Foreign Policy In Focus

For President Mahmoud Abbas, the vote was a last-ditch attempt to boost his increasingly diminished relevance.

When the State of Palestine was declared a non-member state at the UN General Assembly last week, it was hailed by the Palestinian leadership as key victory for the Palestinians in their struggle to establish their state. The vote at the UNGA where 138 countries voted in favor of Palestine with only nine states against it was an important moral and symbolic victory for the Palestinians, and perhaps, unfortunately, nothing more.

For President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority ( PA), this vote was not a necessary part of a national strategy to achieve real statehood for the Palestinians -- in the absence of any peace process with Israel -- rather a last-minute attempt to boost his increasingly diminished relevancy and to cover for the Palestinian leadership historic failures. This political victory is also significant in terms of its political and historic ironies.

By the time the Jewish settlers in Palestine, the “Yishuv,” declared their state of Israel in 1948, they had by then an established and experienced army numbered over 60,000 men and immediately after that an air force. For the Palestinians on the other hand, by the time the UN declared their statehood, last week, they have abandoned all of the military capabilities they had in the past and ended up making themselves helpless and defenseless.

In reality, moreover, the new status of Palestine as state is meant to compensate for the failure of the “peace process” with Israel that was supposed to lead to the same conclusion. More importantly, however, it exposes the Palestinian national-secular movement failure to address in reality the continuing statelessness of its people, the issue of Palestinian refugees and their right of return, and what will become of the Palestinians who ended up becoming Israeli citizens after the establishing of Israel in 1948 and the fate of the Palestinian diaspora.

It is worth noting ,meanwhile, that the new Palestinian “victory” and the new status at the UN came only after President Abbas failed last year to submit an application for Palestinian statehood to the UN Security Council under pressure from the US. Abbas could have submitted the application for the UNSC, last year, which would have been denied anyway, but he could have turned to the General Assembly to force it to act in place of the Security Council, and to hold a vote for full membership to the UN in which case he would have won .

But president Abbas did not use that strategy for fear of full confrontation with the US and Israel. This explains why he opted to submit an application for a non-member observer status, a watered-down status from a full-member state.

To sell this “victory” to Palestinians, PA officials have argued publicly that with this new status, Palestine can join the International Criminal Court ( ICC) and other UN agencies, thus threatening to punish Israel over its war crimes and violations of international law. Although this is all true, to activate the ICC investigation, the Palestinian leadership is required to make a declaration to accept the ICC jurisdiction as it did in 2009 and also can join the ICC on an ad-hoc basis.

But this is easier said than done. If and when the Palestinian leadership decides to take Israel to the ICC for its war-crimes violations against Palestinian civilians as per the findings of the Goldstone Report, Israel can at the same time lodge a complaint against Hamas officials accusing them of committing war crimes against its citizens. In this albeit unlikely scenario, the Palestinians will risk having Hamas leaders being prosecuted by the ICC alongside Israeli leaders.

Palestinians ended up in this political limbo ever since the late Yasser Arafat started this “peace process” with Israel over 20 years ago. In order to stay relevant in the regional politics, the Palestinian secular nationalist movement, represented by the PLO, abandoned all of its military means in the hope that negotiating peace with Israel would alone deliver them the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders. 
 
This strategy has proven itself to be self-destructive for the secular nationalists as evident by this hollow victory. At the end of the day this new status changes nothing for Palestinians, while Palestine as envisioned by the UNGA resolution and president Abbas, is increasingly disappearing from the map due to constant illegal Israeli settlement building.

As for Hamas, while labeled as a terrorist organization by most of the world major powers, all that it has to do is to present itself as a credible alternative to the secular nationalist model, especially in light of its recent victory in Gaza, while waiting for the PLO to eventually self-destruct.

