Achieving Palestinian statehood

[I'm on a roll today: two pieces after months of little action here.  That said, the following consists of some thoughts that have been brewing in my head over the last couple of months, so it was fairly easy to put them down.

UPDATE: An edited version of the article below has gone up at the Ideas blog here.]

In just over a month the question of whether a Palestinian state is recognised by the international community will be put before the UN. Despite the fact that there has been plenty of time to prepare and anticipate for this moment, it still seems uncertain how this is to be achieved in practice. Several factors are in play here – and they are outside the control of the Palestinians themselves.

Where are the current social protests going?

[The following article is now up at the LSE Ideas Centre blog.  Although I can't tell if they've edited for length.]

Tents on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv

When the history of the present is eventually written, 2011 may well be most closely associated with the ‘Arab spring.’ Attention will undoubtedly centre on the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the currently ongoing protests against leaderships from the Gulf to Yemen and violent reaction from the Libyan and Syrian regimes.

However, the pressure for change in the Arab world has not occurred in isolation. The last month has seen the transformation of what was initially a youth movement in Tel Aviv against the high cost of living to encompass all elements of society in Israel. alongside the tents sprouting up along the wealthy Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv, the last three weekends have seen the size of the protests escalate, resulting in an estimated 300,000 people marching across Israel under the banner of social justice.

On Brazil's global rise

(Last month I was a participant at a conference on Brazil and the Americas in the 21st century.  It was jointly hosted by the LSE Ideas Centre and the Fundação Getulio Vargas.  I wrote a summary of my thoughts based on the participants' contributions along with some reading I did in the following weeks for a project I'm aiming to do.  I had hoped that the piece would have been posted on the Ideas Centre blog by now, but since it hasn't I've also decided to post it here.)

UPDATE: This piece has now gone up at the blog.

 

At a recent presentation to the LSE Ideas Centre, the Brazilian ambassador to the UK, Roberto Jaguaribe, painted a relatively positive picture of Brazil’s regional and global role.  He noted Brazil’s efforts to achieve greater regional integration, from the creation of the Mercosur common market (including Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and, as an associate member, Venezuela) in 1991 to the establishment of the South America-wide UNASUR in 2008.  He reported on Brazil’s increasingly diversified trade relations with the world and its current efforts to open up global governance through its participation in various groups of other state actors, along with the G20.  Brazil’s emergence, along with these other state actors, opens the prospect of change in the nature of international relations more generally.

 

Donors and Palestinian development

Back in June I was part of a seminar hosted by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at Birzeit University to consider alternative forms of development in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT).  This is an issue which has vexed us for much of the time that I’ve been involved with the CDS, including a conference that was put on in September last year.

The seminar came off the back of a report that I was involved in drafting which consisted of a conflict-related development analysis (CDA) of the OPT.  The seminar focused specifically on the aid community and what it might be able to do differently so as to assist development.  Our main recommendation in the report was that donors’ assistance be directed to support resistance against the occupation.  In particular this means adopting a more rights-based approach to development than has been hitherto applied, where people’s ability to choose for themselves is the primary means when determining how funding be allocated, rather than paying agencies and individuals to do things for them.

The Arab spring and its conceptual challenges

I haven’t been posting lately. This is partly because I have been focused on writing the first drafts of some papers that I intend to spend the summer revising before submission. But it’s also to do with the fact that I took an extended trip, to Jordan and Egypt. In Cairo I attended a conference on the Egyptian revolution at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the transitions currently underway there. Since getting back I’ve also attended a conference at Birzeit on the Arab spring as well.

I’ve taken away a few interesting points from both. I was especially struck by the limitations we face as scholars to explain what has happened and is happening here in the region. This point was explicitly mentioned by several of the participants at the Birzeit conference, including Saleh Abdel Jawal and Abaher Saka, who noted the focus on old concepts which contributed to a failure to predict the uprisings since Tunisia last December. This was despite all the structural factors being in place according to Laurent Jeanpierre, from rising unemployment among the young, closed political systems and rising opposition outside of the conventional norms. Indeed, this was one of Saka’s main points: that opposition was taking place in new and emerging public spaces that had been overlooked previously.

