One of the most dangerous and most common mistakes people make about the Middle East is to believe that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is just around the corner.
This is an easy mistake to make; peace is such a good idea, who could be against it? After all, it’s very easy to see what the only reasonable solution would be: a division that roughly corresponds to the old pre-1967 Green Line, with some land swaps for each side. It’s also easy to see that both sides would be better off if they agreed to the compromise. The Israelis could settle down in peace with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors, and the Palestinians, with lots of aid from the rest of the world, could start to build their state without the effects of the Israeli occupation.
Yes, there are some tough issues. For the Israelis, there is the question of Jerusalem and, to a lesser extent, the problem of the religious and ultra-nationalist settlers who dream of a Greater Israel that goes (at least) to the Jordan River. For the Palestinians there is the emotional issue of the ‘right of return’, the belief that those who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 have the right to return to their original homes in pre-1967 Israel. There is also the problem of the radical groups who refuse to recognize Israel and believe in continuing war, whether ‘holy’ or not, against the Jewish state.
Outsiders and especially Americans look at this situation and draw what seem to be the obvious conclusions: the ‘moderates’ on both sides need to control their ‘extremists’ so that the common sense solution can be reached. Outside powers like the US can and should help the two sides reach the agreement, and also provide sweeteners — financial incentives, security guarantees, anything else that might be useful — to make that process easier. To get the negotiations going, the ‘extremists’ on both sides must be prevented from acts that place obstacles in the path: The Palestinians need to give up provocative actions like terror attacks; the Israelis need to stop building settlements, and improve conditions in the occupied territories. America’s job is to get both sides to do the right thing and to empower the moderate majorities to overcome (or buy off) the radical fringe.
Many people argue that Israel is the side that most needs to crack down on its crazies right now. The settlers’ movement, the aggressive tactics of the occupation, the brutal response to rocket attacks from Gaza have made it next to impossible, people argue, for the moderate Palestinians to participate in serious peace talks. Worse, the continued expansion of settlements is an assault on the core concept of a compromise peace. As Israeli settlements grow thicker and denser beyond the Green Line, it becomes less and less likely that Israel will ever withdraw. Palestinians lose hope that the peace process will ever pan out, and the chances for peace diminish.
This belief helps explain why so many people in so many countries care so passionately about stopping Israeli settlements. It’s not just that people perceive the Palestinians as the underdogs. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute threatens the peace and security of the whole world, and these Israeli actions are seen as blocking a quick, fair and final resolution of the quarrel.
This picture of the Middle East peace process is partly right and partly wrong. It’s right about the obvious compromise; any final border between Israel and the future Palestine will have to run on or near the Green Line. The conventional view is right about the difficult issues; it’s even right that outside powers like the US should work to nudge the two parties down this path — and that Israeli settlements at this point are not helpful.
But the standard model is also partly wrong. The two sides are not ready to make peace yet, the obstacles to peace are not symmetrical and continuing Israeli settlements (which I agree are not in Israel’s interests) are not the main obstacle to peace.
The core problem is what it has been since the Arab side rejected the UN partition plan of 1947: a critical mass of Palestinian opinion, backed by some governments in the region, does not accept the basic idea of partitioning the land. There have always been some Palestinians who supported the idea of a territorial compromise, and over the decades their numbers have increased and their influence has grown, but a large and influential core of the Palestinian national movement the is not ready to give up the demand that displaced Palestinians must return to the lands and homes they lost during the Israeli War of Independence.
Today’s division between the more moderate “Fatahstan” on the West Bank and the more radical “Hamastan” in Gaza has deep roots. In general, the West Bank has historically been a stronghold of Palestinians who might under the right conditions be ready to accept the 1967 borders; Gaza has been dominated by those who reject the idea. It’s easy to see why. Almost all the Palestinians in Gaza are the descendants of refugees, and the Gaza strip is a barren zone of desert land with no resources or prospects. Territorial compromise condemns virtually everyone in Gaza to a bleak future; the dream of a return to lost lands is the driving current of Gaza politics. When Arafat and the PLO started to hint at giving up the right of return, opinion among the refugees and the dispossessed shifted away from Fatah toward Hamas. If Hamas begins to soften its approach, other, more radical movements will likely pick up support.
On the West Bank, the picture is mixed. The Palestinians who lived there before 1967, and especially some of the elite and well established families and groups among them, are often genuinely and sincerely ready for compromise peace. Opinion in the refugee camps is more mixed; more people in the camps feel like the Gazans.
Then there is the Palestinian diaspora: hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. There are many currents of opinion and thought among these Palestinians, and there are differing degrees of commitment to Palestinian issues, but as is often the case, romantic and extreme views of nationalist issues can be found among the diaspora. Just as Irish-Americans went on collecting money for the IRA long after most of the Irish in Ireland were heartily sick of them, so Palestinian exiles and immigrants may continue to see the Israeli-Palestinian issue in romantic and emotional terms and support radical groups.
