PERHAPS BECAUSE of too many competing events — America’s bitterly-fought mid-term election amidst parlous economy; US President Barack Obama’s coming visit to India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in Hanoi and the Group of Twenty summit in Seoul, to say nothing of the terrorist threat following the despatch of explosive parcels to the US from Yemen — a depressing development of great consequence has gone practically unnoticed. The direct talks between Israel and Palestine, given a jump-start by Mr Obama and inaugurated with fanfare by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, have been suspended for more than a month. This is longer than they had lasted.
More importantly, “suspension” is a euphemism. The reality is that the talks are all but dead, not deadlocked. The reason is that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, resolutely refuses to extend the freeze on the construction of Israeli settlements on the Palestinian territory in the West Bank that ended on September 26. And the President of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, understandably refuses to negotiate if the settlement construction goes on, which is exactly what is happening. No fewer than 30 new projects have been started (in addition to 120 settlements that already exist) and one of the new settlements is being built in eastern Jerusalem that would be the capital of the state of Palestine if and when it comes into existence under the generally-accepted two-states formula.
If the two sides have not yet officially declared that the talks have collapsed, there are two reasons for it. First, such a declaration before November 2 would have added to Mr Obama’s woes in the mid-term elections he and his Democratic Party are contesting practically with their backs to the wall. Secondly, the Arab League, meeting in Syria on October 9, had ruled out any negotiations with Israel for as long as settlements were being built but had given the “American brokers” a month to persuade Mr Netanyahu to “do the right thing”. Of this happening there is no chance because the Israeli Prime Minister remains irremediably intransigent.
Mr Obama, fully aware of the critical importance of the settlements issue, made extraordinary efforts to cajole Mr Netanyahu to extend the freeze for no more than 60 days. In return he offered Israel additional security guarantees, more fighter planes, missile defence, and a commitment to veto any UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel. Nothing could have been more generous than this, as even Israel’s staunch supporters in America accept. Still Mr Netanyahu refused. His plea to the Americans is that his Right-wing colleagues in the coalition simply would not permit any restrictions on settlement construction.
This is true only to the extent that some of his ministerial colleagues, such as foreign minister Avigor Liebermann — who is a Russian immigrant, lives in a settlement and is trying to establish himself as leader of the Israeli Right — are giving him trouble.
But objective observers point out that what Mr Netanyahu is saying is an “excuse”, not an explanation. He can jettison extremists in his Cabinet and make common cause with those in the Opposition that support the peace process. Mr Netanyahu rejects this advice out of hand.
Even so, there is no dearth of Israel’s friends in the US who are advising Mr Abbas not to be “distracted” by the settlements issue but resume his negotiations with Mr Netanyahu to settle “broader questions” such as the borders of the two states (with Israel “compensating” Palestine by swapping its land for the areas occupied by Israeli settlements) and Jerusalem etc. The response of the Palestinians to this is: For how long can we go on talking while Israel goes on building more settlements? Soon enough there would not be sufficient land for a viable state of Palestine. They add, pertinently, that settlements are illegal under international law.
History underscores the validity of the Palestinian position. The Oslo Peace Accords, reached by Palestinian and Israeli negotiators under Norwegian auspices, were signed spectacularly in the south lawns of the White House on September 13, 1993. There were high hopes that within 10 years the two states would be living in peace. But the assassination of the Israeli warrior turned peacemaker, Yitzhak Rabin, 15 years almost to the day, dashed these expectations. All subsequent efforts to make peace — setting up a “contact group” of which the UN was a member, President Bill Clinton’s last-ditch attempts at Camp David in September 2000 and President George W. Bush’s at Ann Arbor eight years later — have also come to naught. Now President Obama’s initiative has flopped.
Under the circumstances, is it any surprise that the Palestinian side has come to the conclusion that direct talks with Israel, with occasional mediation by the US, have outlived not only their utility but also their futility? No wonder, Palestinian leaders are openly discussing the idea of seeking recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine within the 1967 borders from the UN Security Council, and requesting it to direct all member nations to do the same. Unfortunately, this is not a practical proposition. There is no way the US can refrain from vetoing such a resolution in the Security Council. The support of even all the other 14 members would be of no avail.
There are some friends of Palestine as well as Palestinian thinkers who feel that the futile search of two states should be abandoned and they should agree to just one state of which the entire Palestinian and Israeli populations would be equal citizens. Whatever its future, the idea has much merit. For in such a situation, demography would do what the most intense and prolonged diplomacy hasn’t. In a democratic Israel the principle of one-person-one-vote would secure for the Arab majority its legitimate rights. At present the Arabs living in Israel are being treated as second-class citizens as recent riots in Jerusalem and some other places demonstrated. The only other alternative Mr Netanyahu’s Israel — already insistent on establishing the identity of his country as a Jewish state in which all citizens and immigrants must take an “oath of loyalty” to such a state — would be to turn itself into an apartheid state. Would the United States and the world community accept that?