Slipping standards?

It seems that having a PhD does not go well with politics as events in Germany and Libya seem to attest.  While most criticism is bound to be directed at the individuals concerned, I find myself wondering what the supervisors and examiners were - or rather, weren't - doing in all of this.  Didn't they question the dissertations in front of them?  Didn't they notice the plagirism?  And for the supervisors: did they not see the difference in writing styles between their students and the final product during the course of study?

Palestinians and Israeli reality

One of my criticisms of the Israeli peace camp has been that it does not seem entirely familiar with development taking place on the ground, within Palestinian society. In making that claim I am being rather sweeping and possible unfair; it may well be that there is greater awareness of the nuances within Palestinian political and social life by Israelis than I give credit for. That said, comments like those on Thursday gave me pause for thought, since a generally positive impression of the Fayyad plans and the measures implicit within it overlooks some of the starting points for my critique of the situation within the West Bank (e.g. whether market forces are both feasible or indeed justified in the context of occupation – two distinct issues in themselves). As I also mentioned in my post on Thursday, this needn’t prevent Israelis from being able to get a better perspective and understanding on the situation in the West Bank. There is sufficient material available to anyone who wants it.

A tale of disconnection

The last two days have offered an interesting juxtaposition between the reality of the occupation and the relatively disconnected nature of the Israeli peace camp.  Both were troubling.

Yesterday I was in Hebron where there were protests against the closure of Shuhada Street in the old city.  Nearby the Israel army provides a round-the-clock presence for 400 settlers who took over part of the old city in 1980 and live behind high walls, barbed wire and various security measures.  We arrived around 1pm to find the protestors – mainly teenagers and boys – going as far as they could into the old city in the street and along the roof tops and throwing rocks at the soldiers.

First thoughts about the Palestinian Papers

Of course, it can’t go without saying something about the leak of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera and the Guardian yesterday. I must find time to work my way through some of the documents. But what are the implications likely to be in both Palestine and Israel? Like Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, I’m inclined to think that the fallout will be more significant for the Palestinians at first. The fallout will hit the individuals’ negotiators’ credibility – although it has to be said that the general public’s mood has been largely sceptical of the leadership’s efforts in recent years. I can’t comment on Robert Grenier’s analysis that the negotiators were no quislings and were working for their people – my instinct is to give them the benefit of the doubt, since all politics is about compromise – but I doubt that the man on the Ramallah omnibus will see them in as favourably a light.

Envisioning Palestinian economic policy

There were three papers presented at the MAS conference on Sunday. Two were general, one by Samir Abdullah that examined the development gap and internal distortions between the West Bank and Gaza and the other by Numan Kanafani, which proposed some models to achieve economic integration between the two areas. A final one, by Abd Al Fatah Abu Shokor, dealt with the Jerusalem economy. Of the three, this was perhaps the least useful, since while it useful on the analysis (as many Palestinian papers are), it wasn’t so good on envisaging a future vision for Jerusalem. He provided very general recommendations, including a structural plan (which according to some of the commentators speaking after him, already appears to be in place, the President’s Office having set up a Jerusalem Unit in 2007 with EU money to complete one and which will be launched next month) and promoting religious tourism around the Haram Al Sharif and supporting ‘steadfastness’( i.e. resistance movements).

Fayyad at MAS

I don’t usually find it useful to go to a meeting or conference to listen to a politician; you can usually find what they think or have said elsewhere. Besides, if it’s a public forum they are less likely to be particularly candid, especially if there plenty of cameras and microphones in front of them. That said, they do have a pulling factor, which the most insightful academic in the world can’t match – mainly because the more critical the academic, the more likely they are to be further away from power and thus to implement their vision.

With that in mind, having been in Palestine for nearly a year now, when the opportunity came to listen to the prime minister, Salam Fayyad, speak at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute’s (MAS) annual conference, I had to go. His shadow has loomed over the course of everything that I’ve worked on over the past year, mainly relating back to his Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State programme, the so-called Fayyad Plan, which has been the government’s main vision for the past 18 months.

