The Gordian Knot: The Israel/Palestine Peace Dilemma

Jenkins and Maher: The Mideast Peace Dilemma

THE ELECTION of Barack Obama opens the door to renewed peace negotiations over the Israel-Palestine conflict. With the appointment of George Mitchell, the lead negotiator of the peace accord in Northern Ireland, as the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the prospects for serious negotiations looks as promising as they have for several decades. At the same time, this opportunity for peace may go nowhere. In the late 1990s, the Oslo accords collapsed into the second intifada, renewed terrorist attacks in Israeli cities, Hamas missile attacks, the 2006 war in Lebanon and Gaza, and this year’s Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The recent Israeli election brought a hardline government to power that has refused to endorse a two-state solution, which is seen by almost all parties as central to any viable peace solution. Prime Minister Netanyahu has endorsed negotiations and economic development but ruled out sovereignty for a prospective Palestinian state. Meanwhile Hamas is rumored to have ties to groups working against the Egyptian state, which raises questions about their long-term goals. In many respects, the major players seem more interested in continuing the trench war or returning to a “hot war.” What would bring the various parties to the bargaining table to negotiate a durable peace?

The Enduring Trench War
The Israelis’ and the Palestinians’ repertoires of action are restrained by broader processes, and these repertoires in turn constrain the potential avenues for action. The Israelis have found it easier to pursue a strategy of containment by bolstering security forces, building the separation wall, and isolating the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders, racked by political instability and a lack of economic development, have benefited politically from continued rocket attacks and opposition to Israel. At a minimum, they continue to control whatever international aid comes in and retain their positions in Ramallah and Gaza City. These political and security positions have locked both sides into a trench war that can provide some sense of security but will not lead to an enduring peace within the country. International forces, specifically the Quartet (the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United Nations), are interested in resolving the conflict, but they lack the political will and/or ability to affect the process. The resistance to, lack of political will for, and lack of commitment to the two state solution have combined to form a Gordian Knot that we must now try to cut through. Part of this work must focus on convincing each of the parties involved that a two-state solution is to their benefit. That awareness will not come about automatically but must be created by a process that disrupts perceived interests in “business as usual” among all the players on the ground.

The Israeli Security Dilemma
Convincing Israelis that they would benefit from a two-state solution will not be easy, and may in fact be one of the most significant barriers for an end to the conflict. Israel has a limited number of options for dealing with the Palestinians. Option A, their current choice, is to contain the Palestinians and hope that the Palestinians’ will to resist eventually dies away. Option B is to give the Palestinians their own state. They also have a series of non-viable options including driving the Palestinians into the sea or imposing harsher coercive constraints, but international and historical pressures prevent them from pursuing these options. Israel relies on strong ties with the United States and Europe for military and economic support as well as trade outlets. More intense repression might jeopardize U.S. and European support for Israel and would likely strengthen Palestinian radicals. Israel is also internally constrained by its identification as a democracy and by memories of the Holocaust. Finally, even if Israel overcame these internal and international constraints, there is no guarantee that repression would ensure long-term security. The Palestinians have developed a strong nationalist movement, impossible to defeat without extreme violence. The international community is very unlikely to allow that type of solution.

The Israelis have been successful at containing the Palestinians and limiting the number of suicide bombers, and so the argument that they will be unable to ensure a lasting peace for their people may seem problematic. Despite these successes, however, Israel is burdened with a massive and expensive security apparatus and a legitimate security dilemma. This dilemma flows from the recognition that Israelis will never be able fully to contain Palestinian attacks through coercion. Palestinians have in the past successfully come up with new ways of threatening Israeli civil peace. As the second intifada heated up, Palestinians resorted to suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli citizens. In response, the Israelis built the separation wall and put up security checkpoints to hold off these attacks, leading the Palestinians to resort to rockets and kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. As Israel devises new means of containing the risk, the Palestinians come up with new methods of threatening the peace. This process can in principle go on indefinitely.

Eventually Israel needs to gain the consent of the Palestinians in order to ensure long-term security. This consent is impossible without significant Palestinian autonomy. Containment and economic isolation threatens to radicalize the West Bank and further radicalize the Gaza Strip. Coercive sanctions may reduce the threat in the short-run but will produce new and more violent measures by an entrenched and increasingly radical resistance. As the U.S. found in its Iraq occupation, military force tends to create reactive nationalist resistance and, in ways that are impossible to predict, to demoralize occupying armies, especially ones claiming to be democratic and humanitarian in their ultimate objectives.

