To most of my readers this is old news, and tiring news. But President Obama has spoken (Thursday May 19th), and some reaction seems appropriate.
Here's an old Israel supporter who has gradually lost faith in the Israeli leadership. In the fall of 1990, representing my institute in Oslo, I spent a couple of hours at the dinner table talking to our up-and-coming political visitor from Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu – he was a most charming and spirited interlocutor, setting out in our conversation his deep concern about peace with the Palestinians and the need for a basic change to come about in their mutual relations. This was three years before the famous Oslo accords. It was therefore very difficult for me to understand later on that he would not sign off on that agreement, and that as time went by he slowly made it clear that he would not support its implementation, finally declaring that he would fight it in every way he could. Some of my colleagues who had watched his rise over a longer period warned me back then that I'd been had. It took me quite some time to accept that they were probably right. For the past decade or more I have resigned myself to the understanding that this man was not – and is not – credible.
Of course, Israeli politics is not run by one individual; from an initially fairly stable political unit it has become a complex short-term coincidence of incoherent political forces, each of which is insufficient to provide a stable course for the nation. Yet it has been tough for many of us who have sympathized with Israel's right to exist alongside its neighbours, to see the unrelenting course taken by its governments in the past decade. The Palestinian side has helped the extreme side of Israeli politics immensely with its own practice of (and ideological support for) indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians. And so the old practice of an eye for an eye – the ancient law of Hammurabi, as familiar to Israel as it is to the rest of the region – goes on without pause. Israel attacks the Palestinians, and the Palestinians attack Israel, and no one knows for sure what is a retaliation and what is a fresh offence. The story is almost too familiar to repeat.
The Palestinians missed their chance in 1948 when they could have had what they are now denied – the entire West Bank and Gaza strip. They preferred instead to push the Israelis into the sea, having all Arab neighbours jointly attack the newly established state of Israel to achieve its extermination. After two years it was obvious that they had failed. The tottering Israeli state survived. Palestinian residents of Israeli-held territories left in large numbers, some under threat of force, others out of fear. The ensuing decades saw repeated attempts to shift the balance between the parties with surprise attacks, mostly by the Arab neighbours, but also by Israel (the 1956 war). The disastrous Arab failure in the 1967 Six-Day War - initiated by Israel after an escalating campaign of Arab provocations - led to Israel's long-term occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza strip and East Jerusalem as well.
I cannot believe that the great circle of Israel's (now gradually diminishing) sympathizers abroad would reject the 1967 borders. To terminate the occupation, to me, is the only way forward. The long series of permissions being unstoppably granted for new Israeli settlements to be established in the West Bank, and the unscalable wall to protect them, are a disgrace. Evidently the Obama administration is of the same opinion. It may be too little, too late.
With the Arab uprisings and regime changes of this year, democracy is uncertain to advance and some kind of primitive pay-back seems to be looming in any case. Israel has long held the key to its own future, but refused to put it into the lock. It may be a late stage now - perhaps too late? - to expect that same key to be able to turn things to the better.
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Olav, On your Israel points, a couple of comments. There have always been three issues in my mind:
1) What approximate version of the 1967 borders are defensible militarily? (( I spent a good deal of time in Israel in the 1980s as a State Dept/White House official, and I came to understand analytically what it would take to actually mount a military defense of Israel using certain threat assumptions. People might disagree about some of the details, but the responsibility of any Israeli government, right or left, must be to achieve those borders – and that will involve retaining parts of the west bank, Golan heights, etc.))
2) Broad, formal, unequivocal recognition and acceptance of Israel’s permanent existence as a state by all regional states and movements. And this in the context of a brokered solution on the key issues: right of return, status of Jerusalem, West Bank settlements, etc.
3) The formal, security guarantor role of the USA as it relates to the first two.
I DO NOT think this is achievable (( and I do not know many serious people who do)) so the job becomes one of a “managed impasse” with the USA in the lead role and with demonstrable small steps TOWARD the above three goals. I think Netanyahu is a good, strong leader, and it will take someone like him to achieve any progress (( a la Nixon and China)), but his demeanor is sometimes his worst enemy.
