Henry Siegman, Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and long-time Middle East analyst, is a regular commentator on the Charlie Rose Show. While I invariably agree with Siegman’s “take” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I often find him ponderous and lugubrious in the way that diplomats can be.
But I have to say that his Sharon and the Future of Palestine is a profound and savage critique of Israeli government policy toward the Palestinians. His essay is depressing, but deeply persuasive and an important read for those concerned about the conflict. Please note that the article was written shortly before Arafat’s death.
Siegman begins by demolishing one of the dominant theories among Mideast pundits, that Sharon will be the next DeGaulle–a strong military man who renounces his hard line past in order to embrace peace for his people and thereby cement his reputation as a great leader while creating a historic legacy. Siegman concludes his demolition of this questionable theory with this:
Unfortunately, these views are based on a misreading of both Israeli and Palestinian realities. Sharon is not about to agree to the minimal conditions for a workable Palestinian state. His unshakable resolve to avoid dealing with the Palestinians-even to prevent chaos in the wake of the promised withdrawal from Gaza-and to widen Jewish settlement activity throughout the West Bank, which has increased following the announcement of his disengagement plans, gives the lie to such wishful thinking.
Another theory embraced by an apparent consensus of Israelis (which alarmingly includes most of the Israeli Left) is that Sharon’s proposed Gaza withdrawal is an important step toward a lasting peace. Siegman notes that the Sharon plan is entirely unilateral. In fact, one of the beauties of it as far as Sharon and the Israeli hardliners is that it completely ignores the Palestinians giving them absolutely no input into the process. It is Israel’s fait accompli for the Palestinians. And it requires that Sharon give no further concessions to them after returning Gaza, thus weakening any U.S., European or Palestinian demands for the return of West Bank land.
Siegman predicts that the long term prospects for the Gaza disengagement plan are ominous:
Sharon’s insistence that withdrawal from Gaza will be entirely an Israeli initiative and will not be negotiated with any Palestinian leaders seems designed to produce a state of anarchy in Gaza, one that will enable him to say, “Look at the violent, corrupt, and primitive people we must contend with; they can’t run anything on their own.”
Next, our analyst turns to the chilling interview Dov Weisglass recently gave to Haaretz (see my Weisgalss Says Gaza Pullout to Prevent Palestinian State) in which he brags about how Israel has permanently quashed the movement for a Palestinian state while in the process pulling the wool over the eyes of President Bush and the Congress. He says that the Gaza pullout
“is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” As Ephraim Sneh, a Labor member of the Knesset, observed, “Formaldehyde, it should be noted, is the liquid in which dead bodies are preserved.”
I think Weisglass would make Machiavelli proud, don’t you?
Where this essay is especially strong is in peeling off the external layers of posturing and hypocrisy in U.S. and Israeli pronouncements to reveal the true intentions behind the words. He points out that both Sharon and the State Department engaged in a hypocritical little tarantella over Weissglas’s statement:
After Sharon’s office issued an entirely predictable-and patently dishonest-statement that he remains committed to the road map, a US State Department spokesman immediately declared that not only does this administration not doubt Israel’s continued adherence to the road map and to President Bush’s two-state “vision,” but there is “no cause” for such doubt.
What is remarkable about all of this is…the arrogance that allows Weissglas to flaunt Israel’s deception without fearing that it would damage Sharon’s plan, so certain are he and Sharon that they have Bush and Congress in their pockets.
Siegman does not spare the Bush Administration either in this analysis. He says that either Bush was terribly naive in signing the April 14th letter which conceded Israel’s right to retain West Bank settlements in a final peace deal; or he was deliberately colluding with Israel’s deception.
Our analyst rightly warns that neither Sharon nor Bush should suffer from the delusion that the Palestinians will somehow tacitly accept or go along with Israel’s plans because they “leave Israel in control of the West Bank and defer Palestinian statehood for decades while Israel continues to annex territory and fragment what is left into isolated cantons.”
The Settlers: a State Within a State
Siegman notes an alarming new trend in the political situation within Israel–the increasing power and influence of the settler movement. In a wicked play on the Greater Israel formula for “two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean” (Jordan and Israel, but no Palestine), he contends that there are already two states there (but the second it not Jordan): Israel and the settler state. His elucidation of this concept is both bold and savage:
In that settler state, Israeli norms and laws do not apply, and Israeli police and the IDF largely defer to the settlers. Settlers who injure or murder Palestinian farmers and destroy their property and farm lands are rarely arrested and almost always go unpunished.
This settler state has succeeded in recruiting a network of supporters in the State of Israel, including cabinet ministers who head various ministries that have been channeling to them- surreptitiously and criminally, without any public accountability-hundreds of millions of dollars for the expansion of settlements and infrastructure. These settlers simply do not recognize the right of the State of Israel and its elected officials to interfere with their messianically inspired rule in this settler state.
If the average Israeli understood this development, I wonder what they’d think. That it was a preposterous idea, just like Sharon’s idea 20 years ago of putting 100,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza (there are now 200,000)?! Siegman here proposes a bold and incisive idea which I’d never considered.
