The passing of former Israeli president Shimon Peres, the last of Israel’s founding generation of statesmen, has prompted an avalanche of eulogies from the international community. Remembering him as a “dear friend,” a “great man of the world,” and Israel’s “biggest dreamer,” world leaders and dignitaries from 70 countries gathered in Jerusalem for his funeral on Friday, among them Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first time Abbas had stepped foot in Israel since 2010.
The domestic backlash to Abbas’s attendance reveals that Peres is remembered quite differently among many Palestinians, and highlights Abbas’s increasing isolation at home. In Palestine, Peres is reviled for his early support of Israeli settlements, his 1996 military campaign in southern Lebanon that resulted in the Qana massacre, and his failure to deliver on promises of peace made in the Oslo Agreements.
Within hours of the announcement that Abbas would be at the funeral, pressure against his visit to Israel began to build. Members of the Joint Arab List, a political party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, had already declined to join the funeral, and refused even to express condolences. Joint List chair Ayman Odeh explained that despite Peres’s peace efforts in the 1990s, “we have fierce opposition to his security stances of the occupation and building settlements, bringing nuclear weapons to the Middle East, and unfortunately, as president, he chose to support [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his policies.” That Abbas was the only Arab head of state attending was another indication of his isolation. (Representatives from Jordan, Oman, Morocco, and Bahrain, as well as Egyptian Foreign Minister Samih Shoukry, were also present.)
According to a report from Palestinian daily Ma’an News, unnamed officials attending the ongoing annual meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council complained about the optics of the visit, claiming that it would undermine Fatah’s base of support and hand Islamist groups a public relations victory.
Palestinian social media also mobilized against Abbas, with the hashtag “Condolences for Peres’s death are treason” beginning to trend soon after the announcement of the visit. Rumors swirled that Israeli culture minister Miri Regev had attempted to snub the Palestinian President by denying him a first row seat at the funeral, until Peres’s family intervened. Users reacted with consternation as a screenshot of Abbas on television was claimed to show him shedding tears. “This won’t help his [political] position,” one commentator said:
محمود عباس رئيس فلسطين يبكي في وفاة شمعون بيريز رئيس اسرائيل السابق .. مشهد يصعب استيعابه pic.twitter.com/Feo9tjG6lI
— مسمار (@mesmmarr) September 30, 2016
Footage also showed a smiling Abbas shaking hands with Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, and speaking with Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni.
High-placed Fatah officials defended Abbas’s move, saying that it would send a message to the world that the Palestinian people were serious about peace. They did not mention if Israel had committed to any reciprocal steps. Netanyahu had not acknowledged Abbas’s presence in his remarks at the funeral.
The backlash against the visit expresses the despair many ordinary Palestinians feel with the status quo. More than twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the settlement enterprise continue apace, while Palestinian statehood seems more distant than ever. That frustration is often directed at Abbas, who is sometimes seen as an obstacle to change. His decision to attend Peres’s funeral seems unlikely to alter that perception.
Philip Sweigart is program director at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service, and received a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Middle East Studies from the University of Virginia, where he wrote his thesis on the role of ethno-sectarian identity and class differences in the 2011 Arab uprisings.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State John Kerry / Shutterstock
On Wednesday Israel and the United States finally signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), committing the United States to provide Israel with $38 billion in military aid over the ten years spanning 2019-2028. The sum includes $5 billion for missile defense, which Israel had previously had to lobby Congress for each year; and a $200 million per year increase in basic aid. The MOU makes some changes to the system by which the US provides aid to Israel, and was also unusually difficult to negotiate. Here are five takeaways:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got less than he hoped. At one time, Netanyahu had been hoping for as much as $50 billion over a ten-year period. The increase in basic aid from $31 to only $33 billion over that period has to be a disappointment to him. While the US commitment to an extra $5 billion for missile defense (bringing the total package to $38 billion) gives Israel certainty for that funding, it also caps what Israel gets for missile defense. Congress had already included over $630 million in the Appropriations bill for FY 2017 for missile defense, so it is reasonable to think Netanyahu hoped to get more than $500 million per year in the new MOU.
The new MOU ends US support for Israel’s defense industry. Since the 1980s, when the Israeli economy was on the brink of disaster, Israel has been the only country that has been permitted to use part of its aid (26% of it) from the United States in its own country. Every other aid recipient must use the money to purchase arms from US manufacturers exclusively. The purpose was to help build up Israel’s private defense industry and by 2015, Israel was the eighth largest exporter of arms in the world. Rather than subsidizing a competitor in the global arms trade, the new MOU phases out this provision, providing a windfall for the US’ own arms industry, increasing by over $1.5 billion per year the amount that Israel will have to spend with US corporations. A big part of that increase comes from Israel agreeing to immediately cease using 14% of its annual aid on fuel for Israeli military vehicles. Thus, US corporations will eventually receive 100% of the aid the US taxpayers are providing to Israel rather than only a portion of it.
