreme that they might use the weapons they have been issued for self-protection, to fight Israeli security forces who seek to remove them.
But even he admits that...
In the best case, the settlers and the hard right will agree to compromise with the mainstream and endorse a unilateral partition scheme that may involve the removal of some settlements, but will in fact seek to compel the Palestinians to acquiesce in a system of semi-autonomous enclaves surrounded by "security" fences and by the remaining settlements... This corresponds with the ideas for limited unilateral redeployment currently being discussed by PM Sharon and others on the right.
So here is the situation - the Palestinians will never accept any measure of any Jewish state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (they refused, even at Taba - hell, lets be honest, even in Geneva - to give up on the Right of Return). Yet Jewish settlers will accept a limited withdrawal to defuse the demographic time-bomb, and in fact they'll accept the limited withdrawal that's on the table today. It seems that once Alpher gives up his delusion that the Palestinians can ever be brought around to cease fighting Israel, Sharon's plan emerges as the only realistic alternative to the status quo. But of course, this is precisely what Alpher refuses to give up:
Yet unless Israelis can convincingly demonstrate a state-level capacity to roll back the settlement movement, and Palestinians can prove a capability of stopping violence and respecting the Jewish nature of Israel, and unless the two peoples get better leadership, the two-state solution is liable to be seen in historic perspective as a very brief episode in the tragic annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - despite the support of a broad majority of Israelis and Palestinians.
This so-called insight is nothing more than the old Leftist canard - "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." The problem is not Israeli leaders, and it's not even Palestinian leaders any more (maybe 10 years ago Arafat was leading the Palestinian people to extremism, but today if anything it's the other way around). And Alpher admits that Israelis have already mobilized the political will to roll back at least some settlers, whereas the Palestinians have demonstrated less the zero desire to either stop the violence or to respect the Jewish nature of Israel. The blame for the current violence does not lie equally with the Israelis and the Palestinians, and so the solution cannot come equally from both. The Palestinians are a lot farther from peace than the Israelis are, and pretending otherwise will not bring anyone any closer to a solution.
UPDATE: Saul Singer puts it much better:
There are, however, some fundamental points that Sharon has not conceded, and that much of the Zionist Left implicitly has: that the bet on Yasser Arafat as a pragmatic negotiating partner failed, that so long as the Palestinians refuse to abandon the demand of "return" the two-state solution is beyond grasp, and that settlement blocs that do not interfere with Palestinian continuity should never be dismantled and should define the ultimate borders of the Jewish state
There's a lot going on in this article, but Alpher's basic argument is that a two-state solution is becoming increasingly unlikely because:
(a) The Palestinians will not accept a state unless it's borders closely follow the Green Line
(b) Israeli settlers will make it politically impossible to give the Palestinians a state with borders that closely follow the Green Line
If a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians does not emerge in the near future, he argues that the situation will continue to deteriorate until it becomes a full-blown regional war that triggers international intervention. However, his recommendations beg the very fundamental question that he is supposed to be presenting a political solution for - specifically, whether there can ever be a two-state solution that is acceptable to the Palestinians. If there is a negotiated settlement that, as Alpher implies, is publicly popular but politically difficult, then he is a lone voice crying out in the wilderness for a solution to the senseless bloodshed. But if there is no solution that the Palestinians will accept short of the eradication of the Jewish state, then Alpher is (for the second time in as many decades) a dangerous siren call of appeasement that will lead to more violence and hopelessness.
For all his left-of-center advocacy, Alpher does occasionally have to acknowledge the reality that has shattered the Israeli Left - the Palestinians really, really, really seem to not want peace.
The Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad - their popularity growing throughout the intifada years to encompass around one-third of the Palestinian population - reject the notion of any non-Muslim sovereignty at all in historic Palestine. At best, they would acquiesce in a negotiated two-state solution as a tactical and temporary measure...
Indeed, nearly all Palestinians, following Yasser Arafat's lead at Camp David and Taba, also insist that Israel accept at least in principle the right of return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees to the Jewish state... And they deny the Jewish historical narrative according to which the Temple Mount
Instead, he falls back into the fetishistic habits that he and his Oslo brethren developed during the 1990s - even while he knows that the Palestinians do not want peace, he wants to act as if they do, and so he'll accept even the barest whisper of a hint as absolute proof. All so that he can blame Sharon for the current impasse:
From 1950 to 1967, a Palestinian state was not even on the Arab agenda, while Israel expressed a readiness to turn the armistice lines (Green Line) with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into official borders within the framework of peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, the two countries occupying those territories. Only in 1988 did the Palestinian National Council, meeting in Algiers, ratify 181 for the first time and endorse a two-state solution.
