In his last year in office, President Bush has finally gotten engaged in the Middle East peace process. Last week he made his first visit as president to Israel and the West Bank, only weeks after convening a high-profile peace summit in Annapolis this past November.
Bush started the stopwatch to count down his remaining year in office by committing his administration to the seemingly impossible task of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Meeting this deadline, itself the most tangible outcome of the Annapolis summit to date, will now require a Herculean effort from Washington. Much like his predecessors — Ronald Reagan presented the Schultz plan in 1988, the elder George Bush convened the Madrid peace conference in 1991, and Bill Clinton hosted the Camp David talks in 2000 — Bush waited until the last year of his presidency to delve into the muddy waters of Middle East peace-making. But while this countdown is important, there is a second stopwatch ticking in parallel that makes the need to reach an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of 2008 all the more urgent: In January 2009, the term of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will also come to an end.
The Palestinian leader has repeatedly made clear since his election in 2005 that he has no intention of seeking a second term. This fact should be of great concern. While some argue that losing Bush might not exactly spell disaster for the peace process, the loss of Abbas — absent a peace agreement — almost certainly will.
Like no other Palestinian leader, Abbas has been committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and a negotiated, nonviolent end of the Israeli occupation. Reaching back to the 1980s, he was the first and most important proponent of negotiating with Israel. He was a key protagonist during the Oslo years, and in 1995 presented the first-ever draft of an Israeli-Palestinian final status accord with Yossi Beilin.
Abbas also spearheaded attempts to reform the Palestinian Authority as its first prime minister, but was pushed out of office by the self-serving Yasser Arafat. Still, when Arafat passed away, it was Abbas who inherited the mantle of the unifying Palestinian leader. There are simply no alternatives to him.
Even if Abbas was convinced to run again, in the absence of a true peace process or signaled agreement, he would most likely lose. Worse still, as of now it is entirely unclear who might succeed him.
Within the moderate camp, the current prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is a favorite of the West, a brilliant technocrat and economist. Fayyad is a reformer and secularist committed to peace and normalization. However, he lacks a popular platform and, as a former World Bank official, never gained the street credibility of the old and new Fatah guards — let alone of Hamas.
Muhammad Dahlan was once thought of as a possible alternative, a strongman well liked by Israel and the United States, tough but clever and equipped with the requisite street credibility. The Hamas coup in Gaza in June, however, has been interpreted by many as a reaction to Dahlan’s failed policies. His candidacy would not only deepen the divide between Fatah and Hamas, but would also raise concerns among the many Palestinians favoring reform and accountability.
Elder stateswoman Hanan Ashrawi, much like Fayyad, has limited popular standing, as do other reform- and peace-minded strategists and advisers close to Abbas. The sole candidate who combines street credibility and popular appeal with a demonstrated commitment to negotiations and coexistence is the imprisoned former Fatah leader in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, a key figure during the Palestinian uprising in 2000 and 2001. However, an orchestrated release from jail in Israel may well undercut his credibility and thus prevent his candidacy, even if it takes place in conjunction with the liberation of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Therefore, the strongest contender may well turn out to be one that nobody in Israel or the United States will look forward to: a Hamas nominee. Whether Ismail Haniyeh, the relatively moderate, erstwhile elected prime minister, or the much more hardline former foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas president would certainly not be acceptable as a negotiating partner for Israel or the United States.
A radicalized Palestinian entity on both sides of Israel would be a failed state before it could achieve statehood. Achieving a peace agreement by the end of 2008, therefore, is a deadline dictated by far more than Bush’s interest in establishing his legacy in the Middle East. It is also a profound necessity for all those wishing to avoid a further disastrous deterioration in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, a development that would undoubtedly contribute to a further destabilization of the entire region.
The member states of the international diplomatic quartet, the American Jewish community, policy shops, think tanks, non-government organizations, political action committees, peace operatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the so-called Arab quartet, donors, presidential candidates, Congress — they all must give unwavering support to the peace push by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in order to apply the necessary pressure to bring about an agreement.
There are few elements of a future peace deal that remain genuinely unclear; the outline of the endgame is well known. What is needed now is commitment, dedication and political will to achieve an agreement before the time runs out in January 2009 — because if it does, the clock may well have stopped for good.
Markus Bouillon, former director of the International Peace Academy’s Middle East Program, is the author of “The Peace Business: Money and Power in the Palestine-Israel Conflict” (I.B. Tauris, 2004) and “Iraq: Preventing A New Generation Of Conflict” (Lynne Rienner). Michael Shtender-Auerbach, former associate director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative, is the founder and managing director of Social Risks LLC, a social, environmental and political risk consultancy.