Hamsters and peace

Back in August I attended a couple of seminars in Jerusalem on security and border issues between Israel and a future Palestinian state, which I’ve blogged about previously. The central challenge among the (Israeli) presenters was how to ensure security for Israel without any direct form of control.

It’s not a new question. I was struck by this as I was digging through the journal section in the LSE library this week (research for an entirely unrelated paper) and came across the first edition of The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations and an article entitled ‘A Proposal for Peace in the Middle East’ by Morton Kaplan.

Looking at the last year through new eyes

Having shivered my way through subzero temperatures in Vienna last week for the purposes of knocking heads and putting together a research proposal that will hopefully see funding for up to three years, I also had time to reflect on public perceptions to the first outing of the paper related to the conflict and development project I’ve spent the best part of a year working on. The report itself is very long and full of quotes, but the version I read and we discussed was a fifth of the size.

Essentially, the two main options that I proposed facing international donors in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) are a choice between working to end Israel’s occupation or finding programmes and projects that tinker at the edges. The latter is clearly sub-optimal, but it’s probably also the most likely.

What was most striking for me was the extent to which I’ve internalised some assumptions from nearly a year on these issues and seeing how a European audience reacted to some issues that now seem ‘normal’ to me. For example, I felt that there was a bit if a struggle from my student and faculty audience regarding Hamas’s position as part of the furniture. Too often the party is seen as out of the ordinary in Europe. At the same time, because of the Fatah-Hamas split, I was asked whether it was possible for the two – and by implication, both wider Palestinian society and foreign donors – to find some areas where possible consensus was achievable. This might provide scope beyond the one area of joint thinking, namely an end to the occupation – and which is arguably least likely.

It brought it home to me that I feel that I am finally starting to get a real sense of how things are perceived by the community as a whole here, rather than trying to make a set of externally developed assumptions fit from without. So in a strange way, I found that instead of journeying to Europe in my trip to Vienna, I was actually brought back to the OPT.

A gulf of misunderstanding?

One of the most striking things about the ‘process’ in this part of the world is the disconnection between Israelis and Palestinians when it comes to envisaging the future. This was most visibly brought home to me during the German-sponsored IPCRI conference, ‘Peace Begins with Jerusalem?’ at the Ambassador Hotel yesterday afternoon. It was during the final session, with presentations from Sonia Najjar, Gilead Sher and Hilia Tsedaka, that I especially noted this.

Gilead Sher was Ehud Barack’s co-chief negotiator at Camp David. His presentation on Jerusalem was that the issue of Arab and Israeli neighbourhoods wasn’t the sticking point. Rather it was the Old City and how to govern the Holy Sites that caused the greatest headache. He felt that on Jerusalem the Clinton parameters that were proposed at Camp David 10 years ago are still relevant today, with the one caveat that the separation of neighbourhoods on the basis on population and majority groups should not be applied within the Old City. Instead he favours a form of independent third party administration, headed by an international and with Palestinian and Israeli input – effectively the Jerusalem Old City Initiative that was launched in May this year.

There is a catch though. Sher claimed that the time is not right for this measure to be put into place. He criticised the current process as one that is waiting for everything to be agreed between the two sides and he suggests an alternative of dealing with those issues that are feasible now and putting into place all those that can be agreed. On the surface this looks reasonable. But what is staggering is that he overlooks the fact that this has been the way that the process has taken its course since the early 1990s. In fact the whole Oslo process has been one of leaving the most insoluble issues to the end, with the aim of building confidence and trust between the two sides through smaller-scale measures in the intervening period.

It was therefore pertinent that Sonia Najjar’s presentation reminded attendees of the current and systematic process of Judaisation that is going on in East Jerusalem. She noted that Israeli laws and policies in the city are diminishing the Palestinian presence through settlement building (which as of today, there are reports that the US has abandoned efforts to try and restart the settlement freeze – outside of Jerusalem though) and the takeover of Palestinian neighbourhoods. Even if there is a ‘negative’ form of peace (i.e. no violence), this comes nowhere near any attempt to build trust between the two sides – or Sher’s vacuum.