Siegman predicts dire and ominous consequences for Israel if it pursues Sharon’s policies to their logical conclusion:
It is one of the ironies of history that Jews-whether in the US, Europe, or Israel-who were disproportionately involved in struggles for universal human rights and civil liberties should now be supporting policies of a right-wing Israeli government that is threatening to turn Israel into a racist state. For if Sharon leverages his promised withdrawal from Gaza into an Israeli presence in the West Bank that is impossible to dislodge-a point that some observers insist has already been reached-a racist regime is surely what his policies will produce.
Demolishing the occupied land=security argument
He continues his discourse by attacking the underlying principles of the theory that Palestinian terror is a mortal threat to Israel’s existence. Not true he says. And even if it were true, it would be much easier to bring the Palestinian terrorists into line if they had the responsibility of a state of their own to maintain. With a state comes responsibilities. Arafat could afford to be an international rogue, adventurer and opportunist. But the first prime minister of an independent Palestine would not be able to ignore anti-Israel terror born within his midst.
There are also those who maintain that Israel must remain in the Occupied Territories because they are a vital security buffer to Israel proper. Again, not so says Siegman. Most Israelis said the same about southern Lebanon, which became a bloody quicksand that sucked Israel into a devastating guerilla war with Hezbollah. He correctly points out that Israel’s northern border is now much quieter than it ever was when Israel occupied Lebanese territory.
Israel’s security fence is universally endorsed by the Israeli populace as a guarantee of their security. Again, Siegman demurs. He quotes Nachum Barnea, one of Israel’s most widely read and influential political commentators, who declares what should have been self-evident to the Israelis who planned the fence:
{The path] should have been on the Green Line, without deviations or trickery. That way it could have been built quickly, without legal delays and political damage, as a security fence, not a political border…. But the route planners, from the prime minister down, preferred to try to pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Instead of focusing on security they preferred to play politics.
More Israeli Misconceptions
In Sharon’s strange world view, the Palestinians would only merit a state of their own once they satisfied a long string of onerous conditions imposed on them by Israel. Siegman notes acidly:
Palestinians have the right to a state in the West Bank and Gaza not because they meet certain standards set by Sharon, the man who aspires to acquiring much of their land, or because Bush has a “vision” of two states living side by side, but because of universally recognized principles of national self-determination.
The Palestinian claim to what the international community affirmed in a 1947 UN resolution as their rightful patrimony has not been annulled by Arafat’s bad behavior or by the failure of the Palestinian Authority’s institutions…
In this age of pre-emptive wars, state-sponsored murder and political calculations divorced from moral reality, it’s important to note that there are rock bottom ethical principles that undergird international relations and which may only be ignored at one’s peril.
Zionist hardliners like to gird their arguments with the rejectionist theory of Palestinian nationalism: that all Palestinian leaders, no matter what they say publicly, yearn for the destruction of Israel. Amos Malka, chief of military intelligence under Ehud Barak gave the lie to this theory. He also took on other intelligence officers who claimed to possess intelligence that proved Arafat’s goal was to dismantle the State of Israel. This contention is a fraud, he said because there is no such intelligence.
Abandon a facilitated settlement–embrace intervention
One of Siegman’s boldest ideas here is to suggest that, if either party refuses to embrace the golden opportunity for peace reflected in Arafat’s death, then the world community should abandon the policy of facilitating an agreement between them. Indeed, it has long appeared to me that the hope that Israel and the Palestinians would ever align their positions closely enough to negotiate a settlement is bogus. Instead, the UN, European Union, Russia and the U.S. should convene an international conference, not dependent on Israeli-Palestinian approval or even participation, at which they would negotiate principles for permanently resolving the conflict.
These principles would include provisions for equal territorial exchanges between both parties, the Palestinian Right of Return may only be exercised within Palestinian territory, and that the Arab portions of East Jerusalem would become Palestine’s capital. The Temple Mount would be in Palestinian control while the Western Wall would fall under Israeli sovereignty. An international third party would administer other holy places.
The provisions could not be changed unless both parties agreed. Any party rejecting them would be subject to immediate economic and diplomatic sanctions. While it’s certainly true that Israel might “tough it out” and reject such a peace deal, the chances would be good that even a neanderthal like Sharon would realize that he can hoodwink George Bush, but not the entire world:
The point of such an international effort would be to change the calculation of costs and benefits that both sides engage in. That calculation would be significantly affected by the prospect that the offending party’s diplomatic and economic relations with much of the international community would be damaged, and that it would have no prospect of receiving international recognition for unilateral measures it may take.
That is an outcome even a right-wing Israeli government cannot be indifferent to, as is evident from recent warnings from within Israel’s foreign ministry about the destructive consequences of Israeli policies that are seen by the European Union as transforming Israel into an apartheid state. Despite the derision expressed by Sharon in response to the International Court of Justice decision about the illegality of the route of Israel’s separation fence, that opinion has affected decisions since made by Israel’s Supreme Court and the IDF regarding the route of the fence. Even Sharon’s right-wing government experienced a shock when all European Union member states voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution calling for the removal of the fence.
Let’s hope Siegman is wrong and Sharon surprises us.
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