Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro caused a stir by ever-so-gently telling the truth about the occupation. Speaking to a conference at Tel Aviv’s respected Institute for National Security Studies, he addressed “the latest increase in tensions and violence between Israelis and Palestinians,” and observed, “Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities; too much vigilantism goes unchecked; and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”
The outraged reaction from Israeli officials—which included a demeaning slur against the American ambassador by a former Netanyahu aide, as well as Netanyahu himself trying to shame Shapiro by noting the recent murder of an Israeli woman whom Shapiro had actually memorialized in his speech—was as overwrought as it was predictable. The fact that Shapiro’s words of concern were far outnumbered by words of solidarity and support mattered little. It has been the policy of the Netanyahu government that even the most carefully worded public criticisms by its closest friends shall be treated as an attack on the very foundations of the state.
It is simply a matter of fact that Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank live under two different systems of law—the former under Israeli civilian law, the latter under military law imposed after the territories were occupied in 1967. If an Israeli and Palestinian were to be arrested at the same spot in the West Bank at the same moment for the same crime, they would be subjected to two entirely different legal procedures, the former Israeli civil law and the latter military law. In this regard, it’s only Shapiro’s use of “seems” that seems a bit odd. Read more at Tablet Magazine
During his meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered “a package of meaningful measures in the West Bank.” Although Netanyahu was apparently vague about what those measures would be, an anonymous Israeli official told a reporter for Israel’s Ha’aretz, “The prime minister made it clear that we want American recognition of the settlement blocs and of the fact that we can build there.”
Most observers have long recognized that any workable two-state agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is likely to include Israel keeping the large settlement blocs of Gush Etzion, Ariel 
and Ma’ale Adumim. A key question had been if, and when, U.S. policy should shift to acknowledge this, either tacitly or explicitly.
For most of the period from 1967 until today, the United States has viewed all Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line in the same way. The one exception came in 2004, when George W. Bush, in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wrote, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.” The Bush administration’s thinking here was that, by delivering this recognition, it would make it politically easier for Sharon to take difficult steps toward peace.
The Obama administration, while never making any sort of declarative statement, quietly and unofficially walked back this policy of winking at the “settlement blocs” that Bush established. Many on the right criticized this, but Daniel Kurtzer, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel in 2004, defended the Obama administration’s move, noting both that Israel and the U.S. had never agreed upon a definition of the “settlement blocs,” and in any case the growth of settlements had far outstripped what the Bush administration would have considered acceptable.
Now some are suggesting again that hope for preserving the two-state solution lies in accepting building in those settlement blocs.
Michael Koplow, policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, a group that advocates for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and author of the excellent blog, Ottomans and Zionists, makes the case for this approach in a piece today In sum, Koplow argues that, while it is hard for peace advocates to accept any settlements as legitimate, pragmatism dictates differentiating between settlements we expect Israel to keep and those we do not.
“The reality is that if a two state solution is to happen,” writes Koplow, “it will require settler buy in, for better or worse, and getting settlers to support two states means recognizing that for the majority of them, expanding their current communities does not create an impediment to a final status agreement.”
First, let’s recognize that, yes, hard-to-swallow compromises often have to be made in order to progress toward a mutually beneficial outcome. The problem here is that objections to this idea are not, as Koplow characterizes them, only about moral high ground, nor about principle. The issue is very much a practical one.
It’s helpful to review the history. Israel has always accepted incremental gains so that it can pocket them and use the new status quo as a new starting point. One example of this strategy is the Palestinian recognition of Israeli sovereignty, made most explicitly in 1993 by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasir Arafat. In 2007, the Israeli demand changed from simple recognition to recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, a much more problematic formulation, and a unique one in the annals of international relations. Netanyahu is very well aware of this strategy, and he is employing it now in this demand for US recognition of the settlement blocs.
Such recognition would have real effects on the ground – none of them good. As happened under the Bush administration, it would allow for further expansion of these key blocs, which have already grown into much bigger threats to the contiguity of a Palestinian state than they were before, with ever-expanding “regional council” areas surrounding the growing built-up areas, and new, barely connected “neighborhoods” in the blocs.
