- You have asked me to speak to current American policies
in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the
Holy Land. You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship
of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this. It is both
an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital / at this
ministry.
-
- The declaration of principles worked out in Oslo seventeen
years ago was the last direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinian
Arabs to reach consequential, positive results. The Oslo accords
were a real step toward peace, not another deceptive pseudo-event in an
endlessly unproductive, so-called "peace process." And
if that one step forward in Oslo in 1993 was followed by several steps
backwards, there is a great deal to be learned from how and why that happened.
-
- There can be no doubt about the importance of today's
topic. The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs
the world's conscience as well as its tranquility. The Israel-Palestine
issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism. In
the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they
dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization
and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole. It
stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies
abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between
Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead
of global strife. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish
this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.
-
- For better or ill, my own country, the United States
has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest. American
policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity
to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse
their infection of the wider world. American policies and actions
in the Middle East thus affect much more than that region.
-
- Yet, as I will argue, the United States has been obsessed
with process rather than substance. It has failed
to involve parties who are essential to peace. It has acted
on Israel's behalf to preempt rather than enlist international and regional
support for peace. It has defined the issues in ways that preclude
rather than promote progress. Its concept of a "peace process"
has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than
a driver for peace. There are alternatives to tomorrow's diplomatic
peace pageant on the Potomac. And, as Norway has shown, there
is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy Land.
-
- Over thirty years ago, at Camp David, Jimmy Carter pushed
Israel through the door to peace that Egypt's Anwar Sadat had opened. Twenty
years ago, the first Bush administration pressed Israel to the negotiating
table with Palestinian leaders, setting the stage for their clandestine
meetings in Oslo. The capacity of the United States to rally
other governments behind a cause that it espouses may have atrophied, but
American power remains far greater than that of any other nation. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the Middle East.
-
- For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely
on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to
sustain its economic prosperity. It has counted on its leverage
in American politics to block the application of international law and
to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and
actions. Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to
put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi
with the Palestinians or other Arabs. Neither violent resistance
from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive
Israeli governments to question, let alone alter the priority they assign
to land over peace.
-
- Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency
relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework
over which Israel exercises decisive influence. They have been
powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other humiliations
by Jewish soldiers and settlers. Nor have they been able to
prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on
the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza.
-
- Despite this appalling record of failure, the American
monopoly on the management of the search for peace in Palestine remains
unchallenged. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia once
a contender for countervailing influence in the region has lapsed
into impotence. The former colonial powers of the European Union,
having earlier laid the basis for conflict in the region, have largely
sat on their hands while ringing them, content to let America take the
lead. China, India, and other Asian powers have prudently kept
their political and military distance. In the region itself,
Iran has postured and exploited the Palestinian cause without doing anything
to advance it. Until recently, Turkey remained aloof.
-
- On rare occasions, as in the case of the 1973 Arab oil
embargo, the Arabs have backed their verbal opposition to Israel with action. Egypt
and Jordan have settled into an unpopular coexistence with Israel that
is now sustained only by U.S. subventions. Saudi Arabia has
twice taken the initiative to offer Israel diplomatic concessions if it
were to conclude arrangements for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. But,
overall, Arab governments have earned the contempt of the Palestinians
and their own people for their lack of serious engagement. For
the most part, Arab leaders have timorously demanded that America solve
the Israel-Palestine problem for them, while obsequiously courting American
protection against Israel, each other, Iran, and in some cases
their own increasingly frustrated and angry subjects and citizens.
-
- Islam charges rulers with the duty to defend the faithful
and to uphold justice. It demands that they embody righteousness. The
resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites' failure to
meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just
at Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated
with it.