That said, to what extent can Najjar’s own suggested course deliver results? Having cited various international obligations that Israel is a party to – and isn’t upholding – she favours international pressure on the Israeli government. But as the US failure over the settlement freeze has shown on the one hand and the Brazilian and Argentine recognition of Palestinian sovereignty within the 1967 borders has shown – there is as yet no teeth to enforce this. That said, it is not unreasonable for us internationals to pressure our governments on this issue, as Mandy Turner pointed out at her Kenyon lecture last week. Nevertheless, given the absence of international pressure to date, why should the future be any different?

So if the external environment is not conducive, what about on the ground? Hilia Tsedaka is with ‘Win-Win Jerusalem’, an organisation that wants to transform the zero sum game (‘win lose’) between Palestinians and Israelis in the city into one that benefits both. To achieve this requires greater citizen participation in decision making and she cited various examples of where this has happened from the top (e.g. Cyprus constitution) to the bottom and through mid-level players (e.g. the participatory budget in Porto Alegre). She feels that the more participation there is, the more trust will be generated between the two sides. Her method is to run facilitative workshops that ‘support’ and ‘empower’ Palestinians on the one side and transform Israeli minds on the other. This will create the conditions for greater trust, including shared interest projects, greater communication skills and better awareness of how to use the system.

Following the conference’s end, I said to her that I was still uncertain as to how trust was to be generated through the methods she suggests. Surely in the case of the Jerusalem municipality a more ‘empowered’ Palestinian is a threat and therefore someone to be denied greater participation rather than the other way around? I was still lost as to how the leap is made from win-loss to win-win.

And this is where I have the biggest problem with these proposals. Ironically, it was Sher that put his finger on it in the discussion when he said it was necessary to combine both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the process (and I assume he means more than just Jerusalem here). He said it’s necessary to condition people’s hearts and minds as well as proposing these ideas and projects, which lack detail of how they are to actually built trust. Unlike Najjar, he opposes third party intervention as a stick to beat Israel with, but supports it to help the negotiations along (a subtle way of shifting the terms of the debate, I feel). That said, he remains frustrated that there has been no movement forward since Camp David – and more to the point, no sign of any response from the Israeli leadership about the Arab Peace Initiative, which has been reiterated every years since it was first proposed in 2002.

To me this suggests that if confidence-building is to start somewhere, it has to be with the Israelis. Najjar’s analysis of a disempowered people being forced out of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, with the complicit support of the municipality and state, not only highlights the lack of trust between both sides, but also which side is stronger in this struggle. It’s time to stop pretending that the two sides are equal; indeed, Sher praised the institution building and degree of security that has occurred in the West Bank over the past few years – but he stopped short of suggesting that Israel offer something in return as a (confidence building) gesture.

The Israelis like to talk about Yasser Arafat having missed an opportunity at Camp David. Yet it often seems that it is they who are doing so. To conclude, contrary to the official rhetoric that Jerusalem is a united city, the pollster Dahlia Scheindlin (who spoke earlier) revealed that Israeli Jews recognise Jerusalem’s divided nature and neighbourhoods and are pragmatic enough to accept partition if their government present them with it. Rather than making public opinion, Israelis are following their leaders. Now is therefore the time for them to take the chance. Although I suspect they will miss it.

No change


Despite the hiatus on this blog, I have been writing elsewhere, for the LSE Ideas Centre and the online Spanish magazine, Global Affairs. Much of the reason for the silence here is the absence of any seminars or presentations that I have gone to over the past few months. Much of this is the result of bad timing for me, having other commitments, visitors, etc. In fact, when I arrived at the Kenyon Institute last night for Naseer Aruri’s and Mandy Turner’s presentations, I noticed that the last event I had attended was back in August – at least one where I took notes (there was also a conference at the end of September where I was both participant and scribe – I hope one day to write something more substantial than a blog piece on those issues there).