Importantly, if Obama should acknowledge such a thing, it will likely be seen as a final betrayal by the U.S. of the Palestinians’ historic compromise, in which they accepted 22% of historic Palestine for their state. Again, this is not simply a matter of principle, nor about securing the “moral high ground.” It’s pure pragmatism, based upon clear lessons of history. If we ignore the blocs, Israel naturally pockets that and presses for more, as any shrewd negotiator would if they could. Such a policy effectively removes the blocs from the negotiations. The Palestinians would quite reasonably ask what there is to discuss when the U.S. has already framed the talks in terms of Israel having secured the major blocs by force.
This approach did not lead to progress when Bush took it. It would likely be much worse if Obama did it now, given the current situation, where Israel has lurched further right, the U.S. has lost most of its credibility as broker, and Abbas is hanging politically on by a thread. While well intentioned, Koplow’s “solutionism” thus runs the risk of feeding into the Israeli right’s agenda to block a two-state solution. (And while new approaches and ideas are most welcome, it must be said that “Let’s give Israel stuff and hope good things happen” is one of the oldest approaches there is in Washington.)
The alternative to this is not to call for a full settlement freeze, which in any case Obama is not going to do, nor is his successor. A better way forward is to frame talks in terms of treating everything beyond the Green Line as equal but open to swaps. Israel would then know that to keep the blocs it must pay “fair market value” for them and be flexible enough to allow for contiguity for the Palestinian state (i.e. it needs to reduce the areas currently reserved for settlement growth, which are much larger than the built-up areas themselves).
Such an alternative is pragmatic and is, in fact, consistent with existing U.S. policy and, importantly, with international law. What has been missing is the political will to frame the talks in the manner that the international community, including the U.S., has long agreed: borders based in the 1967 lines with mutually agreeable swaps. That is how Israel can keep the settlement blocs. They are not a fait accompli, but an Israeli gain for which the Palestinians must be compensated fairly, and not merely by Israel agreeing to meet its pre-existing commitments, as Netanyahu is now offering. Anything less would merely reinforce the current dynamic of Israeli impunity, and further entrench the one-state reality.
In recent weeks, an upsurge in violence in Jerusalem has brought the embattled city back into the headlines. According to Danny Seidemann, founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem and one of the leading experts on the city, this violence, boiling at a level unseen in Jerusalem since 1967, actually began over a year ago, and it is not just another spoke in the “cycle of violence.”
“Usually there’s a tendency to overstate the instability of Jerusalem,” Seidemann said at a meeting of journalists and analysts in Washington this week. “But Jerusalem is normally a far more stable city than its reputation. What we are seeing now are significant developments that go well beyond tomorrow’s headlines.”
Seidemann described a dangerous confluence of factors, with the political stalemate creating an atmosphere of despair in which the conflict, which has always been political, will finally become the religious conflict that many have believed, until now incorrectly, that it is. The current conflict centered on the Temple Mount is only the tip of the iceberg. According to Seidemann, “The entire fabric of this conflict has changed.”
“The fighting over the Temple Mount indicates the establishment of a biblical narrative which is already fanning the flames of a religious conflict,” Seidemann said. “It is planting the seeds of the transformation of a political conflict, which can be solved, into a religious conflict which cannot be solved. We are seeing the ascendancy of those faith communities that weaponize faith. We are seeing the marginalization of traditional religious bodies who understand that Jerusalem is best served by the faiths working together.
“Nothing guarantees the outbreak of violence as much as the real or perceived threat to sacred spaces,” Seidemann continued. “But the Temple Mount is the detonator, not the explosive device. Violence is sustained by the perceived loss of the two-state solution.”
As Seidemann pointed out, the two-state solution has lost a great deal of its credibility. This is true for both sides, but it is especially impactful for the Palestinians. While observers, politicians, academics and activists debate whether or not the two-state solution is still feasible, that loss of hope for ending the occupation is the key factor in creating despair among the Palestinians. Recent statements by Israeli leaders, indicating that they have no intention of ever leaving the West Bank, and by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinians no longer consider themselves bound by previous agreements may have brought doubts about the two-state solution into sharper relief, but it is the reality on the ground that convinces Palestinians of the solution’s failure.
The result is despair, and that is not at all confined to Jerusalem. Israel might have escalated the tensions in September by granting access to the Temple Mount to hundreds of the most extremist Jewish radicals, but all that did was raise the temperature on an already burning flame.