-
- The perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attack on the United States saw it in part as reprisal for American complicity
in Israeli cruelties to Palestinians and other Arabs. They justified
it as a strike against Washington's protection of Arab governments willing
to overlook American contributions to Muslim suffering. Washington's
response to the attack included suspending its efforts to make peace in
the Holy Land as well as invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. All
three actions inadvertently strengthened the terrorist case for further
attacks on America and its allies. The armed struggle between
Americans and Muslim radicals has already spilled over to Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia, and other countries. Authoritative voices in Israel
now call for adding Iran to the list of countries at war with America. They
are echoed by Zionist and neo-conservative spokesmen in the United States,
-
- The widening involvement of Americans in combat in Muslim
lands has inflamed anti-American passions and catalyzed a metastasis of
terrorism. It has caused a growing majority of the world's 1.6
billion Muslims to see the United States as a menace to their faith, their
way of life, their homelands, and their personal security. American
populists and European xenophobes have meanwhile undercut liberal and centrist
Muslim arguments against the intolerance that empowers terrorism by equating
terrorism and its extremist advocates with Islam and its followers. The
current outburst of bigoted demagoguery over the construction of an Islamic
cultural center and mosque in New York is merely the most recent illustration
of this. It suggests that the blatant racism and Islamophobia
of contemporary Israeli politics is contagious. It rules out
the global alliances against religious extremists that are essential to
encompass their political defeat.
-
- President Obama's inability to break this pattern must
be an enormous personal disappointment to him. He came into
office committed to crafting a new relationship with the Arab and Muslim
worlds. His first interview with the international media was
with Arab satellite television. He reached out publicly and
privately to Iran. He addressed the Turkish parliament with
persuasive empathy. He traveled to a great center of Islamic
learning in Cairo to deliver a remarkably eloquent message of conciliation
to Muslims everywhere. He made it clear that he understood the
centrality of injustices in the Holy Land to Muslim estrangement from the
West. He promised a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a judicious
recrafting of strategy in Afghanistan. Few doubt Mr. Obama's
sincerity. Yet none of his initiatives has led to policy change
anyone can detect, let alone believe in.
-
- It is not for me to analyze or explain the wide gaps
between rhetoric and achievement in the Obama Administration's stewardship
of so many aspects of my country's affairs. American voters will render
their first formal verdict on this two months from tomorrow, on the 2nd of
November. The situation in the Holy Land, Iraq, Afghanistan,
and adjacent areas is only part of what they will consider as they do so. But
I do think it worthwhile briefly to examine some of the changes in the
situation that ensure that many policies that once helped us to get by
in the Middle East will no longer do this.
-
- Let me begin with the "peace process," a hardy
perennial of America's diplomatic repertoire that the Obama Administration
will put back on public display tomorrow. In the Cold War, the
appearance of an earnest and "even-handed" American search for
peace in the Holy Land was the price of U.S. access and influence in the
Middle East. It provided political cover for conservative Arab
governments to set aside their anger at American backing of Israel so as
to stand with America and the Western bloc against Soviet Communism. It
kept American relations with Israel and the Arabs from becoming a zero-sum
game. It mobilized domestic Jewish support for incumbent presidents. Of
course, there hasn't been an American-led "peace process" in
the Middle East for at least a decade. Still the conceit of
a "peace process" became an essential political convenience for
all concerned. No one could bear to admit that the "peace
process" had expired. It therefore lived on in phantom
form.
-
- Even when there was no "peace process," the
possibility of resurrecting one provided hope to the gullible, cover to
the guileful, beguilement for the press, an excuse for doing nothing to
those gaining from the status quo, and last but far from least lifetime
employment for career "peace processors." The perpetual
processing of peace without the requirement to produce it has been especially
appreciated by Israeli leaders. It has enabled them to behave
like magicians, riveting foreign attention on meaningless distractions
as they systematically removed Palestinians from their homes, settled half
a million or more Jews in newly vacated areas of the occupied territories,
and annexed a widening swath of land to a Jerusalem they insist belongs
only to Israel.
-
- Palestinian leaders with legitimacy problems have also
had reason to collaborate in the search for a "peace process." It's
not just that there has been no obviously better way to end their people's
suffering. Playing "peace process" charades justifies
the international patronage and Israeli backing these leaders need to retain
their status in the occupied territories. It ensures that they
have media access and high-level visiting rights in Washington. Meanwhile,
for American leaders, engagement in some sort of Middle East "peace
process" has been essential to credibility in the Arab and Islamic
worlds, as well as with the ever-generous American Jewish community. Polls
show that most American Jews are impatient for peace. Despite
all the evidence to the contrary, they are eager to believe in the willingness
of the government of Israel to trade land for it.
-
- Previous "peace processes" have exploited all
these impulses. In practice, however, these diplomatic distractions
have served to obscure Israeli actions and evasions that were more often
prejudicial to peace than helpful in achieving it. Behind all
the blather, the rumble of bulldozers has never stopped. Given
this history, it has taken a year and a half of relentless effort by U.S.
