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1 Re-framing the conflict â Israel in the post-Oslo era
The literature on conflicts and conflict resolution, including the extent to which they can be resolved, offers two similar analytical categories that traverse two continuums. First, the literature distinguishes a âsimpleâ conflict from a âprotractedâ conflict. In the former, the matter of contention is control of a defined domain of resources, which may be territorial, symbolic, religious, material or other. A protracted conflict, by contrast, addresses control of multiple domains at one and the same time. Material, territorial, symbolic, religious, psychological and other resources are essential elements of the conflict, and the battle is waged concerning all of them. Each side attempts to overwhelm the other regarding all of them, and the solution is a zero-sum solution of profit and loss (see Coleman, 2003, 2006).
The literature also distinguishes between a controlled conflict and an uncontrolled conflict. The former is limited and focused on clearly defined issues; hence some kind of compromise is possible, based on the ability of the parties to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, or to determine what is important to each party and work out a division or solution based on a compromise. By contrast, an uncontrolled conflict takes place in multiple arenas and diverse domains simultaneously, and the parties believe that everything at issue is fundamental and cannot be forfeited. Any compromise is tantamount to surrender. Hence, the parties avoid or at least are unable to achieve even a partial resolution (Bar-Tal, 2007).
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is both protracted1 and uncontrolled. There are key areas that leave no room for a solution. Not least, there is a protracted territorial conflict with Israelâs gradual takeover, by means of force and violence, of the assets of the weaker Palestinian side. In addition, antithetical narratives exist that cannot be reconciled: a return to an ancestral home for Jews promised by God, versus a colonial enterprise to dispossess the native Palestinian population that resulted in the Nakba of 1948. On both sides, there is fierce opposition to any and all arrangements or compromises on the key issues, especially the most volatile of them, such as Jerusalem and the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees. What is more, the Palestinians are sundered by a fierce internal ideological debate between Fatah (including the PLO and the PA) and Hamas, a rift that has grown much wider since the Oslo Accords and even more so since the rupture between the West Bank and Gaza after the 2007 coup in the latter (for details, see Ghanem, 2009). Considering that the Palestinian Authority currently rules over a small fraction of the Palestinian people, there are serious questions about its right or ability to represent them. Given that it does not represent the large Palestinian minority in Israel or the Palestinians of Gaza, and evidently represents only a minority of Palestinians in the diaspora, by the most generous estimates, it speaks for not more than 30% of all Palestinians.
On top of this, the conflict has a long history of violence and bloodshed that cannot be bridged. The wounds have never had a chance to heal; every period has witnessed traumatic events that make mutual trust impossible. The conflict has never been punctuated by a major and enduring truce, as in Northern Ireland. This point is crucial, given that the conflict is paradigmatically uncontrolled. For example, a rightwing extremist, Baruch Marzel, carried out the Hebron Massacre in 1994, at a time when the Israeli Right was fearful that the Oslo negotiations might succeed. A year and a half later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who lent the Oslo process credibility for many in the Israeli public, was assassinated. His governing coalition was replaced soon afterward. A somewhat similar dynamic took place on the other side. Forty days after the Hebron Massacre, Hamas launched its first suicide operations and dramatically stepped them up after the elimination of its chief bomb-maker Yihya Ayyash (the âEngineerâ) in January 1996. That, in turn, increased the strength of the Israeli Right and weakened the Left and Shimon Peres, its candidate in the elections that spring for prime minister.
As noted, this is a territorial dispute, but it also includes irrational ideological elements, such as a âdivine promiseâ, the âland of our fathersâ and âWaqf landâ, and as such is not easily amenable to compromise. The intrinsic element of religion â Judaism versus Islam and Christianity, and the holiness ascribed to places such as Jerusalem and Hebron â further complicates the picture. It is hard to imagine a rational and logical resolution of a conflict based on deep convictions, religious heritage and age-old cultures that see the other side as a bitter and implacable enemy rather than an interlocutor.
The conflict is a zero-sum game with regard to both territory and resources. There is almost no area of real cooperation between the two sides (the win-win scenario). The conflict is not simply local but has foreign extensions: the Palestinian diaspora, the Arab and Islamic worlds, the Jewish people, and especially the Jews of the United States and France, who have great political influence over their respective decision-makers.
We could easily describe additional elements of the conflict that make it fundamental and irresolvable, especially in light of recent events in the Arab world, which have had major ramifications for the Palestinians and will continue to do so. Here, though, we would like to focus on the issue of whether the current round of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel might lead to a permanent settlement. The basic argument advanced below is that the chances of reaching a settlement acceptable to both parties are negligible, if not nil. Here are the reasons.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is deeply complex and features components not known to other conflicts. It is underpinned by a historical discourse loaded with religious, theological terminology, and compounded by a moral conflict over historical narratives and primacy over the land. The question of Palestine is not simply a colonial issue, in the classical sense of the word. Certainly, it includes traditional colonial dimensions of occupation and colonization, including the British Mandate over Palestine (1917â1948), similar to the mandate systems in the Arab and African regions. But, Palestine was further marked by another peculiar type of colonization â the Zionist colonialism that promised to resolve the Jewish problem.
