Thinking Strategically on Settlements
July 13, 2012 § 1 Comment
Shimon Peres gave a speech this week in which he warned about the danger that settlements pose to Israel’s Jewish majority. He spoke about a “threatening demographic change” and pointed out that without a Jewish majority, Israel will cease to be a Jewish state. This prompted predictable outrage from the right, with Yesha head Dani Dayan inveighing that the only danger to the Jewish state is conceding the right to the West Bank and 350 rabbis sending Peres a letter in which they said he should beg for forgiveness for the peace process and criticized his “hallucinatory ideas.” Peres’s speech also, however, brought opprobrium from the left, as various people were upset that Peres framed the problem with settlements as a strategic problem rather than an ethical or moral one. In this view, the primary problem with the settlements is that they are furthering the occupation and preventing a Palestinian state, and thus the argument against them should be that Israel is perpetrating an unethical policy in the West Bank and settlements should be denounced primarily as conflicting with the value of a democratic state and a Jewish state.
I am sympathetic to this argument, but it ignores the politics of the situation and misses the long view. The left and center-left do not need any convincing on the need for Israel to abandon the settlement enterprise outside of the major settlement blocs that Israel will presumably keep in a peace deal. If there is to ever be real movement on this issue, it is the right that needs to be brought around, and arguments about Palestinian rights are unlikely to be convincing. I do not mean to suggest that everybody on the right is completely unconcerned with the status of the Palestinians on the West Bank, but this has historically not been a winning argument on the right. If the right is to be swayed, it will be by arguments about Israel’s security and future, and in that sense, the demographic argument is the only one in town. I’ve heard that people in the upper ranks of the government don’t take the demographic threat seriously and believe that time is actually on Israel’s side, and I have had similar impressions in talking to friends and colleagues who are more rightwing on Israel issues than I am. When I was in Turkey two years ago, I got into what turned into a heated discussion with an older American Jewish couple whom I met while their cruise ship was docked in Istanbul for the weekend. During a conversation about Israel where I brought up the argument that Israel was running out of time to separate from the West Bank, the wife heatedly insisted that I had no idea what I was talking about because her daughter lives in Israel and has five kids, and so she absolutely refuses to believe that in 20 years there will be just as many Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank as there are Jews. The only way to convince rightwingers and conservatives that settlements need to be dealt with is to keep on pushing the demographic argument and make people realize that every day that passes increases the possibility of a binational one state Israeli future. This is why Peres’s speech was the correct response to the Levy Report, and while it might make folks on the left upset, a little more strategic thinking on this issue is required.
On a similar note, this is why I think that the Levy Report is so dangerous and why I disagree with Brent Sasley’s argument that Levy does not represent anything new. Has Israel been extending its control over the West Bank? Yes, it has. But that doesn’t mean that the Levy Report is not a dangerous development, because by legally eviscerating the line between Tel Aviv in Israel proper and Efrat over the Green Line, and between authorized settlement bloc Ariel and unauthorized outpost Migron, it brings a one state solution ever closer (for those whose Hebrew is less than stellar, Elder of Ziyon has a useful translation of the legal reasoning section of the Levy Report). The report’s significance is not in what it signals about past Israeli intention in the West Bank, but in what it signals about Israel’s political future and survival as a Jewish state. Brent and others think that the report is simply more of the same and that the declaration that there is no occupation is just the Israeli right showing its true colors in a more public manner, but this loses sight of the fact that Levy represents the opening salvo in the growing calls for a rightwing one state solution. Quite simply, this will be the end of Israel as we know it, and the right needs to be convinced that this is a path to oblivion. If this requires hammering away at the demographic argument and dropping language steeped in morality and ethics, so be it. Peres is on to the right idea here, and people on the left and the center should start thinking along these lines as well.
You Mean Abbas Is Not A Committed Liberal?
April 24, 2012 § Leave a comment
George Hale reports in Ma’an that the Palestinian Authority has been forcing Internet service providers to block websites critical of Mahmoud Abbas on the orders of the attorney general, who is getting his marching orders either from PA intelligence or from Abbas’s office directly. This is sadly not at all surprising coming on the heels of arrests of journalists for criticizing Abbas on Facebook, and is the latest reminder that while the PA may look benign compared to its more radical cousin in Gaza, it is not and never has been a democratic organization, nor is it a paragon of liberal values.