Special Envoy George Mitchell to persuade the parties even to meet directly
to talk about talks as they first did here in Oslo, seventeen
years ago. When the curtain goes up on the diplomatic show in Washington
tomorrow, will the players put on a different skit? There are
many reasons to doubt that they will.
-
- One is that the Obama administration has engaged the
same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed "peace
processes" to produce and direct this one with no agreed script. The
last time these guys staged such an ill-prepared meeting, at Camp David
in 2000, it cost both heads of delegation, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat,
their political authority. It led not to peace but to escalating
violence. The parties are showing up this time to minimize President
Obama's political embarrassment in advance of midterm elections in the
United States, not to address his agenda still less to address each
other's agendas. These are indeed difficulties. But the problems
with this latest and possibly final iteration of the perpetually
ineffectual "peace process" are more fundamental.
-
- The Likud Party charter flatly rejects the establishment
of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River and stipulates that: "The
Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule,
but not as an independent and sovereign state." This Israeli
government is committed to that charter as well as to the Jewish holy war
for land in Palestine. It has no interest in trading land it
covets for a peace that might thwart further territorial expansion. It
considers itself unbound by the applicable UN resolutions, agreements from
past peace talks, the "Roadmap," or the premise of the "two-state
solution."
-
- The Palestinians are desperate for the dignity and security
that only the end of the Israeli occupation can provide. But
the authority of Palestinian negotiators to negotiate rests on their recognition
by Israel and the United States, not on their standing in the occupied
territories, Gaza, or the Palestinian diaspora. Fatah is the
ruling faction in part of Palestine. Its authority to govern
was repudiated by voters in the last Palestinian elections. The
Mahmoud Abbas administration retains power by grace of the Israeli occupation
authorities and the United States, which prefer it to the government empowered
by the Palestinian people at the polls. Mr. Abbas's constitutional
term of office has long since expired. He presides over a parliament
whose most influential members are locked up in Israeli jails. It
is not clear for whom he, his faction, or his administration can now speak.
-
- So the talks that begin tomorrow promise to be a case
of the uninterested going through the motions of negotiating with the mandate-less. The
parties to these talks seek to mollify an America that has severely lessened
international credibility. The United States government had
to borrow the modest reputations for objectivity of others the EU,
Russia, and the UN to be able to convene this discussion. It
will be held under the auspices of an American president who was publicly
humiliated by Israel's prime minister on the issue that is at the center
of the Israel-Palestine dispute Israel's continuing seizure and colonization
of Arab land.
-
- Vague promises of a Palestinian state within a year now
waft through the air. But the "peace process" has
always sneered at deadlines, even much, much firmer ones. A
more definitive promise of an independent Palestine within a year was made
at Annapolis three years ago. Analogous promises of Palestinian
self-determination have preceded or resulted from previous meetings over
the decades, beginning with the Camp David accords of 1979. Many
in this audience will recall the five-year deadline fixed at Oslo. The
talks about talks that begin tomorrow can yield concrete results only if
the international community is prepared this time to insist on the one-year
deadline put forward for recognizing a Palestinian state. Even
then there will be no peace unless long-neglected issues are addressed.
-
-
-
- Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with
the capacity to disturb it by violence. It is almost impossible
to impose. It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained,
if those who must accept it are excluded from it. This reality
directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington
and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.
-
- Obviously, the party that won the democratically expressed
mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them Hamas is
not there. Yet there can be no peace without its buy-in. Egypt
and Jordan have been invited as observers. Yet they have nothing
to add to the separate peace agreements each long ago made with Israel. (Both
these agreements were explicitly premised on grudging Israeli
undertakings to accept Palestinian self-determination. The Jewish
state quickly finessed both.) Activists from the Jewish
diaspora disproportionately staff the American delegation. A
failure to reconcile either American Jews or the Palestine diaspora to
peace would doom any accord. But the Palestinian diaspora will
be represented in Washington only in tenuous theory, not in fact.
-
- Other Arabs, including the Arab League and the author
of its peace initiative, Saudi Arabia, will not be at the talks tomorrow. The
reasons for this are both simple and complex. At one level they
reflect both a conviction that this latest installment of the "peace
process" is just another in a long series of public entertainments
for the American electorate and also a lack of confidence in the authenticity
of the Palestinian delegation. At another level, they result
from the way the United States has defined the problems to be solved and
the indifference to Arab interests and views this definition evidences. Then
too, they reflect disconnects in political culture and negotiating style
between Israelis, Arabs, and Americans.