Hamas's victory last month against Israeli attempts to destroy its military capabilities in Gaza shows that Hamas political thinking stands a better chance of establishing a Palestinian state if it shows political flexibility and moderation. Needless to say, Hamas cannot win an outright war with Israel, but maintaining a military capability that in itself can create both deterrence and a leverage against Israel, can be a winning formula to achieve a real statehood for the Palestinians. With those elements in mind, it would not be far-fetched to imagine a deal between Hamas and Israel whereby Palestinians can establish their real state under better conditions.

Ali Younes is a writer and analyst based in Washington D.C. He can be reached at: aliyounes98@gmail.com and on Twitter at @clearali.

At IPS Special Project Right Web, Samer Araabi writes:

For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been mired in stalemate. Countless peace overtures over the past 30 years have fallen apart for one reason or another, and the basis for many of these negotiations—the division of the territory into two distinct states—is becoming increasingly impossible as a result of demographic changes both inside Israel’s 1948 borders and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Frustrated by the failure of international players—and the United States in particular—to act as neutral and effective arbiters, the Palestinian Authority recently put in motion a plan to unilaterally declare statehood. Despite the fact that this objective is in line with long-standing U.S. foreign policy, the response by many Washington pundits and policymakers has been remarkably vitriolic.

Washington has come down hard on the idea of an independently pursued statehood bid, attacking not only the Palestinian Authority but the United Nations itself, while implicitly supporting the increasing militarization of Israeli settlements. Washington’s reticence to acknowledge the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people could severely compromise the potential for future peace.

To read the piece in its entirety, visit Right Web.

If you read some of the blogs or alternative media reports on the Internet you might know it happened, but you wouldn’t have found out from the major Establishment media. I got it from Caroline Glick, the right-wing deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post: “Earlier this month, Rep. Joe Walsh and 30 co-sponsors issued a resolution supporting Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria.” That’s the way Glick and other Israeli expansionists refer to the West Bank, or what is known in most of the world as the occupied territories. Yes, it happened, an action so provocative and stupid it is understandable that the Times and the Posts of this country would want to ignore it. 

Two days after the Republican Walsh tabled his bill in the House, the New York Times ran a political blog piece about him, sans the Israel connection, but noting that he is “a darling of the Tea Party” who had “raised his national profile during the debt ceiling debate this summer, touring the media circuit after he put out a video vehemently accusing President Obama of bankrupting the nation and lying to the American public.”

And, the Walsh gambit wasn’t the only U.S. political action Glick sought to pass off as good for the Israel expansionists. “Israel has nothing to lose, everything to gain from going on the offensive. Our friends in US Congress have shown us a path that lays open to us to follow,” she wrote, adding that, “Israel’s friends in the US Congress have put forward two measures that pave the way” for “a strategy for victory.”

Glick also cites the action of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who has introduced a bill calling for the US to “end its financial support for the Palestinian Authority and drastically scale-back its financial support for the UN if the UN upgrades the PLO’s membership status in any way.”

“Ros-Lehtinen’s bill shows Israel that there is powerful support for an Israeli offensive that will make the Palestinians pay a price for their diplomatic aggression,” says Glick.

There is no question where Glick, a former assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, with numerous ties to neo-conservative circles in the US, is coming from. She holds that “Israel’s sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria are ironclad while the Palestinians’ are flimsy. As the legal heir to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Israel is the legal sovereign of Judea and Samaria. Moreover, Israel’s historic rights to the cradle of Jewish civilization are incontrovertible.”

This stance puts her in league with far right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, chair of World Likud, and Chair of the Knesset Committee for Aliya (immigration), Absorption and Diaspora Affairs. Danon announced at the end of October the Israeli Parliament will take up a bill he has authored calling for full Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), Danon’s bill “was submitted in line with a similar initiative in the U.S. Congress offered by Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), which calls for supporting Israel’s rights to annex the West Bank should the Palestinian Authority move forward with its statehood bid without negotiating."

“Meanwhile, a letter signed by the leaders of four ruling coalition factions -- Likud Party chairman Ze'ev Elkin, Shas chairman Avraham Michaeli, Habayit Hayehudi chairman Uri Orbach, and National Union leader Yaakov Katz -- asks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex Jewish-settled areas of the West Bank and calls for increased construction in those areas,” according to the JTA.

