September 17 , 2010
Pointless Peace Talks with Netanyahu
Last week President Obama finally pressured the Palestinians to agree to direct negotiations with Israel. On the face of it, this would seem a step forward. But unfortunately, these talks are being conducted with Benjamin Netanyahu, the extreme right-wing Prime Minister of Israel, whose government depends on the support of the religious Shas party, whose head Rabbi just called on God to kill all the Palestinians. That would certainly be one possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!
True negotiations would require a basic understanding of what the parameters of a settlement would be. Right now, Israel holds all the cards. The Palestinians are a subjugated and occupied people, with no real power of their own, and the only thing they can offer the Israelis is to stop insisting on their rights as human beings. What the Israelis want is to colonize the West Bank in peace, and not have the Palestinians complain about it.
There is one small fly in this ointment. There are too many Palestinians, and the rest of the world seems, at times, to care about them. 3.6 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza, and another 1.2 million in Israel. For Israel to continue its occupation, it will have to bear the shame of being seen as an apartheid state. Eventually, this could result in meaningful international pressure on Israel, despite the American diplomatic umbrella that Israel has enjoyed. So the Israelis are willing to let go of the Palestinians, just as long as they can keep the land, or at least large parts of it.
What Netanyahu is willing to contemplate is the one and a half state solution. There will be a full sovereign state for the Israelis, and for the Palestinians there will be bits and pieces of land on which the Palestinians can be crowded and controlled. What Israel wants to do is keep all of East Jerusalem, keep the Al-Aqsa mosque, incorporate vast sections of the West Bank, and annex the entire Jordan River valley. What will be left for the Palestinians will be little pieces entirely surrounded by Israeli soldiers.
These pieces will not even have control of their own air space, water or borders. It will not be a nation, but just an enlarged version of the giant open-air prison that is Gaza. The Israelis will scream to the world about how “generous” their peace offer is, and how evil and anti-Semitic and irrational the Palestinians are for not jumping for it. This was what Ehud Barak offered at Camp David 10 years ago, and he then claimed his offer was unbelievably generous, a claim that was accepted and believed by America.
Obama has been completely outmaneuvered by Netanyahu. Obama is now a wounded President, and he is about to lose control of Congress. He has neither the will nor the political capital to pressure Israel. Netanyahu has completely turned the tables on him.
For the Palestinians, these pointless negotiations will be a complete waste of time. While Hamas may try to disrupt the negotiations with acts of terrorism, it really can just stand by and wait for Netanyahu to do what he does best. In a few weeks, the Israelis will restart the settlement building in full force, after several months of a mild slowdown. This will reveal that the real purpose of these negotiations, and all the negotiations Israel has entered into in the last 17 years, has been, to make possible the further colonization of the West Bank.
If an Israeli government really wanted to end the conflict, the deal is there. The Arab League Peace Plan offers Israel full normalization not just with the Palestinians, but all the Arab nations. It just has to return the land it grabbed by force in 1967, go back to the international border, and allow the Palestinians to have a fully sovereign state on the West Bank and Gaza, along with a just resolution of the refugee issue.
Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