The Kenyon event took place last night and was a follow on from their own two day conference on Monday and Tuesday – which I wasn’t able to attend for the above reasons. That said, I suspect that both Aruri and Turner were able to give a flavour of what that event must have been like, since both presented there as well.

Aruri chose not to present the same paper that he had done at the conference – a great shame for me, since it was sought to put Palestinian development in historical and political context. Instead, he offered an alternative paper called ‘The Ongoing Erasure of Palestine’ which was extremely bleak. Essentially his argument was that there can be no two-state solution when Zionism is the Palestinian’s adversary. Zionist colonialism he considers to be unique as a movement, offering no territorial concessions and expanding Israel’s control of historic Palestine. He talked at length about ‘politicide’, the term that Baruch Kimmerling had fashioned to describe what was happening to the Palestinians, with the dissolution of Palestinian political identity through the use of ethnic cleansing.

Aruri was scathing both about external actors such as the US (who he has called a ‘dishonest broker’ in a previous book and who has gone against the global consensus fashioned after 1967 – i.e. end of occupation, withdrawal to the Green Line, East Jerusalem to be Palestinian, etc) and the Palestinian leadership. The latter he deems to have colluded in its own destruction, offering no alternative. Ultimately, the diplomatic paralysis that currently exists is embedded in the failed Oslo peace process for him.

Turner also presented a very compelling argument with her paper on ‘Creating “Partners for Perace”:Aid, humanitarianism and the international donor community in the OPT’. The term ‘partner for peace’ has become increasingly used and she has tried to understand what it means. Essentially, there are three elements associated with the concept: (1) an attempt by donors to support and impose the ‘right’ type of Palestinian political elite, (2) pressure the ‘right’ type of Palestinian elite to make peace with Israel on the grounds set out by Israel and (3) marginalise and/or remove the ‘wrong’ type of Palestinian elite.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that what this means is the fragmentation of Palestinian politics and society, a process has been in place since 2006 and Hamas’s electoral victory that year. Whereas Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and Salam Fayyad are seen as ‘partners’, Hamas are clearly not. Turner believes that the Road Map period which emerged in the wake of the Second Intifada met its end in 2006 and has been replaced with the ‘partners’ paradigm, whereby the US has increased its financial commitment to the PA (as have all donors – although interestingly, this may be more to do with better tracking than actual sums) and sought to isolate and defeat Hamas by focusing on building up the West Bank.

For me as a development analyst (!), Turner’s presentation was extremely useful, since you can see a double-edged game being played in the present period. On the one hand donor aid is being used to reduce the impact of the occupation for all Palestinians, but there are differences between that provided to ‘partners’ in the West Bank and the ‘wrong’ type in Gaza. That to the West Bank aims to promote ‘appropriate’ actors while that in Gaza is more humanitarian is scope, being designed to take care of those who do not comply with the ‘partners’ model. Borrowing from a researcher in Africa (whose name I missed), Turner ends up with donor aid as a means of managing a surplus population, where Palestinians are fed but not free. (indeed, Turner also commented on the shift in conceptualising sovereignty in the Palestinian context, away from natural rights of statehood for a nation and the creation of governments to one that is primarily concerned with state capacity and governance – i.e. statehood only comes if you can prove that you can carry it out rather than demanding it as a right)

Both presentations present very bleak prospects in my view. For neither presenter is there a visible alternative to the prevailing situation, whether internal or external. Internally, the options looks extremely limited. The choice seems to be either one of being on the quisling side of supporting the US/Israeli Oslo model or being against it. In the subsequent Q&A I asked where domestic resistance was to come from and Aruri was unable to provide an answer. He said there were three choices, neither of which were realistic: (1) end the current peace process and internationalise it (but this won’t work because the Palestinians are too insignificant to challenge the international balance of power and force participants to the table), (2) maintain the status quo (which is not attractive – and besides the Palestinians are running out of any more concessions they can make) or (3) another intifada (which is not really an option given the demobilised nature of Palestinian society).