The question is why is this taking place now, and as with so much of this type of behavior, the answer is internal Palestinian politics. Hale notes that the sites being shut down are perceived to be in Muhammad Dahlan’s camp, and since Dahlan is Abbas’s fiercest and oldest rival, Abbas has missed few opportunities to harass him every chance he gets. Eliminating rivals has taken on greater urgency, however, as calls grow for the indefinitely postponed Palestinian elections to actually be held at some point soon. No date has been set, but events on the ground indicate that Abbas is preparing for an election that he anticipates will take place by the end of the year. The shutting down of sites loyal to Dahlan is part of the general crackdown on dissent and criticism of Abbas that is being carried out against journalists, bloggers, and private citizens. These measures have intensified and suggest that Abbas is more worried now about public opinion than he has been in the past.
Dahlan is also not the only potential rival being targeted. The recent contretemps between Abbas and Fayyad, initiated by Abbas trying to embarrass his prime minister by having him meet with Netanyahu on Palestinian Prisoners Day and now having degenerated to the point where Abbas refuses to be on speaking terms with Fayyad, is also borne out of internal Palestinian politics. There are rumblings that Fayyad might challenge Abbas and run for president, and even though Fayyad has no real base of support and would likely lose, his popularity with foreign governments and the international community still makes him a dangerous threat to Abbas. Unlike Dahlan, who is basically a gangster chieftain, Fayyad cannot be compromised or endlessly investigated, so Abbas’s options for discrediting him are limited to trying to make him look foolish and like an Israeli stooge, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try. And of course, Abbas is doing everything he can to root out support for Hamas in the West Bank, which presents the ultimate threat to his continued rule over the PA.
Taken together, I think this means that Abbas knows something we don’t, and that elections are more imminent than anyone thinks. The Arab Spring and elections in Tunisia and Egypt make it harder for the PA to keep on pushing them off, and Abbas’s actions look to me like classic campaigning in an electoral authoritarian state. Expect more reports of decidedly illiberal behavior on Abbas’s part for the rest of the year, or until elections are held (if ever). When Abbas took over the PA’s reins following Arafat’s death, there was a perception that he was quiet and mild mannered and had no real interest in staying in power for long. Turns out that being Palestinian president is a decent gig, and like authoritarians everywhere, Abbas is willing to fight dirty to hang on to his job.
Some Thoughts On 60 Minutes and Palestinian Christians
April 23, 2012 § 3 Comments
60 Minutes ran a segment last night on Christians in the Holy Land that examined their dwindling numbers in cities like Bethlehem and Jerusalem and how this relates to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. A report like this is bound to draw controversy and this one did not disappoint, with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren taking lots of heat due to the disclosure during the segment that he called the president of CBS News and tried to have the story killed. Before I dive in, a disclaimer: Ambassador Oren was one of my professors at Harvard and is a friend, and I spent many fond hours chatting with him about all sorts of topics in his office at Georgetown (he arrived one year after I did) before he was appointed ambassador. Since then, I have seen or spoken with him only two or three times, and I continue to hold him in the highest regard.
Given the above facts, I am certainly not the world’s most objective commentator on Michael Oren. But I fail to see why heads are exploding over the fact that the Israeli ambassador is trying to protect his country’s image. Did he come off as tongue-tied when Bob Simon ambushed him on camera with a question that was purely about process rather than substance? Sure. Let’s remember though that THIS IS HIS JOB. He is not paid to be an objective analyst. He is not paid to project a balanced and nuanced view of events in the Middle East. He is paid to be Israel’s spokesman in the United States and to advance Israeli interests, and if he gets wind of the fact that a network is planning on airing a story that is unfairly critical of Israel (more on this below) on its flagship news magazine program, it would be diplomatic malpractice for him not to try and keep the story off the air. Does anyone reading this actually believe that diplomats from every country on the planet do not do the same thing? Is this legitimately more surprising than the stories that emerged just last week about the Pentagon and the State Department trying to suppress reports and leaked photos of American troops in Afghanistan posing for pictures with Taliban corpses? This is what governments do, folks. Michael Oren is a high ranking official of the Israeli government and his first and only priority is to protect his country and its image, and if he comes off looking poorly in the course of doing so, it’s because that comes with the territory. Please spare me the feigned outrage, particularly when Bob Simon claims that this is the first time he has encountered a reaction to a story before it has been broadcast, which was far and away the most outrageous statement of the night.
