“The Nation” Magazine
January 28, 2002
A New Middle East Approach
by Jerome M. Segal
The chance for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is not dead. A way to reach a just, secure and internationally
guaranteed compromise exists. Though the path forward may not be easy, it is
infinitely preferable to what otherwise lies ahead: a complete
unraveling of the Oslo Accords, the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority
and a massive escalation of death and destruction on both sides.
We must start with a simple fact: The Israeli-Palestinian final-status
negotiations did not end at Camp David in July 2000. Nor did they end
when the Al-Aqsa Intifada started two months later. President Clinton's
framework for peace was presented only in December 2000. Indeed, the
negotiations in Taba in January 2001 were viewed by the participants as
having been distinctly productive. Had Israeli Prime Minister Barak won
re-election, it is quite possible that a peace agreement would have
been concluded. The new intifada has been enormously destructive, but only
after the February 2001 election of Ariel Sharon, to which it
contributed, did the violence itself become the dominating issue, ending the
negotiations. This has, of course, been reinforced by the events of
September 11, 2001.
The American approach to the collapsed peace process remains firmly
rooted in the Mitchell report, which was issued last spring: Achieve a
cease-fire, undertake confidence-building measures and renew negotiations.
It seems eminently sensible. Yet the extraordinary American effort made
to achieve even a brief cease-fire suggests that this policy will not
work. Indeed, even if a cease-fire takes hold, chances are very high
that it will break down long before confidence-building measures have been
undertaken. Moreover, even if negotiations are renewed, with the vast
gap on final status between the PLO and the present Israeli government
led by Sharon, the likelihood for negotiations deadlock, on every
central issue, is very high. And such total deadlock will inevitably
disintegrate into renewed violence, at ever higher levels of intensity. Indeed,
even if the proposal discussed by Shimon Peres and Abu Ala for
immediate Palestinian sovereignty in the limited areas from which Israel!
!
has already withdrawn were to be adopted, it would provide only a
short respite before the reality of total deadlock reasserted itself. It is
time for the United States, exercising leadership through the UN
Security Council, to pursue a wholly different approach.
With the failure of efforts to re-establish meaningful bilateral
negotiations, and with the delegitimization of Arafat as a negotiating
partner, Israelis are increasingly looking for decisive unilateral solutions.
In particular there is strong public support for unilateral separation:
the idea that Israel, without negotiations, should withdraw from some
or all of the territories and establish a physical barrier, with the
Palestinians on one side and Israelis on the other.
While unilateral separation resonates well with the public, it has only
limited support among the Israeli leadership and security
establishment. There are several reasons for this. First, with the current Israeli
government in power, any unilateral separation would only be partial,
leaving almost all the settlements intact and substantial areas of the
West Bank under Israeli control. It would not result in a viable
territory for the emergence of a Palestinian state. Thus it would produce only
a new line of conflict. Second, unilateral withdrawal would serve to
confirm among Palestinians the belief that it is possible to drive Israel
from the territories through violence. Thus it would bring fresh
recruits to that effort. And third, even if it were possible to withdraw to a
truly viable line--some version of the 1967 border with adjustments to
accommodate some of the settlers--unilateral withdrawal would mean that
Israel was giving up territory without having gotten anything in!
!
return. Even for the advocates of land for peace, to give up the land
without having secured the peace is wrongheaded.
In what follows I lay out a new alternative. It seeks to achieve a
separation of the two peoples, but not through unilateral action. Rather,
it proposes that the United States use the UN Security Council to
achieve a kind of coordinated separation, but one in which the Council will
not take no for an answer. In this, it represents a radical departure
from previous US policies. But the proposal is far from radical in its
objectives. It leaves for later the issues of Jerusalem and refugees;
instead, it focuses on the issues of territory, statehood and settlements.
Here it seeks to be decisive, to achieve an end to the territorial
dimension of the conflict through the emergence of a Palestinian state
living at peace with Israel. The territorial specifics are little different
from what Clinton proposed and what is now an international consensus:
the near complete withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.
The Plan
First, the UN Security Council would assert its legal authority over
the territories and East Jerusalem. This assertion of authority would be
justified on several grounds. Except for its recognition/admission of
the State of Israel in 1949, the UN never relinquished the territorial
authority it possessed over Palestine at the end of the British Mandate.
While Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 called for bilateral
negotiations to achieve Israeli withdrawal from "territories occupied"
during the 1967 war and respect for Israel's right to live in peace,
thirty-five years have passed without resolving the status of the
territories. In taking this new initiative, the Council would explicitly
acknowledge that the prospects for achieving, through bilateral negotiations
alone, the peace agreement envisioned in Resolution 242 are not
promising. Noting that the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were
not, in 1948 or in 1967 (or at present), under the recognized sovereig!