Externally, the prospects are not great either. Both Aruri and Turner concluded that the US position is unlikely to change. Turner offered some suggestions as a British and European citizen for the EU (we had a few representatives last night). She said that the EU should consider the following: (1) sue Israel for damages as a result of its destruction of EU-funded projects, (2) pull the EU (and the UN as well) out of the Quartet, since it’s effectively an American enterprise) and (3) make effective use of the human rights conditions within the EU-Israel agreement.

While this may all seem like too proposals though, what are the chances of that happening? The more I think about it, the more I feel that the current situation is like the calm before a storm – yet I don’t know what form the storm will take. It can’t be another intifada since neither the first or second achieved the removal of Israel. If anything it brought about excessive and disproportionate violence in a effort to break Palestinians’ will. In neither case did that happen, but neither did it achieve its goals of an end to occupation. So here we remain, both sides circling and eyeing each other suspiciously, with no clear end in sight. A rather grim vision.

Border assumptions

A bit late in coming, but an interesting discussion last week between Nizar Farsakin and David Newman regarding the future borders of Israel and a Palestinian state – the most recent IPCRI event. Farsakin used to work at the Negotiations Support Unit in Ramallah and is now at the JFK School fo Government in Harvard (a place I can only dream of working at!) while Newman is based at Ben-Gurion University. So what were the main points I took from the event?

1. Farskakin’s neat little point about fixing the border not being the solution. Rather the key to a good boundary is engagement between the two sides.

2. The Palestinians believe they have made countless concessions, from the 1947 proposed borders on the basis of demography to the 1967 lines for political reasons. They want to see a comprehensive final status deal put before them, because they see themselves compromising but to little effect.

3. Both Newman and Farsakin note the ‘open-ended’ nature of the Israeli approach. Farsakin pointed out that for the Israelis, the Oslo process started from the assumption that they would see how Area A worked out and then add additional results from it, rather than setting out their intentions from the start. Newman distinguished between the two sides as the Palestinians having a clear endgame in sight (i.e. the 1967 borders) and the Israelis’ absence of one. To my mind that makes the Israeli position far more flexible and fluid – and reflects the nature of Israeli policymaking since before 1948. Even though they officially accepted the 1947 partition plan Ben Gurion always saw it as a tactical rather than final solution.

4. Both presenters felt that the bulk of the territorial division is already in place and what’s up in the air is around 10-15% - which Newman argues would be decided on the final day of any negotiations. That’s just the nature of brinkmanship. Farsakin pointed out that the latest Palestinian overture was to approach the US mediator, George Mitchell, and ask the Israelis through him to lay out what land they would be willing to swap – effectively getting it on the table rather than just having an ambiguous starting position.

5. Newman noted the rise of the one-state solution as being talked about among the settlement movement. Of course it has nothing in common with the idealistic, leftist vision. Moreover, he argued that the two-state solution remains the most pragmatic and closely associated with public opinion.

6. That said, even though borders remain in the public consciousness, the discourse is being hijacked by ‘facts on the ground’. Newman pointed out that even though the Wall was unilaterally imposed and presented as a security measure, increasingly Israeli public opinion is coming to see it as the ‘border’. At the same time Farsakin commented that refugees’ attitudes to their right of return shifted depending on what they were offered. This has been shown in surveys that phrase the details of a final agreement differently.

7. Newman also observed the re-emergence of borders in wider discourse. He said a decade ago the discussion was about a ‘borderless’ world as a result of globalisation. Since 9/11 borders have become more relevant and discussed about, although they aren’t necessarily territorial. I have to concur: crossing the Green Line in Jerusalem you get a mental shift whether you walk from East into West or vice versa.

8. Speaking of discourse, Newman also noted that Israelis may be increasingly likely to accept land swaps. Since 2005 there has been discussion about this in the Israeli street, especially regarding how to resolve the challenge presented by territorial contiguity on both sides as a result of the settlements.

