Ottomans and Zionists
July 25, 2013
Now that reports are surfacing that negotiations between the
Israelis and the Palestinians are scheduled to begin in Washington on
Tuesday – although there are also conflicting reports that Saeb Erekat
is going to stay home until the Israelis agree to use the 1967 lines as
the basis for negotiations over the final border – it seems like a good
time to lay out some reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism
about whether these talks are fated to go anywhere. Since I am generally
pretty cynical about such things, let’s start with the reasons why I
think the talks may fail. One of the biggest obstacles is the domestic
politics involved. Brent Sasley has written a thorough piece
arguing that the politics right now on the Israeli side are actually
favorable for meaningful negotiations and concessions, but I tend to see
things differently.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has not shown the
willingness in the past to actually deal with the hard choices involved
in coming to an agreement, and while that does not mean that he is
incapable of doing so, nothing in his past indicates that he is an
enthusiastic peace process negotiator. If he is being dragged to the
negotiating table unwillingly through a combination of pressure and quid
pro quo for past U.S. security assistance, it is not going to bode well
for the final outcome. Even if he is doing it of his own volition,
which is certainly in the realm of possibility, the fact that he seems
unwilling to accede to measures such as relinquishing sovereignty over
parts of Jerusalem – which is going to have to be in any deal that the
Palestinians will accept – is a bad omen. Then there is the problem of
Netanyahu’s party. The current iteration of the Likud is the most right
wing in its history, and a large bloc, if not an outright majority of
the party, does not trust Netanyahu and is adamantly opposed to
negotiations. In fact, an increasingly large subset of Likud members,
led by Danny Danon, have been openly calling for Israel to annex the
West Bank and ditch the two state solution in favor of the rightwing
version of a one state solution. It is also the case that the more
radical Likud members now control the party’s policy apparatus and serve
as deputy ministers in the government; in fact, it seems as if
Netanyahu is refuting the latest nonsense from Deputy Defense Minister
Danon every other week. Sasley argues that this cast of characters is
aware that they cannot win without Netanyahu and will ultimately fall in
line, but I am not nearly so certain. Plenty of Likud voters will vote
for the party if, say, Bogie Ya’alon is the headliner, and I don’t think
that the Likud ministers and back benchers are going to sit idly by if
Netanyahu begins to give up territory in the West Bank or order the
evacuation of settlements. They have staked their political reputations
almost entirely on rejectionism of the two state solution, and just
because Netanyahu asks them nicely does not mean that they would not
rather have a smaller but purer version of the Likud. See the experience
that John Boehner has had with his own unruly caucus of House
Republican newcomers as a parallel to how this would play out.
Furthermore, Netanyahu is being kept afloat by his temporary merger with
Yisrael Beiteinu, which he wants to turn into a permanent one. Without
the extra YB votes, Likud immediately loses 10-12 seats in the Knesset.
