In a week’s time, the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas is going to submit an application for full membership to the United Nations Security Council. They are doing so after nearly two decades of frustration with the Oslo process, which was meant to produce swift agreement but has only produced suffering, violence and more danger. The Palestinians – which had allowed government under Arafat to become a series of corrupt fiefdoms and supported a vicious campaign of suicide attacks against Jewish civilians – are to blame for some of that, but Israel is even more so. After a serious and substantially successful effort at governance and security sector reform led by Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, the Palestinians are inaugurating a dramatic, game-changing new phase not merely in the Israel-Palestinian struggle but in global diplomacy, and seizing the initiative – and their own future – in a striking new way.
It is one of the biggest stories in world politics not only in 2011 but in decades. Will it be a Berlin wall event, or a Prague Spring tragedy?
This bid is projected to falter in the Security Council – victim of a supremely stupid and myopic US veto – and succeed handsomely in the General Assembly. In short, it is happening, and it is necessary. It will bury the Oslo Agreements deep in the sand they deserve to be interred in. It will be a diplomatic disaster for Israel and the United States (which means it is in fact a sign of a better path for each) and any country which has hedged its support for the Palestinians in the past. Surely the most fundamental value held by international society since 1945 has been that self-determination is a basic right and that colonization is a fundamental wrong – yet Israel’s friends around the world, Australia included, have allowed it to be violated with impunity.
I do not support a one-state solution, but this international conspiracy against a two-state solution (which would be a decisive guarantee of Israel’s existence, for one thing) has been truly scandalous.
Oslo may have provided the figleaf for Israel’s colonial exception, but this vote will end it as a framework. It returns the framework to one more recognisable in international law. And it is the responsibility now of all powers with an influence to act, well, responsibly in the face of a new set of dangers – Israeli retaliation or brutality, Palestinian violence, or God forbid, a third intifada.
Which brings me to the latest International Crisis Group (ICG) Middle East Report (#112), which was published September 12, but thudded into my inbox this morning ironically as the New York Times reported that Abbas had announced they would submit their bid to the UNSC and go for full statehood. A centrepiece of the ICG’s recommendations was that the PA should avoid submitting their bid to the Security Council.
The analysis in many ways makes much sense, and consistent with ICG’s core mandate to seeking to prevent and resolve deadly conflict and support human security, it is rightly concerned to support Palestinian aspirations and legitimate Israeli interests, whilst avoiding subsequent conflict and damage to the Palestinian economy. Yet with some gauche advocacy of US interests, it seems to have overstepped its mandate, and fails to show the US the path it desperately needs to take.
So, a few critical points, and a conclusion…
On Oslo and the path to the bid:
ICG: “The path to the UN has been a tale of collective mismanagement. Palestinian leaders, in a mix of ignorance, internal divisions and brinkmanship, oversold what they could achieve at the world body and now are scrambling to avoid further loss of domestic credibility.”
Harsh words, which fail to recognise the vision and calculation involved in the Palestinian strategy. Abbas and his colleagues gave Oslo every chance, and had it thrown in their faces time and time again. The ICG – ironically given its thoughtful analysis of the security sector reform process – fails to credit the reform success of the PA, which is one of the great success stories of complex conflict in recent years, dramatically reversing Palestine’s slide into a warlord dominated failed state. If only Afghanistan or Iraq’s leadership could take some inspiration from them.
The ICG’s harshness here is further undermined by their welcome recognition that resuming negotiations would be a bad thing:
“It is hard to understand how negotiations can help get the parties out of their fix when (failed) negotiations are what led them there in the first place. If there is one thing on which U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials concur, it is that it is virtually impossible in the present context for Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu to make substantial progress, let alone reach an agreement. Reasons abound: deep substantive gaps between the two parties; decreasing U.S. authority and enhanced domestic constraints in the run-up to a presidential election; Palestinian divisions; and the weight of the Israeli Right. Restarting talks now to prevent a so-called train wreck in September could well provoke a more dangerous crash when negotiations collapse. It is not enough to take care of September when the rest of the year looms.”
The ICG urges Palestine to limit its aspirations and avoid the Security Council:
So lets move the ICG recommendations to the EU, apparently on behalf of the United States:
“Several considerations should guide the EU’s endeavour [to leverage the PA's need for their support of a UNGA vote]. First, it should persuade the Palestinians to forget about trying to obtain full membership in the UN through the Security Council. That would divide the EU, which very much wants to remain united, and force a U.S. veto that would paint Washington as the slayer of Palestinian aspirations – hardly a desirable reputation at a time of Arab turmoil. Besides, it makes no sense for the Palestinian themselves, who would start their quest for statehood with a setback and the associated loss of momentum.”