Palestinian opinion is very far from reaching a consensus on giving up the right of return in exchange for recognition of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders. Even Yassir Arafat, with his immense personal prestige (and considerable personal charm) could never take that final step. As long as peace means sitting indefinitely in Gaza (with perhaps some people moving to the already crowded West Bank), it is unlikely that many Palestinians there will see much advantage to a ‘peace’ that solves none of their real problems.
Worse, even if a group of Palestinian leaders signs a treaty with Israel, a substantial chunk of Palestinian opinion is likely to think that the treaty is at best a temporary arrangement and at worst a betrayal of the national cause. There will be a ‘rejectionist wing’ of the Palestinian movement; it will likely continue armed struggle against Israel and perhaps against a Palestinian government considered illegitimate. This struggle could come as religious terrorism; it could be secular, nationalist terrorism. It could be both; there is likely to be plenty of it. Outside powers are virtually certain to support various resistance movements for their own purposes. Will the Palestinian government be able to crack down ruthlessly on a resistance movement that will likely have foreign funding and significant popular support?
The Israelis know this; that is one reason so many Israelis are not enthusiastic about making concessions for peace. Israelis want the violence and the killing to stop; if it isn’t going to stop, why make concessions?
Outsiders want peace so much and find peace so desirable that we cannot believe that this problem cannot be solved. It’s pretty clear that we want negotiations more than either the Israelis or the Palestinians; otherwise why do we spend so much time, effort and money trying to threaten, bribe or cajole the two sides into sitting down? Indeed, the fact that so much of recent history in the region revolves around the efforts of outsiders to get the two sides to make peace should tell us something. If the two parties wanted peace badly, they wouldn’t need so much help negotiating it and negotiations would not be so dragged out.
The truth is that American national interests require a peace process in the Middle East even if peace remains out of sight. An ongoing process between the Palestinians and Israelis offers hope to the region, helps keep day to day tension under control, makes Iranian and Syrian efforts to make trouble more difficult and eases the path of Arab governments who want to work with us on other issues and who in any case are more worried about Iran than about Israel right now.
This peace process is not (or does not have to be) a hypocritical sham. The long haggling process between the two sides has already clarified some of the difficult issues surrounding, for example, the future status of Jerusalem. Interim agreements reached during these discussions can improve living conditions for both Palestinians and Israelis. And gradually building relationships and trust between the negotiators at least on the two sides helps; the concept of ‘two states living side by side in peace’ is more substantial today than it used to be. We are 62 years closer to peace in the Middle East today than the world was in 1948.
Arguably the biggest single blunder the United States has made in this long process was the decision to ‘go for broke’ at the end of the Clinton administration, when the White House basically risked a total breakdown in the peace process in order to get an agreement on President Clinton’s watch. We are still struggling to recover from that mistake a decade later; if President Obama could get back to the status quo that President Clinton gambled away, he would count himself a very successful diplomat.
It’s hard to tell from the outside if the Obama administration believes that a relatively quick peace agreement is possible or not. Because America needs a credible peace process, a smart administration would be talking up the prospects for peace even if it understood that a final agreement remains out of reach. On the other hand, the attractive mirage of a quick solution to this problem has led past presidents to miscalculate before. Ask President Clinton.
If the administration understands that its goal is a credible peace process that reduces tension in the region and improves life for Israelis and Palestinians on the ground while making modest, incremental gains toward real peace, it might get what it wants — if it plays its cards carefully and well. But if it believes that a quick dash towards peace will get it over the goal line, it is probably going to be disappointed — and the fallout in the region will be severe.
Taken to the extreme, the belief that the two sides are close to peace leads some to embrace one of the most dangerous ideas in the world: that the United States should define and impose a peace on both sides, using American troops if necessary to patrol the new frontier. It is hard for me to think of a riskier proposal; violence on the frontier more than likely would not stop, and the United States would be caught in both the political and military crossfire between two angry parties.
In the medium to long term, the United States badly needs peace in the region. Unfortunately, getting the Palestinians to “yes” will be hard. I’ve argued in Foreign Affairs that we need to think much harder about how to compensate and resettle refugees. Even that will not win over the entire population; Palestinians have repeatedly said in the past that such measures are not what they want. They want to go home and for more than sixty years most have refused to accept anything else. The passing of time and the permanence of Israel have slowly built support for alternatives among Palestinians; developing attractive alternatives will help speed the slow process of change.
But the bad news and the brutal truth about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that until the Palestinians give up the dream of returning to pre-1967 Israel, peace will not finally come. Neither Israel nor anybody else can force them to give up this dream. The dream is real, the dream is woven into memory, culture, politics and faith.
With luck and skill, we can perhaps manage this conflict; we may even be able to hasten the day when it ends. Anything is possible in this world, but a quick, negotiated end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost certainly not in the cards.