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All Process, No Peace

(Weekly Standard) Elliott Abrams - In Israel, there is deep suspicion of the Obama administration, both at official levels and among the population at large. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to impose a partial settlement freeze should not have been a surprise despite the months of friction with Washington; for any Israeli government, relations with the U.S. are a central strategic matter, while a (partial) moratorium in West Bank construction is not. In the coming year Israel may have to deal with the Iranian nuclear program - and therefore needs to avoid tension with Washington whenever possible. One official of a previous Israeli government put it this way to me: "Bibi agreed to this freeze to enable Israel to concentrate on Iran without the daily background noise about the settlements." Israel will always go far to keep relations with Washington on an even keel. The anti-Israel bias in the UN's Goldstone Report astonished Israelis, but what hurt them more was the acceptance by the "international community" of Goldstone's assault. So the ten-month construction moratorium - to reduce tension with Obama, and to shift the blame for refusing new peace negotiations to the Palestinians - was approved 11-1 by Israel's security cabinet. No matter who sits at what table, there will be no serious negotiations: The Israelis and Palestinians are too far apart on the core issues to reach a deal now, and the Fatah and PLO leadership (having lost the last elections to Hamas and having lost Gaza to a Hamas coup) is too weak now to negotiate compromises and sell them to the Palestinian people. For two decades the "peace process" has failed to end the conflict. Yet there is a way forward, the one sensible option never really tried: to start at the beginning rather than the end, by creating a Palestinian state from the bottom up, institution by institution, and ending with Israeli withdrawal and negotiation of a state only when Palestinian political life is truly able to sustain self-government, maintain law and order, and prevent terrorism against Israel. This may seem like a formula for endless delay but it is in fact the fastest way forward. The writer, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.
2010-01-22 08:34:53
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