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Article Excerpt
The following is an edited transcript of the fifty-fifth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council The meeting was held on Friday, January 16, 2009, with Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., presiding.
CHAS W. FREEMAN, JR.: president, Middle East Policy Council
Among today's pressing issues is the question of peace between Israel and its neighbors. Six years ago in April, the Middle East Policy Council dedicated a conference to the question of whether the two-state solution was viable or not. At the time, it was a topic no one was really willing to address, and I must say the panelists found it too difficult to confront directly. Yet, even then, there was reason to doubt whether the two-state solution was achievable. This morning we're conducting a conference on whether the two-state solution can be salvaged. The change of topics does not represent progress. In the interim, the process of colonialization of Palestinian lands by Israelis, or Jewish immigrants from abroad, as the case may be, and the occupation and its brutality have continued. We've come to a situation in which there is very little land left for a state; there's no agreed framework anymore for a discussion of two states; and, in fact, there is no one on the Palestinian side with whom Israel is prepared to talk who has the authority to make a deal.
Meanwhile, the definition of the two-state solution continues to slide, as we were reminded by Tzipi Livni, who declared that one of the merits of a two-state solution is that it would allow Israeli Arabs to be transferred to an independent Palestine and stripped of their Israeli citizenship. This doesn't speak well of the direction of Israeli politics or the hope for this solution. So President-elect Obama, in a few days when he takes office, will inherit a situation in which there's no clear diplomatic process, and, though Israel's existence as a military power in the region is well understood and recognized, its legitimacy as a country is not accepted. In many respects, Israel is not part of the Middle East at all--not politically, not economically and not culturally.
For Israel, clearly, the long-term issue is how to achieve acceptance of its existence from its neighbors, whether they believe Israel's coming into existence was right or wrong. That remains an unattained objective. For Palestinians, aspirations for self-determination remain unfulfilled. It's not clear yet what the long-term effects of the disgusting scenes in Gaza will be, but the record suggests that it's probably likely to strengthen hardliners on the Palestinian side rather than empower those prepared to work with Israel.
So President Obama will confront a worsening situation in a region where the credibility of the United States, Israel and the Palestinian leadership, divided as it is, is close to zero, and most people do not see the two-state solution as viable. In these circumstances, the question of whether that solution can be salvaged is very appropriate and timely. If it isn't salvaged, the consequences for Israel, the Palestinians and the United States are grave indeed.
WILLIAM B. QUANDT: professor of politics, University of Virginia
Thank you for 12 years of service in bringing intelligent debate to issues that often are not intelligently debated in this town and country. Also, thank you for staking out a position on the issue at hand that is going to make me look even less pessimistic than you. I think you gave us a pretty sober preliminary outline of the problems concerning the two-state solution. I will try to give you a slightly different take on it, but obviously, in the midst of the current crisis in the Middle East and Gaza, and with the record of the past 10 years in mind, it takes an enormous act of faith to believe that the two-state solution can be salvaged. I think we all know that it's a long shot at best.
But I've been around this business long enough to know that it is hard in the midst of a crisis to be quite sure where we're going to come out at the end of it. There are moments when crisis can clarify issues, sober people up and give them the sense that we can't really afford to go through this too many more times and that something needs to be done. This sense of urgency, obviously, has been lacking in the past decade or so. Perhaps we can rediscover the reasons that this conflict needs to be resolved, and resolved on a basis that is viable and sustainable, so that we don't go through these periodic crises again.
The other thing that makes me think perhaps this is a moment when we might look for some new developments is that new leadership is about to arrive in Washington. I don't want to pretend that it's the magic solution to all problems, but it is clear that who is president in this country can make a difference. We've had presidents who have taken this issue more seriously and dealt with it more forcefully and others, who have simply thrown in the towel and declared that there is no compelling American national interest involved, and that we ought to stand on the sidelines until they discover in their very last year that maybe that's not the best stance. But, by then, it's too late.
I'm willing to believe that out of this crisis, and with new leadership in Washington, there are some possibilities for new approaches. But it's obviously still going to be very tough to revive the framework of the two-state solution that has been the primary one that we have been thinking about for quite a long time. Let me go through a balance sheet of what I see as the negatives and the positives for new diplomacy and for the possibility of a negotiated outcome along the lines of the two-state solution. I think there are obvious negatives, but there are a few positives.
Let me start with the negatives, so I can end on something that sounds a little less grim than perhaps what Chas. outlined. First, we know that the facts on the ground make a two-state solution extremely difficult. The last time I spent any prolonged period in the West Bank, I drove around to look at all the places that I've seen off and on since about 1970. It truly is shocking how little there seems to be left, over which to negotiate and on which to build a Palestinian state. Settlements are all over the place, and most of them look like they aren't about to be packed up and dismantled.
The first question that one has to ask is, can a two-state solution be constructed without a massive relocation of settlers back to Israel proper on the order of maybe a 100,000-150,000, and is there any Israeli government we can imagine that is capable of pulling off that kind of displacement? These are people who have been encouraged, after all, to go and live in the West Bank and have been given incentives to do so. I guess, on one level, I could say that this was done politically; that is, political incentives were given to people to move there. You can reverse those incentives. It is primarily a political challenge. There is nothing built into the demography that says it's impossible, but it is very difficult.