All these points lead neatly to tomorrow’s event, which I’m really looking forward to: about Israeli and Palestinian public opinion and the prospects for changing them (that said, a friend’s recent piece on Israeli and Palestinian taxi drivers’ attitudes towards the process in Jerusalem suggests that ordinary people just want the thing resolved – so maybe the gulf isn’t as great as I thought. Then again, it may just be wishful thinking on my part...).

Two cheers... but still missing something


I haven't mentioned yet how pleased I am with the BBC's new website.  Not because it's more spaced out, bu the fact that they have finally separated the Americas in two, with Latin America and the Caribbean separate from the US and Canada.

My main grumble with the previous version had been that too often Latin America was overshadowed by 'American' news.  However, just changing the format isn't enough.  There's a broader problem with Latin American coverage in Britain and just looking at the news today demonstrates that.  What counts as news from Latin America for the BBC constitutes the following: football, poverty, violence, drugs, crime (and if drug-related crime can be presented, so much the better), animals and Hugo Chavez.

Out here in the Middle East Edward Said's work on 'orientalism' was very instructive about the way that the 'West' has perceived and shaped impressions of this part of the world.  Maybe there's a similar word to describe how the West shapes its views about Latin America?  If so, I'd really like to know it.

Securing Security?

Another IPCRI event on ‘Israeli and Palestinian Security Concerns in the Peace Process’, at which the panellists were Rami Dajani of the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit and Shlomo Gazit, a former IDF general in charge of running affairs in the occupied territories after the 1967 war.

I tend to think that both sides know full well what the others want and that what’s holding them back are there willingness to make concessions and other factors like not preparing public opinion. However, it seems that the issue of security in any agreement is going to be painfully drawn out. Dajani saw the ‘endgame’ as involving the following: a full Israeli military withdrawal, a Palestinian state with a monopoly on the use of force within its territory, a third party to support differences between the two sides and bilateral and regional security arrangements.

Gazit painted a far more pessimistic picture, seeing little chance of an ‘ideal’ peace as Dajani had laid it out. At best there was likely to be a ‘cold peace’ between the two sides and others that would last for a generation. Moreover, he couldn’t accept settlers being under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state (at least not immediately), which rather poses problems for the notion of the Palestinians having complete control over force in the West Bank. He later went on to say that it was only a highly ideological and active minority that was a problem so would require Israeli presence during an interim period. He also alluded to some legislation in the Knesset which would see a referendum on settlements. A rejection of the settlement policy would weaken the movement and reduce its capacity to be the tail that wags the dog [I may need to go away and find details about this referendum, since this was the first I’d heard about it].

Gazit also sees a future West Bank rather like Gaza today, where Israelis security concerns will be less about high level, technologically advanced weapons than homemade, small scale ones – but ones that have strategic risks, since places like Ben Gurion airport would be brought within range. He was also less confident about a third party role. It would only work if both sides shared the same rules and agreed to abide by it. That hasn’t always been the case in this part of the world.

One especially interesting question in the following discussion was about how to prepare Israeli public opinion for Israeli withdrawal and a Palestinian state. At the moment they are very happy with the current situation, since there have been fewer security risks or problems since the end of the second Intifada. Dajani said that Israelis had to realise that the current situation was only an illusion of security and that Israel needed to be made accountable for its actions. That could be done by imposing a cost on it, rather than providing incentives and rewards for it to change its behaviour (its OECD membership might have been on way). This means pressure from outside rather than from within.

Gazit meanwhile saw three possibilities surrounding a two-state solution – and how they should be set out to the Israelis: either an agreement between the two sides, a unilateral Israeli withdrawal or recognition that the current situation could explode into violence again [really? I’m not so sure. After all, what did the second Intifada really achieve?]. As for Gershon Baskin of IPCRI, his conclusion is that there’s no point trying to change public opinion directly. Instead the focus should be on influencing decision-makers, since the public are likely to support a settlement as long as security issues are ensured. He also noted that the recent legislation that imposes a penalty on Israelis (whether Jewish or Arab isn’t specified I think) that act against Israel is one way that the state has hit back at trying to achieve the imposition of a cost, as Dajani suggested (the legislation is directed at the BDS movement, which I’ve talked about in previous posts).

