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Israel, America, and the question of Palestine

Hamid Ansari

Every serious assessment of the West Asian situation focusses on the need to resolve the Palestinian question. The utility of armed conflict appears exhausted. The remaining option is diplomacy — diligent and aimed at securing a comprehensive and just solution.

DO STRAY happenings make a pattern? An opinion poll conducted by the daily Al Quds Al Arabi last month sought answers to two questions: Do you expect change in American policy after the electoral losses of the Republicans? Do you expect Israel to recognise any Palestinian government? The responses were in the negative — 83.7 per cent for the first question and 93.2 per cent for the second. The Arab street saw no change in the offing.

Glimpses of a change of tactics emerged elsewhere. On November 27, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert used the occasion of the death anniversary of David Ben-Gurion to make a carrot-and-stick offer to the Palestinians: "The state of Israel is a powerful state ... In a violent battle, we will prevail ... Do not put us to another test." If a new Palestinian government committed itself to the implementation of the Quartet road map and the release of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority would be invited "to conduct a real, open, genuine and serious dialogue" within whose framework "you would be able to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state, with territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria — a state with full sovereignty and defined borders." The latter would be "in accordance with President Bush's April 14, 2004 letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon."

Mr. Olmert elaborated the conditionality: If the Palestinians agreed to relinquish violence, accepted Israel's "right to live in peace and security next to you, and relinquish your demand for the realisation of the right to return," Israel would agree "to the evacuation of many territories and communities" and assist in the establishment of industrial zones that would generate employment.

Then came the punch line: "We will seek the assistance of those neighbouring Arab states which strive for a peaceful solution to the conflict between us including the Kingdom of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in order to benefit from their experience and receive backing for direct negotiations between us."

The wording and timing of the Olmert speech is significant. It came after the massacre at Beit Hanoun. The Quartet road map mentioned by him was comprehensively thwarted by the Sharon Government and the Saudi-Arab League plan of 2002 ignored altogether. Both have now become the vanguard of a post-Gaza, post-Lebanon, post-Congressional election "peace" offer by Israel. It is being encouraged by the United States and its Arab allies because both find the direction of events acutely disconcerting.

On November 30, King Abdullah II of Jordan told an Indian journalist that the time span for finding a two-state solution to the Palestinian question does not exceed six months. He said beyond it, a Palestinian state may not be possible at all. Presumably, as on innumerable previous occasions, the urgency of solving the problem was impressed upon U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Riyadh recently.

The context of the signals is relevant. Israel, after the sobering experience of Lebanon and Gaza, is ostensibly reiterating terms unacceptable to the Palestinians but seems to be moving away from the earlier insistence on unilateral steps. Israeli commentators have noted that 10 months after Hamas' electoral victory, and despite a wide-ranging regional and international boycott, Khalid Meshal could threaten a third Intifada if an Israeli withdrawal did not materialise in six months. This is also to be read with the offer by Hamas of seeking a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. So Mr. Olmert's preconditions for talks are unlikely to materialise, nor is the release of the two Israeli soldiers, held by Hamas and Hizbollah, likely except on mutually acceptable terms that would amount to a climbdown. Although a de facto ceasefire is in place, a Palestinian unity government acceptable to Israel and the U.S. is unlikely to emerge in a hurry.

The standoff between Fatah and Hamas, and the announcement of fresh presidential and parliamentary elections by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and its rejection by the Hamas leadership, is suggestive of a determined effort (supported by Western powers) to undo the electoral victory gained by Hamas. The Palestinian public, in the meantime, has learnt new techniques of collective action to oppose Israeli occupation. Their suffering, in individual and societal terms, is enormous; their will to resist remains intact, possibly firmer.

The Arab friends of America are a worried lot. They witness the disaster confronting U.S. policy in Iraq and are apprehensive of the consequences in strategic, regional, and domestic terms. The discovery last week of more al-Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia shows the Kingdom's vulnerability to Islamist influences. Jordan is no better; the Islamist with the greatest influence today is Abu Mohammad Al Maqdisi, a Jordanian national and incarcerated in a Jordanian jail. Below the surface in both these countries, as in Egypt and several others in the region, radical influences are pervasive.

And then there is Iran. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon have reaffirmed Iran's centrality. The ideology-driven, Israel-induced, mishandling of the nuclear question has added to Iran's regional stature without detracting from its international standing. It has given opportunity to China, and Russia, to make firmer their strategic relations with Iran. Despite the obvious, and the recommendation emerging from the Baker panel, the real debate in the U.S. about Iran remains domestic; the Christian fundamentalists, the Neocons, and the Israeli lobby combine to thwart a review of perception and policy. The domestic dynamics of Iran, ever vibrant, have again come to the fore in view of Hashemi Rafsanjani's victory in this week's election to the Assembly of Experts and the countrywide gains made by the reformists in municipal elections.

Every serious assessment of the West Asian situation focusses on the need to resolve the Palestinian question. A recently published study in the Princeton Project on National Security describes "the complete breakdown of regional order" as the greatest threat emanating from West Asia and asserts that "any long-term solution in the Middle East must include a comprehensive two-state solution in Israel and Palestine based on mutually agreed borders and settlement of contentious issues, such as the `right of return' of the Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem." It recommends that "the United States must take the lead in doing everything possible to achieve a peace settlement."

It was an axiom of American policy, since the early 1970s, that "a prolonged stalemate [in peace negotiations] would move the Arabs towards moderation." Another axiom was that the U.S. would be the sole arbiter of an eventual settlement. Both these stand disproved today. The resulting situation has destabilised the region; strategists also view it as a power vacuum. The position was summed up last week by the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer: "With the Iraq war, the U.S. has lost its unilateral-power position in the Middle East, and elsewhere. In the future, various global powers will be active in the Middle East — primarily the U.S., Russia, China, India. Let's hope Europe is among them because its security is defined there." The point about the decline of American power in West Asia has been made more comprehensively by Richard Haas in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Fischer makes the interesting point that a new strategy in the region should be "based on political leverage, not on a threat of military intervention." It should lead to "direct talks, security guarantees, and support in political and economic integration." There is no indication yet of any such approach being contemplated in Washington where the preference is for tactical adjustment rather than for strategic reassessment. This is evident from the Headley memorandum that was leaked to the media on the eve of the meeting between President Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Israel, as on similar occasions in the past, will wait for the storm to blow over. An American effort to pursue the peace process meaningfully is unlikely given the totality of domestic and foreign policy considerations, despite the fact that the Baker-Hamilton report's (Recommendations 13-17) emphatic assertion that the U.S. cannot achieve its goals in West Asia unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli and the Palestinian-Israeli crises and resolves them in terms of UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 leading to a two-state solution on the principle of "land for peace" and the "right of return." The radicals among the Palestinians, having discovered Israel's vulnerability, will not negotiate away their critical demands. Iran will continue to consolidate its diplomatic gains. King Abdullah II's time schedule is thus unlikely to fructify.

Is there a way out of the impasse? The utility of armed conflict appears exhausted. Drifting in choppy seas is hazardous. The remaining option is diplomacy — diligent and aimed at securing a solution that is comprehensive and just. The mechanism for it would be critical. The ease with which Israel frustrated the Quartet road map would need to be taken into account. An international conference, and time-bound commitments, would be essential. Could the Madrid Conference of 1991, in which the international community made a first sustained effort for peace, be a model that could be developed?

(The writer has served as India's Ambassador to several countries in West Asia.)

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