Never
Never Land
By Roni Ben Efrat
22 September, 2007
Challenge Magazine
After
Hamas was elected, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) attempted
to cooperate with it. This led Israel to claim there was no one to talk
to. After Hamas took over Gaza, however, Abbas officially dismissed
its government and set up a Fatah version in the West Bank. Israel's
excuse had evaporated. Instead, PM Ehud Olmert and Abbas presented the
new situation as a window of opportunity.
The window is fake. The mere
possession of a common foe will not suffice to bring about the changes
that would have to occur, and the bold steps that would have to be taken,
in order for Olmert and Abbas to achieve sustainable peace.
At the initiative of US President
George W. Bush, the two sides are slated to take part in an international
conference on the Middle East. This is due to occur in Washington in
November. According to Aluf Benn in Haaretz (September 12, 2007), the
conference will provide the setting for a joint declaration by Olmert
and Abbas, followed by supportive speeches from the other participants,
as yet unknown. The Olmert-Abbas statement, to be formulated in advance,
is supposed to serve as a basis for future negotiations.
t is a dangerous thing to
hold a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Failure does
not lead back to Square One. Failure underlines the gap between the
sides, and across it leaps the spark of conflagration. That is what
happened after the failure of Camp David in July 2000. The result was
the Second Intifada.
We have little else to expect
this time. The three main players—Bush, Olmert and Abbas—are
all lame ducks, each in his way.
We start with Bush. His chief
problem in the Arab arena is Saudi Arabia. Despite the historical alliance
between the US and the Saudi monarchy, the interests of the two don't
always coincide. (At Camp David in July 2000, the Saudis and the Egyptians
refused to endorse the emerging agreement, and without their support
Yasser Arafat could not sign.) Saudi Arabia is not happy, to say the
least, with American policy in the region. In its view, the war in Iraq
was a big mistake: by overthrowing Saddam, Bush weakened the region's
Sunnis against Iran. On the Palestinian question, the Saudi position
is very different from Jordan's and Egypt's. While these two blame Hamas
alone for the Gaza coup, the Saudis believe that Fatah also bears responsibility.
Saudi anger is directed at both for violating the Mecca Accord of February
this year, which the Saudis initiated, hosted and mediated. It, they
think, would have enabled the two sides to coexist in peace, and it
could have been the lever of a united Arab position toward a political
solution. If Saudi Arabia absents itself from the Washington conference,
this will signal its refusal to join the effort to isolate Hamas. The
Saudi absence will give Hamas legitimacy, undermining Western efforts
against it.
That is one reason, no doubt,
why Abbas visited Saudi Arabia on September 11. He told his hosts that
his condition for a new agreement with Hamas is a return to the pre-coup
situation and a reaffirmation of the Mecca Accord. The Hamas leaders
are also courting the Saudis. They too want a reaffirmation of the agreement,
but interpreted as they see fit.
The second lame duck at the
conference in November will be Ehud Olmert. Legally he could run again:
the lameness is de facto. Since the Lebanon War of 2006, his popularity
has been stuck below 10%. The Winograd Committee investigating the war
was expected to force his ouster, but its final report has been postponed.
He is also the focus of corruption inquiries that could place him under
indictment. So weak a leader cannot make peace. Any conceivable accord
with the Palestinians will arouse fierce internal opposition, but Olmert
lacks the kind of standing he would need in order to face it down. He
is no Ariel Sharon.
It is said that Olmert has
been talking with Abbas about a declaration of principles for a permanent
solution. A number of hypothetical versions have been floating about,
among them the idea that the Separation Barrier will form the boundary
between the two states. In exchange for the lands that the fence has
swallowed, the Palestinians will be compensated with Israeli lands—in
the Negev perhaps, or in the form of a corridor linking the West Bank
and Gaza. The settlements west of the fence will come under Israel's
sovereignty, while those that lie deep in Palestinian territory will
be evacuated. The last is easily said, but it is hard to picture Olmert
pulling kids off settlement rooftops today. The settlers of "Judea
and Samaria," as they call the West Bank, are a different breed
from those of Gaza.
If Olmert were to try dismantling
settlements, it is doubtful that his government could survive. Politically
he depends on the right-of-center coalition he has built. Its 78 Knesset
members (out of 120) include 12 from the ultra-orthodox Shas and 11
from Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel Our Home").
Any agreement that Abbas might accept would almost certainly drive these
23 from the coalition, leaving 55. Olmert would then have to rely on
the 5 Meretz seats and the 10 Arab. Ever since the assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin, no Israeli PM wants to depend on Arab votes. Even disregarding
his unpopularity, then—or his legal problems—Olmert would
lack the political clout to push an agreement through. Beyond that,
there is the question of whether he would want to. He voted, we recall,
against Oslo.
