My Current Obsession -- Israel and the Palestinians

Another blogger. Just what the world needs, right? Bear with me folks as I try to get a handle on all of this.

Right now, I am obsessed with the Middle East -- more specifically the Israeli-Palestinian question. Tony Blair is right. It is the single most important foreign policy issue faced by the West today. There was an interesting discussion thread on of this issue on Laura Rozen's site a few days ago. I wish I could find it again. (I haven't mastered permalinks yet and now it has scrolled off the site.) But my sense is that an important point is being missed in all the sturm and drang.

Today's lead article in Ha'aretz raises that point yet again. Ha'aretz reports that "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday described Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as the Palestinians' best chance for peace." That seems hard to believe, but maybe it's an "only Nixon could go to China" sort of thing. But that's not really my point.

The thing that disturbs me about this, and about much of the reporting and commentary around the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, is that so much of it is focused on a search for "Peace" as if peace was something that could be achieved independent of the substance of changes that will be necessary to achieve peace. One change that I think all agree will be necessary for peace is a Palestinian state. Yet, does Mubarak (or anyone) really think that Sharon is the Palestinians' best chance for something that actually looks and feels like a real, sovereign "state"? And, if not, is Mubarak really saying that the Palestinians' best hope for peace is to abandon the goal of having a real sovereign state?

Arafat is widely excoriated for "lacking the courage" to make peace in 2001. His death is resulting in a "regime change" that I suspect the Israelis hope will lead the Palestinians to accept what Arafat did not. I question whether that 2001 Israeli offer is still on the table in any event. But, assume it is. Should the Palestinians accept it?

I would love it if they would, of course. But I can also see why they would not. And, I do not think it has anything much to do with a lack of courage or a preference for violence or a desire to eradicate Israel. It has to do with the fact that what Barak offered, even with the enhancements contemplated by the "Clinton Parameters" had few -- if any -- of the attributes one would associate with a "state". Certainly, it lacked territorial integrity. Even after full implementation -- which would have taken years and would have been subject to the vagaries of internal Israeli politics much like the Oslo "redeployments" were -- there would have remained within the Palestinian "state" a veritable melanoma of linked Israeli settlements that would remain a part of Israel. Would Israel have accepted a proposal which gave the Palestinians a comparable salient within Israel? The idea is laughable, of course. But, I do not think that a refusal by Israel to accept such an outcome would be nearly portrayed as a failure of courage or an unwillingness to be a "partner" in peace.

But beyond the territorial issues, the Palestinian "state" proposed by Israel and Clinton would have had nothing that even approaches what anyone would consider true sovereignty. The Palestinians would not have been allowed to have an army. The Israelis would have maintained unfettered rights over Palestinian air space. And Israel would have retained the right to send its forces into Palestine any time it felt "threatened". This is not a "state" in any meaningful sense of the word. It is, at best, a protectorate. Except that, the people being protected, of course, are not the Palestinians but the Israelis.

The "road to peace" here seems so simple to me: Full sovereignty for the Palestinian people over all of the land occupied by Israel in the '67 war; a capital in East Jerusalem; control over and access to the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount; and compensation (financed by the West and the Arab oil oligarchies) to the refugees for the property they fled from or were driven from (depending on who you believe). What is it about this outcome that is so unthinkable to Israelis? More important, what is it about this outcome that makes to West unwilling to insist on it?

The continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian war -- and that is what it is -- no longer something we can watch from the sidelines, satisfied with sincere, even heroic, efforts at mediation. That war is now posing a serious and worsening threat to vital American and European interests: we have no hope of ending our own war on terrorism until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Since it seems entirely improbable that the Israelis and Palestinians will be able to resolve this conflict themselves, is it time for the West to begin to think about imposing a settlement in much the same way it did in the Balkans?