Meanwhile, in a related development, the U.S. sharply condemned the Netanyahu government’s decision to build 1,100 new housing units in East Jerusalem. "We are deeply disappointed by this morning's announcement by the government of Israel approving the construction of 1,100 housing units in East Jerusalem," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "We consider this counterproductive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties."

Catherine Ashton, foreign policy director for the European Union, also slammed the move saying it "should be reversed" as it undermines the search for peace in the region. She added that the settlement expansion "threatens the viability of an agreed two-state solution" between the two sides, as backed by the EU, the United States, Russia and the United Nations. On September 28, the government of China the nation "regrets and opposes" Israel's expansion of the East Jerusalem settlement.

Not much accurate reporting on the settlement expansion either. On September 27, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner penned a 700-word piece online titled “Israel Angers Palestinians With Plan For Housing” that was carried by a number of newspapers around the country. It contained nary a word about the State Department response or that of the EU or China. When the story appeared in print the following day it had been amended to include only mention that the Obama administration was “deeply disappointed” by the Israeli announcement.

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

The Land of Israel caucus -- a parliamentary group established in 2010 by members of Likud and other nationalist parties (Shas, National Union and Jewish Home) -- is calling on the Israeli government to respond to the Palestinian Authority's "unilateral" actions at the UN this past week by formally annexing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank (which the caucus members usually refer to as "Judea and Samaria"). Shortly after this, Knesset Deputy Speaker Danny Danon (Likud) announced that his bill to scrap "all obligations between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority as established by international agreements" (including the Oslo Accords) and permit "full Israeli annexation of the West Bank" will be voted on in the Knesset at the end of October. 

In a letter to PM Netanyahu (which preceded Danon's announcement), the Land of Israel caucus members also urged the government to increase settlement expansion, suspend financial assistance to the PA, and halt all Palestinian construction projects in "Area C" of the West Bank.

Area C is administered by the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) authorities, who "retain authority over law enforcement and control over the building and planning sphere," according to the UN (Area A consists of Israeli settlements, and Area B is administered by the PA). The area is the least densely populated part of the West Bank and is believed to hold 150,000 Palestinian residents. Due to underdevelopment, it is considered the most marginal part of the West Bank, despite accounting for almost 2/3 of the West Bank's total land area.

The UN considers the eventual establishment of Palestinian Authority control over Area C under the terms of the Oslo Accords "vital":

In addition to its importance to those residing within its confines, Area C contains the land reserves critical for the sustainability of a future Palestinian state. Area C holds the only available space necessary for the expansion of Palestinian population centers as well as the bulk of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land. Because it is the only contiguous territorial block in the West Bank, large-scale infrastructure projects including national roads, water and electricity networks usually pass through it.

The Palestinian Authority has demanded a halt to Israel expansion in the area in return for renewing negotiations. The Land of Israel caucus, though, claims that the area is an integral part of "Greater Israel." Religious figures in the caucus said at the caucus's founding that "One of the goals of the lobby is to promote legislation to strengthen settlement – legislation that already exists in the Bible."

Ze'ev Elkin (Likud), who has been at the forefront of the caucus's efforts since its establishment, asserted in 2010 that: 

We face many challenges and we have many problems, but still and all, the rate of growth in Judea and Samaria is the largest in the country. As with the Jews in ancient Egypt, the more they oppress us, the more we grow . . . . We are all united to strengthen the Land of Israel and develop Judea and Samaria.

Danon, among others on the Israeli right, have suggested that in the event of annexation, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs would have to either swear loyalty to "the Jewish state," or migrate to Jordan and Egypt. Supporters of Danon's plans often allude to Jordan as "the Palestinian homeland."

