For decades, Palestinian leaders sometimes seemed to be their own people’s worst enemies.
Palestinian radicals antagonized the West, and, when militant leaders turned to hijackings and rockets, they undermined the Palestinian cause around the world. They empowered Israeli settlers and hard-liners, while eviscerating Israeli doves.
These days, the world has been turned upside down. Now it is Israel that is endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is isolating his country, and, to be blunt, his hard line on settlements seems like a national suicide policy.
Nothing is more corrosive than Israel’s growth of settlements because they erode hope of a peace agreement in the future. Mr. Netanyahu’s latest misstep came after the Obama administration humiliated itself by making a full-court diplomatic press to block Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. At a time when President Obama had a few other things on his plate — averting a global economic meltdown, for example — the United States frittered good will by threatening to veto the Palestinian statehood that everybody claims to favor.
With that diplomatic fight at the United Nations under way, Israel last week announced plans for 1,100 new housing units in a part of Jerusalem outside its pre-1967 borders. Instead of showing appreciation to President Obama, Mr. Netanyahu thumbed him in the eye.
O.K., I foresee a torrent of angry responses. I realize that many insist that Jerusalem must all belong to Israel in any peace deal anyway, so new settlements there don’t count. But, if that’s your position, then you can kiss any peace deal goodbye. Every negotiator knows the framework of a peace agreement — 1967 borders with land swaps, Jerusalem as the capital of both Israeli and Palestinian states, only a token right of return — and insistence on a completely Israeli Jerusalem simply means no peace agreement ever.
Former President Bill Clinton said squarely in September that Mr. Netanyahu is to blame for the failure of the Middle East peace process. A background factor, Mr. Clinton noted correctly, is the demographic and political change within Israeli society, which has made the country more conservative when it comes to border and land issues.
Granted, Mr. Netanyahu is far from the only obstacle to peace. The Palestinians are divided, with Hamas controlling Gaza. And Hamas not only represses its own people but also managed to devastate the peace movement in Israel. That’s the saddest thing about the Middle East: hard-liners like Hamas empower hard-liners like Mr. Netanyahu.
We’re facing a dangerous period in the Middle East. Most Palestinians seem to feel as though the Oslo peace process has fizzled, and Israelis seem to agree, with two-thirds saying in a recent poll published in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that there is no chance of peace with Palestinians — ever.
The Palestinians’ best hope would be a major grass-roots movement of nonviolent peaceful resistance aimed at illegal West Bank settlements, led by women and inspired by the work of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A growing number of Palestinians are taking up variants of that model, although they sometimes ruin it by defining nonviolence to include stone-throwing and by giving the leading role to hotheaded young men.
The Israel Defense Forces can deal with suicide bombers and rockets fired by Hezbollah. I’m not sure that they can defeat Palestinian women blocking roads to illegal settlements and willing to endure tear gas and clubbing — with videos promptly posted on YouTube.
Mr. Netanyahu has also undermined Israeli security by burning bridges with Israel’s most important friend in the region, Turkey. Now there is also the risk of clashes in the Mediterranean between Israeli and Turkish naval vessels. That’s one reason Defense Secretary Leon Panetta scolded the Israeli government a few days ago for isolating itself diplomatically.
So where do we go from here? If a peace deal is not forthcoming soon, and if Israel continues its occupation, then Israel should give the vote in Israeli elections to all Palestinians in the areas it controls. If Jews in the West Bank can vote, then Palestinians there should be able to as well.
That’s what democracy means: people have the right to vote on the government that controls their lives. Some of my Israeli friends will think I’m unfair and harsh, applying double standards by focusing on Israeli shortcomings while paying less attention to those of other countries in the region. Fair enough: I plead guilty. I apply higher standards to a close American ally like Israel that is a huge recipient of American aid.
Friends don’t let friends drive drunk — or drive a diplomatic course that leaves their nation veering away from any hope of peace. Today, Israel’s leaders sometimes seem to be that country’s worst enemies, and it’s an act of friendship to point that out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Response by Davis A. Harris
You recently wrote a column in The New York Times entitled “Is Israel Its Own Worst Enemy?” Asserting that yours is “an act of friendship,” you unleashed a torrent of criticism against Israel, claiming, among other angry accusations, that the Jewish state is “endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance.”
I beg to differ. And no, I don't do so as an opponent of a two-state agreement or a fan of settlements throughout the West Bank. I happen to be neither.
While I've never for a moment argued that Israel should be walled off from critical scrutiny, I simply think you've spun a narrative which is highly selective in its purported analysis.
Stripped to its bare minimum, you believe that peace with the Palestinians would be just around the corner if only Israel had enlightened leadership today.
Your main claim is that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu prefers settlements – a “national suicide policy” – to peace.
