Israel/Palestine for Iran Swap?

A couple days after Israeli papers reported that Benjamin Netanyahu was stiffing Barack Obama and his plans for Middle East peace, the Guardian says that all sides have reacheda tentative agreement:

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials.

Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme. The US, along with Britain and France, is planning to push the United Nations security council to expand sanctions to include Iran's oil and gas industry, a move that could cripple its economy.

In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."

I guess it matters which reporting you believe. Russia and particularly China seem to be missing in the Guardian's report about a tough line with Iran, and they both have veto power in the UN Security Council. Juan Cole doubts its effectiveness, and thinks the Likudniks will wriggle off the hook of whatever they agreed to during peace talks. Even in the report, they are only agreeing to a "partial" settlement freeze.

What could have a bigger impact is the news that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad plans to build the infrastructure for a separate state.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, unveiled a government program on Tuesday to build the apparatus of a Palestinian state within two years, regardless of progress in the stalled peace negotiations with Israel.

The plan, the first of its kind from the Palestinian Authority, sets out national goals and priorities and operational instructions for ministries and official bodies. Mr. Fayyad said it was meant to hasten the end of the Israeli occupation and pave the way to independent statehood, which he said “can and must happen within the next two years.”

There was no immediate official Israeli comment, with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Europe. But two Israeli officials reacted with consternation over what they saw as a unilateral action. The United States consul general in Jerusalem expressed approval for the plan.

The two-year timetable matches Obama's stated two-year timetable for peace negotiations in the Guardian article. I would assume that there is some back-channel encouragement of Palestinian state planning and a means to goose peace talks.

I really don't need another American President getting belligerent about Iran, especially when, the last I heard, the Islamic Republic was offering to talk. But the gears of Middle East peace, stalled throughout pretty much the entire Bush era, seem to be moving again.

Two States Require Two Partners

The White House met with a lot of Jewish leaders last week to outline his plans in the Middle East peace process. I imagine they take into account this CAP paper, suggesting that Obama's timeline for success has travelled ahead of "the abilities or the political conditions of either the Israeli or the Palestinian side." We can certainly see that today, with the announcement by Israel that they will continue to build a housing project in East Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday defended plans for a new Jewish housing development in East Jerusalem, rebuffing the Obama administration's opposition to Israeli construction in the mostly Palestinian area.

"United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged," Netanyahu said in response to questions that U.S. officials raised last week with Israeli Ambassador Michael B. Oren about a 20-apartment project approved this month. "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem."

The Palestinians expect East Jerusalem to form the capital of a future Palestinian state, and the Obama administration has included the area in its demand that Israel stop building beyond the line that divided the sides before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Given that Netanyahu's win is still fresh, this is probably a fairly popular proposal in Israel. Which is why Obama's team must engage with Israelis to improve the position of peace and partnership in public opinion polls. Palestine doesn't really have a solid negotiating partner either - Hamas and Fatah's infighting could lead to stormy elections in the next year. While Palestine's problems, particularly the lack of a civil society and governmental institutions, are large, the block of hardliner Israelis at the head of the government may be a bigger obstacle to peace, however. I don't see either side truly interested in the concessions necessary to reach an agreement.

Abe Foxman said last week that "the Administration is putting too much weight on solving the conflict." As ridiculous as this sounds, it's probably the view inside much of Israel as well.

Space On The Left For Two-State Solutions

It was clear when Bibi Netanyahu made his speech with its alleged concession to a Palestinian state that he was not fully endorsing anything approaching a framework for that state. What sovereign entity agrees to unilaterally disarm and not defend its borders? Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the US, basically confirmed this the other day:

In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren said: "When the prime minister and the government uses the word 'state' now, it has to attach a number of caveats to it, so it'll be understood that what we're talking about here is not a state in the classical sense, as is widely understood, but a state that will have some -- some -- substantive restrictions on its powers."

That's just not going to be good enough, or at least it shouldn't be for policymakers in this country. Harold Meyerson points out that Americans, in particular American Jews, understand that a two state solution, and only a two state solution, can bring about peace in the region and ensure the security of everyone, including the Israelis.

What underpins the resolve of both the administration and Congress to push the Israelis, no less than the Palestinians, toward a settlement is the clear approval this approach commands among American Jews. A poll taken in March for J Street, an organization of American Jews that favors a territorial accord, showed 72 percent support among Jewish Americans for U.S. pressure on Israel and its Arab neighbors to reach an accord, and, remarkably, 57 percent support for U.S. pressure just on Israel. The poll also found 60 percent opposition to the expansion of settlements.