Moving to the substance of the story, the gist of the 60 Minutes report was that the Christian population in the West Bank is shrinking and that Palestinian Christians are leaving in large numbers, and that this can be blamed on Israel. It is difficult to assess the size of this reported exodus or how rapidly it is taking place since Bob Simon provided little in the way of hard numbers. The implication is that this is a direct result of the Israeli occupation, and while this may very well be true, there was nothing but purely anecdotal evidence provided to support the charge. Simon interviewed the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem who said that in 1964 there were 30,000 Christians in Jerusalem and now there are “very few” with Simon putting the number at 11,000. Damning stuff, until you find out that according to Menashe Harrel (whose numbers are widely considered authoritative) there were 25,000 Christians in Jerusalem in 1948 and only 12,646 in 1967, which leads one to conclude that the Jordanians must have been secret Israelis given the dastardly effect their control of Jerusalem had on the Christian population. With Jerusalem’s Christian population now standing at 11,000, it is impossible to claim with a straight face that Israel is responsible for a rapid mass migration by Christians elsewhere.
In addition, there is the inconvenient fact that while the Christian population is shrinking, the Muslim population is growing. Are we supposed to take away from this that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank disproportionately affects, or even purposely targets, Christians? If Israel’s actions are the direct and proximate cause of Christian flight, then it would have been helpful to see some sort of causal chain established by 60 Minutes, but instead the viewers are told that Christians residents are disappearing and that this is due to occupation of the West Bank, yet no effort is made to ascertain why Christians are leaving (aside from Ari Shavit’s observation about Christians being squeezed between political Islam and political Judaism) but Muslims are not. Christian communities are disappearing across the region, have been driven out of Iraq entirely and are coming under sectarian pressure in Egypt, yet 60 Minutes finds Zahi Khouri’s claim that he has never heard of someone leaving because of concern over Islamic fundamentalism to be a completely credible one. Bob Simon asked Shavit, “Do you think the Israeli government ever thinks of the fact that if Christians aren’t being treated well here, and America is an overwhelmingly Christian country, that this could have consequences?” yet there was no documentation at all of ways in which Christians are being specifically mistreated for being Christian, just an allegation hanging in the air as if the question itself were somehow proof.
The bottom line is that this was a sloppily reported and lazily researched segment falling far below 60 Minutes’ usual standards. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I carry no water for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or mistreatment of Palestinians, and would be thrilled to see both of those things ended immediately. I call out what I view to be Israeli missteps and bad behavior all the time. But Michael Oren was correct to view this piece as a hatchet job that was undeserving of being aired. Yes, Israel has made life very unpleasant for plenty of Palestinians, and Christians in Bethlehem are particularly ill-served by the occupation and the separation barrier given their proximity to Israel proper and their reliance on religious tourism, but there was simply no proof presented by CBS outside of empty conjecture that Israel is deserving of more blame for this than are the Palestinian terrorists that prompted the construction of the barrier in the first place, nor was there even a scintilla of historical or regional context to place this story in perspective. Being a Christian in the West Bank cannot be easy for a variety of reasons, and I can understand why Palestinian Christians would feel uncomfortable under both Jewish and Muslim rule, particularly when they each rely on an increasingly assertive religious nationalism. It should be perfectly clear though that Israel is not targeting Christian Palestinians, that the Christian population of Jerusalem has remained steady since Israel claimed the entirety of the city in 1967, and that the Christian population of the West Bank is shrinking for a variety of reasons, some of which have to do with the occupation and some of which have nothing to do with it whatsoever. The public perception following the 60 Minutes report is that Michael Oren did not come off well, but 60 Minutes and Bob Simon did not exactly cover themselves in glory (the segment has been in the works since last year and this is the best they could come up with??) and deserve any criticism that might come their way.
Peace Process Theater
April 17, 2012 § 1 Comment
Today’s developments in Israeli-Palestinian peace process negotiations demonstrate why the two sides, despite the joint statement that they issued reiterating that they are both committed to peace, are in reality farther apart then ever in coming to a lasting, binding agreement. Let’s begin with the turmoil on the Palestinian side of the ledger. The much-anticipated letter from Abbas to Netanyahu was delivered by Saeb Erekat and Majed Faraj, and while there had been speculation that it would contain a threat to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and return day to day control of the West Bank to Israel, the letter reportedly did not go that far, which should be cause for optimism. This means that a small sliver of agreement and coordination still theoretically exists on which to base negotiations.
