Israel Is Caught in a No-Win Situation
| WRMEA Archives 2006-2010 - 2008 November |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 7-9
Special Report
Israel Is Caught in a No-Win Situation
By Rachelle Marshall
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PRIME MINISTER Ehud Olmert’s latest peace proposal, timed for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Israel in late August, was yet another offer the Palestinians had to refuse. Israel would retain the large West Bank settlement blocs (and the water acquifers that lie beneath them) while giving the Palestinians an area in the Negev equivalent to 5 percent of the West Bank in exchange. Israel would continue to control Palestinian borders and air space, and be free to send the army back in at any time. The future of Jerusalem and other core issues would remain on hold. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat rejected the offer as “not serious.”
Although Israel emerged from three of its several wars with greatly expanded territory, the captured territory came with a Palestinian population inspired by a growing sense of nationalism and desire to be free. Today, despite its superior military power, the Jewish state is facing an unbeatable enemy: reality. Demographic facts and the steady expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank are forcing the Israelis to decide whether to grant Palestinians full citizenship in a democratic binational state; dismantle the settlements and accept a sovereign and independent Palestine; or attempt to rule over three million captive people under a permanent system of apartheid. Israel has so far opted for the last.
Although they originally favored a binational state, Palestinians for the past two decades have called for the establishment of an independent state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel’s determined effort to forestall such an outcome has made the on-again, off-again peace process an exercise in futility, and convinced many Palestinians that a single democratic state is now the only feasible solution.
As a result, the greatest challenge Israel faces today is not posed by militants, whose every rocket attack serves to justify harsher Israeli retaliation, but from Palestinians who until now were willing to settle for their own state on just 22 percent of original Palestine. Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem and a respected scholar of Islamic philosophy, is an advocate of nonviolence. He is not only a longtime supporter of a two-state solution but has expressed a willingness under certain conditions to give up the Palestinians’ right of return. His Aug. 20 interview with Haaretz was therefore a strong warning to the Israelis that their time is running out.
“Unless a major breakthrough happens by the end of this year,” he said, “we should start trying to strive for equality...The facts on the ground are making the situation irreversible.”
Creating “facts on the ground” was the phrase used by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the 1970s when, as a cabinet minister, he initiated a rapid buildup of Jewish settlements in the West Bank designed to make its return to the Palestinians impossible. In April 2004 George Bush used a similar term, “existing realities,” in a letter to Sharon endorsing Israel’s right to keep the West Bank settlement blocs.
Israel took Bush’s message as a green light to build more settlements. Construction has nearly doubled in the past year, according to Peace Now, with more than half of the 2,600 new housing units going up in the West Bank east of the separation wall or in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Speaking to reporters in Israel on Aug. 26, Rice said the new construction “did not advance the peace process.” But Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni dismissed the issue as irrelevant to that process, saying the goal should be “not to let any kind of noises that relate to the situation on the ground enter the negotiating room.”
Almost all Palestinians insist that, on the contrary, the settlements and Jerusalem must be the central issues of any negotiations, and that the expansion of settlements destroys any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Veteran attorney and former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council Ziad Abu Ziad stressed this point in an interview with the Israeli magazine Challenge. “Israel doesn’t want a Palestinian state,” he said. “The settlements policy torpedoes any chance for one, and Israel persists with that policy, building ever more.” As a result, he warned, “the struggle will escalate and so will Israeli oppression. It will reach a point where the world will no longer be able to sit in silence. Then it will rise up against Israel.”
Knowing that international leaders are reluctant to take action against Israel as long as as the U.S. is its benefactor, protector and arms supplier, Israeli officials ignore such warnings. Olmert rejected a plea by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that former Fatah commander Marwan Barghouti be included among the 198 Palestinian prisoners released on Aug. 25. Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for orchestrating attacks against Israeli occupation forces, is the one leader who could unite the Palestinians behind a two-state solution and turn them away from Hamas. Like Abbas, he has been a consistent supporter of coexistence with Israel, and while in prison helped write a peace plan that drew support from all Palestinian factions. Israel’s refusal to release him indicates it would rather face continued violence than agree to a reasonable peace.
Although the scandal-plagued Olmert will leave office once a successor is elected, Israeli policy is unlikely to change in the near future. Of the four major candidates competing to replace him, Foreign Minister Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak want Israel to keep the major West Bank settlements and Jerusalem but give lip-service to a two-state solution. The two other challengers, Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz and Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, oppose even a token Palestinian state. In Netanyahu’s words, “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”
Missing from the list is a candidate who speaks for the Israeli peace camp. Nevertheless, peace activists continue to make their voices heard. On Aug. 6, 100 Israeli academics issued a statement opposing an Israeli attack on Iran, declaring that “Arguments for such an attack are without any security, political or moral justification.” A more dramatic gesture was made by an international group of activists, including several Israelis, who under the banner of “Free Gaza” sailed from Cyprus to Gaza in late August aboard two ships carrying humanitarian supplies (see story p. 15).
Fearing unfavorable publicity, Israel allowed them to land in Gaza City, where they were greeted by thousands of cheering Palestinians and praised by both Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and President Abbas. Lauren Booth, a sister-in-law of international peace envoy Tony Blair, told the welcoming crowd, “It was impossible for [the Israelis] to win because they have no case for what they are doing to your port and to your borders.”
Self-Defeating Injustice
Israel’s unjust actions will in the end prove self-defeating. The late playwright Arthur Miller warned in a speech in Jerusalem in 1995, “Without justice at its center, no state can endure as a representation of the Jewish nature.” Having reduced the possibility of a two-state solution almost to zero, Israel now has to choose between continuing as an oppressor nation that violates the most basic principles of Judaism, or becoming a secular democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equal rights.