For all these reasons, Olmert
remains deliberately vague about possible Israeli concessions. He also
knows that his partner is much too weak to carry out the Palestinian
side of a future accord. Why then go to a conference? Here a new kind
of political creativity comes into play: let's make a "political
horizon" or "shelf agreement," which won't go into effect
until Abbas has gained a monopoly of force in the West Bank and Gaza.
The credit for this pipe dream goes to US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, who will chair the November conference, and Israel's Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni. Welcome to Never Never Land.
The third duck is Abbas.
He has declared that he will not run again for the presidency, which
makes him officially lame, but his problem lies deeper. Abbas continues
to be Number 2 long after Number 1 is gone. Even Arafat, with his reputation
and charisma, could maintain a semblance of Palestinian unity only by
going with the flow. Such a task is far beyond Abbas.
At the moment, oddly, help
for Abbas comes less from the West than from Hamas, which has recently
succeeded in making itself hateful to a great many Palestinians. Before
the coup, there were mosques in Gaza that were mainly attended by Hamas
and others that were mainly attended by Fatah. The Hamas mosques had
Hamas-inclined preachers (imams), and the Fatah mosques had Fatah-inclined
ones. Toward the end of August, Hamas replaced the Fatah-inclined imams
with others more to its liking. The Fatah members went to Friday noon
prayers and heard diatribes against the Fatah-led PA in the West Bank.
As a result, they decided to conduct their prayer meetings outdoors.
In this they were backed by the Palestinian Left and secular organizations.
Hamas has forbidden outdoor prayer, sending its forces to break up the
assemblies with sticks and gunfire. The image of Muslims keeping Muslims
from prayer is not endearing to Palestinians. The coalition of Fatah
and its supporters called for a general strike on September 10. Although
not complete, it made an impact.
The growing revulsion against
Hamas, however, will not suffice to turn the tide for Abbas. If he doesn't
come back from the conference in November with concrete gains —which
Olmert, we have seen, cannot afford to give him—he might well
resign. He could attempt, of course, to make amends with Hamas, but
this would again nullify him as a partner in American and Israeli eyes.
The cards, in short, are stacked against Abbas whichever way he plays
the game.
The cards, it would appear,
are stacked against all. "I raise my eyes to the hills," sang
the Psalmist. "From where shall my help come?"
Not, certainly, from the
fourth player, Hamas. This organization continues to behave without
a realistic strategy. In taking over the Gaza Strip, both in the fact
and in method, it acted recklessly. It permits its own militia, as well
as the Islamic Jihad, to shoot Qassam rockets into Israel, thereby presenting
itself as a power to be reckoned with. But Hamas sans Fatah has nowhere
to go. In the unity government, as long as Hamas shackled Fatah to its
charter, there was no political horizon—there could be no talk,
for instance, of an international conference. But Fatah at least gave
Hamas a much needed measure of legitimacy. Upon kicking Fatah out of
Gaza, Hamas hamstrung itself. Its isolation has increased. The economic
blockade has become hermetic. Even in the Arab world, there is growing
disappointment. We may cite one instance among many, this from Abdullah
Iskandar, writing on September 10 in the pro-Saudi Al-Hayat:
"Hamas has failed in
the issue that is closest to its goals, i.e. attracting people to its
ideology. It has probably become blind to anything but the force of
its armed men in dealing with the many growing and complex problems
it faces, which culminated in the boycott of its mosques by Palestinian
factions and civil society institutions...
"When Hamas justifies
its practices by speaking of Law, it only states an imagined law that
rejects pluralism, coexistence and opposition; a law that stipulates
the treatment of factions and parties as rogue bodies that should be
persecuted. Some have even compared these practices with those of the
Israeli occupier's when Israel was still present in the Strip.
"Hamas has failed in
politics, as it has failed in management and in dealing with people.
It has failed in presenting a sound model of its Islamic project. The
movement has lost its soul."
From where then will help
come? This much is certain as well: not from Never Never Land. Fourteen
years ago at Oslo, the US and Israel ignored the wider picture, seeing
in a weakened PLO a window of opportunity. The result of negotiating
with the weak is a weak agreement. Now, once again, they reach for a
broken reed.
Soon Israel will celebrate
its sixtieth year. These have been sixty years of short-sighted bullying.
Its lack of willingness to reach a territorial compromise—to pay
the price that Arab recognition requires—leads the region each
time into deeper strife. The failure of Oslo brought Hamas to power.
Now Hamas has become a significant factor. The political arena has become
more complicated and more dangerous. The price remains what it has always
been.
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