After the freeze

It’s been awhile since I updated this blog and almost a week since I attended the IPCRI event in Jerusalem regarding what happens after the Israeli settlement freeze policy comes to an end. Along with the ever present Gershon Baskin, the Palestinian negotiator, Khalil Toufakji, and the Ha’artez journalist, Akiva Elder, were on the panel.

The central message that came out of the discussion was the narrow window available for the US to take a lead. The settlement freeze comes to an end (although this is on new settlements, not ones that were already under construction – so it was never a complete freeze) in September which poses an awkward – in Gershon’s words, a ‘dangerous’ – time until the American congressional elections in November. That’s about two months were the American position is likely to be (ironically) frozen.

Elder suggested that if the Democrats lose the House this will show that AIPAC has been working overtime to weaken their vote. If they win that would give Obama about a year to be free to act in a more independent manner on Israel-Palestine without any interference with the Jewish lobby. Gershon has picked up on the one year point in his piece in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, in which he points out that from November 2011 Obama will be focusing attention on his re-election campaign.

So timing seems to be everything. But in the post-panel discussion afterwards, I asked for some reflections on the previous reversal in terms of settlement policy, during the ‘disengagement’ in Gaza (I call it ‘disengagement’ because while the settlements are no longer there, the siege remains in place). Elder wasn’t that positive about the decision, saying that it had been a unilateral one and that for many Israelis the attitude has been mixed, with many seeing the removal from Gaza as giving something up for nothing.

Meanwhile, Gershon pointed out that the disengagement showed that things that are done can be undone, including the removal of settlements. He said it was telling that the head of the settlement movement had accepted the need for withdrawal from Gaza but that there were also lessons to be learned. In particular this included not pulling down the houses, since they could have been bequeathed to the Palestinians and that the Israeli state has largely forgotten the settlers, with many of them still homeless today. The same mistakes shouldn’t be made in the West Bank – if it comes to that.

Coalition comments

Watching a British election from abroad is strange and never more so than now. If ever Britain seemed foreign, this would be the time.

I have mixed feelings about watching the Lib Dems entering into coalition with the Tories. Although I’m a largely detached member of the party and less tribal these days, I do identify myself as on the left. So watching the deal being struck between the two has been uncomfortable to say the least.

But it seems that at least some of the constitutional objectives of the Lib Dems have been secured. Fixed term parliaments will go a long way to ensuring a more level playing field between parties, by removing the prime minister’s right to call an election. They also managed to get a referendum on the electoral system. OK, it’s only a referendum – and a free vote at that, which will mean the right-wing Tory press will oppose it for all it’s worth. But it’s still an improvement over Labour’s abandonment of the Jenkins inquiry.

And let’s face it: even if we did get a more proportional electoral system (which I know AV is not) the reality would be that the horse-trading that has taken place over the past week would become commonplace after every election. In such circumstances ideological purity may be a nice thing, but in terms of government formation it’s unlikely to happen (hence my preference for sitting as a critic on the side!).

Beyond the constitutional commitments, I’m less convinced that there is much overlap between the two parties on issues such as public spending, immigration and foreign policy. I’m particularly concerned that that Vince Cable won’t be able to make much headway against the banks in terms of regulation. And already the Lib Dem amnesty on illegal immigration has been watered down along with support for the euro (which after Greece would anyone in the party still be advocating entry?!) along with partnership of a party that has its friends with some of the more undesirable elements of the homophobic and anti-semitic east European Right.

And finally, why exactly did the party focus so much on one particular education policy of the pupil premium? Surely it should have had a broader remit to review the curriculum, teaching methods, etc?

Either way, for the first time political discussion around the Burton dinner table will no longer be divided and enter uncharted territory; both father and son will have some sympathies for the same government.  I just wonder whether this means that the Telegraph will be replaced with the new house newspaper, the Guardian?!