-
- To begin with, neither Israel nor the conveners of this
proposed new "peace process" have officially acknowledged or
responded to the Arab peace initiative of 2002. This offered
normalization of relations with the Jewish state, should Israel make peace
with the Palestinians. Instead, the United States and the Quartet
have seemed to pocket the Arab offer, ignore its precondition
that Israelis come to terms with Palestinians, and gone on to levy new
demands.
-
- In this connection, making Arab recognition of Israel's
"right to exist" the central purpose of the "peace process"
offends Arabs on many levels. In framing the issue this way,
Israel and the United States appear to be asking for something well beyond
pragmatic accommodation of the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle
East. To the Arabs, Americans now seem to be insisting on Arab
endorsement of the idea of the state of Israel, the means by which that
state was established, and the manner in which it has comported itself. Must
Arabs really embrace Zionism before Israel can cease expansion and accept
peace?
-
- Arabs and Muslims familiar with European history can
accept that European anti-Semitism justified the establishment of a homeland
for traumatized European Jews. But asking them even implicitly
to agree that the forcible eviction of Palestinian Arabs was a morally
appropriate means to this end is both a nonstarter and seriously off-putting. So
is asking them to affirm that resistance to such displacement was and is
sinful. Similarly, the Arabs see the demand that they recognize
a Jewish state with no fixed borders as a clever attempt to extract their
endorsement of Israel's unilateral expansion at Palestinian expense.
-
- The lack of appeal in this approach has been compounded
by a longstanding American habit of treating Arab concerns about Israel
as a form of anti-Semitism and tuning them out. Instead of hearing
out and addressing Arab views, U.S. peace processors have repeatedly focused
on soliciting Arab acts of kindness toward Israel. They argue
that gestures of acceptance can help Israelis overcome their Holocaust-inspired
political neuroses and take risks for peace.
-
- Each time this notion of Arab diplomacy as psychotherapy
for Israelis has been trotted out, it has been met with incredulity. To
most in the region, it encapsulates the contrast between Washington's sympathy
and solicitude for Israelis and its condescendingly exploitative view of
Arabs. Some see it as a barely disguised appeal for a policy
of appeasement of Israel. Still others suspect an attempt to
construct a "peace process" in which Arabs begin to supply Israel
with gifts of carrots so that Americans can continue to avoid applying
sticks to it.
-
- The effort to encourage Arab generosity as an offset
to American political pusillanimity vis-à-vis Israel is ludicrously
unpersuasive. It has failed so many times that it should be
obvious that it will not work. Yet it was a central element
of George Mitchell's mandate for "peace process" diplomacy. And
it appears to have resurfaced as part of the proposed follow-up to tomorrow's
meeting between the parties in Washington. It should be no puzzle
why the Saudis and other Arabs could not be persuaded to join this gathering.
-
- As a last thought before turning to what must be done,
let me make a quick comment on a relevant cultural factor. Arabic
has two quite different words that are both translated as "negotiation,"
making a distinction that doesn't exist in either English or Hebrew. One
word, "musaawama," refers to the no-holds-barred bargaining
process that takes place in bazaars between strangers who may never see
each other again and who therefore feel no obligation not to scam each
other. Another, "mufaawadhat," describes
the dignified formal discussions about matters of honor and high principle
that take place on a basis of mutual respect and equality between statesmen
who seek a continuing relationship.
-
- Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's travel to Jerusalem
was a grand act of statesmanship to initiate a process of mufaawadhat
relationship-building between leaders and their polities. So
was the Arab peace initiative of 2002. It called for a response
in kind. The West muttered approvingly but did not act. After
a while, Israel responded with intermittent, somewhat oblique suggestions
of willingness to haggle over terms. But an offer to bicker
over the terms on which a grand gesture has been granted is, not surprisingly,
seen as insultingly unresponsive.
-
-
-
- I cite this not to suggest that non-Arabs should adopt
Arabic canons of thought, but to make a point about diplomatic effectiveness. To
move a negotiating partner in a desired direction, one must understand
how that partner understands things and help him to see a way forward that
will bring him to an end he has been persuaded to want. One
of the reasons we can't seem to move things as we desire in the Middle
East is that we don't make much effort to understand how others reason
and how they rank their interests. In the case of the Israel-Palestine
conundrum, we Americans are long on empathy and expertise about Israel
and very, very short on these for the various Arab parties. The
essential militarism of U.S. policies in the Middle East adds to our difficulties. We
have become skilled at killing Arabs. We have forgotten how
to listen to them or persuade them.
