Peace Talks

The Israelis and Palestinians are currently in peace negotiations discussing the possibilities for a two-state solution. This is the latest iteration in a process that began with secret negotiations between Israeli academics and PLO officials in the early 1990s, and the first step culminated in the signing of the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn in September 1993. Since then we have seen Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, the Camp David talks, the Annapolis conference, etc. In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas the following:

• 93.5% of the West Bank (5.8% of the balance made up in land swaps with Israel and 0.7% in a corridor connecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).
• The entirety of the Gaza Strip 
• Sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which would become the Palestinian capital (with the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif placed under the auspices of the future Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel)
• Token amount of Palestinians given the "right of return"- about 3,000. 

Abbas said that he would study the proposal but ultimately never signed it. According to him, "the gaps were wide" between the Israeli and Palestinian positions. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying, "Olmert...said: 'We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin [the Old City, Mt. of Olives, the City of David, and the Arab neighborhood Silwan].' Abu Mazen [Abbas] too [in other words, like Arafat] answered with defiance, saying, 'I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine - the June 4, 1967 borders - without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.' This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign..." [note the lack of any mention of Jewish holy places in Jerusalem. That was not by accident.]

The problem is that the Israelis and Palestinians should be "in a marketplace or a bazaar." After all, one negotiates in a bazaar. These should be negotiations, not dictations by either side.

This very brief history shows that one should not be too excited about this latest round of negotiations. Abbas has already come out saying that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, will not permit an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, will not accept any interim agreement, never accept an agreement where the Palestinians get less than 100% of East Jerusalem (including the Jewish holy sites), etc. This is essentially the same rejection made by Abbas in 2008, and that the late Yasser Arafat made in 2000. In other words, despite the recriminations of the blame-Israel crowd, Israel has been quite willing to give up land in the quest for peace. The Palestinians have said no. And this time will be no different. 

In order to please the Palestinian Authority, Israel has agreed to release 104 prisoners in four tranches. Israel is releasing the third tranche, which consists of 26 prisoners, as I write these words. The men being released have done nasty things. No one seems to be asking themselves the larger question: if a sticking point of negotiations is for Israelis to release prisoners guilty of stabbing women and old men, and murdering fellow Palestinian "collaborators", that speaks to a deep sickness in Palestinian political culture. No country should be forced to release prisoners of this type: we are not speaking of political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. Rather we are speaking of men who have committed the most atrocious of crimes, many against innocent civilians. Furthermore, these prisoners, like prisoners before them, will be greeted with garlands when they return to their homes (and in official festivities in Ramallah). This is very disturbing, and I would venture to say that it is this mindset, combined with the "all or nothing" Götterdämmerung mentality of Palestinian nationalism, that is the cause for the failure of the peace process, not the construction of settlements in the West Bank. The latter are an irritant, but they are not the cause of the failure of talks. 

However, the international community at large does not see things this way. Our own Secretary of State has suggested that if the talks fail, there very well may be a Palestinian intifada, and implied that it would be justified. So in other words, if the Palestinians enlarge their demands (as they have historically done) and the Israelis consequently say "forget it", the Palestinians will have been implicitly permitted to launch a violent campaign against Israel. The onus, in other words, has been entirely placed on Israel. There is very little reason to believe that any peace agreement will be signed. With the combination of Palestinian/Islamic nationalism, Israeli fears and cynicism, and the lens through which the international community sees the conflict, it is not difficult to see why.

UPDATE: Here is the celebration in Ramallah, attended by Mahmoud Abbas himself.