The bad news is that Salam Fayyad, who was slated to deliver the letter to Netanyahu, was a no-show. There are a number of reasons why this might be, and none of them bode well for the future. Fayyad might have backed out because he does not think another expression of Palestinian discontent is going to jumpstart negotiations, which would signal a worrying degree of frustration on his part. Fayyad is the great moderate of Palestinian politics, and he has enormous credibility with the U.S. and other international actors. He has led the effort to build up Palestinian institutions and improve the West Bank’s economy and security, and he has been largely successful. He is also the rare – or maybe even more accurately, only – Palestinian politician who says the same things in Arabic to his domestic audience as he does in English to an international audience. He has never been accused of inciting or excusing violence, does not glorify terrorists who kill civilians, called for Hamas to recognize Israel years ago, does not have even a whiff of corruption about him, and by all accounts is honest and determined. If Fayyad believes that things have degenerated to the point that this letter will accomplish nothing, the risk exists that he is at the point of abandoning his project of state-building. Fayyad does not have a natural constituency among Palestinians as he is not a career politician or a high ranking PLO member, and if he resigns as prime minister, international aid to the PA will dry up overnight and the situation in the West Bank will quickly deteriorate.
Fayyad might also not have agreed to deliver the letter because Abbas was trying to discredit him by asking him to do it. Today is Palestinian Prisoners Day, in which Palestinians express their solidarity with those in Israeli jails, and the optic of meeting with Israeli officials today is not a popular one. Abbas and Fayyad do not have a good relationship, and it was not improved with the news that the unity deal that Abbas agreed to with Hamas stipulated sacking Fayyad. Abbas might have been trying to embarrass Fayyad even further by demanding that the letter be delivered today, and Fayyad understandably did not want to do it himself. The PA’s footing is tenuous enough already, and it certainly will not be improved by more fighting between its two top figures. If the PA implodes, the party that stands to benefit the most is Hamas, and that will certainly not do any wonders for Israeli security or the prospects of a deal.
Finally, it’s possible that Fayyad did not deliver the letter himself because he does not think that negotiations with Israel are still a viable path to a Palestinian state. Fayyad is on record as being against a unilateral declaration of statehood and did not agree with last fall’s strategy of pressing the UN to recognize a Palestinian state, and if he has one way or another become so disenchanted that he now believes in institution-building for its own sake without it leading to negotiations with Israel, then Israel will have lost in a big way. In many ways, Fayyad is the perfect Palestinian counterpart for Netanyahu, as they have both expressed the opinion that improving the West Bank’s economy and security is a vital precursor to successful political negotiations. If Fayyad does not want to be a part of the PA’s current negotiating process because he thinks it is a waste of time, it would signal the death knell of true moderate Palestinian partnership.
In the meantime, while Israel and the PA held a meeting and issued a joint statement that nobody expects to lead to any real progress, 1200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons began an indefinite hunger strike to protest the practice of administrative detentions and what they allege to be abusive and humiliating behavior on Israel’s part. This more than anything highlights the absurdity of today’s peace process theater. Of these two separate and distinct events, the one that is guaranteed to hold Palestinian attention and support is prisoners going on a hunger strike in opposition to Israel rather than Palestinian negotiators exchanging letters with the Israeli government. Even if Abbas were to drop his preconditions and come to the negotiating table, and the two sides were able to make some progress, is there really going to be much appetite for talks among Palestinians at this point? With hunger striker Khader Adnan being freed today, there is a stark example of what appears to be a successful strategy for countering Israel against the backdrop of endless negotiations that have not produced much in the way of tangible gains. This doesn’t mean that it will lead to Palestinian violence, but it also does not mean that negotiations are still viewed as the only alternative to armed resistance. Of all the days in which the peace process has seemed moribund, today might have reached a new low with its hollow message of two sides working together.
The Pitfalls of Preconditions
April 3, 2012 § 6 Comments
Barak Ravid reports in Haaretz that long-time negotiators Saeb Erekat and Yitzchak Molcho recently met in secret in an effort to revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and that the PA has outlined a number of demands that it plans on presenting to Netanyahu as preconditions to negotiations. Unsurprisingly, Abbas’s preconditions are that negotiations begin with a baseline of the 1967 borders and that Israel freeze all settlement activity.