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has announced the construction of 1,100 new homes in East Jerusalem beyond the "Green Line." The caucus has urged the government to maintain the pace of settlement expansion, and PM Netanyahu has indicated that if the PA wishes to resume talks with Israel following the UN bid, Tel Aviv will not agree to "preconditions," which, among other things, would include a temporary halt settlement construction. Israeli settlement construction has increased this past summer, partly in response to massive social protests that originally began in response to rising costs of living and housing shortages (the caucus actually urged an increase in settlement construction in response to the protests). The issue of halting Israeli settlement construction has proven to be a major stumbling block in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and a source of humiliation for the Obama Administration. 

Some have suggested that the latest Israeli moves are a response to comments by a PLO official towards the separation of Jews from Palestinians in a future Palestinian state, though top Israeli officials have also been explicitly advocating population transfers in Israel and the West Bank targeted at non-Jewish individuals as part of a future peace settlement. 

Paul Mutter is a graduate student at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Tony Blair got one thing absolutely right.

The special envoy to the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the U.S., the EU, and Russia) did not get much sleep at the UN meeting in New York last week.  In an environment made frenetic because of the Palestinian bid for full recognition as a UN state, Blair seems to be alone in a deep understanding that the most auspicious time for diplomatic negotiations is when everyone who matters is bumping into everyone else who matters in the same space. His insistence on using the chaos to the fullest allows him to be especially resilient in the face of Palestinian anger at the suggestion that negotiations replace the Palestinian application. No problem. Blair is now affirming Prime Minister Abbas's strategy to make a bid for full UN membership. In this period after the vote, negotiations are certain to be even more frenetic. It was never an either/or situation: either negotiations for a two-state solution, or application for statehood at the U.N.

If scientists and mathematicians were on the scene they would no doubt have a theoretical interest in the diplomatic scurrying for some kind of behind-the-scenes results. "Aha!" they might say. "Here we have a collection of 'agents" interacting with one another in pursuit of a seemingly simple result, and what might emerge is something much more complicated that cannot be predicted on the basis of the collective action." This ambiguity, the hallmark of what theorists call nonlinear systems (what goes in is not necessarily what comes out), is what makes everyone crazy and often unable to find solutions to a complex problem. Like Tony Blair, scientists find the chaos challenging and seductive, knowing that this is a terrific opportunity for changing the game.

Unlike President Obama, stuck in the legend of present-day Israel read to him by the American Jewish right, Blair seems able to scan a larger library, maneuvering deftly through the stacks for an answer at the edge of chaos. He is comfortable in not knowing which book off the shelf might suggest the happy ending he is searching for. Where Blair is diplomatically nimble and adaptive, Obama is disappointedly rigid and adamant.

Complex systems science is often called "the science of surprise," or the "science of emergence." In order to assist difficult negotiations in today's world, the mediator must give up the need to control the outcome of a very nonlinear, very chaotic, quite unpredictable process. Otherwise, there are no surprises and no breakthroughs, just the same old tired outcomes. Because Netanyahu and Obama are wedged in the old and increasingly discredited paradigm of command and control, they are failing as leaders facing a much more complex world. This failure of leadership disrupts, and ultimately disables, what little respect is left for U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.

In his speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly, Obama spoke in generalities with little sense of urgency. Reading from a text that could have been written for him by the pro-Israel lobby, he held his position that the U.S. would veto the Palestinian call for statehood, even after delivering speech after speech previously affirming the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own. "Peace is hard" he said and must be won in negotiations. 

Obama knows what's at stake politically--conservative Jewish and evangelical Christian money and votes--and is allowing his election agenda to overtake his international responsibilities. Those include respecting the "Arab Spring", a fight for democracy in a sea of autocratic rule. Obama is once again choosing not to do the right thing on one of the issues that matters most to the freedom fighters: ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and welcoming a Palestinian state into the family of nations. Our unconditional support for Israel sadly leaves the U.S. at the bottom of the arc of the surprising, emerging new Middle East. Because of the absence of the U.S. as the champion of democratic reform, we can be almost certain that this sea change will be more chaotic. Let's hope we don't tumble over the edge into the swirling waters.

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. is President of Ars Publica, applying the science of Complexity to the art of diplomacy.