The Palestinian Political Problem
Israel should not take all the blame for the current situation. The Palestinian political situation is another obstacle on the road to peace. Most Palestinians recognize that they lack the political and military capacity to defeat Israel and that they have to live with Israel. But Palestinian leaders have little incentive to reach a settlement. Fatah lacks the legitimacy to unify Palestinians around a settlement, and Hamas in principle opposes negotiations. Many observers note that the split between Fatah and Hamas makes peace negotiations complicated and that the current trench war punctuated by violent outbursts works to legitimize the radicals on both sides. The lack of serious peace measures was critical to Hamas’ election victory in 2006, which some saw incorrectly as a mandate for Palestinian radicalism. It was instead a vote against Fatah, which many Palestinians perceive as corrupt, incompetent, and unable to bring peace. At the same time, Hamas has not proven its ability to bring peace, so its legitimacy (with or without the January 2009 Israeli incursion) is likewise problematic. The Palestinian populace is weary of the violence but has also been sidelined by Palestinian leadership. So long as that leadership is not compelled to respond to popular views, it can perpetuate the conflict without addressing the desire for peace and economic development.

Palestinian leadership has benefited from the continuation of the trench war, which has provided a scapegoat for their inability to ensure tangible improvements and funneled attention away from the problem of corruption in Palestinian politics. It has also provided Palestinian leaders with control over international aid and thereby a claim to power. So, like the Israelis, Palestinian leadership must be convinced of the need to turn away from short-term benefits in favor of long-term gains. The move toward a two state solution would be beneficial for Palestinian leadership for several reasons. It would bring increased international aid and economic development along the lines of the recently instituted Valley of Peace initiative. Furthermore, the Palestinians would have control over their own sovereign state. After a peace settlement, the various factions will no doubt battle over who controls the spoils of office but this would be an appealing alternative to continued trench war. At this point, it isn’t view as likely and hence continued trench war is more appealing.

A Quartet of Interests
Unfortunately, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be treated as merely a domestic affair. International forces have interests in—and influence on—the outcome of the conflict. The members of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) have their own interests at stake in the region. The United States has shown a strong pro-Israel bias over the past decade, and critics have raised questions about its ability to be an impartial peace broker. However, the United States’ image in the Middle East would greatly improve if it could secure a peace that both sides accept. Russia’s interests in the region are tied to Syria, and so it is unlikely that it will act as a powerful force in Israel/Palestine. The evidence suggests that Syria is interested in negotiations that will open economic markets–so long as the security of its regime is protected. The European Union, specifically Germany, has been a strong advocate of peace negotiations in the region and is generally perceived as evenhanded. However, there is no strong voice within the EU calling for serious negotiations. Right now the EU appears to be content to wait for others to act. Finally, the UN has a significant amount to gain from brokering a legitimate peace in the region. Many of its critics have reviled the UN as ineffective or anti-Muslim or anti-Israel. Playing a role in addressing the conflict would be a significant demonstration of its competence and political relevance. Leaving the U.S. aside, the least capable have the most to gain from peace talks, and the most capable have the least to gain. The lack of power or willingness to institute change severely weakens the international community.

How to Get There from Here
George Mitchell has a major challenge. All the major leadership groups prefer Plan A (continued trench war) to Plan B (peace with major concessions). Israel has been able to immunize itself from most Palestinian attacks by building the wall and instituting the embargo and stronger police controls. On the Palestinian side, Fatah and Hamas want to pursue the current political game, looking forward to distributing the spoils of new reconstruction aid, and avoid the political costs of concessions. The international community does not have the strength or the will to press for serious peace talks. Plan B is costly for all sides.

At the same time, what may drive the various parties—the Israelis and Palestinians as well as the international community—to serious talks is the realization that the failure of the Mitchell negotiations would be devastating: it would destabilize and radicalize the West Bank where Hamas already has a growing following. It would also further isolate and damage the Gaza economy. Israel would face renewed Palestinian militancy and negative international opinion. The U.S. and the Europeans would find themselves increasingly unappreciated in the region and perhaps globally.

These obstacles do not imply that the conflict is unsolvable. At its heart, the Israeli-Palestinian problem is a leadership deficit. Israeli and Palestinian leaders are adept at mobilizing for conflict but, to date, have never been compelled to respond directly to popular demands for peace. In part, this is because of the way in which peace negotiations have been conducted. Rather than taking the question to the people, negotiators have met in private and focused on the contentious issues that divide them—the settlements, what to do with east Jerusalem, access to the holy sites, the right of return—all of which should be part of a legitimized peace process rather than preconditions for negotiations. At this point, all the various positions have been so well rehearsed that no leadership group is able to enter into serious negotiations without heavy baggage that effectively blocks any possible resolution of the conflict. Although two states are the only viable long-term solution, politicians live in the short-term, and compromises on these issues require imposing costs on significant segments of both the Israeli and Palestinian populations. As a result, politicians find it easier to pursue a strategy of containment. There is a range of opinion among Israelis about what to do, but the dominant strategy has been to contain the conflict and put off resolving it until tomorrow. Likewise, the Palestinian leadership is divided but agrees on the advantages of keeping the trench war going.

