The absurd and tragic thing about the inability of the Israelis and Palestinians to work out a final peace settlement is that, compared with many conflicts, the terms of a settlement are not difficult to delineate and most impartial experts are agreed on them.
They are as set out in a public letter jointly issued by the New America Foundation and other bodies. Key points are a territorial settlement on the basis of the 1967 borders and that Palestinian refugees give up the demand of return to Israel in return for massive compensation.
When it comes to the lead participants, there are two obvious questions. First, whether a majority of Palestinians could be brought to agree to such a deal, or whether Hamas will remain intransigent and retain mass support. We will not know that until such a deal has actually been offered. And it needs to be offered not in the shambolic and ambiguous way it was offered at the end of the Clinton administration, but as the result of a formal peace process, backed not just by the US but by the international community and the great majority of Muslim states. If a majority of Palestinians rejected a deal along those lines and in those circumstances, they would be beyond saving and I, for one, would wash my hands of them.
The other question is whether an Israeli government will sincerely and formally offer such a deal. Here there has been a significant shift in recent years among the tough but pragmatic sections of the Israeli establishment. Even such a hardliner as Tzipi Livni, foreign minister, now accepts in principle the need for a genuine two-state solution – not out of any love for the Palestinians but because the alternatives seem much worse for Israel.
Of course the problem is that during the past 40 years Israeli governments have deliberately burdened themselves with a ferocious Frankenstein’s monster: the heavily armed Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
Thomas Friedman once wrote that for a peace settlement to be reached, both an Israeli and a Palestinian leadership would have to be prepared to fight a civil war against sections of their own populations. The Palestine Liberation Organisation does seem willing to fight such a war against Hamas if it is offered a real state to rule, not some Is- raeli-dominated Bantustan. Israeli governments, however, have so far stopped short of a real showdown with their set- tlers, and it does not seem that they are yet close to being willing to face this.
That leaves the US and its willingness to put pressure on the Israelis. Up to now, the idea of the US acting as an honest broker has been an insult to the intelligence of mankind. On the other hand, the very fact that the US has been such a massive and unconditional supporter of Israel gives it immense leverage if it chooses to use it.
Will the US exert such pressure? Two recent books offer a discouraging picture. The first, by two distinguished US academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, examines the US Israel lobby as a whole (The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The second, by Victoria Clark, a British writer, examines the Christian fundamentalist supporters of Israel (Allies for Armageddon: the Rise of Christian Zionism, Yale).
The only really encouraging thing about Mr Mearsheimer and Mr Walt’s book is that they were courageous enough to write it. Like the New America letter, this gives some hope that, as they urge, more American journalists and intellectuals will come forward to open a true democratic debate on the terms of US support for Israel.
Ms Clark’s book raises the issue not only of the support of some Americans for the most extreme forces in Israeli society, but also of the implications for a modern democracy if substantial groups in it actively reject crucial principles of the enlightenment. On the Israel-Palestinian issue, as recorded by Ms Clark, many Christian Zionists use arguments from the Old Testament to justify ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The greatest hope lies in American patriotism and the extent to which the US establishment takes the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously. If it really does value American interests and lives and sees these as seriously endangered by Islamist extremism, then to give the Islamists the kind of help they receive from the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is insane. On the other hand, I expected intelligent Americans to recognise this publicly in the wake of the attacks of September 11 2001. That was six years ago and most have not done so yet.
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