U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, frustrated perhaps by the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, declared last week that it is time to grapple with the "core issues of the conflict," adding that the United States recognizes "that a Palestinian state achieved through negotiations is inevitable."
How do I break this to you, Ms. Secretary of State? If you haven't heard the news, the settling of ethno-political conflicts by negotiations is anything but inevitable.
By "ethno-political" I mean conflicts in which the core issue is self-determination, which in most cases means separatism. Nothing undermines negotiations quite like this core issue, especially if neither side is feeling pressure to concede. According to a study by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program - which compiles a much-sited database on international arms conflict - there have been nearly 370 episodes in the world of armed ethnic conflict since 1946. More than 150 of them involved non-state actors seeking self-determination, but Uppsala's database lists a mere eight of them as ending in a peace agreement that addressed the final status of the territory in question.
While the purported existence of eight negotiated settlements may give Clinton cause for hope, a further look suggests her optimism is misplaced. Each of these deals was preceded by undue pressure on one of the sides to compromise - something absent from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Three of the cases involved the 1992-95 war in the Balkans, which led to the recognition of Republika Sprska, the end of the breakaway Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia in Bosnia, and the recognition of Croatian sovereignty over the short-lived Serb Republic of Krajina. These agreements followed the chaotic breakup of Yugoslavia, which included a NATO bombing campaign of Serb positions in Bosnia, the dispatch of international forces to the nascent Bosnian state and the Croat conquest of Krajina. Israel is in no danger of breaking up, and unless the U.S. is willing to go down the same heavy-handed route with it, the Palestinian Authority or both, such coercive agreements can be left out of the formula.
Then there was Indonesia's recognition of East Timor in 1999 and its peace deal with the Free Aceh Movement in 2005. The former was preceded by a regime change in Jakarta and the entry of Portugal as a patron of East Timor, while the latter was preceded by the rebels facing certain defeat in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. Giving up East Timor, whose occupation was costly to the government, posed no perceived existential threat to Indonesia. In Aceh, the rebels were happy enough to give up demands for independence in exchange for autonomy, due to their dire situation. Again, neither scenario is relevant to Israel.
Another case of successful peace negotiations entails the agreement between the Senegalese government and a moderate faction of separatists in that country's Casamance region, in 2003. Beside the fact that a number of rejectionist groups continue to employ violence, the Casamance deal does not constitute a model for peace in this region because independence was conceded, not gained.
A seventh conflict, between Abkhazia and Georgia, is listed as ending in 1994 with a peace treaty, while in fact the deal was a cease-fire virtually imposed on a defeated Georgia by the rebels' Russian allies. Georgia has refused to sign a treaty recognizing Abkhazia, which continues to operate as an unrecognized de facto state - hardly an example of successful negotiations.
The final conflict under review did not actually end in agreement, but could have the most relevance for the Israeli-Palestinian situation: Kosovo. Uppsala's database deems the Rambouillet Accords a peace treaty, but Serbia never signed them. Rather, NATO bombed Serbia into submitting to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999 ), after which the UN assumed administrative control over Kosovo. Consequently, peace talks in Vienna during 2006 failed to resolve the core issue of sovereignty, and Kosovo declared independence unilaterally in 2008 - a move Serbia understandably has yet to recognize.
And these are the "successful" negotiations. There is a whole slew of cease-fires that have left conflicts frozen or that collapsed in the wake of renewed violence without ever progressing to the stage of resolving core issues, from Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea to South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Moldova.
Given the current impasse and the lack of sufficient historical evidence that ethno-political rivals can resolve core issues at the negotiating table, particularly when neither side faces military catastrophe, there is no reason to conclude that a negotiated Palestinian state is inevitable. Rather, the most likely way that a such a state will emerge will be through unilateral declaration of statehood, followed by international recognition. Israel will be mightily displeased but, like democratic Serbia, it will have to make do with diplomatic lobbying without exercising the military option. The conflict will remain, but as long as the Palestinians respect the borders, it will eventually become abeyant.
At this point, Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence provides the only conceivable precedent. It is far from ideal, but if Clinton wants to see the birth of a Palestinian state on her watch, her best odds lie with rallying the international community behind recognizing unilateral independence. Argentina and Brazil have already got the ball rolling. The European Union said this month it would recognize a Palestinian state "when appropriate," and some of its foreign ministers are pushing for recognition independent of negotiations. At what point will Clinton follow?
Steven Klein is an editor at Haaretz English Edition.
Front Page Features