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Middle East: New Directions for Peacemaking

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Middle East: New Directions for Peacemaking March 2010 Noref Article Middle East: new directions for peacemaking Yossi Alpher Summary The Israeli and Palestinian leaderships are cur- US President Barack Obama acknowledged at the end rently unable to sustain a viable peace process of his first year in office that he had underestimated aimed at producing a two-state solution. Hence the obstacles to peace in Jerusalem and Ramallah and the Obama administration and the international had failed to move the parties forward.1 Obama cor- community should readjust their priorities. Three rectly noted that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders areas of alternative effort suggest themselves. and their politics had proven intractable. But he and Israel-Syria peace negotiations would test the his peace envoy, Senator George Mitchell, appear to possibility of reducing the presence of Iran in believe that simply applying “more of the same” blan- the region and weakening its Islamist surrogates, dishments and minor pressures in the coming year Hizbullah and Hamas. All the abortive strategies will break the logjam. They are still underestimating invoked in recent years against Hamas in Gaza the difficulties. should be assessed with a view to stabilizing the Strip and neutralizing Hamas’ capacity to sabotage a peace process. And more dynamic 1 This article is based on the author’s “On Israel-Palestine, No support, including from Israel, should be offered More of the Same”, the New York Times, 2 February 2010, for Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/opinion/03iht-edal- Fayyad’s encouraging statebuilding program on pher.html?scp=1&sq=yossi%20alpher&st=cse, accessed 4 the West Bank. March 2010. Yossi (Joseph) Alpher is co-editor, with Ghassan Khatib, of bitterlemons.org, a web-based Israeli-Palestinian political dialogue magazine and bitterlemons-international.org, a web-based “Middle East roundtable”. Alpher served in the Israel Defense Forces as an intelligence officer, as a senior official in the Mossad, and as director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. While at JCSS, Alpher coordinated and co-edited a major research project on options for a Palestinian settlement, and produced “the Alpher Plan” for an Israeli-Pales- tinian territorial settlement. He has coordinated several track II dialogues between Israelis and Arabs. In July 2000 (during the Camp David talks) he served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. March 2010 1 Yossi Alpher: Middle East: new directions for peacemaking Situation not ripe True, Syria’s readiness and capacity to trade its Iran Neither Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu alliance for a more mainstream Arab position, peace nor Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas really want with Israel and closer ties to the West are not clear – as a dynamic peace process right now, if only because the rhetoric of the recent Damascus “resistance” sum- neither is politically capable of “delivering”. For the mit (Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah) demonstrates. past 20 years, Israeli governing coalitions have regu- But the potential payoff justifies the risk of failure. In- larly collapsed over Israeli-Palestinian peace issues; deed, the mere fact of Israel-Syria negotiations would Netanyahu’s current right-wing government is in this hurt Hamas, thereby strengthening Abbas. This is the respect more vulnerable than most. Besides, beyond rationale for devoting more US diplomatic energy to half-hearted rhetoric, the prime minister himself has Damascus instead of Ramallah and applying pressure hardly demonstrated his commitment to a two-state if necessary to Netanyahu to start talking to the Syrian solution. president, Bashar Assad. Abbas, for his part, is severely constrained by the Fa- tah-West Bank / Gaza-Hamas division, pressures from Hamas: failed strategies Fatah hardliners and his own rigid positions on Jeru- A second revised priority should address Hamas itself. salem and refugees. Hence, despite his commendable It is time to recognize that all the strategies mustered opposition to violence, he is an unlikely candidate for against the Hamas “emirate” in Gaza since the take- a compromise outcome. Thus even if and when the over of June 2007 have failed: two sides return to negotiations – a likely eventuality in view of US and moderate Arab state pressures – the • The economic warfare policy invoked by Israel, talks are almost certainly doomed to failure. the Quartet and Egypt has punished 1.4 million Gazans, impoverished the moderate middle class, and empowered and enriched Islamists and smug- Alternative priorities: Syria glers, yet has failed to dislodge the Hamas regime. Accordingly, administration priorities regarding Mid- It is plainly counter-productive. dle East peacemaking should change, radically. First, • Israel’s use of military force in Gaza, most recent- Obama and Mitchell must recognize that in the current ly a year ago, may have bought it some deterrent regional