Is that so?
Yes, it's true another step toward building within Gilo, a well-developed Jerusalem neighborhood, was just taken and the timing was unhelpful.
But, in your column, you noted: “Every negotiator knows the framework of a peace agreement.” Those negotiators all understand that Gilo will remain part of Israel in any conceivable deal.
No, I'm not one of those you disparage as believing that “Jerusalem must all belong to Israel in any peace deal.” But I do know that, in any final agreement, Jerusalem will necessarily look different from it did on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, taking into account historical and demographic realities.
But what's most striking is that you insulate the Palestinian Authority (PA) from any responsibility for the current impasse.
While going after Israel with a two-by-four, and grotesquely implying that “hard-liners like Netanyahu” are to be lumped together with “hard-liners like Hamas,” the PA gets a free pass.
Is that because you genuinely believe they're squeaky clean, or rather because, as the political cliché goes, they're the “weaker party” and, therefore, need to be coddled?
Either way, you're missing an essential part of the story you're seeking to describe.
First, why isn't the PA at the bargaining table across from Israel? President Abbas was there till early 2009, when, it should be noted, neither side imposed preconditions on the other to pursue those talks. Importantly as well, the Israelis put a far-reaching two-state deal on that table – not the first such offer, by the way – only to have it once again rebuffed.
Anything to be learned from that experience?
Second, if the Palestinians can now seek to impose preconditions on Israel for a resumption of talks, why shouldn't Israel be able to do the same?
Moreover, when the prime minister you vilify became Israel's first leader to agree to a moratorium on settlement building for ten months, where were the Palestinians?
Third, did you catch President Abbas' speech at the UN General Assembly on September 23, as part of his unilateral UN gambit? If so, would you characterize it as offering an olive branch? If you were an Israeli, irrespective of President Clinton's unbecoming attempt at ethno-religious categorizing of Israeli citizens, would you take comfort from the Palestinian leader's fiery words?
Fourth, did you by chance see President Abbas' op-ed, on May 15, in your newspaper? Did you notice his rewriting of Middle East history, which the fact checkers somehow missed? Was that piece meant to send an encouraging note to Israel, the other half of the equation, about the PA's credibility as a peace partner?
Fifth, did you read President Abbas' comment, in early September: “We are going to complain that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years.”?
That, of course, takes the “occupation” back to 1948, the year of Israel's establishment, rather than the Six-Day War.
Does this mean, in Palestinian eyes, that the conflict is territorial or existential?
Sixth, did you notice the comment of the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, as reported the other day in Lebanon's Daily Star?
The ambassador said, “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”
In other words, he said, the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing passports to Palestinian refugees.
Did the PA reject his comment? If so, I missed it.
And if a new Palestinian state is not the answer to the Palestinian refugee issue, then what exactly is?
Seventh, in Brazil, the Palestinian ambassador there, Alzebin Ibrahim, was quoted in the prominent magazine Veja-Brazil as saying to a contingent of university students that “Israel should disappear,” expressing his preference for the final outcome. Did you catch it?
Again, if the PA repudiated the ambassador's words, it escaped me.
Eighth, you note that the “Palestinians are divided,” but fail to mention the PA-Hamas reconciliation agreement or in any other way address how the Hamas factor is to be addressed in the context of the current diplomatic imbroglio.
Skipping it, however, won't make it go away – and it's not a minor matter, either.
Ninth, you omit any reference to another PA action that raises questions about prospects for peace – glorification of Palestinian terrorists.
Among the most glaring examples of late was the visit earlier this year by a PA cabinet minister, Issa Karake, to the family of Abbas Al-Sayed.
Al-Sayed was the Hamas mastermind of the terrorist attack on a Passover Seder in Netanya, an Israeli coastal city. Thirty people were killed in the assault. On March 28, 2011, Isake presented Al-Sayed's family with a commemorative plaque marking the ninth anniversary of the carnage.
If cold-blooded murderers are to be lionized by the PA, does this advance the prospects of peaceful conflict resolution?
And finally, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said more than once, if the PA were to recognize the goal of two states for two peoples, then, from Israel's viewpoint, the way would be paved for a speedy breakthrough.
But President Abbas can't acknowledge the link between Israel and the Jewish people, i.e., the inherent legitimacy of the state. In fact, he's made clear he won't.
How does that stance help inspire confidence to move the peace process forward?
Respectfully, the Israeli people don't need lectures on the imperatives of peace. After 63 years, I assure you, they understand what the absence of peace means far better than you and I do.
But they also know, to borrow a phrase from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro in another context, that “the press's misunderstanding was merely the wish's predilection to be father to the thought.”
Perhaps a clearer understanding of the realities on the ground might have steered you away from your own wishful thinking – and one-sided spin.