It is absolutely not true that "the outline of the endgame is well known". May I assume that the authors of the above article couldn't even write their own names in Arabic, let alone actually read literature from the Arab world? In order to solve a political conflict, one has to be able to define the very essence of that conflict. Since the authors claim quite naively that "the outline of the endgame is well known", one understands that they believe it is a rational conflict about territory and refugees. However, since there was a conflict also in the 1930's when there weren't any refugees, the settlement of the refugee problem doesn't confront the essential conflict. The return to the 1967 border and dividing Jerusalem also wouldn't address the real cause of conflict, since the crisis of 1967 was born when these territories were in Arab hands. Needless to say, the 1947 Partition Plan was also an unacceptable compromise from the Palestinian point of view - and that is still so today! Why? Well, when that question is satisfactorily answer, we will all reach the conclusion that the conflict is not going to end this year. Even if all the West Bank is evacuated, even if all the refugees are returned, even if we dismantle the barrier, even if we cancel our 1948 Declaration of Independence - the Palestinian side will not declare that the conflict has been resolved. The conflict predates all these supposed grievances.
The latest developments on the Gaza Egyptian border illustrate the impossibility of setting up an independent Palestinian state, hence the necessity to have Egypt assume control over the Gaza Strip while incorporating it and its residents. And of course, simultaneously, it should be assumed that any future peaceful accommodation in the West Bank will have to include Jordanian assumption of sovereignty in most of the West Bank. When reading UNSC Resolution 242, which is the basis for all peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors it becomes very obvious that the solution described above is well built into that Resolution and wisely so. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even under the best of circumstances could not provide for a viable state economy. Israel, in addition, under any accommodation with the Arabs will have to retain certain parts of the West Bank for security reasons. The West Bank of course is not connected physically to the Gaza Strip, and when the Strip was taken over by the Hamas in June of last year it was further separated from it, politically this time. Also, historically, economically, socially and even religiously the Gaza Strip is more related to Egypt than to the West Bank. Hence the integration of the Gaza Strip into Egypt is the natural thing that should have taken place. It should have happened back in 1979 when Israel signed the peace agreement with Egypt, but it is better now than never. A successful integration of the Strip with Egypt however will not come about unless Egypt realizes the positive potential in doing so and unless Arab countries and the international community, including Israel, lend their shoulders to such an undertaking. A large portion of the Gazans can and should be resettled in the Sinai Peninsula, mostly in its northern part, and with the right package of economic, financial and consulting incentives begin to develop the agricultural, fishing, industrial and tourism potential of the region. Note, the whole of the Sinai Peninsula is three times the size of the state of Israel. Through the use of technologies to produce high quality water and to develop very profitable desert agriculture, technologies developed in Israel during the past several decades, the Sinai-Gaza region can become a very successful project that will dry out the poverty of the Gaza Strip and with it the source of political and religious unrest and subversive activity that could affect adversely not only Egypt but other Arab states in the region. Will Egypt which had controlled the Gaza Strip until 1967, will Israel, will the Arabs, will the world community be wise enough and imaginary enough to pursue this rout towards peace in the region? I certainly hope so, for the sake of the people of this country, Arab and Jew alike, and for the sake of an accommodation of peaceful co-existence between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Shlomzion, Jerusalem, Israel
M. Markus Bouillon and M. Michael Shtender-Auerbach, do not know what they are talking about, my guess is that they live in wonderworld (USA). They don’t speak or understand Arabic, they don’t know how the Arab street thinks, they don’t know that Arab policies are done in the mosques and not in the Fath cabinets... Do they know that "my fellow" Egyptian Yasser Arafat was an executive of the mosques policies? Abbas, or any other Palestinian leader, will never sign any peace treaty with Israel, because fixing borders (that has been the aim of consecutive Israeli governments, even giving up part of Jerusalem and dismantling a lot of "settlements", because Israel is eager to get internationally recognized borders) means giving up Arab lands to the Jews...And this is considered as high treason in the Arab world...Such a leader would not last a single month alive. Signing such kind of paper means he is signing his own death sentence. Anwar Sadat was killed for much less than that, he retrieved all of the Sinai and still was killed...In his funerals only Europeans and America leaders were present...He is still cursed by the Arab street.
How deluded can some people be? There isn't a shred of evidence to prove any of the Arabs want peace. What has been proven time and again, is that they want a piece of Israel here and a piece there until they've perverted all of the Jewish Homeland into an accursed Palestine with no room for Jews! The big push Israel needs for peace is to expel their sworn enemies immediately and without apology or further hesitation or Israeli sovereignty will be lost. Parents of Slain Son Cry For An End to Deadly Peace Process Israel's Only Way Out: Follow Kahane!
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