And...
Within the PLO-led Palestinian mainstream, which still officially advocates a two-state solution, the territorial ideas of Sharon and the settlers are a non-starter.
Reality check -
A White House document obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, in effect blames the Palestinians for the violence which is now moving into its third year, charging that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO have not taken steps to stop terrorism, HA'ARTEZ reported. The failure to stop the violence has thrown into question the Palestinian Authority's acceptance of Israel, the 12-page report says.
Of course, what Alpher won't - perhaps can't - admit is that the PLO never really wanted peace. That what is most fanciful and conspiratorial may be the truest; that Arafat used the Oslo years in order to conduct a systematic induction of Palestinian society and especially of Palestinian youth into a death cult that sees the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews as ends in themselves; and that during the whole time, Arafat was openly proclaiming this plan to the entire world and bragging about how the West was so weak and naive that they wouldn't step in to stop him.
I almost sympathize with people like Alpher - it must be very, very difficult to keep up this mental charade - it must take a lot of energy. Because the stark results - an entire generation of Palestinian youth that openly repeats the death-cult slogans that they heard on Palestinian children's television as they were growing up - is not only staring everyone in the face (as it was during the Oslo years as well), but is now to be found in the charred remains of Israeli busses and cafes. That's much harder to ignore.
And yet he does his best to keep it up:
It is important to note at this point that, according to all available survey data, a majority or at least plurality of both Israelis and Palestinians continues to prefer a two-state solution to all alternatives.
I would like to see the survey data that he's referring to. All of the survey data and reporting that I've seen goes the other way. I wonder if he's thinking of a particular poll, which is why he had to qualify his claim with the weird phrase "at least a plurality" - don't we have data on this?
Alpher is right that a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians is politically impossible, but he's right for the wrong reasons. He thinks that it's impossible is because the settlers in the West Bank will never allow a political decision mandating their evacuation to pass, and that even if one did pass they would fight rather than leave.
Nor are they likely to agree easily to move - in fact, a few thousand of them are so extreme that they might use the weapons they have been issued for self-protection, to fight Israeli security forces who seek to remove them.
But even he admits that...
In the best case, the settlers and the hard right will agree to compromise with the mainstream and endorse a unilateral partition scheme that may involve the removal of some settlements, but will in fact seek to compel the Palestinians to acquiesce in a system of semi-autonomous enclaves surrounded by "security" fences and by the remaining settlements... This corresponds with the ideas for limited unilateral redeployment currently being discussed by PM Sharon and others on the right.
So here is the situation - the Palestinians will never accept any measure of any Jewish state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (they refused, even at Taba - hell, lets be honest, even in Geneva - to give up on the Right of Return). Yet Jewish settlers will accept a limited withdrawal to defuse the demographic time-bomb, and in fact they'll accept the limited withdrawal that's on the table today. It seems that once Alpher gives up his delusion that the Palestinians can ever be brought around to cease fighting Israel, Sharon's plan emerges as the only realistic alternative to the status quo. But of course, this is precisely what Alpher refuses to give up:
Yet unless Israelis can convincingly demonstrate a state-level capacity to roll back the settlement movement, and Palestinians can prove a capability of stopping violence and respecting the Jewish nature of Israel, and unless the two peoples get better leadership, the two-state solution is liable to be seen in historic perspective as a very brief episode in the tragic annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - despite the support of a broad majority of Israelis and Palestinians.
This so-called insight is nothing more than the old Leftist canard - "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." The problem is not Israeli leaders, and it's not even Palestinian leaders any more (maybe 10 years ago Arafat was leading the Palestinian people to extremism, but today if anything it's the other way around). And Alpher admits that Israelis have already mobilized the political will to roll back at least some settlers, whereas the Palestinians have demonstrated less the zero desire to either stop the violence or to respect the Jewish nature of Israel. The blame for the current violence does not lie equally with the Israelis and the Palestinians, and so the solution cannot come equally from both. The Palestinians are a lot farther from peace than the Israelis are, and pretending otherwise will not bring anyone any closer to a solution.
UPDATE: Saul Singer puts it much better:
There are, however, some fundamental points that Sharon has not conceded, and that much of the Zionist Left implicitly has: that the bet on Yasser Arafat as a pragmatic negotiating partner failed, that so long as the Palestinians refuse to abandon the demand of "return" the two-state solution is beyond grasp, and that settlement blocs that do not interfere with Palestinian continuity should never be dismantled and should define the ultimate borders of the Jewish state