These numbers reflect changes in American Jewish life and thought that have been building for decades. At a broad level, the intense identification of American Jews with Israel has been waning for many years. More narrowly, the past couple of decades have brought the rise of American Jewish groups that try to pressure the U.S. government to push for a two-state solution -- a clear counterweight to more established organizations such as AIPAC that generally try to pressure the U.S. government to do whatever the Israeli government would like it to do. The J Street PAC, an organization that's just three years old, raises funds for members of Congress who back policies leading to a two-state solution, much as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) encourages its backers to donate to candidates who toe a more hawkish line.

I wouldn't go so far to say that AIPAC has been completely sidelined, but clearly Jewish groups have created space on the left to allow Obama to take a hard line on the settlements issue. It's good that Hillary Clinton refused to yield to racist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on this count.

Obviously, Netanyahu isn't being realistic or even serious about a Palestinian state. But for the first time in a while, the forces of peace are dictating strategy in the White House, at least as it concerns the Middle East.

Netanyahu Sort-Of Relents

Looks like Eli Lake was right:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed an independent Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, dramatically reversing himself in the face of U.S. pressure but attaching conditions the Palestinians swiftly rejected.

A week after President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would have to be unarmed and recognize Israel as the Jewish state — a condition amounting to Palestinian refugees giving up the goal of returning to Israel.

Netanyahu, in an address seen as his reponse to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said the holy city of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Senior Palestinian officials Saeb Erekat said the plan "closed the door" to negotiations [...]

Erekat said Netanyahu's plan was unacceptable since it effectively imposes a solution on the core issues of the conflict.

"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations," he said. "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."

Is this a step forward for Netanyahu? Yes. Does it move the ball forward? Apparently not, as the last paragraph makes clear.

Just the fact that Netanyahu had to give a speech like this to combat the Obama speech in Cairo moves the ball forward in some sense, pushing the discussion toward the peace process. But each side is trying to outflank the other on who is more inclined toward peace and what must remain in and out of a deal that the going will be extremely slow. I would say it's better that he did this than nothing at all. But we're still light years away from a solution, and more engagement is needed from the Administration.

Wait And See In The Middle East

Yesterday's meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yielded little in public. Obama reaffirmed his commitment to a two-state solution, and pressed Israel to close settlements, while Netanyahu was obscure in his rhetoric, talking about a commitment to restart "peace talks" but more focused on the perceived threat from Iran. And he certainly didn't commit to stopping the settlement expansion, which disappointed Palestinian observers.

After meeting with President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he was ready to begin peace negotiations with the Palestinians "immediately." But he also reiterated positions that seem to restrict the scope of those talks -- namely that he would accept only a limited form of Palestinian self-government and that any talks would have to include Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a "Jewish state."

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the conditions seemed to undermine any negotiations before they even started.

"There is a difference between being a tough negotiator and a non-negotiator. What I heard today was a non-negotiator," said Erekat, who added that Palestinians had been looking for Monday's meeting to produce some sense of progress -- whether a statement from Netanyahu about the restriction of settlements or on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"He says that he wants me to govern myself by myself. I have one simple question: How can I do that when roadblocks are suffocating us in towns and refugee camps? When the army makes incursions wherever they want? When the demolition of homes continues?" Erekat said.

At the same time, in one of the more promising developments, Hamas has made overtures toward peace for the first time in its history.

Leaders of Hamas have begun reaching out to the West with conciliatory words, saying the Islamic militant group wants to be part of a Mideast solution and raising the possibility they would someday accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In the most significant statement so far, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal told British lawmakers recently that the group is open to "real peace." In Gaza, the Hamas government said last week it is ready to discuss "any approaches and proposals that can lead the region out of its current situation."

In a recent interview, Hamas lawmaker Yehiye Moussa said the group is "not demanding to destroy Israel." West Bank legislator Mahmoud Ramahi added that Hamas is ready to talk to the West — stressing the group has nothing in common with the virulently anti-Western al-Qaida.

Quite a reversal, when the partner for peace is in Palestine and not Israel. If Hamas can change its tone, surely Netanyahu can. But we don't know the extent of his commitment to peace, and what Obama has extracted from him.

Key Moment For The Future Of The Middle East

The President and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting at this hour about a series of issues pertaining to Israel, Palestine and the Greater Middle East. Conflicting reports have stated that Netanyahu either will or will not support the two-state solution that Western leaders, including President Obama, have backed. We'll know soon enough. But we can follow the actions taken by the Likud government and know where Netanyahu really stands.

Israel has moved ahead with a plan to build a new settlement in the northern West Bank for the first time in 26 years, pursuing a project the United States has already condemned as an obstacle to peace efforts. The move comes on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, despite Western calls for Israel to halt its settlement activity. [...]