Since the start of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, various political solutions have been proposed. Most significant was the 1947 Partition Plan, which the Palestinian leadership rejected as unfair and detrimental to their political, national and historical rights (Khalidi, 2006; Shlaim, 2000). Since then, the conflict has been marked by a series of transformations, most notably the 1948 war and Palestineâs Nakba, and the June 1967 war that launched the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Aside from the dramatic effects on Israel, these events exerted an equally profound change on the Palestinian national movement, which shifted its discourse from liberation to one of statehood on 22% of Mandatory Palestine (Mustafa, 2007).
The Oslo Agreement of 1993, concluded under a global imbalance of powers and as a consequence of the 1987 Palestinian popular Intifada (uprising), signaled yet another phase in the history of the Palestinian national movement and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) had an immediate impact on Palestinian national goals, which have been ultimately limited to statehood. The PNA has also changed the nature of the national struggle, which has come to favor negotiation in place of armed resistance. This expedited shift from armed struggle within the PLO framework to the PNA-sponsored negotiation strategy led to a Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel. At the time, Palestinians considered this adequate to satisfy Israelâs demands for political legitimacy from the Palestinians and Arab world (Ghanem, 2002; Mustafa, 2007).
In reality, the Palestinian strategic impasse began with the conclusion of the Oslo Agreement and the establishment of the PNA. It reached its climax with the collapse of the 2000 Camp David talks, after which no political alternatives could be found to exit the stalemate. The parties even failed to devise strategies to materialize their own political platforms. The contest for power has overwhelmed the Palestinian national project. Successive efforts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, from the Cairo Agreement of 2005 to the Mecca Agreement signed two years later, failed to overcome the crisis of the Palestinian political system and the entrenched division between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Ghanem, 2009; Mustafa, 2007). In addition to the internal political deadlock within the Palestinian national movement, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process has seen recurrent predicaments. In Israel, the rise of right wing parties to power over the past decade has introduced major changes to Israelâs vision of the conflictâs resolution. This vision is an evolution from earlier transformations, including the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the Camp David summit of 2000, and the Disengagement Plan from Gaza and the Northern West Bank of 2005, and has resulted in the political impasse in negotiations over the past several years.
Israelâs approach to the conflict since Netanyahuâs ascent to power (2009)2
We believe that Netanyahuâs ascent to power in 2009 was the result of the clearly uneven power relations between the two parties. While imposing demands for a reconciliation on the weaker party, the stronger party has maneuvered within the framework of a settlement. In addition to an unequal reality created by a final resolution of the conflict, disproportionate power relations between parties who are willing to resolve the conflict render engagement with solutions, on which each party relies, disproportionate too. In this vein, we argue that the Israeli negotiations strategy seeks to reach an unbalanced settlement by proposing a political compromise to Palestinians in return for securing a Palestinian reconciliation for Israelis.
The Israeli approach under Netanyahu to a settlement with the Palestinians does not meet the basic requirements for solving a continuous and protracted conflict, such as the Israeli-Palestinian one. Such a conflict requires a balanced approach alongside mutual recognition and justice; any neglect or abuse of such principles will not lead to a final resolution, although it might lead to a weak and temporary settlement (see Abu-Nimer, 2001).
The official Israeli stand under Netanyahu accepts a limited Palestinian state alongside the settlements and any territories in the West Bank (Area C) and East Jerusalem that would be under Israeli sovereignty in a future settlement. Israeli discourse over the last four years has been part of a strategic and ideological adjustment by the Israeli right wing in the wake of the Oslo agreement and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu, in this regard, has been consistent in his statements, including his famous speech at Bar-Ilan University, his speech at the United Nations in September 2011, and in his repeated speeches to the Israeli Knesset and the public media.
Features of the political settlement that Netanyahu is willing to offer the Palestinians to resolve the conflict over the 1967 border are as follows:
Recognition of an unarmed Palestinian state.
Annexation of settlement blocs; i.e. a refusal to return to the June 4, 1967 border.
Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley area. This presence could range from a maximum of Israeli sovereignty to a minimum of long-term military control.
Jerusalem, especially the Old City, as the unified capital of Israel. In the best-case scenario, Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would be conceded.
In return, Israel demands that the Palestinian side adopt reconciliation to resolve the conflict resulting from the 1948 war (Table 1.1). This includes:
Recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; that is, recognition of Israel as a Jewish State.
Recognition of the Israeli narrative of the responsibility for the refugee problem. The refugee problem resulted from the Palestinian refusal of the 1947 Partition Plan and the engagement of Arab armies in the 1948 war with the intention to exterminate the Jewish political entity on the âLand of Israelâ.
Recognition of Jewish historical and religious rights in Palestine.
The reconciliation issues in Israel that does not wish to address with the Palestinian side include:
Recognition of Israelâs historical responsibility for the refugee problem and the right of the refugees to return to areas inside the State of Israel as an integral part of acknowledging this moral responsibility.
Recognition of the Palestinian historical narrative, including the Palestiniansâ right to their land and their historical narrative of the conflict.
A willingness to atone for the historical injustice caused to Palestinians inside and outside Israel, translated into a recognition of this historical injustice and a readiness to pay compensations as a form of redress.
Table 1.1 Reconciliation vs. settlement â Palestinian-vs. