The Israel Defense Forces and civilian police have, when called upon, obeyed decisions by Israel’s political leadership to evacuate settlers and settlements. More recently, however, the effective implementation of politically controversial decisions was accompanied by opposition within the ranks, abetted by political leaders and prominent rabbis, to executing military orders considered to represent a repudiation of the political and religious dictates of Greater Israel.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has not ended the occupation, but it has recorded one significant accomplishment. As one Israeli commentator explained, “Today it seems that the biggest threat to the quiet in the territories comes not from the Palestinians, but from irresponsible provocations of the zealous, insane margins of the Israeli right wing.” Palestinians have long been at the mercy of the twin instruments of occupation—settlers and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The former have acted with impunity in what they view as a century-old battle against Palestinians for control of Palestine’s land and resources.
The Madrid Peace Conference convened two decades ago in a spirit of great optimism. However it was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, dragged to the meeting by President George H.W. Bush, who offered the most prescient commentary on Madrid’s troubled legacy. “I would have carried out autonomy talks for ten years,” he remarked in June 1992, “and meanwhile we would have reached one half a million people in Judea and Samaria.”
After twenty years of negotiations the occupation is as firmly entrenched as ever. Settlements have always been a key barometer of Israel’s intentions. According to this standard, Israel’s commanding presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has only gone from strength to strength as the settler population exploded from 231,000 when Madrid convened to more than half a million today. Israel’s “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip in 2005 only highlighted the critical role of complete settlement evacuation as a key element signaling a change in Israeli policy.
As political theatre, September’s Israeli-Palestinian clash at the UN proved to be an anticlimax. In dueling speeches before the UN General-Assembly, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine Liberation Organization ran in place. Abbas gave a stirring speech making the Palestinian case for statehood before an audience at pains to acknowledge it. Netanyahu left the podium as he arrived–his hand “stretched out in peace” according to principles that guarantee failure. President Barack Obama’s remarks confirmed something that has been clear for many months: The U.S. peacemaking machine is out of ideas and energy.
The idea that the existence and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were not incompatible with the march toward a historic peace between Israelis and Palestinians was one of the central assumptions underlying the Oslo process.
As the September date for consideration of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s UN bid for recognition and state membership approaches, the attention of Israelis, as well as many Palestinians, is focused elsewhere. The occupation is more distant from everyday Israeli concerns than at any time in the last two decades. Israelis are protesting about internal domestic issues, from the price of cottage cheese to the critical lack of affordable housing. In contrast, relations with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or the grinding expansion of settlements, hardly rate attention.
It is a measure of the stalemate now defining the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that the mere reassertion by US and Israeli leaders of long-held, if conflicting, views is counted as news. In a series of speeches in late May, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each sought to make his case before an international audience whose frustration with U.S. leadership and Israeli rejectionism has increased the prospect of support for UN action on the creation of a Palestinian state in September.
Having failed to win a settlement freeze and now focused on the extraordinary developments throughout the Arab world, Washington has apparently exhausted its ability to direct the Israel-Palestine diplomatic process.
Despite declarations to the contrary, the U.S. effort to revitalize talks in the wake of the failure of the settlement freeze effort lacks both content and commitment. Instability in Egypt virtually assures an extended “time out” in U.S. efforts.
Administration officials have often declared that the United States cannot want peace more than the parties themselves, but if there is a defining character to the diplomacy of the last few months, it is that Washington has demonstrated more of a commitment to diplomatic engagement than either of the antagonists.