-
- I am not myself an "Arabist," but I am old
enough to remember when there were more than a few such people in the American
diplomatic service. These were officers who had devoted themselves
to the cultivation of understanding and empathy with Arab leaders so as
to be able to convince these leaders that it was in their own interest
to do things we saw as in our interest. If we still have such
people, we are hiding them well; we are certainly not applying their skills
in our Middle East diplomacy.
-
- This brings me to a few thoughts about the Western and
Arab interests at stake in the Holy Land and their implications for what
must be done.
-
- In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all
things. My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed
Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the
Holy Land. To my mind, these interests include but are,
of course, not limited to gaining security and acceptance for a democratic
state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations
that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters,
as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious
strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism
in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these
aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and
freedom for Palestinians.
-
- Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, also have compelling
reasons to want relief from occupation as well as self-determination for
Palestinians. They may not be concerned to preserve Israel's
democracy, as we are, but they share an urgent interest in ending the radicalization
of their own populations, curbing the spread of Islamist terrorism, and
eliminating the tensions with the West that the conflict in the Holy Land
fuels. These are the concerns that have driven them to propose
peace, as they very clearly did eight years ago. For related
reasons, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has made inter-faith dialogue and
the promotion of religious tolerance a main focus of his domestic and international
policy.
-
- As the custodian of two of Islam's three sacred places
of pilgrimage Mecca and Medina Saudi Arabia has long transcended
its own notorious religious narrow-mindedness to hold the holy places in
its charge open to Muslims of all sects and persuasions. This
experience, joined with Islamic piety, reinforces a Saudi insistence on
the exemption of religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem from political interference
or manipulation. The Ottoman Turks were careful to ensure freedom
of access for worship to adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths when they
administered the city. It is an interest that Jews, Christians,
and Muslims share.
-
- There is, in short, far greater congruity between Western
and Arab interests affecting the Israel-Palestine dispute than is generally
recognized. This can be the basis for creative diplomacy. The
fact that this has not occurred reflects pathologies of political life
in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination. Tomorrow's
meeting may well demonstrate that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding,
the United States is still unfit to manage the achievement of peace between
Israel and the Arabs. If so, it is in the American interest
as well as everyone else's that others become the path-breakers, enlisting
the United States as best they can in support of what they achieve, but
not expecting America to overcome its incapacity to lead.
-
- Here, I think, there is a lesson to be drawn from the
Norwegian experience in the 1990s. The Clinton Administration
was happy to organize the public relations for the Oslo accords but did
not take ownership of them. It did little to protect them from
subversion and overthrow, and nothing to insist on their implementation. Only
a peace process that is protected from Israel's ability to manipulate American
politics can succeed.
-
- This brings me to how Europeans and Arabs might work
together to realize the objectives both share with most Americans: establishing
internationally recognized borders for Israel, securing freedom for the
Palestinians, and ending the stimulus to terrorism in the region and beyond
it that strife in the Holy Land entails. I have only four suggestions
to present today. I expect that more ideas will emerge from
the discussion period. A serious effort to cooperate with the
Arabs of the sort that Norway is uniquely capable of contriving could lead
to the development of still more options for joint or parallel action on
behalf of peace.
-
- Now to my suggestions, presented in ascending order of
difficulty, from the least to the most controversial.
-
- First, get behind the Arab peace initiative. Saudi
Arab culture frowns on self-promotion and the Kingdom is less gifted than
most at public diplomacy. Political factors inhibit official
Arab access to the Israeli press. The Israeli media have published
some mostly dismissive commentary on the Arab peace initiative
but left most Israelis ignorant of its contents and unfamiliar with its
text. Why not buy space in the Israeli media to give Israelis
a chance to read the Arab League declaration and consider the opportunities
it presents? I suspect the Saudis, as well as other members
of the Arab League, would consider it constructive for an outside party
to do this. It might facilitate other sorts of cooperation with
them in which European capabilities can also compensate for Arab reticence. The
Turks and other non-Arab Muslims should be brought in as full participants
in any such efforts. This wouldn't be bad for Europe's relations
with both. By the way, given the U.S. media's notorious one-sidedness
and American ignorance about the Arab peace plan, a well-targeted advertising
campaign in the United States might not be a bad idea either.