The Bush administration faces a similar problem in Iraq and Afghanistan: how to square the increasingly unpopular presence of U.S. troops in those countries with America’s proclaimed commitment to freedom and human rights. Bush once said his goal in going to war was to fight terrorism and replace tyrannical regimes with democracies. Now that more and more Iraqis and Afghans want us to leave, the administration must decide whether to honor their wishes or remain in their countries against their will.
As of early September, Iraqis were balking at signing a security pact that would legalize the continued stationing of American troops in their country. In a speech to tribal leaders on Aug. 25, Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called unequivocally for a U.S. troop withdrawal, saying: “It is not possible for any agreement to conclude unless it is on the basis of full sovereignty and the national interest, and that no foreign soldiers remain on Iraqi soil after a defined time ceiling.” He named December 2011 as the date when the occupation army should leave.
The administration took Al-Maliki’s words lightly. Rice insisted that any timetable would be “aspirational” and White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the administration was aiming for a “mutual agreement on flexible goals...based on conditions on the ground.” A significant source of disagreement is U.S. insistence that American soldiers be granted immunity from Iraqi law, a provision the Iraqis strenuously oppose.
Al-Maliki is under considerable pressure not to give in to the Americans. Graffiti saying “Iraq for sale: See Maliki” has appeared on U.S.-built separation walls in Baghdad, and thousands of Iraqis gathered in Baghdad on Aug. 8 chanting “No, no to America! No, no to occupation!” Iraqi clerics loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, an outspoken opponent of the occupation, are urging their followers to join a new wing of his movement dedicated to promoting social service programs. A spokesman for al-Sadr said the military wing was waiting to hear terms of the status-of-forces agreement. “If the U.S. began to implement a withdrawal timetable,” he said, “we shall complete the path to dissolution.”
Not surprisingly, American occupation authorities regard the social and political role of al-Sadr’s movement as more of a threat than his militias. The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, said in an Aug. 12 press conference that he would pay particular attention to efforts by al-Sadr’s movement to challenge the government by meeting the needs of ordinary Iraqis. Odierno warned that the tactic had proved effective when it was used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and said, “We do not want the Hezbollah model inside Iraq.”
In fact, Iraqis whose needs have been ignored by a government that has failed to provide the most basic services might welcome such a model. Hezbollah restored electricity, and rebuilt clinics, roads and other infrastructure in southern Lebanon that had fallen into ruin during Israel’s 18-year occupation. The organization holds a number of seats in the legislature and continues to provide much needed social services in areas it represents.
As the threat from al-Qaeda diminishes, U.S. military activities in Iraq now seem directed at political and sectarian factions the government sees as rivals. In one such incident in late August, U.S.-trained Iraqi special forces stormed the headquarters of the provincial government in Dyala, killing two civilians and four policemen, while American helicopters hovered overhead. According to witnesses, soldiers rousted members of the provincial council from their beds, roughed them up, and took away their cell phones and cars. Two officials, a member of the Iraq Islamic party and a university dean, were arrested. “They treated us like criminals,” said Hadi Abdullah al-Temami, a Shi’i legislator.
The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan has intensified the ethical dilemmas posed by Bush’s “War on Terror.” The U.S.-led war is prompting numbers of Muslim fighters, including Arabs, Turks and Central Asians, to join with the Taliban in resisting the foreign occupiers. As Taliban attacks increase, so do the number of U.S. and NATO air strikes, and with them an increase in civilian deaths that serve to attract more support for the militants.
The July 6 air strike that killed 27 people at a wedding party, most of them women and children, was followed by an even graver incident on Aug. 23, when U.S. warplanes bombarded a village in western Afghanistan. According to Afghan and U.N. investigators the attack killed at least 90 civilians, including 50 children. The Pentagon (in a report filed by Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame) claimed 25 to 30 militants and 5 civilians were killed.The police chief of the region, Col. Rauf Ahmadi, said, “There is no evidence to show there were Taliban there that night.”
Afghans complain that the U.S. and NATO air strikes and ground attacks that kill civilians are too often a response to information provided by warring tribal chiefs or by people seeking reward money. Prompted by popular anger, the Afghan Council of Ministers has called for negotiations on a status of forces agreement that would spell out the authority and responsibilities of foreign forces in Afghanistan. The Council, which is headed by President Hamid Karzai, has also demanded an end to intrusive house raids by U.S. soldiers, and to the detention of prisoners for years without trial at Bagram air base.
The Afghans’ request for restraint by the U.S. military is no more likely to be met than the Iraqis’ demand for a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington declared in late August that “The U.S. is now losing the war against the Taliban,” and called on the U.S. to treat Pakistani territory as a combat zone. But, as many Middle East experts predicted in 2002, the war has already spread to Pakistan.
American commandos have begun conducting ground raids in the tribal areas, and American officials said there would be an even broader campaign against the Taliban inside Pakistan by U.S. Special Operations Forces. On Aug. 26 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mulroney, held a secret meeting aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier with senior Pakistani military commanders to plan a joint strategy. Meanwhile, the Pakistani army was in the midst of a three-week bombing campaign in South Waziristan that, according to UNICEF, eventually dislodged 200,000 civilians from their homes. The air offensive failed to kill any known Taliban leaders but brought on heavier attacks by the Taliban.
Bush’s advisers say he will soon ask Congress to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations...” But if events of the past six years have proved anything, it is that bombs, torture, and mass detentions don’t stop terrorism. What remains to be tried is an end to U.S. and Israeli military occupations and an effort to provide education, health care, and hope for a better life to the people who today lack everything but suffering and resentment against foreign domination.
Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.
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