The second obvious point: Weak leadership is a bad formula for peace making. When you have leaders who are looking over their shoulders or looking toward the next election, they tend to do things that they think will enhance their popularity. But that's rarely consistent with making the tough decisions we know an Israeli leader and a Palestinian leader and an American president would have to make if this problem is going to be resolved.
Fortunately, I think we have a strong American president whose inclinations are untested but probably not too bad on this issue. We're very likely to have divided and weak Palestinian leadership--that's going to be a problem until it gets resolved. We don't know what we're going to have on the Israeli side. Within a few weeks, we will perhaps know, but it's unlikely that we will have a strong, peace-oriented coalition emerging from this crisis. We'll be lucky if we don't get Benjamin Netanyahu and a very hard-line, right-wing leadership.
In the past, we were always able to say, at least Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, insofar as we can measure it, is on the whole in favor of a compromise solution, more or less a two-state solution. Is that still the case? I don't know that there's any evidence for it, but at least it's a question as to whether, out of this crisis, we haven't seen a hardening of positions on both sides. Ultimately, politicians need supporters if they are going to make peace, and right now it's not clear to me that the kind of underlying politics of the Israeli or Palestinian communities is ready for a negotiated compromise.
Let me switch to the positive side in my last few minutes. I've already said that I think the Obama administration has an opportunity. By not being George W. Bush, Obama has great credibility for a brief moment in the Arab and Muslim worlds, simply because they're glad to see a change in Washington. Once Obama starts taking positions and saying things, obviously, many people will not be as pleased as they would like to be.
As they look at the team forming around him who will deal with the Middle East, they may conclude that it is going to be Clinton-redux and that we're going to see incrementalism and confidence-building. We know, in all honesty, where that's going to end. We're not going to get to a negotiated agreement with that approach.
So there are a lot of question marks about the new administration, but they will benefit for a period from simply not being George W. Bush. I think when Obama says from day one that he's going to start tackling this issue, we ought to hold him to it, because it's one of the few positives in the equation. Secondly, there is a lot of international support for settling this problem once and for all if we could figure out how to do it. Europeans will support it. The vast majority of the Arab regimes will, not that they're all very robustly legitimate in their own right. Nonetheless, having them all sign on to the Arab League peace initiative is worth something.
We would find support from our other allies: the Quartet and the Turks are being helpful. There is a lot of international enthusiasm for tackling this one again, but they will need American leadership, l don't think it can only be the Americans doing it, but they will work with the new administration with money and with peacekeeping forces if necessary--we're seeing that already in the Gaza crisis--and with diplomatic energy. That's a plus. We don't have to do this alone, if we decide to get engaged as Americans.
Third, the Syrian-Israeli track seems pretty easy. I don't want to exaggerate it; it's not going to fall into place overnight. But people who have been in Damascus quite recently tell me that Bashar al-Asad is ready to make peace. He's putting out all the right signals. That actually helps rather than competes, in my view, with the Palestinian-Israeli track. I think it's always better to be moving on both tracks rather than to have a competition over whether we want to get one at the expense of the others. It could be a plus, if we saw real progress on the Syrian track. It could encourage those who believe peace negotiations can still work.
The fourth positive factor is this: on the whole, if there is ever going to be a negotiated two-state solution, we know what it's going to look like. Not that it's going to be easy, but the Clinton parameters plus Geneva give us the idea of the target to aim for. More or less the 1967 lines, a few adjustments, a few percentage points here and there, offset with other territories; Jerusalem divided; and the other issues more or less as they had been laid out in 2000. That's the target, l don't think we have to start from scratch in trying to imagine what it would look like.
Finally, I think the two-state solution comes back into focus, because there is no good alternative in terms of a negotiated solution. There are other outcomes. We're seeing them right now; we've seen them for the last 10 years. We haven't had a two-state solution. We've had violence, we've had chaos, we've had a five-state de facto outcome, a little enclave up here, a little enclave there, a little enclave here, Gaza and Israel. That may be the future, but it's not peace. You'll probably hear a one-state alternative. I have no objection to the theory; I just don't think there are enough takers in the Middle East right now to make it viable. It has virtually no support in this town, as far as I can tell. I will confess to thinking practically; that's the business I am in. It's politics, it's diplomacy, the art of the possible. It's what you can get accomplished. There is no alternative in my mind, in terms of a negotiated solution, other than the two-state one.
All I would say to Obama is, go for it one more time, but do it seriously and don't wait till your eighth year.
AMB. FREEMAN: I think that was an excellent introduction to this topic. It is true that optimism is to diplomats as courage is to soldiers. If you are trying to solve a problem, it makes sense to understand it in its worst dimensions, but it never makes sense to abandon hope. So I take it you are a disciple, Bill, of the "yes we can" school.
PROF. QUANDT: Yes, we should.
ALI ABUNIMAH: fellow, Palestine Center; founder, ElectronicIntifada
It's a great pleasure and honor to be here with such a distinguished panel. I don't know if I will refute Professor Quandt's thesis, but I will give my own ideas. As we're speaking here, the war that's going on in Gaza has to be mentioned. Massacres and atrocities on a scale that the world has not witnessed so openly and brazenly in many years. What is happening will be remembered on an infamous list including Deir Yassin, Qibya, Kafr Qasim, Jenin, Sabra and Shatila. To these infamous names, others will be added:...
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