Is a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict REALLY possible?
The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behaviour of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.
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As Stephen Walt noted, the angry remarks quoted by Goldberg show how much top U.S. officials (and their president) would like to put pressure on Israel to alter its behaviour.
If Netanyahu has written off the Obama administration that presumably means he believes he has nothing to fear from it, but could he be wrong? Is it beyond doubt that Obama, kicked in the teeth by the mid-term elections, is now the lamest of lame duck presidents?
My reading between the lines of what has been reported to date about the discussions with Iran is that with the mid-term elections out of the way Obama (and therefore the P5+1) will reach an agreement with Iran before the Republicans take control of the Senate in January. He wants a deal because it’s in America’s own best interests, because he needs Iran’s help with the management of the mayhem in Iraq and Syria and because he needs to demonstrate that he can still get things done.
If he does do a deal with Iran and make it stick, and if he survives (I don’t rule out the possibility that he could be assassinated), the question arising will be this.
In what is left of his presidency does he have the courage, the balls, to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most Arabs and other Muslims everywhere could accept?
Saudi Arabia will be almost as furious as Netanyahu, the neo-fascists to the right of him and the Zionist lobby in America if there is a P5+1 agreement with Iran, but Obama could appease the Saudis by saying and meaning that his plan for ending the Israel-Palestine conflict will be based on their Arab League endorsed initiative of 2002. (This offers Israel peace and a normalization of relations with the entire Arab and wider Muslim world in exchange for an end to its 1967 occupation. As it is presently worded this Arab peace initiative calls for East Jerusalem to be the capital of the Palestinian state, but there would be no Arab objection to the whole of Jerusalem becoming an open, undivided city and the capital of two states. The Arabs are also prepared to compromise on the matter of the return of the dispossessed Palestinian refugees by accepting, as the pragmatic Arafat and his senior leadership colleagues did without saying so in public, that the return would have to be restricted to the territory of the Palestinian state. And the truth is that even Hamas would accept this compromise if it was approved by a referendum).
If there is an agreement with Iran, and if he was truly wise, Obama would follow it up without delay by inviting top Saudi and Iranian leaders to the White House to urge them to end their regional (Sunni-Shia) rivalry. If it could be ended, and if Egypt’s President Sisi was put on notice that American funding and other assistance would cease if his tyranny continued, the Arab world could be transformed. What I mean is that its descent into violent chaos and more not less authoritarianism could be stopped; and the ideas and hopes which inspired the “Arab Spring” could be given new and sustainable life.
Now I must answer my headline question – Is a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict really possible?
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