!
nty of any state, the Council would assert that it is the ultimate
legal authority for the disposition of these areas.
Seeking to delineate sovereignty within the territories, the Council
would then specify conditions that, if met, would result in Security
Council authorization of the PLO to establish the government of a
Palestinian state, and subsequently for Security Council recognition of that
state. If, along the lines of the Peres/Abu Ala proposal, a truncated
Palestinian state already exists, these would be preconditions for
directing Israel to undertake a fuller withdrawal. These conditions would
include:
§ The State of Palestine will recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
§ The State of Palestine will (Jerusalem excepted and postponed)
recognize Israel as sovereign within the borders established by this plan,
and further agree that such borders are final, constituting the end of
the territorial dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
§ The Palestinian state will not enter into any defense or assistance
treaty with any state not at peace with Israel, and until a bilateral
agreement with Israel is achieved will not import weapons.
§ The State of Palestine will accept international inspectors,
appointed by the Security Council, under US leadership and including Israeli
participants, to insure that such conditions are carried out faithfully.
§ The State of Palestine will demonstrate, as a prior condition of
international recognition, its capacity to exercise control over acts of
violence emanating from its territory.
If the PLO/State of Palestine accepts these conditions, the Security
Council would then direct Israel to submit to the Council, within ninety
days, a plan for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank. Specific requirements would be:
§ Israel must withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip.
§ Israel must withdraw from a minimum of 95 percent of the West Bank,
and must provide, on a one-for-one basis, a territorial swap for areas
it proposes to retain.
§ Within the West Bank area, there must be territorial contiguity for
the State of Palestine, with access to Jordan.
§ Within evacuated areas, Israel will provide for the full evacuation
of Israeli citizens.
§ Evacuated settlements will be transferred to the State of Palestine
in good condition, with the understanding that the value of the housing
and infrastructure will count as a credit in any ultimate plan for
compensation of Palestinian refugees.
Upon receipt of the Israeli plan, a committee formed of the five
permanent members of the Security Council and chaired by the United States,
would either accept the Israeli proposal, modify it or return it to
Israel for specified amendments. Once the committee agreed on a final plan
and received from the PLO its acceptance of the conditions detailed
above, the Council would direct Israel to carry out the withdrawal. It
would further announce that (Jerusalem excepted) the resulting border
between Israel and Palestine fulfills UNSC Resolution 242 and constitutes
the permanent international border, with Israel recognized as a
sovereign Jewish state within that border. Thus the Council would foreclose any
future effort to challenge Israeli sovereignty over those areas of
Israel that exceed the original lines of the UN's 1947 partition plan. If
the PLO does not accept the conditions, there would be no directive to
withdraw.
While this would end the territorial dimension of the conflict
(Jerusalem excepted), other vital issues would remain. Here the Council would
call upon the two states, at the earliest date, to undertake bilateral
negotiations on the remaining issues, including Jerusalem, the Temple
Mount, refugees, security arrangements and economic cooperation. On
Jerusalem, the Council would endorse the Clinton parameter that what is Arab
should be Palestinian and what is Jewish should be Israeli. On refugees
the negotiations would be based on recognition of Israel as a Jewish
state. The Council would further specify that if the two sides reach
agreed modifications in the Security Council separation plan, the Council
will accept those modifications.
Why This Approach Can Work
As noted above, from an Israeli point of view one of the problems with
unilateral separation is that it turns land over to the Palestinians
but gets nothing in return. In particular, it leads to a Palestinian
state that has made no commitments with respect to security issues. By
contrast, this proposal, which I call externally directed separation/end of
territorial conflict (EDS/ETC), extracts from the PLO in advance major
concessions on a variety of issues: Israel as a Jewish state, the
finality of borders, demilitarization, alliances and international
inspectors. Other security considerations could be pursued through bilateral
negotiations, using economic cooperation as an incentive.
Like the proposals for unilateral separation, EDS/ETC results in
Israeli withdrawal and a Palestinian state, and leaves for the future
negotiations on other issues. Because both approaches result in a Palestinian
state, they share the important benefit of moving Palestinian
nationalism toward normalization. If Israel's long-term security
vis-à-vis the Palestinians is to be attained, it will come about not through
crushing popular movements and terrorists with popular support but
through the evolution of Palestinian nationalism into the familiar pattern of
a nation-state with national interests to protect, and thus with a
susceptibility to the familiar logic of deterrence between states.
Externally directed separation, however, has a particular value for
Israel with respect to the internal problems it faces over settlement
evacuation. Whether through bilateral agreement, unilateral separation or
externally directed separation, extricating the settlers from the West
Bank and Gaza will be a traumatic experience for Israeli society.
