Syndication
Grasp the Promise of Annapolis
Opinion
Print this article
Email this article
Other articles by Daniel Levy
More in Forward ForumEven the most hardened of Middle East cynics could be excused for momentarily feeling a fluttering of hope after witnessing the scenes at this week’s peace conference in Annapolis, Md.
Israel’s much-maligned prime minister, Ehud Olmert, conducted himself with consumate dignity, displaying a rare capacity to combine unabashed national pride with sincere empathy for the other. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, met Olmert’s outstretched hand with an unflinching commitment to a negotiated resolution of this bloody conflict and to a realization of his own nation’s aspirations that would not be at Israel’s expense. Both men have developed a degree of genuine mutual respect and appreciation, and they were on display at Annapolis.
Only President Bush came up short, sticking to a simplistic good-versus-evil narrative that was not only patronizing, divisive and lacking any resonance with the Arab world, but might very well prove counterproductive. Nonetheless, the Bush administration, and especially Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, can allow itself a gentle pat on the back this weekend: A joint statement was achieved, the conference was well attended, the speeches were uplifting, and Bush personally committed himself to the process.
The self-congratulatory moment, though, should be a fleeting one.
This week’s peace conference assiduously avoided even a flirtation with the serious substance and content of a peace agreement. The warm words at Annapolis will be followed by pledges of hard cash at a donors’ conference scheduled for Paris in three weeks, but after that the testing ground returns to the far more hostile terrain of the Middle East.
If, several weeks from now, the negotiations are perceived to have stalled and the situation on the ground to have deteriorated or just stayed the same, then the smiling Annapolis summiteers will turn ashen-faced and their detractors back home will claim vindication. Such a scenario is all too imaginable; a return to mutual recrimination, blame games and American disengagement would be perhaps the bookmaker’s favorite.
As coincidence would have it, the Annapolis gathering fell on the same week as the 60th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of Resolution 181. Separated by six decades, these events are in fact intimately and perhaps decisively linked.
Anyone who has supped at the table of Zionist history has that night and the U.N. vote indelibly etched into memory: 33 in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions. This was the great moment of international recognition for the Zionist cause.
The rest is history: The Arabs rejected partition, brave young Israel survived a war of independence and a threatening alliance in 1967, and the country has since grown middle-aged awaiting an Arab peace partner. All national narratives tend to play fast and loose with the historical record, and ours is no exception.
So where do we find ourselves in November 2007? Sixteen Arab states, including all of Israel’s neighbors, attended the Annapolis conference. This comes five years after the Arab League adopted an initiative that holds out the prospect of recognition and normal relations for Israel with the Arab world once comprehensive peace is achieved.
Even before that, at the Madrid conference in 1991 and at the Sharm el Sheikh summit in 1996, the Arab states stood alongside Israel when the United States convened previous peacemaking efforts. Some dismiss the significance of these developments and point to the curmudgeonly refusal of the Saudis to shake hands, but as Olmert himself quipped this week, “What did you expect, tea in Riyadh tomorrow?” The Arab states have actually softened their own position by taking steps toward normalization in advance of Israel ending the occupation.
The historic success of 1947 was a territorial division whereby 55% of mandatory Palestine would become a national home for the Jewish people, while 45% would be an Arab-Palestinian state. The prospect held out by the Arab initiative and the Annapolis summit is of Arab, Palestinian and world recognition and support for an Israel on 78% of that original territory.
You do the math. The Arab world is saying yes to less than half of what it was offered — and rejected — 60 years ago.
Some may ask why we ought to be defeatist now; history, such critics have been known to argue, proves that the longer we hold out, the more we get. This approach ignores the devastating damage done to Israel’s standing in the world and to its security, as well as disregards how the country’s priorities have been skewed by the ongoing occupation and absence of internationally recognized permanent borders.
Are we really prepared to continue paying over the coming decades the human, material and moral price in order to edge the percentage of land we can call ours from 78% to, what, 80% or 81%?
Grasping the promise of the Annapolis conference and the Arab initiative means saying yes to 78% and withdrawing to the 1967 lines on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and on the Golan Heights. There can be reciprocal and minor modifications to those lines, such as land swaps, that would allow for incorporating the vast majority of settlers into Israel’s new and internationally recognized borders, but the basic parameters of the deal are pretty clear. Israel would be wise to seize the post-Annapolis moment, while the Arab consensus on the Saudi initiative still holds and before there is a further waning of American influence in the region.
It would be cozy and comforting if all this could be achieved in accordance with Bush’s division of the world into moderates and extremists, but that is as intellectually lazy as it is practically unachievable. The challenge to the Annapolis framework is not only the need to summon the political courage to embrace the 78% option, it is also to build a more inclusive process that creates openings for actors who will be crucial to the credibility and sustainability of any secure peace — in particular Hamas. Engaging Hamas, even indirectly, will not be easy, but Hamas, too, is inching toward an acceptance of the 1967 lines. In the context of an agreement that enjoys Arab consensus, an end of occupation and an acceptance of its own political role, Hamas’s acquiescence is far from inconceivable.
Annapolis represents Israel getting to yes with the Arab world. Now Israel and its supporters in America should declare a resounding yes to 78%. Last time I checked, we were a people who recognized a good deal when we saw one.
Daniel Levy is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and The Century Foundation. He served in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office under Ehud Barak and was an official negotiator at the Oslo II and Taba peace talks.