That flame, however, could burn high for some time. The increasing influence of religious forces among Palestinians has been well-documented in the Western media. Less obvious, but just as important, has been the dramatic increase in the influence radical religious forces have in Israel. Formerly, the Israeli government sought to contain such forces, and particularly to keep messianic radicals away from the Temple Mount. As Netanyahu demonstrated last month, this has changed.
The reporting in the United States has largely focused on incidents of assault or murder of Israeli civilians. In covering the leaderships of the two sides, much of the debate has been over whether or not Abbas has been “inciting” the violence, as Netanyahu accuses him of (and which the IDF refuted today). The theoretical discussion has been about whether this is the beginning of a “Third Intifada.”
All of these are missing the mark. While many, in and out of Israel, may have relegated last summer’s devastation of Gaza to historical memory, in the West Bank, Palestinians saw it as yet another confirmation of the low value the world, not only Israel, places on their lives. That despair, the despair of occupation, rather than any of Abbas’ words, is what incites violence. This is the atmosphere that leads to more protests and more violence, as Palestinians are forced to confront a reality where they have nothing to lose. It is not an “Intifada,” and it is not any sort of organized uprising. It is simply the inevitable result of an occupation that seems to have no end.
While Abbas’ faltering position as the head of the Palestinian Authority and the aggressive attitude of the Netanyahu government are major factors in creating this hopeless atmosphere, Seidemann pointed out that the problem is not limited to those bodies.
Referring to the announcement the same day of Israel having demolished homes of two terrorists who carried out deadly attacks last year, Seidemann said, “Demolishing of these houses make Palestinians wonder when the Abu Khdeir terrorists and Duma terrorists will be dealt with.”
This refers to two cases of Jewish terrorism that sparked global outrage. But the way Israel has dealt with them demonstrates why Palestinians feel so devalued. Muhammed Abu Khdeir was murdered in July of 2014. The culprits have been arrested and are still on trial at this time in Israel’s criminal court system. In contrast, Palestinians accused of terrorism are tried by Israeli military courts. And where the families of Palestinians convicted in those courts see their homes demolished in a type of collective punishment, it is the Abu Khdeir family, not those of the confessed murderers, that have been spat upon outside the court. Even the US State Department has accused the Israeli government of harassing the Abu Khdeir family.
The Duma murderers are even more immediate and galling to Palestinians. The arson in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank killed an 18-month old baby and both his parents. Yet, despite the fact that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has publicly stated that Israel knows who the murderers are, they have not been arrested. “This creates a feeling that Palestinian lives don’t matter, and that is not only directed at Israel, but also to the Palestinian Authority and much of Arab world,” Seidemann said.
Seidemann is one of the growing body of serious analysts who contend that the model of bilateral talks brokered by the United States that grew out of the Oslo Accords can never produce an end to Israel’s occupation. His message was that outside intervention was going to be necessary, even as he understood how difficult it would be to make that happen.
“There has been no action on Israel since collapse of Kerry initiative (in 2014),” Seidemann said. “Many in the Obama administration are making compelling arguments for simply walking away. Taking any action on this issue would require expending political capital and still may not be successful. These are strong arguments.
“But the implications of walking away are startling. It is very likely that the two-state solution, if it is not lost already, will be clearly lost before January 2017. If that happens, it will have died under this president.”
Seidemann pointed out that, in some ways, the two state solution is being lived now in Jerusalem, with Israeli Jews rarely entering Palestinian areas and Palestinians avoiding the Jewish parts unless they have work or other business there. Settlers in East Jerusalem, however, are living a one state reality, with soldiers accompanying convoys in and out of their enclaves, constant tension and very different standards of living between the two isolated communities. Seidemann described it as “Belfast at its worst.”
Seidemann said that the level of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on security remains good. But that won’t last in the current climate. Regardless of Abbas’ commitment to non-violence, Netanyahu continues to accuse him of incitement – “Netanyahu plays on Israeli fears and anxieties like a virtuoso plays on a Stradivarius,” said Seidemann — and the security cooperation is becoming more and more of a political liability for Abbas. Eventually, those things will combine to break that cooperation. This was one of the implications of Abbas’ speech at the United Nations last week. In any case, Seidemann said, that cooperation is insufficient to deal with destabilizing forces at play.