Potentially it will pit the Israeli army against armed settlers. Probably
there will be experiences so scarring that Israel will not recover for a
generation. Of the three alternative approaches to separation,
externally directed separation will result in the lowest level of national
trauma. An evacuation from the settlements that is forced upon an Israeli
government by the pressure of the entire outside world is one that is not
optional. As such it will engender the least amount of resistance and
have the widest level of popular support. Moreover, once it is
accomplished, as externally imposed, it will be relatively free from never-e!
!
nding charges of internal betrayal. In this way, it is even preferable
to a bilateral negotiated agreement.
In the plan presented above, the five permanent members of the Security
Council, led by the United States, would require a withdrawal not to
some interim territorial line but to a permanent border between Israel
and Palestine, recognizing Israeli sovereignty within that border. Thus
the plan seeks territorial stability. Under the current political
configuration in Israel, no proposal for unilateral separation will be
sufficient in territory to achieve a stable border. Externally directed
separation, just because it is imposed, has the ability to go beyond the
constraints of domestic politics. In this case, imposition from the
outside represents an advantage for Israel, even though it will mean that
more territory is transferred to the Palestinians. By imposing final
borders, the Security Council will solidify an international consensus on
the territorial issue. As such, there will be virtually no international
support or sympathy for any further Palestinian territorial ambitio!
!
ns. In international law, it will end the territorial dimension of the
conflict.
Political Dynamics
The reader may ask how this plan can surmount the political opposition
of territorial and religious absolutists on both sides of the conflict.
The answer lies in the political dynamic created by such action by the
Security Council.
First, by resolving the territorial dimension of the conflict EDS/ETC
removes the most fundamental motivation for violence among those
Palestinians prepared to live at peace with a Jewish state. Thereby, it
isolates the true maximalists from the bulk of the Palestinian populace. And
second, by giving rise to an established Palestinian state, it removes
from the various factional forces any legitimization of their claim to
be independent decision-makers on issues of war and peace. Both factors
will increase the capability (and thus the accountability) of the new
Palestinian government with regard to preventing any continued violence.
A Palestinian state can act to achieve a monopoly over the means of
violence not because of Israeli or US demands but simply because that
monopoly is a normal constitutive feature of any state. While Hamas and
Islamic Jihad may hope to resist the authority of the Palestinian state,
they will find--as did the Irgun in its 1948 confrontation with Isr!
!
ael's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion--that once statehood is
achieved, the ability to do so is severely limited.
There is, of course, the possibility that the PLO will not agree to the
various conditions for statehood required by the Security Council. In
particular, it may resist recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, because
this would have relevance to the issues arising when the question of
refugees is negotiated. In effect, the international community would be
saying to the Palestinians that accepting Israel as a Jewish state is a
condition of their own statehood. With this coming from the Security
Council there is a strong chance it would be accepted. However, were the
PLO to refuse this, there would be no directive to Israel to withdraw.
Internationally, the situation would, however, be transformed. The
responsibility for continuing occupation would rest upon Palestinian
unwillingness to meet Security Council conditions.
Similarly, there is the possibility that the Sharon government would
refuse to obey a Security Council directive to withdraw. Indeed, if the
Security Council directed unconditional withdrawal, there might be
widespread support in Israel for standing alone against the world. But the
above plan is conditional on the PLO (and the putative state of
Palestine) recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and accepting that this
withdrawal ends the territorial dimension of the conflict. On territory, it is
not radically different from what Clinton proposed. Coming from the
Security Council, under US leadership, it is unlikely that Sharon would
choose to disobey such a directive, but if he did, a totally new dynamic
would arise within Israeli politics. The Labor Party would withdraw
from the national unity government and would be in a position to make the
next elections a referendum on whether to accede to the Security
Council and end the territorial dimensions of the conflict. Central to wi!
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nning such a referendum would be the demonstration by the PLO/State of
Palestine that it exercises and will continue to exercise a monopoly
over the use of force within the Palestinian polity. It will be the
moment of truth for both peoples.
The real difficulty facing the EDS/ETC idea is that it can't succeed
without strong US leadership. Thus far the Bush Administration has not
been willing to play that role. There are three conditions under which
this might change. First, if an Israeli government were to signal its
desire for an imposed solution. Today this is, of course, impossible.
Second, if the conflict became so heated as to generate a major threat to
America's fundamental security interests. And third, if there developed
within Israel a substantial body of public opinion calling on the
United States to play this role. Such appeals would have to be sufficiently
forceful to win significant support within the US Jewish community and
the larger US public. It is with this last option that hope resides.
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