The initiative began three years ago, under the auspices of then-defense minister Amir Peretz, who promised to transform a former army outpost into a permanent settlement for evacuees from the Gaza Strip. The move was then frozen due to American insistence.

You can do the math for yourself and realize that this was a plan George Bush's Administration protested. Now Netanyahu has clearly planned to revive it. The timing here is obvious.

Juan Cole talked about today's meeting as akin to a Kennedy-Khrushchev summit, with just as many repercussions. Obama and Netanyahu have serious differences and different political needs. We won't know the answer to this today. But if Obama can insist on his vision of Middle East policies (and he has the bargaining power, in the form of billions in foreign aid, to do just that), we actually have a chance to salvage the intractable challenges there and even progress toward peace. If Obama accommodates, we'll see more suffering and more war. It's as simple as that.

Game Of Chicken In The Middle East

At the AIPAC conference, both the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Vice President called for a settlement freeze in the West Bank as a step toward peace in the region. Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have responded by saying "Um, no."

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is beginning to implement, on the ground, what he talked about in the course of the election campaign. A high-ranking source close to Netanyahu said that the prime minister planned to unfreeze land for construction in the existing settlements for the purpose of natural growth.

He also said that as for the clash that could arise on this subject between him and US President Barack Obama, Netanyahu will tell the president that he does not intend to break promises made by the previous government and does not intend to build new settlements. "We are going to open the tap so that people can live," he said, only one day after the UN issued a report saying that there were contingency plans in Israel for building 30,000 housing units in the Etzion Bloc.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday expressed a similar position during his visit to Berlin. He said that it was premature to talk about an arrangement with the Palestinians that is based on "two states for two peoples."

Netanyahu's making a distinction without a difference. Settlement construction is settlement construction, and it deeply damages the peace process. Of course, the right-wing government in Israel wants no part of peace, so that follows logically.

Obama does, however, and this sets up an interesting showdown between the two leaders. Obama would be expected to hold the cards, but peace requires a partner. MJ Rosenberg has an interesting take:

The new president is committed to the two-state solution and intends to insist that the Israeli government not take actions that thwart that goal. That means moving against ever-expanding settlements (which the Israeli press today reports are about to be expanded even more by Netanyahu), easing the flow of goods in and out of Gaza, and removing checkpoints and other obstacles to Palestinian freedom of movement. The administration is also moving away from Israel's ironclad opposition to dealing with Hamas [...]

So is a clash inevitable?

In my opinion, no. That is because I believe that no Israeli government can successfully oppose a popular American president who sets out to pursue Arab-Israeli peace [...]

And not only because it is the United States that is the super power. It is also because President Obama will not be asking Israel to sacrifice any vital interest. On the contrary, in leading an effort to achieve peace, Obama will be advancing Israel's security, along with our own.

That is also why American Jews will rally behind him. It is not because they are indifferent to Israel's security but because they understand that maintaining the occupation undermines Israel's long-term survival.

Most people I know understand this, that from the basis of demographic reality, a two state solution is the only way to have a functioning Jewish Israeli state without apartheid, although on the extremes there are a few holdouts (with increasingly ugly views). But given this argument, and I urge you to read the whole thing, the issue of whether Obama will get a peace deal rests with Obama.

He is scheduled to meet with Netanyahu later this month. What will he decide?

...A key component of all of this is what to do about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Though everyone knows that Israel has nukes, they are not signatories, and this makes it very hard in the Muslim world for the United States to demand Iran's cooperation on their nuclear programs. Over time, I find it crucial to bring Israel and all the other states with weapons into the framework of the NPT, but obviously this will only bring more resistance from the Israeli government. In a typical Solomonic compromise, I could see Obama bargaining this away in exchange for progress on a two state solution.

Push and Pushback

Yesterday, the President met with Jordan's King Abdullah, and in public comments nudged the new Israeli leadership to accept the international goal of a Palestinian state as the only way to produce peace in the region.

In White House talks, Obama reassured Jordan's King Abdullah of his commitment to a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, despite reluctance by Netanyahu's new right-leaning government to support eventual Palestinian statehood.

Obama reiterated his promise to "deeply engage" in efforts to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and predicted good-faith gestures from both sides in coming months.

"What we have to do is step back from the abyss," Obama told reporters after meeting Abdullah in the Oval Office [...]

"I agree that we can't talk forever, that at some point steps have to be taken so that people can see progress on the ground. And that will be something that we will expect to take place in the coming months," Obama said.

Adding to pressure on Netanyahu, Obama added, "I am a strong supporter of a two-state solution. I have articulated that publicly, and I will articulate that privately. And I think that there are a lot of Israelis who also believe in a two-state solution."

And the response?