President Obama significantly reduced Congress’ role in the aid process. Obama got Israel to agree not to accept any money Congress might appropriate for them above the current MOU for two years and not to lobby Congress for additional funds over the course of the new MOU. Israel will be able to lobby for aid for programs not covered by the new MOU, such as tunnel detection technology and cyber security. Congress can oppose these limits, but it will be a difficult battle since Israel wrote the letter to the Obama administration outlining the agreement, not the other way around. Congress would have to sell the idea that they want to go against Israel’s plans for its own aid in order to send Israel more taxpayer money in an age of tightening federal budgets. That is not a battle they are likely to win, and the result will be that Congress’ role in the aid process will be diminished.
President Obama drew an explicit connection between US military aid to Israel and the Palestinian issue. Netanyahu and his supporters have worked very hard over the years to keep the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship separate from Israel’s nearly 50-year old occupation. Obama directly contradicted that notion in his statement on the MOU: “Ultimately, both this MOU and efforts to advance the two-state solution are motivated by the same core U.S. objective that has been shared by all administrations, Democratic and Republican, over the last several decades – ensuring that Israelis can live alongside their neighbors in peace and security… The only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”
President Obama put into action a vision of supporting Israel’s security while opposing its policies. By increasing aid to Israel, Obama made it clear that the United States remains absolutely committed to Israel’s genuine security needs. But he also demonstrated that this commitment should not stop the international community from working to save the two-state solution and opposing policies that undermine it. While his own administration has not succeeded at that task, Obama is clearly accentuating the need for the effort to continue. It’s a blueprint that can be taken to heart by the next administration, other governments and civil society groups as well.
The idea that “direct, bilateral negotiations are the only viable path to achieve an enduring peace,” is repeated often in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The truth of it is obvious; any lasting agreement will require the full buy-in from both Israelis and Palestinians, and it is unlikely that an imposed settlement of the conflict would hold. The frequency with which this axiom is repeated suggests that an imposition of an agreement by outside actors such as the United Nations, the European Union or even the United States is a real possibility. In fact, virtually no one
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
seriously suggests that an agreement simply be imposed on Israelis and Palestinians.
The real issue is how the statement is defined. In general terms, supporters of Israeli policies take this rule to mean that no pressure should be brought upon Israel, as any such pressure is seen as undermining bilateral negotiations. Opponents of Israel’s occupation, on the other hand, tend to see outside pressure, in the form of international diplomacy or economic pressure, as crucial to incentivizing both sides into serious negotiations and toward making the difficult compromises necessary to achieve a final agreement.
As the administration of President Barack Obama enters its final months, there has been a good deal of speculation about what, if anything, the outgoing president will do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Relatively free of political pressure, it seems to make sense that Obama would not want to leave this conflict as it stands, with a peace process in shambles, an increasingly isolated but aggressive Israel and a Palestinian population in deep despair and seeing violence as the only available, albeit futile, route open to them.
According to reports, the administration is considering several options: a United Nations Security Council resolution on the two-state solution, a resolution on the settlements or some combination of the two, either at the UN or in a statement of final status parameters by Obama. Any of these alternatives are staunchly opposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters in the United States.
In order to counter such measures, the argument being made is that only bi-lateral talks can resolve the conflict, and therefore no outside pressures can be brought, in accordance with the Netanyahu government’s view that outside pressure is incompatible with direct negotiations.
In fact, outside pressure does not interfere with bilateral talks, it facilitates them. One example would be last year’s completion of the agreement to halt potential military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The United States and Iran were the key players, but the involvement of the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany – countries that had a variety of views of and interests in the agreement – clearly helped keep negotiations on track and helped both sides to make difficult compromises.
When dealing with a conflict between two peoples that are equally passionate about their nationalism, rights, fears and historical claims, but far from equal in terms of negotiating strength, outside influence is indispensable. The compromises both Israel and the Palestinians would need to make to come to a final agreement will be difficult and will face strong domestic opposition. As with Iran, international advocacy for compromise will be indispensable for embattled leaders in both sides.
But external pressure would serve a more direct purpose in the case of Israelis and Palestinians. Israel currently has a government that, despite its Prime Minister giving lip service to a two-state solution, has worked hard to prevent one from ever coming about. Israelis who voted for Likud, the Jewish Home and other right wing parties, by and large, oppose the creation of a Palestinian state. Most Israelis see a Palestinian state as a huge risk, even if they support the creation of one. Meanwhile, Israel is an economic and political oasis in an unstable region, with the majority of its citizens enjoying a standard of living comparable to most Western countries. Without outside pressure, any Israeli leader, much less a right wing one, has no reason to take the tough, politically risky decisions that ending the occupation would entail.
On the Palestinian side, a fractured and divided leadership makes any political progress difficult. This is compounded by the loss of confidence among the Palestinian populace in both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and the failure of two decades of negotiations to free Palestinians from the occupation. The reality that any agreement will require compromise on both sides is complicated for Palestinians by their view that they have already sacrificed 78% of their homeland for the possibility of a sovereign homeland on the remaining 22%.
The political will required for an agreement with Israel is unlikely to be forthcoming from a Palestinian leadership that is perceived as corrupt and comfortable in positions of relative wealth and power in Ramallah. Only external pressure can push that leadership to make these decisions. The alternative is political chaos and an unknown future leadership that will almost certainly have to show more steadfastness than willingness to compromise, at least in the short run.
