Israel at 75: What peace process? - opinion

In the past 75 years, a great deal of time and effort has been expended by a great many people – kings and presidents and prime ministers among them – seeking a possible peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. 

Although much ink, paper, and film has been used up in covering this series of consistently unsuccessful efforts, the peace process still spends long periods below the political horizon. The latest hiatus has lasted nearly 10 years. 

Yet it refuses to die. 

Its most recent manifestation surfaced in, of all places, Beijing where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spent June 13-16 there on a state visit. China’s President Xi Jinping has more than once proposed resolving the Palestinian issue by way of the two-state solution, and Abbas was following up on the April announcement by China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, that China was ready to facilitate peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. 

Nevertheless, the chances of anything substantive emerging from this Chinese-inspired initiative seem remote, especially since Sino-US relations are at a low ebb and negotiations would be impossible without US involvement.

A 10-year period without any attempts at an Israeli-Palestinian peace

July 29, 2023, marks the 10th anniversary of the last time Israelis and Palestinians sat down together to discuss a possible end to the interminable dispute. On July 29, 2013, by dint of a truly herculean diplomatic effort, then-US secretary of state, John Kerry, succeeded in bringing Israeli and PA representatives together to shake hands at the start of a new determined attempt to make peace. 

Then US president Barack Obama was in his second term in office, and as determined as ever to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. His first unsuccessful effort was based on a 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank, that he persuaded Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to initiate. Abbas frittered away most of the 10 months quibbling over technical details and seeking Arab support for the negotiations. 

Finally, with less than a month of the building moratorium left, the two parties met for the first time, but when the 10 months came to an end on September 26, 2010, Abbas – backed by Obama – demanded a renewal of the construction freeze as the price for continuing the talks. Netanyahu could not gain the political backing to do this, and the peace initiative ground to a halt.

For his second effort, Obama charged his secretary of state, John Kerry, with overseeing the process. He could not have chosen a more dedicated negotiator. Kerry was tireless in his diplomatic efforts, traveling constantly to and around the Middle East to get all parties to agree on the terms for peace talks to take place. Finally, Kerry succeeded, and on July 29, 2013, Tzipi Livni for Israel, and Saeed Erekat for the PA, met under his aegis.

Politicians do not generally relish being faced with their past pronouncements, but comparing what was said back in 2013 with current attitudes highlights the hardening of sentiment that has taken place over the past decade.

If Netanyahu currently envisages any two-state Palestine at all – a dubious hypothesis given the nature of the coalition he heads – he sees it, according to a recent statement, as a demilitarized entity, only partially sovereign, since its security would be controlled by Israel. His vision was simpler back in the day. 

Addressing Congress in May 2011 he said: “Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples − a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state… No distortion of history can deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land. But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable, and independent people in their own state.”

Abbas’s current position is also no longer what it was. 

These days he constantly denies the Jewish connection to the Holy Land. On May 15, 2023 Abbas claimed that the Western Wall – the retaining wall of the Temple Mount – and the mount itself, on which Solomon built the Second Temple, belonged: “exclusively and only to the Islamic Wakf.” 

He adopted a far more conciliatory tone in 2012. In an interview on Israeli TV in the November he said: “Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital…The West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, everything else is Israel.” 

Addressing the UN General Assembly a few days later, he said: “We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel. Rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine... to live in peace and security alongside the State of Israel…”

The optimism marking these statements by Netanyahu and Abbas infected those initiating the negotiations in 2013. Such was the heady feeling that success was just around the corner, that jointly they declared they required no more than nine months to reach an agreement.

Kerry’s carefully crafted peace project was effectively ambushed by Hamas, an organization established specifically to overthrow and remove Israel from the Middle East. 

Back in 1993 Hamas had opposed the Oslo Accords which recognized Israel’s legitimacy, and accused then-PA leader Yasser Arafat of betraying the Palestinian cause. Later they opposed Abbas supporting a two-state solution and refused to regard it as a stepping stone toward eventually gaining the whole of Mandate Palestine. They attempted to wrest control of the PA from Abbas, and continue to try to do so.

To scupper the peace talks in 2014, the Hamas leadership played a master stroke. They hoodwinked Abbas into believing they were prepared to put aside their differences with Fatah and enter a coalition with them. The nine months allotted to the peace negotiations were due to end on April 30. In mid-April, Hamas set up secret talks with the PA in Gaza. On April 23 Abbas made an announcement that shocked the diplomatic world and brought the talks to an immediate end.

Fatah and Hamas, he declared, had agreed on an historic reconciliation. Within the next five weeks Hamas would join an Abbas-led Palestinian government, and parliamentary and presidential elections would be held within six months. Netanyahu responded by saying Abbas could have peace with Israel, or an alliance with Hamas, but he could not have both. He would never negotiate with a government containing Hamas leaders dedicated to liquidating Israel.

Abbas had been duped and Hamas had achieved its objective of blowing the whole peace process, and especially the two-state solution, out of the water. Needless to say, neither a united Palestinian government nor presidential and parliamentary elections ever materialized.

For Hamas, as for those Palestinians outside Gaza who subscribe to its philosophy, the concept of a sovereign Palestine living alongside a sovereign Israel is totally unacceptable. 

They regard the whole area “from the river to the sea” (that is, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean) as Arab territory to which Israel has no right. Their aim is to eradicate Israel altogether and ensure that no Jews remain in the area. The terms Judenrein (“empty of Jews”) or Judenfrei (“free of Jews”), with their chilling Nazi connotations, are entirely apt to describe their purpose. Indeed, the connection between earlier Islamist leaders and the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, and their common stance on the “Final Solution” is well documented. 

All that can be expected from Islamist fundamentalists, their eyes set on eventually subjecting the whole world to Sharia law, is constant opposition to Israel’s presence. 

Given that the two-state solution is an article of faith for China, as for much of world opinion, the Chinese and all those holding it will sooner or later have to face up to an awkward truth. In a two-state solution, one of the two states would be Israel, and Hamas’s whole purpose is to eliminate Israel from the Middle East. So until Hamas, which rules over half the Palestinian population, has been out-maneuvered or disempowered, two states can never become practical politics.  ■

The writer’s latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com