Why should the ICG, or the EU, take it upon themselves to save American diplomacy from itself? It needs a reality check, and this will provide it. The US strategy, since Clinton (George H. Bush and James Baker III’s approach was a standout contrast), has been a spectacularly failed one that refused to use its vast financial and military support for Israel as real leverage to force a decent settlement. Let the the US leadership and diplomatic community experience the depth of their own failure when it comes.
Is it the role of the ICG to act as an advocate for the geopolitical interests of one state, and in doing so, fail to advocate a role for them that would be more likely to bring peace? The cynical passivity the ICG brings to its analysis of the US role here borders on scandalous.
For some contrast,have a look at the Bitterlemons edition on the September statehood bid, which includes comment by the senior Palestinian minister and envoy, Ghassan Khatib, who said this:
“Let’s be clear: the Palestinian leadership cannot live with the continuation of the status quo. The Palestinian leadership cannot afford the continuation of the main features of the current reality: negotiations at the same time that Israel keeps building settlements, with little or no hope of ending the occupation, and in parallel with declining legitimacy as represented by the postponement of elections and the ongoing conflict with Hamas. This is even more true now that Palestinians’ Arab brethren are demanding freedom and democracy across the region. Many Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned time and time again that this status quo is unsustainable. We seem to be approaching the moment of truth.” (The latest edition, here. )
The responsible path for the ICG in this analysis should have been for them to strongly urge the US to do two things:
1. ABSTAIN from voting on the resolution in the UNSC, and allow the resolution to pass should it have the required other votes. It can then make a statement listing its concerns and reasons for not supporting the resolution, and urging calm and constructive engagement on all sides in its wake. This would be a better chance to salvage face in the Arab world and retain some vestige of status as a balanced interlocutor. If it vetoes, it deals itself out of the game. A veto would be grossly irresponsible given the US special responsibility (as a great power) for international peace and security.
2. WARN ISRAEL that its wilful frustration of the peace process, its systemic discrimination against Arab Israelis, and its settlement-building must cease and will have serious costs if they do not. Peace in the form of a negotiated two-state solution is demonstrably in Israel’s and the region’s interest. It will also involve great sacrifice on the part of Palestinians, who will still be faced with a strong, controlling and belligerent Israel and have to forfeit most if not all if the sacred right of return of refugees as the price of a state. Here the EU, US and Arabs must assist those communities to settle in the new Palestinian state and build genuinely secure and fulfilling lives.
Whatever the historic victory the Palestinians will achieve this month, the next year is replete with danger. Sadly, the ICG’s badly needed voice of warning and solution has been muted.
Jeremy Moses
September 17, 2011
I don’t get how you can look at the Palestinian situation in such detail and for so long and still believe that international law might offer a solution. Sure, there might be some brief embarrassment for the US or Israel, but then what? If anyone tried to support a Palestinian state by lending their power (unlikely), it would spark at least a regional war. Norms are over-rated!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the Palestinians bitch-slapping the US and Israel whenever they get the faintest opportunity, but I just can’t see how this makes any material difference whatsoever. Kosovo hasn’t been recognised as a state by the majority of GA members, but it still functions as a state. The other side of the coin is that Palestine can be recognised as a state in legal terms, but unless they can physically assert themselves against the Israeli occupation, the situation will remain the same and may even get worse as Israel tries to create more ‘facts on the ground.’ The Palestinians need more than symbols, they need a serious hegemonic sponsor!
Anthony Burke
September 19, 2011
ah Jeremy, spoken like a true realist. You’ve been reading too much Morgenthau!
But seriously, I don’t entirely disagree with you. Read the piece carefully; I write of “game-changer” not “breakthrough”; of “struggle” not imminent “peace”, and finish with a note about the dangers the near future holds. However this makes everyone aware of the stalemate, and further isolates and de-legitimises the US and the Israeli right-wing. The PA leadership doesn’t have the luxury of saying anything is over-rated; they have to try everything they can. In the circumstances, this is a brilliant move.
Its also a study both in how power-politics infects international law (there is no way around that) and in how norms and law contain and damage bad actors, even if it can’t entirely constrain them. Israel and the US will (and are) pay significant costs for this route. I can see the stalemate continuing, even worsening, because the key problem is Israeli public opinion, its constitution which gives undue influence to minor parties, and the general rightwards drift there.
Will nominal “statehood” help here? It changes the ground rules of the game; its a new “fact” that competes with other “facts” – settlements, walls, F-16s etc. And it – along with Turkey’s new activism and the Arab spring – destabilises the cruel diplomatic framework (American brokerage, the “Quartet”, Arab regime quiesance) which has been used to such effect against the Palestinians. This is why its a game changer. I just can’t see a result any time soon; we’re way into extra time and the crowd has long since gone home.