Comments
Daniel, darling, you are hearing voices again. Take your medication. Listen to Ereket at Annapolis and Hamas in Gaza. They are saying NO as loud as they can. The Syrians are saying No, The Saudi's say NO, even to a handshake. The Iranians and their friends say NO. Try hard to avoid being a fool. Barak, your mentor, is a fool,or worse, and Jews died.
Observer; There is no "Palestine." This is just a name that Israel was given by the Romans. It has no Arab connection. There has never been a "Palestinian" country, language, culture, or people. Jews were the first to be called Palestinians. You're an Arab whose indigenous to Arabia. Your family is occupying Israel, the homeland of the Jews. Besides occupying Jewish land the Arabs have killed thousands of Jewish women and children through terrorists means. THAT IS ETHNIC GENOCIDE!
Peace requires de-politicizing the Bible and the Quran
A single state for Arabs and Jews in Palestine is the solution. Politicizing Genesis 15:18 politicized the Quran; instigating a religious war that could go on for a thousand years. The Zionist dream of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine is unsustainable, unless the Palestinians vanish. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Arab countries for centuries. In Coningsby, Benjamin Disraeli, first and so far the only Jewish British Prime Minister (1868 and 1874-1880), described in glowing terms the “halcyon centuries” in Muslim Spain where the “children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves.” Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512) encouraged thousands of Jews to settle in the Muslim Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain. Islam venerates Judaism. The Quran made Abraham as the first Muslim. Islam is the Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14 is named after Abraham and, to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12. Today, Jewish derived Arabic proper names are common. Around the time of Israel’s creation, more than 850,000 Jews migrated from Arab lands, 600,000 going to Israel. That the migration was due to Arab maltreatment of Jews is an unfair charge. The migration happened during Israel’s creation, when more than 500 Palestinian villages were de-populated and about 800,000 became refugees. Feeling powerless, the Arab masses invoked hostile Quranic Verses, recounted stories of the Prophet’s troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina, drew lessons from substituting Friday for the Sabbath and the direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. For thirteen centuries, however, these events were non-issues. Politicizing the Bible pushed frustrated moderate Arabs into orthodoxy and the orthodox into Jihadism. Witness the growth of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” this conflict would not have developed. The Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized. The two-state solution is capricious: First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is unachievable. Secondly, issues like Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return are intractable. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada. Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement, the extremists on both sides would undermine it. Fourthly, the Arab masses will shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis have failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions. Western democratic and secular ideals and Jewish sense of justice should inspire a single, democratic, and secular state: First, the intractable obstacles would disappear. Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. Arabs would no longer have an excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural, educational, and social interaction would follow. Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews access to the entirety of Palestine. Durable peace requires the genuine welcome of the Arab masses of the Jewish people. The Jews who had lived among Arabs could be a positive factor. Both share customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the older generation, the Arabic language. In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term strategic interests of the Jewish people. In Christian Europe, by contrast, centuries of maltreatment of Jews culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust.
Daniel,
Do you really believe the drivel that flows from your pen? Why is it that Israel is expected to make concession after concession and all the Arabs have to do is show up and sit in the same room? They don't even have to pretend that they can tolerate us. Concession after concession has been made to the Arabs without anything substantial ever being received in return. NOT ONE THING! Not even just the acceptance of Israel's right to exist. Time and again, victories won with blood on the battlefield have backfired into defeats at the negotiating table. The term “peace process” has become virtually synonymous with demands for Israeli concessions. There will never be peace in the world, not just in Israel, until Islam is reformed from within. Don't hold your breath. Islam has embraced the culture of death and as practiced today by Middle Eastern Arabs it is the embodiment of totalitarian evil.
Until then, security provisions should never be sacrificed in the hope of achieving diplomatic success. Concessions do not breed an attitude of conciliation and peace. Instead, they communicate a stance of weakness that is exploited by the Arabs who then press further with more extensive demands. The Arabs have never taken the concept of peace seriously. NEVER! Any lip service to the ideal of peace is intended for one purpose only; to receive whatever they can get without fighting.
Bush, like Clinton at Oslo, drags Israel into a conference that if successful will only weaken Israel's security to change his legacy. Just pitiful.
Daniel take your blindfold off. You obviously didn't notice what happened in Gaza? Why do you believe that anything will be different in the West Bank? What have the Arabs done that shows that they can be trusted? Are you really that stupid or is it just the ultimate in liberal tolerance to make concessions to those who want to destroy you? I fear that Israel will negotiate itself out of existence.
"What happened in Gaza" happened because Israel refused to engage Abbas and the PA as a negotiating partner, thereby strengthening and lending credence to Hamas and weakening the influence of Fatah. This is what happens when you choose unilateral military action over diplomacy. I'm not so naive to think every single Palestinian (or Israeli, for that matter) wants peace, but are you so naive as to think each side unanimously wants to continue the bloodshed? Daniel Levy is right. Please disabuse yourself of the illusion that diplomacy is any easier, or less effective, or more prone to failure than the use of violence and brute force. The only difference is, less life is lost in the process.
As a Canadian of Palestinian origin, with family in Palestine, I have to say this is an incredibly insightful analysis. Perhaps the time has come for the Palestinians and Israelis to know and experience the blessings of peace.
Unfortunately, there are always those who will hold out for a "better deal" or who are simply too fanatical to go for any deal (since they think God is on their side!). In addition to the unnecessary waste of life and moral corruption brought about by the sheer brutality of occupying, controlling and at times ethnically cleansing another people, those who don't go for a good deal should remember that they risk living with no deal indefinitely.