It is, of course, conceivable that the two sides might eventually talk again even without any outside pressure. But, as has been the case for over twenty years, talking does not lead to results by itself. The international community, especially the United States, is not merely justified in putting expectations on both sides and creating consequences for failing to meet those expectations; doing so is a requirement if there is ever to be a diplomatic resolution to this conflict.
The claim that outside pressure is the same as dictating a solution is simply false. Those making such a claim must be asked why. Opposing outside influence on both Israel and the Palestinians, and claiming that any pressure is the same as imposing a solution, is a sure way to block peace, to keep Israel and the Palestinians locked in conflict, and to prevent the realization of a two-state solution.
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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed the Likud Party’s Danny Danon, currently the Minister of Science, to the position of United 
Nations envoy. Danon, a man who Netanyahu fired only last year because of his “loose cannon” actions, seems an odd choice for a diplomatic position of any kind.
Danon seems particularly ill suited for the role of UN Envoy due to his outspoken and uncompromising opposition to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, something virtually the entire world supports. Danon is not afraid to make this clear either. Here are his own words in recent years. Read them and judge for yourself what message Netanyahu is sending by appointing Danon to this post.
“There is place only for one state on the land of Israel…. I do not believe in a two-state solution.” – Al Jazeera
“I will use my strength and influence to convince as many people as I can within the party and outside the party that a Palestinian state is bad news for Israel.” – The Forward
“Even if there will be a vote [at the UN on a Palestinian state], it will be a Facebook state. They will have a lot of likes in the Facebook, but it will not change the lives of the Israelis, the Jewish pioneers, who live in the hills of Judea and Samaria.” – The New Republic
“An independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would pose a grave threat to Israel.” – Fox News
“There was never a government discussion, resolution or vote about the two-state solution…if you bring it to a vote, you will see the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it.” – Times of Israel
“Enough with the two-state-solution. Land-for-peace is over. We don’t want a Palestinian State. We need to apply Israeli sovereignty over all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It’s been about 20 years since the Oslo Accords. That’s finished and now we’re ready for new ideas…We are a nationalist government and not a government that will establish a Palestinian government on 1967 lines.” – Arutz 7
“If you go to the Arab-populated cities in Judea and Samaria, you will hear them speaking like they do in Jordan. It’s the same with the Arabs of Gaza and their connection to Egypt.” – Arutz 7
“Our goal should be to annex the maximum land with the minimum Arab population,” he said of the West Bank. “We should speak about our rights and not apologize for it. We have biblical rights, historical rights, rights according to international law. We also have common-sense rights: We won the war.” – JTA
On building in E Jerusalem: “The international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want.” –Times of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister:
“I think anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state and to evacuate territory is giving radical Islam a staging ground against the State of Israel.” (Politico, 3/16/15)
“I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.” (Times of Israel, 7/13/14)
Naftali Bennett, Minister of Education:
“I will do everything in my power to make sure they [Palestinians] never get a state.” (New Yorker, 1/21/13)
“We are not going to give up more land. This approach has failed. Now, if it means that the world will penalize us, that is unfair but so be it.” (Times of Israel, 2/17/15)
“Israel cannot withdraw from more territory and cannot allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.” (New York Times, 11/6/14)
In a 2010 television debate with Palestinian Israeli Ahmed Tibi: “When [Palestinians] were still climbing trees, we had a Jewish state here… We were here long before you.” (972 Mag, 1/1/13)
Yuval Steinitz, Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water:
“Israel should stop transferring the taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority and consider dismantling it if it continues to act against Israel in the international arena. Establishing a Palestinian state in the current conditions will bring war, terrorism and a Hamas and Islamic State takeover of Judea and Samaria.” (Jerusalem Post, 12/18/14)
“The demand for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, without holding on to the Jordan Valley, without defensible borders, without security control, and without the demilitarization of Gaza… is a recipe for collective suicide.” (Jerusalem Post, 9/8/14)
Ayelet Shaked, Minister of Justice:
“We should manage the conflict and not give up on any centimeter of land. Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than any other alternative.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2/3/15)
“Around us in the Middle East there is total chaos. I’m not willing to give up on my land for this chaos.” (The Forward, 5/7/15)
Moshe Ya’alon, Minister of Defense:
“It is time to free ourselves of the concept that everything leads to a framework that is called a state. From my standpoint, they can call it the Palestinian empire. I don’t care. It would basically be autonomy.” (Jerusalem Post, 10/17/14)
“I think we made a mistake with land for peace.” (The Forward, 6/10/14)
Tzipi Hotovely, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs:
“This land is ours. All of it is ours. We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognize Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere.” (The Guardian, UK, 5/22/15)
“We need to demand sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and nothing less than that.” (Times of Israel, 7/16/12)
Miri Regev, Minister of Culture and Sport:
“The expression Palestinian state should not be used.” (al-Arabiya, 6/11/09)
“The towns in the Jordan Valley are a strategic and security asset of the state of Israel that must stay in our hands.” (The Guardian, UK, 12/31/13)
Silvan Shalom, Vice Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior:
“We are all against a Palestinian state, there is no question about it.” (Ha’aretz, 5/18/15)