The new Israeli government will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in U.S. efforts to stop Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and limit Tehran's rising influence in the region, according to top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's developing policy on the issue.

"It's a crucial condition if we want to move forward," said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United States. "If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can't have the Iranians undermining and sabotaging." [...]

U.S. officials are wary of linking the two issues and, if anything, would like to do the reverse of what Israel has proposed, by using progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks to curb Iranian influence, which is wielded in the region through anti-Israeli organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

"We have to be pretty careful how you approach that kind of connection," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "We are dealing with Iran because there are behaviors out there that are deeply troubling. We would be doing that regardless of other issues. By the same token, the Palestinian issue is an issue that obviously evokes a great deal in the region."

I suppose this is progress, leaving open the door for agreement on a two-state solution. But in the long run, these views are irreconcilable. And Netanyahu appears to be deliberately thumbing his nose at the President by hiring an Israeli ambassador to Washington who strongly supported John McCain.

Charm will only go so far in this case. There are deep divisions.

Israeli Pressure Points

I'm just dubious about Rahm Emanuel saying this.

Yedioth Achronoth, the largest circulation daily in Israel, reports today that President Obama intends to see the two-state solution signed, sealed and delivered during his first term.

Rahm Emanuel told an (unnamed) Jewish leader; "In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister."

He also said that the United States will exert pressure to see that deal is put into place. "Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory," the paper reports Emanuel as saying. In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis a vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there, in Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Clearly, the US would have to find some point of leverage to get this hardline Israeli government to agree to a two-state solution. Netanyahu and Lieberman are macho neocons who rebuff any talk of a Palestinian state. But would Emanuel really hold up Iranian negotiations as an attempt to force Israel to the bargaining table? That seems like a dangerous game to me. I believe that the US would push Israel away from bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, but not hold up multilateral agreements.

Anyway, there's a very clear point of leverage for the Israelis - billions of dollars in American aid. That Emanuel didn't go there speaks to the power of the Israel lobby - although J Street is catching up fast. And considering that most American Jews support a two-state solution, clearly they would also support bringing some American pressure to bear. But you just cannot touch Israeli money - or offer Palestinian aid, apparently.

Meanwhile, Israel is really isolating themselves from the world community by refusing to cooperate with a UN inquiry into human rights violations during the Gaza war. Maybe this is another pressure point?

The End Of The Two-State Solution?

The Israeli elections turned out pretty much the way it looked early on. Tzipi Livni earned a narrow victory, but because there are 64 votes in the Knesset on the far right, Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud have a better chance of forming a government. Even if Livni can woo one of the far-right parties, they would represent a check on any move toward peace with Palestine, since they could react by collapsing the government. The result is that Avigdor Lieberman, who even Marty Peretz calls a neo-fascist and who thinks Arabs in Israel should offer loyalty oaths to the state, is arguably the most powerful figure in Israeli politics, and the two-state solution looks dead.

With Lieberman emerging as kingmaker in the new government, logically speaking, there are only three other plausible future relationships of Israel and the Palestinians:

1. Apartheid, with Israeli citizens dominating stateless Palestinians and controlling their borders, land, water and air. Apartheid would be accelerated under Lieberman's baleful influence. Over time, this outcome would break down, since it will be unacceptable to the rest of the world over the coming decades).

2. Expulsion. The Israelis could try to violently expel the Palestinians (and possibly Israeli-Palestinians as well), creating a massive new wave of refugees in Jordan or Egypt's Sinai. (This option would almost certainly end the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and might well push the Arab states into the arms of Iran, creating a powerful anti-Israel military coalition and a huge set of threats to the United States.)

3. One State. The Israelis could be forced over time, by economic and technological boycotts, to grant citizenship to the Palestinians of the occupied territories.

Since President Obama sent out George Mitchell to attempt to kickstart the peace process and get back on track to a two-state solution, both have now had the rug pulled out from under tham by an Israeli public moving to the far right.

The war in Gaza raised the profile and power of extremists on BOTH sides. Hamas is now more popular and Fatah viewed with more skepticism among the Palestinians, and the hardliners within Gaza have been strengthened.

If the Israelis offer Palestinians citizenship in a single state, they will quickly be overcome by demographics and lose the Jewish state. And if they try to deny citizenship to Palestinian refugees, they will be running a modern apartheid state and gradually lose all credibility. And yet they are determined to go on this suicide mission. Perhaps America would remain willingly blind to this injustice for a time, as Matt Yglesias suggests, but the rest of the world wouldn't, and that would increase global tensions, and at some point America will have to come to a reckoning if Israel refuses to do so.

This is why the two-state solution has such support in both parties, because then we wouldn't have to choose. But as Israel drifts right, that choice will have to be made eventually.