November 12, 2009

By Ted Belman

My own view is that the peace process should end as should the pressure on Israel. I believe that a solution would evolve naturally. The peace process merely distorts market forces which would ordinarily lead the parties to work it out. Removing external forces is like letting capitalism do its thing to find solutions to economic problems.

But as the rest of this article points out, there is far from a consensus on the matter.

JPOST says is Israel is Fighting the credibility gap

Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington and Paris this week had a single, overriding goal: overcoming a stubborn credibility gap Israel seems to suffer abroad over its stated desire to make peace with the Palestinians.

[..] The more likely source for this skepticism seems to be an effort to will Israeli intransigence into being so as to match the current Palestinian inability - born of internal Palestinian politicking - to come to the negotiating table.

Diplomats (and, as with Thomas Friedman, those who spend most of their days with them,) are unused to seeing a “conflict” in which the tactically weaker side might be the more belligerent one. With the Palestinian Authority demanding a total settlement freeze as a precondition for discussions, diplomats are striving to find an equivalent Israeli unwillingness to reach peace.

Maybe that’s why Netanyahu is playing the peace card so strongly. But is his efforts merely tactical or does he genuinely believe that there is a good chance for a deal.

Normally I would argue that his moves are tactical only save for the Haaretz report Netanyahu told Obama: Peace talks must yield deal

[..] At Monday’s meeting, Netanyahu sought to convince Obama that he wants to conduct serious negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to reach a peace agreement. He said that Abbas “must not be written off in advance.”

“[Anwar] Sadat was also written off at first,” Netanyahu told Obama. “Abbas is at the end of his career, and he will be thinking about what he will leave to his nation.”

Netanyahu said that Israeli politicians are urging him to conduct “a process for the sake of process,” either merely for the sake of holding negotiations with the Palestinians, or in order to prevent a further outbreak of violence. “I disagree with my colleagues on both sides,” Netanyahu said. “We need to try to reach an agreement.”

Netanyahu asked Obama to convince Abbas to begin negotiations with him. He expressed understanding for the political difficulties that Abbas found himself in several weeks ago over the Goldstone Report, when he succumbed to U.S. and Israeli pressure and agreed that the PA would not bring the matter before the United Nations, only to reverse his position. “Leaders need to do the right thing, and Abbas needs to be seen as such a leader,” Netanyahu said.

“The absence of a political process would be deadly for the Palestinians and also for us,” Netanyahu warned, “because that would strengthen Hamas, which in turn would be a victory for Iran.” He and the president also discussed concrete steps that would serve to advance the process. In his speech to the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly in Washington, Netanyahu said that Israel is ready to make great concessions for the sake of peace.

Netanyahu told Obama that any final-status deal with the Palestinians will have to include a solution to the danger posed by the introduction of advanced weaponry into the territories. “It can’t be that Israel will be left with a piece of paper while arms smuggling goes on,” he said. “We must create security arrangements that will prevent the introduction of weapons across the border.”

He pointed to the advanced weapons now possessed by Hezbollah and Hamas, which are not made in Lebanon or the Gaza Strip, but are smuggled in from abroad, and gave as an example the arms seized recently from the freighter Francop. “This is a critical problem, to which an answer must be given,” Netanyahu warned. “We suffered rockets twice, from Lebanon and from Gaza, and we do not want to suffer them a third time, in much larger doses.”

The prime minister was impressed with Obama’s knowledge of the details. According to Netanyahu, there is a major difference between his own image as someone who rejects peace, and his actual stance, and the same is true of Obama’s attitude on Iran. Netanyahu praised Obama to his Israeli interlocutors for his efforts to combat the Goldstone Report and the administration’s actions against the Iranian threat.

Sever Plocker writing in YNET thinks otherwise in Death of a ‘process’

[..] Israeli leaders are not ready to make diplomatic decisions, and the Palestinians are also not ready for such decisions. Neither are the Arabs or the Europeans.

Such decisions would constitute an incredible mess, which all sides wish to avoid: A rift within Israel, a rift within Palestinian society, unrest in conservative Arab states, and demands for major financial aid from Europe and America (now, when Western governments are facing huge debts?)

Regional and global leaders are uninterested in peace and are not pursuing peace. They are chasing “peace kites” and are interested in the mirage of a “peace process”: An empty process that is maintained through inertia, as Thomas freedman noted this week.

“The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play,” Friedman wrote in the New York Times. “It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés – and that no one believes any of it anymore.”

Friedman urged the current US Administration to walk out of the show, leaving the parties to the conflict on their own. In his view, the American demands for reviving the “process” merely serve to absolve Israelis and Palestinians of the need to make decisions. If they wish to maintain the status quo and remain inactive, and if it doesn’t bother them, it shouldn’t bother America. Or as I phrase it: You don’t want peace? No need for it then.

There is indeed no point in holding negotiations for the sake of negotiations: It’s a flight to nowhere. The leaders are scared to take the helm and the passengers have become used to living their lives at the terminal, waiting for a miracle, for pressure, for next year, for the next prime minister, for the next president, or for the next elections. The “process,” which marked 16 years of existence in September, was created to that end.

Let’s take our time, say foot-dragging fans on both sides. We shouldn’t rush, they explain earnestly; we must not force an end to this. There’s a time and a place for everything. We can’t finish off the conflict in a hurry (that is, within 16 years.)

The Israelis are hoping that with the passage of time, the force of habit would win out. The Palestinians are hoping that with the passage of time, the force of demography would win out. And this requires time. More time. And more time. Until the solution appears on its own.

In the absence of American pressure for renewal of the talks, one of the two following options will materialize: Either a new Intifada will break out (the likelihood is 51%) or alternately, both sides will start seeking and creating new solutions (the likelihood of this is 49%)

Former Army Chief Shaul Mofaz already started the trend by presenting this week a revolutionary diplomatic plan (that is, revolutionary in respect to the common Israeli and Palestinian perceptions.) The conservatives both here and there rushed to dismiss it because it rejects the essence – that is, the Mofaz plan requires them to move, act, agree, and implement. Move? Act? Change? Who, we?