“Judea and Samaria are the bulletproof vest of Israel.” (Ha’aretz. 5/18/15)
Danny Danon, Minister of Science, Technology and Space:
“Enough with the two-state-solution. Land-for-peace is over. We don’t want a Palestinian State. We need to apply 
Israeli sovereignty over all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It’s been about 20 years since the Oslo Accords. That’s finished and now we’re ready for new ideas…We are a nationalist government and not a government that will establish a Palestinian government on 1967 lines.” (Arutz 7, 10/2/12)
“I understand the importance of political power, so I will use my strength and influence to convince as many people as I can within the (Likud) party and outside the party that a Palestinian state is bad news for Israel.” (The Forward, 7/8/13)
Zeev Elkin, Minister of Jerusalem:
“There is no place for a Palestinian state, not in temporary borders and not in any other configuration.” (Arutz Sheva, 3/25/11)
“Whoever objects to the ‘two state’ solution does not need to present an alternative solution because the basic 
situation is that this territory belongs to us.” (Arutz Sheva, 10/24/13)
“For 20 years, we talked about what to give and why. Now the time has come for an entirely different discourse…This is our land, and it’s our right to apply sovereignty over it. Regardless of the world’s opposition, it’s time to do in Judea and Samaria what we did in [East] Jerusalem and the Golan.” (Times of Israel, 7/16/12)
“I certainly think a Palestinian state is no solution. And if I think a Palestinian state is no solution, that means I do want a Jewish presence here. Which raises the question: What do you do with the Palestinian population? And I don’t think the answer to that question can be found right now.” (Times of Israel, 7/29/13)
Uri Ariel, Minister of Agriculture:
“There will be just one state between the Jordan River and the sea, and that is the State of Israel.” (Middle East Monitor, 5/30/14)
“Anyone here today understands that the vision of two states is unrealistic and will never happen.” (Times of Israel, 8/25/13)
Yisrael Katz, Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy:
“I will not agree to a Palestinian state. The only practical solution is an autonomous entity in the A and B areas with an affiliation with Jordan and Israeli security control.” (YNet News, 7/10/13)
“Israel needs to take unilateral steps to apply Israeli sovereignty to all of the settlements in Judea and Samaria.” (Jerusalem Post, 5/6/11)
The shell game is a tried-and-true method of persuading people to give their money to the person running the game. In political terms, it’s also a reliable method of persuading people to buy into the political stance of the man running the game.
Elliott Abrams is a master of the shell game. He provides what seems like a serious and sober analysis, with just enough cherry-picking of facts and omission of detail to convince you of his point of view. That is a big reason why this man, who is responsible for some of the greatest foreign policy fiascos in American history, continues to be considered a legitimate source for foreign policy analysis.
Perhaps it’s not surprising. Despite the enormous catastrophes brought on by the neoconservative school of thought of which Abrams is a part, the philosophy, such as it is, continues to be an influential voice in the foreign policy debate in the United States. This is, however, even more reason to look at an apparent change of course from Abrams with a skeptical eye. Read more at LobeLog
On Wednesday, the Senate adopted an amendment to the Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (TPA) designed to defend Israel against the global “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement” (BDS). A similar amendment was adopted in the House of Representatives. Whatever one thinks of the bill’s intentions, the actual content of it is troubling enough that it must be opposed, whether or not one opposes the global BDS movement.
Let’s dispense with one point right away. There is no comparison between the sort of actions this bill is targeting and the Arab League boycott of Israel, from which the United States has been defending Israel through legislation since 1977. The Arab League boycott had one purpose and that was to destroy the Israeli economy. It sought no change in policy. What it was protesting was Israel’s very existence.
A similar accusation is often made today against the global BDS movement. Whether one believes that accusation valid or not, there is no justification for barring economic actions which clearly target Israeli policies that are, surely, problematic to say the least. Can we, as Americans, truly justify stigmatizing or even criminalizing a business’ or an individual’s decision not to do business with companies based in Israel’s settlements beyond the Green Line?
This is a distinction that both amendments act to erase. Several times in both bills, the language refers not only to Israel but also to “territories controlled by Israel.” The bills, therefore, erase the distinction between Israel and the settlements it has established in occupied territory – territory that, even according to Israeli law, is not part of Israel.
It is important to remember that Israel has never extended Israeli law or made any official claim to sovereignty to territory beyond the Green Line, except for their claims on East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, neither of which has been recognized internationally, including by the United States. So how can Congress justify treating the settlements as if they are part of Israel? And what are the implications of it doing so?
As cynical as it may sound, it seems that Congress needs no justification for this crude and short-sighted act beyond the urging of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which strongly supports these amendments. One might understand the desire to shield Israel from BDS, just as the U.S. shields Israel from so many other potential consequences of its nearly half-century old occupation. But to willfully include the settlements, as these bills do, serves no obvious purpose other than to maintain that occupation.
The precedent this sets, and the message it sends, is nothing short of disastrous. Indeed, what it really does is pave the way for a one-state future, with no alternatives. It is ironic that, after the shock and opprobrium that greeted Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign pledge that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, the United States Congress would take a step toward closing off the two state option, not with words, but with actual legislation.
That might sound like an overstatement. But consider what this legislation would mean.
