Before I visited Israel the other day, some of my friends in the foreign policy community had admonished me for being overly pessimistic about the new road map drawn at Annapolis for a Middle East peace.
Whatever one thought of Ehud Olmert (not very much), the Israeli prime minister was someone who understood that a deal with the Palestinians was as vital to the future of the Jewish state as to the citizens of the West Bank and Gaza. What is more, in Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians had also found a leader ready to make historic compromises. There was an unprecedented mutual trust between these two men.
I should look too at the US. For nearly seven years the White House had been an uncritical cheerleader for the government of the day in Israel. Now, in his final year, George W. Bush wanted something more than Iraq as his legacy. The timing was propitious. History showed that only presidents with nothing at stake domestically could knock heads together at the negotiating table. For her part, Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, was showing the sustained commitment the process needed.
More than this, governments across the region had woken up to the strategic reality of a querulous Iran’s bid for regional hegemony. Israel needed peace in its own backyard to face up to the threat posed by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad. Moderate Arab states were equally alive to the danger. Saudi Arabia dispatched its foreign minister to Annapolis. Even Iran’s ally Syria had been represented.
So I travelled to Tel Aviv with an open mind. I left a few days later every bit as gloomy as when I had arrived.
On some things, the optimists are undoubtedly right. Mr Olmert does seem to be serious in his negotiations with the Palestinian leadership on the West Bank. Mr Abbas’s officials agree that the relationship is strong.
Mr Olmert explained why during the annual gathering of the Israeli political and security elite at Herzliya. Israel had always resisted the nightmare of a shared state, he told the conference. David Ben Gurion and his successors had fought above all to safeguard Israel as a Jewish democratic state. Now, the realities of the occupation of Palestinian territory threatened otherwise. The stakes had never been higher. Time would soon run out for the two-state solution vital to preserve Israel’s Jewish character.
You could, of course, treat Mr Olmert’s commitment as one of blatant opportunism. His Kadima-led coalition is crumbling. Publication this week of the final report of the Winograd Commission exposed his personal responsibility for the calamitous Lebanon war in 2006. The peace talks provide a convenient justification for clinging on to office.
I am not sure how much motives matter at such moments. Mr Olmert, as it happens, is far from alone in his bleak prognosis of the consequences of inaction. The prime minister will almost certainly fail, one diplomat told me, but he was right nonetheless. Jerusalem, this diplomat continued, cannot deny indefinitely the choice between giving Palestinians their own state or accepting their emergence as a majority in Israel.
When outsiders seek to draw parallels at this point with apartheid South Africa, the public response in Israel is usually one of indignation. Privately, officials share the concern that political stalemate and demographic trends are propelling the country in precisely that direction.
Analysis is one thing. The will to change course another. Mr Olmert anyway lacks political authority. His coalition could collapse at any moment. Only the strongest of leaders, you often hear it said, could make the concessions – on border adjustments, settlements and Jerusalem – required of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.
This is probably true. It is also only part of the story. Israel – at least as represented by politicians and policymakers – just does not feel ready to take any serious risks.
The Herzliya conference, I should say, can be a distorting prism. The event is not a natural home for softies and peaceniks. Its favourite son is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader. The mood of this year’s conference was caught during a short address by Robert Serry, the United Nations co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. New to his post, Mr Serry roundly condemned the terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. The fusillades of qassam rockets, he said, were unconscionable. Then he added a small “but”. Israel should not respond with the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza. “Why not?” came the jeers from the audience.
Hawkish as they may be, the views expressed in Herzliya tap into a broader mood. Most people want a peace settlement. Far fewer seem ready to accept the short-term risks unavoidable in the quest for the long-term security that can come only from a permanent peace.
Mr Netanyahu strikes a chord when he says that no peace settlement is possible until the Palestinians have built a flourishing economy and the political and security structures of statehood. But here is one of many Catch 22s. Such progress is impossible as long as Israelis – and the Likud leader is far from alone in his demand – insist that their own security requires they maintain an iron grip on every dimension of Palestinian life. Mr Abbas is thus denied the authority they insist he assumes.
The same contradiction runs through attitudes towards Hamas. As long as the Palestinians are divided, it is said, Israel does not have a credible partner. But Israel’s lock-down of Gaza has conferred legitimacy on the extremists. By breaking the siege at the Gaza-Egypt border, Hamas has projected itself again as an effective resistance movement. The effort to imprison Palestinians has thus empowered rather than marginalised those wedded to violence.
For the moment, though, such contradictions do not seem to impinge on the lives of most Israelis. Hamas has made life intolerable for those living close to the border with Gaza, but the great bulk of the population is experiencing a period of peace and prosperity. The north is quiet, with Hizbollah shut out by a sizeable multinational force. The West Bank barrier keeps out suicide bombers.
Why, many Israelis seem to ask themselves, should they disturb such circumstances in seeking a peace that may well be unattainable? Mr Olmert’s answer is that the present lull cannot last; in the long term Israel needs a peace agreement. He is right. But, as I heard another diplomat remark, in today’s Israel the long term does not reach much beyond tomorrow.
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