The problem is that Avigdor Lieberman is in many ways the original
rightwing one stater, and there is simply no way in which he agrees to
keep the two parties together once settlements are given up. Netanyahu
knows this, which provides another incentive to make sure that talks
break down along their usual pattern. The same problem exists with
coalition partner Habayit Hayehudi, which has repeatedly threatened to
leave the government over the issue of freezing settlements and whose
head, Naftali Bennett, is also an advocate of annexation. Sasley argues
that pulling out of the coalition will risk breaking the party apart,
leaving Bennett politically homeless, and so he can’t risk it. I think
the much bigger risk to Bennett is the party folding or excommunicating
him for selling out his core principles if he agrees to remain in a
government that agrees to extricate itself from the West Bank. After
all, the party’s very name – Jewish Home in English – is meant to refer
to the entirely of the Land of Israel from the river to the sea and
explicitly lay claim to all of the territory as part of the Jewish
state. The idea that the greater risk in this lies in leaving the
government seems to gloss over the very reason the party exists, its
history, and its makeup. There is also the issue of a referendum, which
Netanyahu has now promised to hold to approve any peace agreement that
is struck with the Palestinians. While the latest poll in Ha’aretz indicates
that 55% of Israelis would approve a peace agreement, that is in a
generic sense. Once the details are factored in and various political
parties and lobbying groups begin to play on Israeli fears about
security, sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the Jewish
character of the state, etc. it will be very easy to siphon off entire
groups of voters through scare tactics and populist campaigns. That 55%
number is a mirage, akin to the way in which Yair Lapid supports a two
state solution but is adamantly opposed to any division of Jerusalem;
lots of people support a peace deal in theory, but the devil is in the
details. Bennett knows this, which is why Habayit Hayehudi has pushed to
extend the Basic Law that requires a referendum to approve giving up
land that Israel has annexed – East Jerusalem and the Golan – to include
the West Bank as well. The hope on the right is that a referendum will
doom any successful negotiations for good. Finally, there is the
Palestinian side. There is no need to rehash here all of the various
arguments over Mahmoud Abbas and whether he rejected Ehud Olmert’s offer
of 99% of the West Bank or whether he simply did not respond because
Olmert was a lame duck and out of office before he even had a chance. My
own opinion is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle,
but I am not as convinced as others on the left that Abbas is a willing
a peace negotiator. The insistence on preconditions to negotiating is a tactic designed to doom talks,
and the fact that Abbas was not willing to jump on Netanyahu’s partial
10 month building freeze a couple of years ago as the excuse he needed
to reenter talks does not bolster the case of those who want to pin all
of the blame on the Israeli side. Abbas may indeed want to talk, but I
do not think it is fair to portray him as champing at the bit to get
started. On the flip side, there are reasons to be optimistic. While, as
I noted above, Netanyahu has not shown a propensity in the past to
reach an agreement that the Palestinians can reasonably accept, he
certainly appears to have arrived at the realization that Israel’s
international standing is becoming more precarious by the day. The EU
guidelines on settlements last week seem to have been a wakeup call of
sorts, and his now repeated public warnings that Israel is facing a real
prospect of a binational state indicate that his attitude in 2013 is
very different than it was during his tenure as prime minister in the
mid-90s or during the beginning of his current stint in 2009. In
addition, as Dahlia Scheindlin has pointed out,
polls consistently and repeatedly show support for a two state
solution, 83 out of 120 seats in the current Knesset are controlled by
parties theoretically supporting two states, and the support for two
states remains even when you add various line items about specific
concessions into the polling questions. In this light, the referendum
may turn out to be a very good thing, since it will reinforce the move
toward a negotiated solution. It is also encouraging that Netanyahu is
seeking political cover to do what needs to be done, since if he
negotiates a deal that is then approved by the Israeli electorate, it
will be difficult for the right to claim that he has overstepped his
authority. Finally, there is the fact that the best way for negotiations
to succeed is if the specific details are kept under wraps, and any
concessions made by either side are not wielded by opponents of two
states as populist cudgels designed to doom the talks. John Kerry has
done a good job of this by not publicly outlining the conditions that
each side have agreed to in order for talks to resume, but even more
encouragingly so has Netanyahu. There is currently a purposeful cloud of ambiguity
hovering over the question of whether Israel has frozen settlement
construction or not, with Netanyahu denying such a freeze exists and
Housing Minister Uri Ariel saying that the de facto and unannounced
policy in place is not allowing for any new construction. This, more
than anything, is the most hopeful sign of all, since if Netanyahu has
actually frozen settlement construction while trying to trick his party
and coalition into thinking that he has done no such thing, it is a more
serious indication of his desire to really strike a deal than any other
datapoint I have seen. P.S. To watch me talk about this more
extensively, here is a link to a video
of a roundtable hosted by David Halperin and the Israel Policy Forum
that I did yesterday with Hussein Ibish and Dahlia Scheindlin. It’s
long, but an interesting and thorough discussion of the various issues
involved.
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