True, most of the measures in this legislation deal with reporting, or Congress’ list of points of emphasis in trade negotiations. However, it sets a clear precedent that the settlements and Israel are a single unit. That can have grave implications down the road. For example, while the United States has routinely averted its gaze from the ways in which American aid to Israel helps sustain the occupation, the fact that at least technically, US weapons are not supposed to be used for this purpose and that US funds had to be kept within the Green Line matters. It is something to build on, to try to make a case with for increased stringency in monitoring Israel’s actions and, potentially, a lever to modify those actions.
More than that, the overwhelming majority of actions taken to try to convince Israel that there is an economic incentive for it to change its policies have been scrupulously targeted at the settlements. Two years ago, the European Union, which is the target of the anti-boycott legislation, issued guidelines based on existing EU law, prohibiting funding of any projects beyond Israel’s recognized borders. Several European companies and investment firms have stopped doing certain kinds of business with some of their Israeli counterparts either because the business supported the settlements or because the work involved would actually be in the West Bank. These are not wholesale boycotts of Israel, but are actions targeted specifically to the occupation and the settlements. Is that what Congress is trying to protect Israel from? If it is, that is a much more significant step against a two-state solution than any of Netanyahu’s campaign promises.
One can debate the merits of boycotts, but when a boycott is called due to the grievous policies of a government, it is a legitimate way for individuals, organizations and businesses to protest that policy. Congress should not be interfering with the choice of individuals and businesses as to how they might wish to use their dollars or euros to express their politics, as long as it is a political expression and not one, like the Arab League boycott, designed to bring all of Israel down because of its very existence.
What Congress is doing with this amendment is putting to paper the view that the West Bank is Israel. What does that imply?
First, it means that Congress is saying that Israel is an apartheid state. After all, in the West Bank there are millions of Palestinians who live under military law while the settlers live under civil law. Two peoples living under different laws administered by the same government is the textbook definition of apartheid. This is the very argument that truly anti-Israel forces use, and now Congress is making it for them.
Second, Congress is standing in clear and undeniable opposition to the vision, first articulated by none other than President George W. Bush over a decade ago, of two states living side by side in peace and harmony. After all, the entire premise of the two-state solution has always been that Israel is occupying territory that is not part of the sovereign state of Israel. This has been the view of not only the international community, but the High Court in Israel, and every Israeli government from 1967 until now.
Thus, Israel would be ending its occupation and de facto allowing a Palestinian state to come into existence. But if this is all one sovereign unit, as the new legislation implies, then we are talking about dividing an existing sovereign state when we mention a two-state solution. That has never been the argument for two states, and it is a much more difficult one to credibly make.
As JJ Goldberg correctly describes it in the Forward, “Proponents (of the global BDS movement) are divided on whether or not they seek to eliminate the independent existence of the state of Israel.” Congress, in a very bi-partisan fashion, is siding with the most anti-Israel elements of the BDS movement who also see the West Bank, Israel and Gaza as a single state, under Israeli rule and therefore an apartheid state.
Congress is also siding with the most radical elements of the settler movement, who see the West Bank and Israel as all part of one, holistic Greater Israel. Many of those settlers do not recognize the authority of the Israeli government, and frequently clash with the government and security forces.
Those are Congress’ fellow travelers in this sort of view, true opponents of the State of Israel. It could not be clearer: support for this legislation is about as far from being pro-Israel as one can get.
With all eyes on the framework agreement for a nuclear deal with Iran, and on the looming Capitol Hill battle to defend it, it is easy to forget that Israel is still in the process of forming its new government. With much of the drama playing out offstage, many observers are sitting back and waiting for the political wrangling over ministries and Knesset committee chairs to be over.
But some are making the case that there is more brewing than the doling out of prestige appointments to the leaders of the parties expected to be part of the fourth Benjamin Netanyahu government. A unity government, at one time thoroughly rejected by both Netanyahu and Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog, has emerged again as at least a theoretical possibility.
The notion of a unity government seemed to have dissipated after both Netanyahu and Herzog initially rejected the idea, but of course, politicians say many things and decide better of it later, as circumstances change and political winds shift. Such changes are common in forming Israeli coalitions, something the selected candidate might have as much as six weeks to do after the announcement of election results.
Two factors have contributed to the revival of the possibility of a government of national unity. One is the central role the new Kulanu party will play in any new government. The party is center-right, and that makes it the most moderate of the parties that are projected by most to constitute the next coalition. Kulanu’s leader, Moshe Kahlon, is primarily interested in social welfare issues and wishes to address growing economic concerns like rising housing prices, increasing gaps between rich and poor in Israel and declining social services. This makes Kulanu, which would also prefer not to be the party farthest to the “left” in the government, naturally supportive of bringing the Labor Party into the government (Labor makes up the overwhelming bulk of the Zionist Union coalition).
Kulanu controls ten seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu’s 67-seat right wing majority is therefore vulnerable to Kulanu. Kahlon has clearly stated that he prefers a national unity government.
By itself, Kulanu does not explain why rumors are starting to circulate in Israel that Netanyahu is trying to woo Herzog into the government. However, combined with the new framework agreement between the P5+1 and Iran on the nuclear issue, we have a very clear motivation for Netanyahu to bring Herzog into the government.
Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week lays out the reasoning well: “The prime minister is well aware that if he forms [a narrow, right-wing] coalition, the crisis in relations with the White House will only deepen. And now that the U.S. and other Western powers have signed a preliminary deal with Iran, it is all the more reason for him to be able to work with Obama in the hopes of toughening up the final agreement in the next three months — and, if all else fails, getting tacit permission from the White House to strike out at Iran if it violates the deal…In a unity government, Herzog most likely would serve as foreign minister, presenting a friendly face to the world in his international role.”
The very slight possibility that some parties from the right would not join a unity government is not a threat, as the Zionist Union brings 24 seats with it, so with them and Kulanu alone, Netanyahu would have 64 seats. It all makes sense, so why wouldn’t Netanyahu do it?
The answer is that he would, if it is a real option. True, a unity government would mean there would be significant opposition from within his own coalition to settlement policy, once again. Other policies would not be as smooth as they would under an all right wing government as well. But in the post-election cool-down, it is reasonable to think that Netanyahu has assessed the damage his scorched earth campaign for re-election caused Israel and decided he must try to repair some of it.
On the surface, the notion of a unity government is good for Israel. It should allow Israel to mend fences with the Obama Administration and the Democrats and it should forestall European pressure at the United Nations and other international fora. The reality is, however, that if Isaac Herzog does agree to the unity government, it will be a disaster for his party and have deeply negative consequences in the end for Israel, the Palestinians and American policy in the region.
A Bad Idea for Labor
The Labor Party once dominated Israeli politics, but has long since fallen off its perch. For a while, Labor was able to win support by being the party of peace, representing the Israel the world could work with and admire. But in recent years, it all too often played the role of fig leaf for center-right or right-wing leadership in power in Israel. With the failure of the Oslo Accords, which were distinctly identified with Labor, it lost its credibility as a “pragmatic peace” party.
This last election brought Labor back to some semblance of relevance, but if it once again plays the role of fig leaf for expanding settlements and continued intransigence from Netanyahu, it will lose a lot of it. The campaign itself demonstrated that Labor is still dogged by many of its old problems. A lot of the increase in support for Labor was the result of voters who were disillusioned with other center-left parties, but did not want to support Netanyahu.
Labor has much to do if it hopes to make further gains in the Israeli electorate. It will move in the opposite direction if it is again perceived as a fig leaf for Netanyahu, and especially so because the best thing Labor currently has going for it is that it is the vehicle to vote against Bibi.
A Bad Idea for Israel
National unity governments in Israel are notoriously clunky machines. The junior partner is always endeavoring to show it is moderating the policies of the senior, and the party of the Prime Minister is trying to get the most out of the other side while giving it as little as possible in terms of both policy and positioning for the next election.
On the international stage, a unity government will, at best, keep Israel from facing increased pressure to end its occupation of the Palestinians. Netanyahu will still need to appease his own party and will be very fearful of giving his rival, Naftali Bennett, the means to increase his support and position himself to challenge Likud from the right. Herzog will be under constant pressure to modify Netanyahu’s positions, but won’t have enough leverage to do much.
It’s a recipe for dysfunction, both domestically and internationally for Israel.
Dangerous for the Palestinians
The one thing a unity government might be able to do is to restart bilateral negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Under current conditions, such talks are likely to be harmful, not helpful, for Palestinian aspirations.
Herzog will do nothing to convince Netanyahu to change his position on the Palestinian transitional government. Hamas remains political anathema in Israel. Nor is he likely to mollify the current Israeli policy view of the issue of Jerusalem. All he will be able to do is restore the status quo ante, which means talks that have no hope of success.
But the very existence of such talks will present serious problems for the Palestinians. At the very start, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will likely be under pressure from the United States and Europe to re-engage. But without some assurances that things would be different in this round, he will face intense domestic pressure to stay away from that process. If he refuses, it will give Netanyahu’s allies in the United States plenty of fodder, and if he agrees to talks that produce nothing but more settlements, he will give his domestic opposition ammunition.
Herzog is a moderate, and if he were Prime Minister, it is not impossible that the right combination of pressures and incentives could get him to pursue an end to the occupation. But in a Likud-led government, he cannot be more than a fig leaf, putting a kinder face on Netanyahu’s intransigence. Without him, the Palestinians have more support, at least in Europe, for pursuing their case in international fora, and the potential for more pressure on a distinctly rejectionist, right wing Israeli government. With him, they have the worst of both worlds: less pressure on an Israel with a more reasonable image but whose policies are little different from those that have caused so much international frustration of late.
A Bad Road for US Policy
Although the two-state solution and bilateral talks to get there are still American policy, the current conditions have to change if such a goal is ever to be attained. Some way of unifying the West Bank and Gaza again, some sense of incentive for Israel to make difficult decisions, a clear vision of how to resolve difficult issues like Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem needs to be presented, etc. Simply forcing talks again will work no better today than it did in 2013, John Kerry’s last attempt which ended in disaster.
Herzog does not help change the current conditions. Instead, his presence in the government makes it easier for Netanyahu to accede to meaningless negotiations. No matter how cynically one may view American policy on this, more of the same is clearly not preferable. It is just turning up the heat on the pressure cooker.