-
- Second, help create a Palestinian partner for peace. There
can be no peace with Israel unless there are officials who are empowered
by the Palestinian people to negotiate and ratify it. Israel
has worked hard to divide the Palestinians so as to consolidate its conquest
of their homeland. Saudi Arabia has several times sought to
create a Palestinian peace partner for Israel by bringing Fatah, Hamas,
and other factions together. On each occasion, Israel, with
U.S. support, has acted to preclude this. Active organization
of non-American Western support for diplomacy aimed at restoring a unity
government to the Palestinian Authority could make a big difference. The
Obama Administration would be under strong domestic political pressure
to join Israel in blocking a joint European-Arab effort to accomplish this. Under
some circumstances, however, it might welcome being put to this test.
-
- Third, reaffirm and enforce international law. The
UN Security Council is charged with enforcing the rule of law internationally. In
the case of the Middle East, however, the Council's position at the apex
of the international system has served to erode and subvert the ideal of
a rule-bound international order. Almost forty American vetoes
have prevented the application to the Israeli occupying authorities of
the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg precedents, human rights conventions,
and relevant Security Council directives. American diplomacy
on behalf of the Jewish state has silenced the collective voice of the
international community as Israel has illegally colonized and annexed broad
swaths of occupied territory, administered collective punishment to a captive
people, assassinated their political leaders, massacred civilians, barred
UN investigators, defied mandatory Security Council resolutions, and otherwise
engaged in scofflaw behavior, usually with only the flimsiest of legally
irrelevant excuses.
-
- If ethnic cleansing, settlement activity, and the like
are not just "unhelpful" but illegal, the international community
should find a way to say so, even if the UN Security Council cannot. Otherwise,
the most valuable legacy of Atlantic civilization its vision of the
rule of law will be lost. When one side to a dispute is
routinely exempted from principles, all exempt themselves, and the
law of the jungle prevails. The international community needs
collectively to affirm that Israel, both as occupier and as regional military
hegemon, is legally accountable internationally for its actions. If
the UN General Assembly cannot "unite for peace" to do what an
incapacitated Security Council cannot, member states should not shrink
from working in conference outside the UN framework. All sides
in the murder and mayhem in the Holy Land and beyond need to understand
that they are not above the law. If this message is firmly delivered
and enforced, there will be a better chance for peace.
-
- Fourth, set a deadline linked to an ultimatum. Accept
that the United States will frustrate any attempt by the UN Security Council
to address the continuing impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Organize
a global conference outside the UN system to coordinate a decision to inform
the parties to the dispute that if they cannot reach agreement in a year,
one of two solutions will be imposed. Schedule a follow-up conference
for a year later. The second conference would consider
whether to recommend universal recognition of a Palestinian state in the
area beyond Israel's 1967 borders or recognition of Israel's achievement
of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout
Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and
equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment). Either
formula would force the parties to make a serious effort to strike a deal
or to face the consequences of their recalcitrance. Either formula
could be implemented directly by the states members of the international
community. Admittedly, any serious deadline would provoke
a political crisis in Israel and lead to diplomatic confrontation with
the United States as well as Israel, despite the Obama Administration itself
having proclaimed a one-year deadline in order to entice the Palestinians
to tomorrow's talks. Yet both Israel and the United States would
benefit immensely from peace with the Palestinians.
-
- Time is running out. The two-state solution
may already have been overtaken by Israeli land grabs and settlement activity. Another
cycle of violence is likely in the offing. If so, it will not
be local or regional, but global in its reach. Israel's actions
are delegitimizing and isolating it even as they multiply the numbers of
those in the region and beyond who are determined to destroy it. Palestinian
suffering is a reproach to all humanity that posturing alone cannot begin
to alleviate. It has become a cancer on the Islamic body politic. It
is infecting every extremity of the globe with the rage against injustice
that incites terrorism.
-
- It is time to try new approaches. That is
why the question of whether there is a basis for expanded diplomatic cooperation
between Europeans and Arabs is such a timely one. And it is why I
was pleased as well as honored to have been asked to set the stage for
a discussion of this issue.
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