While the Palestinians are in a difficult spot and want to gain some leverage going into peace talks, the preconditions gambit is a continuation of the same negotiating mistake. A little reminder of recent history is helpful in understanding why this is. When AIPAC convened its annual conference in March 2010, the attendees gathered during a particularly rocky period for Israel diplomatically. Earlier that month, Vice President Biden had landed in Tel Aviv to be infamously greeted with an announcement of 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem which led to a mini-crisis with the United States and an hour-long dressing down from Secretary of State Clinton. Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon was fresh off causing a diplomatic crisis with Turkey following his attempt to humiliate the Turkish ambassador with cameras rolling in response to Turkish television dramas portraying Israeli soldiers as kidnappers and intentional murderers of innocent civilians. Britain was also threatening to cut intelligence ties and cease intelligence sharing following revelations that Israel had used British passports while assassinating a Hamas military leader in Dubai.
Most importantly, serious pressure was building up for Israel to make real concessions in service of creating an independent Palestinian state. President Obama had called for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations and had pressed Israel for a freeze on all settlement activity. The PA seemed for the first time in nearly two decades to be making progress in building state institutions in the West Bank, and the U.S.-trained PA police force was winning accolades for its progress and professionalism. There was also a growing sense among military officials that a lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front was becoming a problem for the U.S., embodied by General David Petraeus’s Senate testimony that anti-American sentiment in the Middle East was partly due to the absence of a Palestinian state. The momentum for an independent Palestine was building, and following the Biden episode and the fury among top U.S. officials at what they saw as an unacceptable humiliation of the vice president, the Palestinians were in an ideal situation to negotiate a favorable resolution to the conflict.
Such negotiations never took place, however, because the Palestinian Authority committed the crucial mistake of setting preconditions before coming to the negotiating table. As every first year law student required to read the seminal negotiation treatise Getting To Yes can tell you, setting preconditions to negotiating is a tactic that almost always fails. The book’s very first lesson is not to bargain over positions as it is inefficient, damages the relationship between parties, and leads to bad agreements. Tactics such as setting preconditions and refusing to negotiate until they are met are fated to backfire if the objective is to reach an agreement, as the other side is likely to dig in and paint the refusal to negotiate as evidence of bad faith. Over time, the party setting the preconditions will become hostage to the perception that it has no interest in reaching a deal, and will then be forced to maintain its principled position even when events on the ground put it at a disadvantage or give up credibility and leverage by dropping its demand entirely. In short, setting preconditions before agreeing to negotiate an agreement is rarely going to be a winning strategy.
In early 2010, Abbas insisted that no negotiations could take place absent a complete freeze on all building activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which was a condition that Israel was in no way prepared to meet given the extension of the freeze request to East Jerusalem. Netanyahu did, however, agree to a 10 month West Bank settlement freeze, allowing him to take the high road by announcing that he was making concessions and was ready to negotiate at any time while portraying the Palestinians as unwilling peace partners. By September 2010, following months of demands that Israel freeze all East Jerusalem construction, the Palestinians finally agreed to negotiate, but by that point it was too late, as Israel’s settlement freeze expired. Events on the ground had also shifted by that point and Obama announced his unwillingness to ask the Israelis for yet another halt to all West Bank building activity, and the Palestinians were in no position to make a credible case having squandered months of potential negotiations. Fast forward two years later to the most recent AIPAC conference, and the Palestinians and peace negotiations barely registered with attention turned exclusively to Iran.
Despite all this, Abbas is about to pull a Groundhog Day and make the exact same mistake, although this time his starting point is far less favorable and thus his tactic is even more unlikely to work. The question is whether the PA actually wants to have serious negotiations at this point in time or is just looking to win a p.r. battle with Israel. If it’s the latter, then setting preconditions makes sense since it highlights Israeli settlement activity, which is already being cast in an unfavorable light following the High Court’s Migron decision and the current standoff between the IDF and the prime minister’s office over the Beit Hamachpela group in Hebron. If the objective is to actually negotiate though, Abbas and Erekat need to wake up to the fact that setting preconditions is a terrible negotiating strategy that is fated to fail from the start.