Thanks for taking the discussion to a deeper level, though I am not sure whether or how far we agree or disagree. Let me try to unravel the threads.
On your first point, in my condensed reading of it, your argument is that from a military point of view, you “do not think this (presumably, the military defense of Israel's borders even in their present de facto shape) is achievable”. The experience from which you draw this conclusion further underlines its weight. In short, you say that even with the present de-facto borders the military outlook is not much better than it was with the 1967 borders. In a sense, then, we seem to agree thus far.
On your second point, you do not either think achievable a broad, unequivocal recognition of Israel and its right to exist. I agree, though it is not in my view necessary or even realistic to demand that all regional states and movements go along. They won't. Hence, Israel's immediate neighbors must suffice. Is a brokered solution impossible? As long as the Palestinian and Arab sides continue in their long-term disarray, that must be so. Nevertheless, I would not rule out that a continued step-by-step effort to complete the unfinished check-points outlined in the “Oslo process” (Jerusalem, settlements and refugees with Palestinians, Golan with Syria) may still be within reach.
Thirdly, you do not think the formal US goal of guaranteeing the security of Israel is achievable. If I have understood this point correctly, this is a more grave assessment than I would put on it. The US support for Israel both politically and militarily is assumed by most parties on the Arab side to be operative all the time, and that assessment also shapes their actions and their policies (to the extent they have any). Extended deterrence, in other words, while it does not work with suicide bombers, it probably does with most governments in the region.
Where I am puzzled is your view (pt 1) that it is the responsibility of the Israeli government “to achieve those [more defensible] borders”. I'd rather say that the Israeli government's responsibility must be to achieve any durable solution of border issues and other issues with its neighbors while keeping Israel's population from harm. But perhaps I have misread you. Anyway, we clearly perceive Netanyahu differently – my reading from afar (pretty arrogant, admittedly) is that he is not a particularly strong leader but one who is adept at looking like one.
Your best point is the simple conclusion to your mock-syllogistic argument - the one about the managed impasse. I agree with you that this is where we are and perhaps as far as we can hope to get. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is way beyond the point where sensible outside efforts can be of any help.
Good points, Olav. My point on the borders is, whatever one’s view of the rights or wrongs of the overall dispute, that the fundamental right and responsibility of the Israeli government is to guarantee the security of its citizens, and that the sine qua non of that obligation is to define borders that achieve that security objective, and that there is very little room for compromise on that regardless of when the current borders were established (1948, 1967, etc.) or HOW they were established. My earlier experience that I referred to convinced me that we understand roughly where those borders must be (from a SECURITY perspective) and what it’s going to take to defend them (although 20 years of weapons development has affected that). So when an Israeli government looks at this issue they have to say, “Here are our ‘must-have’ borders; they are not up for any discussion,” and then the bargaining begins on the other subjects. Of course, the actual diplomacy has to be less course or obvious than this, but these are the facts.
Our perspectives clearly differ. It is not that yours emphasizes security and mine does not, but rather that your view emphasizes Israel's NATIONAL security and mine its INTERNATIONAL security. From an international security point of view Israel is never secure unless and until and to the extent it has come to terms with its neighbors. This is where a benchmark such as the 1967 borders is needed. Of course, Israel has so far been blessed with neighbors who mostly have not wanted to come to terms, and who have vigorously, violently and unstoppably demonstrated that in action. So Israel has felt free to do whatever it wants to assure its security.
From a national security point of view, of course, Israel will never be secure, period. In this perspective, Israel will just have to stay on its toes forever. It will take the borders it wants and ensure the enduring enmity of all around it. It will not take much for the Arabs in a momentarily democratic Egypt to regress to the standards of Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria is already there, Iran is cheering in the background. The next Arab-Israeli war will be just off the horizon. And the national security perspective will be vindicated.
Yet somewhere down the line Israelis – with their higher living standard, democracy and lower birthrate - will get tired of fighting. Will the Arabs? As I write this the Rafah border crossing into Gaza from Egypt is just opened for the first time since 2007. Is it likely that a new Arab democracy will yield wiser decisions, or that the wish for a better life in Palestine and Egypt will overcome the desire to whip the Israelis? No one knows.
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