President Obama has threatened to downgrade relations with the Palestinian Authority unless they enter direct negotiations with Israel by mid-August.
PA President Abbas has so far refused to speak directly to the Israelis unless they commit to a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to direct talks with the Palestinians as long as there are no preconditions.
The pressure on the Palestinians from the US and the Arab League's acquiescence to direct negotiations are expected to give Abbas the latitude to reverse his position and join negotiations in September.
But what sort of peace will they be negotiating?
Abbas' Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza do not speak with one voice. Neither recognizes the other's legitimacy. Gaza is a disastrous, terrorist-infested mess, ruled by a fanatical theocratic party whose founding charter reads as if it were written by psychopaths suffering from paranoid delusions. It includes references to talking trees wanting to kill Jews and an international conspiracy of Zionists, Freemasons and the Rotary and Lions Clubs.
Israel will not agree to a right of passage between the two Palestinian territories while one of them is controlled by a group committed to the Jewish state's destruction. Hamas' policies have completely sidelined them from participating in the expected upcoming round of negotiations.
For the past few years, the roadmap for peace has talked about a "two-state" solution, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that the only hope for an agreement would be the more recently proposed 3 State Solution.
With the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of achieving peace with Gaza, which has developed its own political culture, there will be a need for 2 Palestinian states, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza.
This idea was proposed, in a form, in early 2009 by John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations.
In Bolton's scenario, Jordan would assume control of the West Bank and Egypt would assume responsibility for Gaza. While that aspect of the solution is unfeasible, since both those Arab countries have rejected that idea and the administrative quagmire that would accompany it, the idea of Israel forming a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and shelving Gaza for the time being seems the only feasible option.
A single agreement with the West Bank will be difficult enough, given Israel's disastrously inefficient system of proportional representation that allows fringe parties to have disproportionate power in government. It will be a nightmare for Israel to have to remove the fanatically orthodox settlers from the West Bank, who have a messianic commitment to their theologically-inspired vision of a Greater Israel. But sensible forces in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, understood there was no other way. That was part of his motivation for building the Security Barrier between Israel and the West Bank. It has served its primary purpose of virtually eliminating suicide attacks from the west bank, but it is also no great secret that the barrier is the most likely future border between Israel and the Palestinians.
While East Jerusalem would remain a point of contention, it appears that the Palestinian side has also recognized this new reality.
While the Gaza situation would remain an open wound where its intractable government, which acts as an Iranian proxy, cannot be dealt with, there is also movement in that area. There is growing support for an international solution to Gaza, which would see Israel cede authority to an international force that would provide security for Israel while assuming responsibility for that territory.
Once a democratic peaceful Palestinian state emerges on the West Bank, it would place enormous pressure on Gaza to find a means of achieving peace. It would alleviate some pressure on Israel and the US in the region, and further isolate hostile dictatorships and their operatives like Syria, Iran and Hezbollah.
2 comments:
Just read your entire article about the 3 party solution and i must say you have enlightened me as to a wide range of issues of which i have no previous knowledge. In other words you are discussing an issue that does not get a lot of airtime here in Vermont. Enjoyed reading what you had to say and hope i can make some thing coherent out of the information. Thumbs up.
Good article. Actually that option has been in the works for some time. There's no point working with Gaza until the people there themselves shake off Hamas and tribal warfare. This may not be too easy to do for them by themselves, but if they people there see the west Bank Palestinians prospering, as they easily could do once hostilities are formally done there, then it would be a greater incentive. I would like to take as a good sign the fact of the Arab League recommending direct negotiations, because sadly, Abbas and his people have been playing for time trying to wheedle more "acts of faith" and concessions from the Israelis before direct talks even get under way. Effectively they still seem to want an end game commitment by Israel before doing anything tangible themselves. One thing that I certainly hope that the Netanyahu government will not cave in on is the fact of the 10 month moratorium on building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is over in September. If that sticks, then the West Bankers know for sure that holding out or demanding more and new concessions is overplaying their hand, and they'll (hopefully) lose US support by not playing ball.
At the end of the day, we know that the outcome is supposed to be borders more or less along the '67 lines with land exchanges for the largest Jewish settlements that will be annexed to Israel.
We don't hear about this much,but I would hope and expect that all the other Jews in the West Bank should be able to remain where they are as Palestinian citizens with dual Israeli status. They've built businesses that employ lots of West Bank Arabs, it makes no sense for that not to continue. Eventually it would be nice to see their communities cease to need to be "fortresses" but that's probably far in the future, maybe another generation away even if all goes well. If this played out as I've suggested then it also will take a lot of wind out of the "Apartheid Israel" idiots' sails. Those types will just go and find some other blood libel of course, but there is real potential for a positive breakthrough. Meanwhile Gaza will just continue to be a crumbling, dirty, parking lot without normal relations with anyone until thpse medieval idiots are deposed.
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