strategic lineup, Syria is more relevant than time, but it proved devastating for Israel’s interna- Palestine. Syrian president, Bashar Assad, declares tional image. The same can be said of the recent himself ready to deal. A Syrian-Israeli process has a assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, better chance of getting under way than a Palestinian- who coordinated Hamas’ military ties with Iran. Israeli process. • Egypt’s mediation efforts with Hamas have failed; even Cairo now acknowledges this. And Egypt’s Thus far, Netanyahu and his advisers have rebuffed strategy regarding Hamas in Gaza – make sure the consistent assessment of the entire Israeli security it’s Israel’s problem, not Egypt’s – renders it a less establishment, led by defence minister, Ehud Barak, than impartial mediator. that Israel should seek negotiations with Syria and of- fer to withdraw from the Golan Heights if, in return, it Now is the time for Washington to sit down with its achieves peace – even a cold peace – that reduces the friends in Europe and the region and reassess these presence of Iran in the Levant and weakens Hamas and failed strategies. Offering to talk directly to Hamas Hizbullah. A successful Syrian-Israeli process would about practical matters – a ceasefire, a prisoner ex- be good for the pro-western moderate Arab bloc, too. change, opening the Gaza passages to trade – should And by stabilizing the Syria-Iraq border it renders the not be ruled out by Israel. Several former Israeli secu- US withdrawal from Iraq, a major strategic event of rity heads and leading politicians have suggested it. the coming year, more likely to succeed. March 2010 2 Yossi Alpher: Middle East: new directions for peacemaking The prospect of engaging Hamas directly must be Nuanced diplomacy needed addressed with considerable caution in order not to To sum up, Obama, Mitchell and the international weaken Abbas and the Palestinian Liberation Orga- community should consider refocusing their efforts nization (PLO) in the West Bank. But the PLO, which toward developing an integrated policy for: stabiliz- is not likely soon to return to power in Gaza, itself ing and pacifying Gaza; shepherding West Bank state- deals directly with Hamas. Indeed, stabilizing Gaza building toward an agreed new interim status even and neutralizing its capacity to sabotage any peace without direct talks;2 and facilitating an Israeli-Syrian process, given that Hamas itself is not ideologically in- process that advances moderation in Palestine as well. terested in replacing the PLO as Israel’s peace partner, might actually help Abbas address his real priorities Europe and the moderate Arab states can play an in the West Bank. important role here in influencing American priori- ties and rewarding Syrian moderation. This requires in particular a more accommodating Arab attitude Fayyad’s statebuilding toward Israel-Syria peace talks. The Arab League One of those priorities, spearheaded by Palestinian should be willing to use the Arab Peace Initiative to prime minister Salam Fayyad, is the current state- provide step-by-step incentives and rewards to the building effort that finds expression in radically im- Israeli public in return for progress, however partial, proved West Bank security, and economic and insti- toward peace. In this case, direct European influence tutional capabilities. This is the first time since the on the Arabs would be vital. Oslo process began that Palestinians are succeeding at statebuilding. Their “bottom-up” efforts even cor- The conventional wisdom, cultivated most recently by respond with Netanyahu’s “economic peace” policy. Obama, has long held that a solution to the Palestinian This is also the first major success for US and other question is the key to political, economic and societal international aid donors to the Palestinians. progress elsewhere in the Middle East. This is almost certainly an exaggerated notion, but only time and a But Fayyad threatens to take this effort to a point solution will prove it so. Still, after 16 years of failing where, in the absence of an agreed solution, a Palestine in efforts to promote such a solution directly, a more that functions like a state asks unilaterally for interna- nuanced and indirect approach, via Damascus, Gaza tional recognition. This dynamic poses both dangers and Palestinian statebuilding, is worth trying. for stability and opportunities for genuine progress. A Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence would understandably be seen by Israel as annulling the Oslo accords, with potentially reckless ramifica- tions. On the other hand, if Netanyahu can be induced to match Fayyad’s progress with coordinated unilateral gestures of his own, for example involving West Bank territory and security, then Palestinian statebuilding can become a win-win game. There are indications that Netanyahu might prefer this route to all-out final status talks as long as he is not confronted with an uncoordinated Palestinian Unilateral Declaration of Independence that is recognized by the UN Security 2 Recently, a number of detailed proposals for fostering Israeli- Council.
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