We acknowledge these barriers to peace, and propose an alternative approach that has yet to be tried: beginning first with a popular referendum on the legitimacy of peace negotiations. Instead of focusing on the outcomes of such negotiations, the process should begin with the question: Are negotiations desirable? As happened in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s, a popular referendum on this simple question can legitimize the peace process. Instead of focusing on the outcome, the question should begin at the very beginning. At this point, there is little trust in any camp in another Oslo accord—which failed in large part because none of the leaders took the agreement seriously enough to try to mobilize public support, and nothing in the agreement compelled them to do so. High diplomacy without grassroots diplomacy failed. Given what we know now, this is not a surprise. The first question is whether peace negotiations should be initiated. Once that is settled, the various parties will have to focus on the divisive issues.

We think that both Israelis and Palestinians will support such a measure. We also think that such a vote will eventually lead to negotiations over a two state solution along familiar lines. Israel knows that it has to deal with the Palestinians and that a durable peace will require Palestinian sovereignty, i.e. a state able to control the Palestinian economy, with means of civil defense and access to international markets. It is reasonable to expect that such a state will accept Israel’s legitimacy and develop economic and social ties with it. There are now roughly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians in the region and so the “one state” solution appears remote. Palestinians know that they will eventually have to deal with Israel and work out some type of accommodation.

There are risks associated with our proposal. The Palestinians might vote it down, hoping to secure bigger concessions from brinksmanship. The Israelis might do the same, hoping to continue the containment policy. But we think the odds are that public opinion will move towards our Plan B.

Plan A is to continue the trench war, which in the short run might look best. Israelis might calculate that further construction of barriers, more checkpoints, a strengthened embargo, and blocking reconstruction aid will starve out the Palestinians. Similarly, Palestinians might calculate that the trench war is better: Peace negotiations in the past have come only when the pressure is on and, anyway, Israelis cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. Furthermore, keeping a major portion of the Palestinians in refugee camps fosters dependence on the Palestinian leadership and prevents serious efforts to dismantle these camps. Still, in the long run, peace negotiations have a greater likelihood of producing significant improvements for everybody. Trench war, in which neither side wins, is likely to keep both sides down.

Plan B would start with a popular referendum in both Israel and the Palestinian territories over the legitimacy of negotiations. It would force both sides to have a public debate over such negotiations without presupposing the outcome. It would force leaders to actually engage in grassroots diplomacy. It would prepare the way for negotiations that would undoubtedly require significant concessions on all sides. And if the vote goes the way we think it will, it would finally force leaders, who have been able to dodge public sentiment by hard-line political appeals, to recognize that the public does support a serious peace process.

Plan B has big risks. It might fail. But the alternative has much bigger risks and will certainly fail.

The Obama administration has a small window for promoting serious negotiations.
The parties involved are currently building up to another round of negotiations, but the discussion has focused on either short-term issues (such as the release of Shalit and the end of the embargo) or jumped ahead to a final resolution and peace settlement. Neither addresses the underlying problem of a lack of political will. Instead of trying to jump from negotiations to a final settlement, domestic and international leaders need to build a groundswell of support for a long term peace. Peace needs to come from the populace, so that leaders on both sides are held accountable. At the same time, the international community needs to provide the space and encouragement for this to happen. For our proposal to work, the initiative must come from the international community. Israeli and Palestinian leaders will favor continued trench warfare, extracting what they can from the international community in terms of aid and support. At the same time, if the international community puts forward the idea of elections, the local leaders cannot turn it down.

If the current negotiations over a truce, eliminating the embargo, and preventing further missile attacks succeed, we argue that the next step should be discussions over a joint public referendum over the need for peace negotiations. Jumping ahead to final stage negotiations is foolish and counterproductive. They will bog down and eventually fail. It is imperative that the politicians on the ground be forced to respond to the legitimate desires of the populace for serious negotiations. Unless that happens, we will see a replay of all the old arguments, with no significant progress. Peace negotiations are a process and focusing on the final stage is a guaranteed way of derailing the process.

J. Craig Jenkins is Professor and Chair of Sociology and a faculty associate at the Mershon Center for International Security, Ohio State University. He studies social movements and conflict processes and has consulted widely with agencies and NGOs involved in conflict negotiations and humanitarian emergencies. His most recent book is Identity Conflicts: Can Violence Be Regulated? (Transaction Books).

Thomas Maher is a PhD student in sociology at Ohio State University. He studies resistance movements in repressive environments. He recently published “Time and Country Variation in Contentious Politics” in the International Journal of Sociology.