Israel and Palestine: Leaks must not poison diplomacy
Palestinian leaders should be praised, not reviled, for their willingness to compromise
THE sadly misnamed Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is proceeding precisely nowhere. America, its chief mediator for the past three decades, has formally taken time out. Israel’s government seems blithely uninterested. The Palestinians are no longer talking to the Israelis. And now, thanks to leaks about the Palestinian conduct of the negotiations from Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite-television channel, it is widely mooted that the process has been killed off altogether.
Diplomacy is indeed comatose at present, but the leaks do not suggest it is past praying for. Rather the opposite. They show clearly the outlines of a possible deal, they suggest that the gaps between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in 2008 were narrow, and they demonstrate that the Palestinians were far readier to make the necessary compromises than Israel’s backers, especially in America, had given them credit for. The leaks were presumably motivated by enemies of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader.
Their main revelation is that he bent over backwards to make a deal. Since no deal was done, his willingness to make concessions is being portrayed by his harder-line opponents in the Palestinian diaspora and among the Arab world’s rejectionists as cowardice, collaboration, duplicity and incompetence. They present it as a vindication of the bleaker alternative vision of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that in theory rejects the notion of a Jewish state altogether and has in the past been readier to espouse violence to achieve its aims. Some of Mr Abbas’s critics are calling for him to step down; many of them castigate him and his team for saying one thing in public and another in private. That’s how diplomacy works As a critique of the way the Palestinians were conducting their negotiations, this is daft. Diplomacy necessarily involves tentatively exploring, in private, ideas that at first seem radical: talks would never get anywhere if the parties involved offered only what was easily conceded. It is not clear whether these were firm offers or merely the airing of possibilities; nor, since the leaks were presumably selective, whether Israel demonstrated any matching flexibility.
Still, on all the most critical issues Mr Abbas and his aides showed a remarkable willingness to soothe Israeli sensitivities and take on their own hardliners in order to win a minimal yet independent Palestinian state. Such readiness to take risks for peace deserves praise, not condemnation. The Palestinians evidently accepted just about all the conditions laid out by Bill Clinton in the “parameters” he proposed as his term of office ended in early 2001. For instance, Mr Abbas’s chief negotiator privately admitted the futility of insisting on the Palestinians’ cherished “right of return”, whereby 5m surviving refugees and their descendants would be able to go back to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. He accepted that only a symbolic few thousand of them could return if Israel were to remain a predominantly Jewish state. He also indicated a willingness to go along with a broadly ethnic partition of Jerusalem, with Israel keeping most of its surrounding settlements provided that the Palestinians could have the core of the eastern side of the city as their capital with wide access to the rest of the West Bank. This is an eminently sensible plan.
Mr Abbas mooted the possibility of an international committee to oversee the city’s holiest sites. Palestinians (and other Muslims) should have access to the area around the Dome of the Rock, while the Jews could pray at the Western (“Wailing”) Wall below it. He also recognised the sense of letting Israel keep the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank close to the 1967 border, which would be adjusted to let Palestinians receive territory through land swaps elsewhere. The Palestinians also seemed to accept the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, provided that minorities had full rights within it. Al Jazeera’s leaks indicate a missed opportunity.
Had Ehud Olmert, the Israeli leader who was ousted just before the end of the Annapolis talks of 2007-08, stayed on, one of the world’s bitterest conflicts might have come to an end. But they also point to a future possibility. The Palestinians’ willingness to make concessions gives the lie to the notion, widely mooted in Israel when the process jams, that there is “no Palestinian partner” for peace. America may feel exhausted and rebuffed, but if it pressed Israel to match the Palestinians’ flexibility, the process might just creak forwards once more.
@ Leaders
Israel and Palestine
THE sadly misnamed Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is proceeding precisely nowhere. America, its chief mediator for the past three decades, has formally taken time out. Israel’s government seems blithely uninterested. The Palestinians are no longer talking to the Israelis. And now, thanks to leaks about the Palestinian conduct of the negotiations from Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite-television channel, it is widely mooted that the process has been killed off altogether.
Diplomacy is indeed comatose at present, but the leaks do not suggest it is past praying for. Rather the opposite. They show clearly the outlines of a possible deal, they suggest that the gaps between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in 2008 were narrow, and they demonstrate that the Palestinians were far readier to make the necessary compromises than Israel’s backers, especially in America, had given them credit for. The leaks were presumably motivated by enemies of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader.
Their main revelation is that he bent over backwards to make a deal. Since no deal was done, his willingness to make concessions is being portrayed by his harder-line opponents in the Palestinian diaspora and among the Arab world’s rejectionists as cowardice, collaboration, duplicity and incompetence. They present it as a vindication of the bleaker alternative vision of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that in theory rejects the notion of a Jewish state altogether and has in the past been readier to espouse violence to achieve its aims. Some of Mr Abbas’s critics are calling for him to step down; many of them castigate him and his team for saying one thing in public and another in private. That’s how diplomacy works As a critique of the way the Palestinians were conducting their negotiations, this is daft. Diplomacy necessarily involves tentatively exploring, in private, ideas that at first seem radical: talks would never get anywhere if the parties involved offered only what was easily conceded. It is not clear whether these were firm offers or merely the airing of possibilities; nor, since the leaks were presumably selective, whether Israel demonstrated any matching flexibility.
Still, on all the most critical issues Mr Abbas and his aides showed a remarkable willingness to soothe Israeli sensitivities and take on their own hardliners in order to win a minimal yet independent Palestinian state. Such readiness to take risks for peace deserves praise, not condemnation. The Palestinians evidently accepted just about all the conditions laid out by Bill Clinton in the “parameters” he proposed as his term of office ended in early 2001. For instance, Mr Abbas’s chief negotiator privately admitted the futility of insisting on the Palestinians’ cherished “right of return”, whereby 5m surviving refugees and their descendants would be able to go back to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. He accepted that only a symbolic few thousand of them could return if Israel were to remain a predominantly Jewish state. He also indicated a willingness to go along with a broadly ethnic partition of Jerusalem, with Israel keeping most of its surrounding settlements provided that the Palestinians could have the core of the eastern side of the city as their capital with wide access to the rest of the West Bank. This is an eminently sensible plan.
Mr Abbas mooted the possibility of an international committee to oversee the city’s holiest sites. Palestinians (and other Muslims) should have access to the area around the Dome of the Rock, while the Jews could pray at the Western (“Wailing”) Wall below it. He also recognised the sense of letting Israel keep the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank close to the 1967 border, which would be adjusted to let Palestinians receive territory through land swaps elsewhere. The Palestinians also seemed to accept the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, provided that minorities had full rights within it. Al Jazeera’s leaks indicate a missed opportunity.
Had Ehud Olmert, the Israeli leader who was ousted just before the end of the Annapolis talks of 2007-08, stayed on, one of the world’s bitterest conflicts might have come to an end. But they also point to a future possibility. The Palestinians’ willingness to make concessions gives the lie to the notion, widely mooted in Israel when the process jams, that there is “no Palestinian partner” for peace. America may feel exhausted and rebuffed, but if it pressed Israel to match the Palestinians’ flexibility, the process might just creak forwards once more.
@ Leaders
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