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Foreign minister and aspiring prime minister
Tzipi Livni used an apparent paradox to bury the two-state
solution. In a speech she gave to high school pupils
Thursday, Dec. 11, she said: "The place for Israeli Arabs to
exercise their national aspirations is a future Palestinian
state - not Israel, which is the Jewish national home."
Livni's next comment: "No single Palestinian refugee will be
admitted to Israel" was a roundabout message in the same
vein to the Israeli Arab minority (a steady one-fifth of the
population).
She clarified this later
by saying that while Israeli Arabs would not be forced to
leave or lose their civil rights, "those who wished to
realize their national aspirations should look elsewhere,"
namely to a Palestinian state when it rises.
But what Palestine was she
talking about? For now and in the foreseeable future, there
are two – one ruled by Hamas in Gaza and one by Fatah on the
West Bank, as the foreign minister knows very well.
America and European
leaders will no doubt do their utmost to breathe life into
the two-state solution. It was first enunciated by President
George W. Bush and is the only raison d'etre of the Middle
East Quartet, which convenes next week at UN headquarters.
In Bahrain Saturday, Dec. 13, US defense secretary Robert
Gates promised the incoming administration would continue to
back a two-state solution of the Middle East dispute.
But they are all in for a
head-on clash with reality.
As long as Israel is not
prepared to use its army to recapture the Gaza Strip, crush
the Hamas government and make Mahmoud Abbas a gift of the
enclave, only three eventualities are in store:
1. Either the Hamas entity
extends its rule to the West Bank and ousts the Abbas
administration, a recipe for war rather than diplomacy; or
2. The two Palestines
endure as separate, unstable entities – Hamas-ruled Gaza
sustained by Iran and the West Bank governed by Fatah,
propped up by US-trained Palestinian security forces and the
Israeli military presence; or
3. While Israeli sustains
its blockade of the Gaza Strip from the north and east,
Egypt will lift its closure in the south and so pave the way
for its gradual domination of the territory.
The geographic duality of
Palestinian rule is only one complicating factor.
Another was offered
Saturday by former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia
(Abu Ala).
He, like the Israeli side,
confirmed that the negotiations which he and Mahmoud Abbas
conducted with Ehud Olmert and latterly Livni for two years
were hopelessly stuck in the mud. He then administered the
last rites to the ideal of an Israeli and Palestinian states
co-existing side by side
Their US sponsor's had
assumed that had been the object and guiding principle of
those talks.
Not so, according to Abu
Ala.
He outlined Israel's
proposal: The handover of 93.2 percent of the West Bank to
the Palestinians while retaining the Jerusalem sector up to
Ramallah (Givat Zeev and part of the Gush Binyamin), Maaleh
Adummim, Gush Etzion and the Jordan Valley. Israel offered
to trade the 6.8 percent remaining in its hands for a
comparable stretch of the Negev. Jerusalem was not
discussed.
The Palestinians rejected
this proposal out of hand.
Abu Ala's frankness was
motivated less by Israel's election campaign, in which Livni
is running a close race against the right-of-center Likud
party headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, than his wish to put
president elect-Barak Obama and designated secretary of
state Hillary Clinton in the real picture as seen by the
moderate Palestinians which he represents.
He was advising them to
give up the Middle East peace principles guiding the
outgoing administration in the last two years, because the
Palestinians had no intention of going through with the Bush
administration's initiative.
Abu Ala did not try to
haggle over the size of Israel's withdrawal from the West
Bank, because that is not the point.
The Palestinians negate
the basic premise of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967
Six-day War borders - the conventional wisdom of US and
European diplomacy though not enshrined in any maps or
international accords.
The Palestinians are
demanding nothing less than Israel's retreat to the 1949
armistice lines and in some places the UN 1947 Partition
Plan plus the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees.
The two-state formula –
now confirmed by Gates - cannot bridge this gap and is
therefore unrealistic as a starting point for Middle East
peace diplomacy.
(Res.) Brig. Giora Eiland,
head of Israel's national security council under former
prime minister Ariel Sharon, put the dilemma in a nutshell
in a lecture to the diplomatic corps in Jerusalem on Nov.
17:
"When we talk about a
two-state solution, we face a paradox: On the one hand,
Israelis and Palestinians feel a genuine need to resolve
their dispute. On the other, neither has any real interest –
or belief - in the establishment of two states living side
by side. This dichotomy is far deeper than generally
appreciated and is getting deeper all the time."
Eiland pointed out that
the career risks any Israeli or Palestinian politician runs
by embracing this formula would far outweigh his chances of
success. Neither side is therefore willing to gamble his
personal future against such odds.
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