On Iran, Herzog’s presence is even more problematic. He would be the one doing the outreach to the United States and Europe, a much less abrasive voice than Netanyahu’s. But his views on Iran are fairly close to Bibi’s. He may disagree with Netanyahu’s approach and belligerent attitude; he certainly disagrees with Bibi having played partisan politics in America on this issue. But substantively, he shares Netanyahu’s concerns about any nuclear agreement with Iran. His objections will not only be presented more effectively and diplomatically than Bibi’s, they will have the added weight of coming from “the other side” of Israeli politics, demonstrating that the country is united on this point and strengthening Republican arguments.
In the end, a unity government remains the far less likely outcome of the Israeli coalition talks. While a far-right coalition, the much more likely outcome, will increase Israel’s isolation in the short term, the possibility that Israel will end up owing more accountability to the world for its policies is good for its long term interests, however counter-intuitive that might seem. As ugly as the next few years might be, they will be similarly better for Palestinian and American interests as well than a kinder, gentler face on the same policies would be.
During the height of the Algerian revolution against French rule, Albert Camus, the celebrated writer, philosopher, humanist, and tenacious foe of fascism, was asked why he did not forcefully condemn the atrocities committed by OAS ultras and French military torturers against Algerian Muslims. Camus was a pied noir—born and raised among the European settler community in Algeria. “I love justice,” he answered, “but I love my mother more.”
Camus’s response shocked his admirers on the left, who felt their hero had failed them. Politically their disappointment is understandable, but Camus was making a profoundly important point. There is a difference in kind between attachments to principles, images, doctrines, or large, and necessarily abstract, groups—however passionate—and attachments to particular things or particular people.
If I lose my mother, the pain of that loss is not assuaged by the availability of another woman of her approximate age. My attachment was to a particular woman, not to “motherliness.” On the other hand, the pain of injustice “there and then” can be lessened by justice “here and now” because the abstract attachment to the principle of equity entails a wide set of equivalent attachments spread over time and space.
Camus loved his mother as a peasant loves and is organically attached to the place he inhabits. It is a particular and quintessentially personal attachment. Camus loved justice in the abstract way an ardent nationalist loves his “patria”—the territory of his nation—most of which he has never, and will never see or know in any personal way. Both attachments can be deep. Both can lead to enormous sacrifice, but they are different.
Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict means, among other things, understanding how these two peoples come to their attachments to the same land from very different directions. Consider a peasant’s attachments to places in his world—to the ancestral burial ground, the mountain whose silhouette shadowed all below it, and the stream with familiar tendencies to flood at particular times. Such ties were deep, so deep that separation from “home” or one’s home village, could hardly be experienced as anything less than death. But these ties were not political. They did not register, for most of human history, as relevant to the political order—usually vast and imperial—within which these “places” were organized. These attachments did not inspire those who held them to “imagine” larger political communities than those who also shared, in an immediate way, the same place of habitation. Nor did they produce an honored or iconic “map image” of a territorial space attached to hundreds of thousands or millions of other human beings to whom the bearers of these feelings could feel kindredness.
Attachment to a particular place can do much to satisfy—or make miserable—those who can preserve them or lose them, but they cannot, themselves, be the basis of what Rupert Emerson called a “terminal community”; that is, a group of people too large to be known individually but which nevertheless is considered worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.
Nationalism and national states require a kind of abstract empathy that, it turns out, humans are quite capable of, but that capacity became apparent only relatively recently in human history. Nationalism requires people to shift much of their emotional investment from personal attachments to a place to abstract attachments to a space. Indeed they must learn to experience those abstract attachments as so important that for them they would be willing to sacrifice, as the saying goes, their “lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor.” The process of transforming attachments to place into attachments to space is a long and difficult one. This is what “nation-building” entails.
For masses in both Europe and the Third World, processes of industrialization, urbanization, education, and marketization, as well as immensely destructive and dislocating wars, “socially mobilized” huge populations, throwing them into new, disorienting, and difficult circumstances. But they made those populations available for this new abstract kind of attachment. From the 17th to the 20th century Jews, and in particular European Jews, experienced these processes with a vengeance. They witnessed the utter destruction of a medieval order that had both sheltered and oppressed them for centuries. But regardless of the strength of their attachment to traditional rabbinic authority, Jewish alienation and exclusion in Christian society made them more prepared for this “modern” world of abstract political loyalties than their non-Jewish contemporaries.
As both Marc Chagall and early Zionists pictured the situation, Jews were “luftmenschen,” floating in the world, unattached to gentile institutions or the fundamentally foreign places over which they hovered. The Jewish strategy of constant migration from erstwhile refuge to possible shelter was directly related to this sociological and psychological condition. All this meant Jews did not experience an attachment to specific places as intensely as ordinary folk around them. More than that, their own cultural celebration of a not-actually-known-or-remembered land—the Land of Israel—gave them centuries of practice in the cultivation of an abstract attachment, not to a “place” of irreplaceable individual meaning, but to a “space” of collective, abstract, empathic focus.
