By Hasan Abu Nimah
This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 27/04/2011
If the Palestinian Authority (PA), supported by Arab states, goes to the United Nations General Assembly in September to demand recognition for Palestinian statehood, it is likely that it will win.
The value of a UN resolution recognising an independent state for the Palestinian people, with its borders running exactly along the 1949 Armistice line, which was the border between Israel and the West Bank until 4 June 1967, should not be undermined.
Such a resolution would be historic if it defined the border precisely, and made a clear break from the vague formulas beloved of those pushing for the peace process, such as border “based on the 1967 line” and such deceptive devices as “land swaps” or “minor border adjustments” that are disguises for wholesale annexations by Israel of its vast West Bank colonies.
By passing such a resolution, a majority of states would once again reaffirm that all Israeli settlements over the 1967 line, including in eastern Jerusalem, are illegal. It would also make sense of the claim that Jerusalem would be the capital of the envisaged Palestinian state - Jerusalem as it was when the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The eventuality of a resolution with such clarity and straightforwardness, however, may be farfetched. Not only because Israel is fighting the idea of any resolution no matter how vague, but because many potential supporters - the Europeans certainly - would condition their backing on the usual watered down texts. That would be tantamount to legally reducing further, rather than reaffirming, the already reduced version of Palestinian territorial rights.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is openly opposed to the proposed PA move and is threatening retaliatory action. US officials, notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are also opposed.
On the “Conversations on Diplomacy” TV show aired on April 20, Clinton made clear that Washington is against “any unilateral effort” by the Palestinians to bring the issue of statehood to the UN for a vote, “because we think you can only achieve the two-state solution, which we strongly advocate, through negotiations”.
But for both Israel and its supporters, it takes more than just verbal opposition to abort the PA’s UN move: they must offer alternatives. And they are at least trying to appear as if they are doing that.
The New York Times reported on April 20 that the Israeli prime minister’s upcoming visit to Washington and planned address to Congress “is highlighting the tensions between President Obama and Mr Netanyahu and has kicked off a bizarre diplomatic race over who will be the first to lay out a new proposal to reopen the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks”.
Clearly intended for purely local, short-term, political considerations, neither of the two impending proposals - Barack Obama’s or Benjamin Netanyahu’s - is likely to restart any meaningful talks. Netanyahu’s two-fold objective of his yet to be defined proposal is to circumvent any possibility of an American peace proposal that may put him under additional pressure. And that explains why the president’s senior adviser to the Middle East, Dennis Ross, is opposed to an Obama peace plan for the Middle East, a course backed by both the president and his state secretary, according to The New York Times report.
Ross’ commitment to Israeli political interests, as a lifelong activist for Zionism inside and outside government, is very well known.
Netanyahu’s second objective is to obstruct any UN action, with US support. Obama, on the other hand, does not want to seal his Middle East policy with last December’s declaration of failure. On December 8, 2010, then State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley announced the end of Washington’s efforts to convince Israel to accept a temporary freeze on settlement construction. That happened despite a very generous package of incentives, including a promise of backing at the United Nations, a multibillion dollar provision of top-of-the-line F35 aircraft, and US support for long-term US-Israeli agreement on the Jordan Valley and a promise that no further freeze would be required ever again, in order to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Crowley said: “We have determined that a moratorium extension will not at this time provide the best basis for resuming direct negotiations. In the coming days and weeks, we will engage with both sides on the core substantive issues at stake in this conflict and with the Arab states and other international partners on creating a firm basis to work toward our shared goal of a framework agreement on all permanent status issues, a goal to which we and the parties remain committed.”
Since then peace efforts, not settlement building, were frozen. Something new must be tried. Something new was actually tried, but it failed again.
Two days after Crowley’s announcement, Clinton made what some interpreted as an important policy statement: “It is time to grapple with the core issues of the conflict on borders and security; settlements, water and refugees; and on Jerusalem itself. And starting with my meetings this week, that is exactly what we are doing.”
That would have been a perfect alternative if it were accompanied by an American declaration defining the position of Washington on the final status issues Clinton wanted to put on the negotiating table. But neither then, nor now is Washington prepared to abandon this kind of ambiguity that proved very destructive, constantly inviting excessive Israeli intransigence and territorial greed.
Speculation on whether Obama will present his own plan for a Middle East peace has been going on since he moved into the White House, well over two years ago.
Despite the critical developments in the region and their compelling lessons, Obama’s approach seems to return the troubled process back to square one. That is irrespective of the fact that mounting analysis, mainly US made, has consistently found that the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict has become a major threat to US interests, regional peace and security, as well as a main source of international terrorism and its resulting wars in the last decade.
Equally established is the fact that the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is primarily attributed to total American protection of Israeli intransigence and lawlessness.
If the April 20 New York Times report “The terms of reference” is correct, a putative Obama peace plan “could call for Israel to accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. For their part, Palestinians would have to accept that they would not get the right of return to land in Israel from which they fled or were forced to flee. Jerusalem would be the capital of both states, and Israeli security would have to be protected”.
Within such a context, the “Palestinian state” could be a mere slogan; the “based on the 1967 borders” simply means that the 1967 border is a guideline that will have to be altered to enable Israel to keep the settlements under the swap of territory formula. The reference to Jerusalem as “the capital of both states” must mean the 2000 “Clinton parameters” that “what is Jewish remains Jewish and what is Arab will be put under Arab control” - a formula designed not only to legitimise past Israeli land thefts in Jerusalem, but future ones as well.
The only unambiguous component of the anticipated Obama plan is the demand on the “Palestinians to accept that they would not get the right of return”.
But is that meant to be a real fresh attempt to broker peace or just a ploy in the propaganda race between Netanyahu and Obama, each to exploit the Palestinian conflict for his own political purposes?
Clearly it is the latter, and therefore there is no need to wonder.
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