Zionism, as a nationalist movement seeking to mobilize a dispersed population and move it to a land inhabited by others, faced more challenges than most. But a typical problem that Zionism did not face was overcoming the highly parochial attachments traditional peasant and village society developed in its laboring masses. The huge task of assimilation into a Jewish “nation” that Israel faced when confronted with hundreds of thousands of Jews from very different countries and classes, and speaking different languages, was not unusual for states seeking to build nations. But Zionism did face one unique problem. It needed to make the new country, so alien for most of its Jewish inhabitants, feel familiar. This meant great emphasis on mapping the terrain of the “Land of Israel,” marking and hiking trails, and exploring as much as possible about its springs, mountains, caves, small rivers, wadis, flora and fauna. It meant changing thousands of place names to invented Hebrew designations as well. All this activity can be understood as a strong effort to establish some sense of “place” to complement the ideological attachment to the “space” of whatever parts of the country could be acquired.
The Arabs in Palestine faced a very different challenge. They sought to rouse their countrymen as members of the “Palestinian nation” to defend, not the villages and locales that were the intimate framework of their lives, but a “space” called Palestine carved out of the Levant by the outcome of battles between European and Ottoman imperialists. This was a more typical assignment for a nationalist movement; one that in Europe and elsewhere took generations if not centuries to accomplish.
When the nakba destroyed the settled life of the 950,000 or so Arabs living in what became Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of refugees huddled in forests, fields, and makeshift camps. Whether in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan, they did not yearn to return to the “space” of Palestine, but to the “place” of their village, their farm, their fields, and their homes. The keys they treasured were to the doors of their actual houses, not talismans of a space promised and celebrated but unremembered. Unlike Zionist immigrants, these refugees needed no maps of where they lived or how to get there. Indeed one reason why tens of thousands of refugees were able to surreptitiously return and remain in Israel is because they knew the back roads and trails so well. Maps are for unfamiliar spaces, not for homey places.
Although the “two state solution” may well never be achieved, its emergence as a plausible target for a negotiated settlement entailed a difficult struggle among Palestinian nationalists to transform attachment to place to attachment to space. This required considerable finesse, along with a good deal of deception and disingenuousness. On the one hand, Palestinian leaders evoked the heartbreaking stories of refugees expelled from their homes and the homes of their ancestors, and then refused permission to return. On the other hand, those committed to the “Palestinian state” option set about transforming the Palestinian pathos into a nationalist ethos focused on “Palestine” as a space, with indistinct borders encompassing parts but not all of the country. That meant using the phrase “right of return” ambiguously, to mean—perhaps, but only perhaps, and only for a very tiny number–return to places, to specific homes, fields and villages. For most it would mean return from spaces that were not in Palestine to locations in a “space” by that name– a space that would not contain “places” of actual, original, attachment.
This is a difficult political task for any nationalist movement. But it was particularly difficult for the Palestinians, because the spaces involved are so small, and therefore where the distances to specific yearned-for places, so near and yet so inaccessible, are so tantalizingly short. From the Israeli point of view, the continued evocation by Palestinians of the “places” they were forced to abandon signals either their adversary’s inability to be satisfied with a Palestinian “space” as a basis for resolving the conflict; or their dishonesty in pretending to accept partition while actually expecting that to be a stage toward eventual liberation of all the “places” in historical Palestine.
Indeed, we may use this analysis to gain a fine appreciation of one of the most difficult points in the seemingly endless and almost certainly fruitless negotiations that have been going on between Israelis and Palestinians. When Palestinians accepted the “two state solution” they did not explicitly accept it as corresponding to two peoples—Jewish and Palestinian. In their eyes that would have been equivalent to recognizing the right of the Zionist movement to have dispossessed Palestinians from their homes and their country. Instead, a Palestinian Arab state would live, side by side, with an Israeli state, containing an “Israeli people” comprised of both Jewish and Arab citizens. This position has been softened to the extent that Palestinians have offered Jewish settlers in the West Bank the opportunity to remain as law-abiding citizens of Palestine.
Meanwhile, however, Israel has escalated its demand. Originally no Israeli leader asked for or ever expected to receive Palestinian or Arab recognition of Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state.” But beginning with Ariel Sharon’s premiership, this became a constantly repeated demand. It is now often identified by top Israeli officials as the single most important requirement before Israel can make its own “painful compromises” for peace. Palestinian leaders and negotiators have objected to the opening that acceptance might give to Israeli policies of persecution or even expulsion of Arab citizens. They have also objected to the injustice and emotional impossibility of Palestinians, as victims, granting approval to their own historical victimization. But another obstacle to Palestinian acceptance of this demand also looms large. To name Israel as a “space” that is “Jewish,” would categorically foreclose the dream of re-establishing Palestinian refugee attachments to places in that space by confining Palestinian political ambitions, now and forever, to the “space” of the pieces of whatever mini-state of Palestine emerges from the agreement.
Because of the different trajectories that brought both national movements into collision, most Israelis can literally not imagine the pain of giving up attachments to places as part of building an attachment to a space. At the same time, most Palestinians can only understand the Israeli demand that such attachments be explicitly abandoned as reflecting the brutality and inhumanity they have come to associate with Jewish power in the space of Palestine.
This is an updated version of “Places vs. Spaces for Palestinians and Jews,” Perspectives, Spring 2014.
Professor Ian Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.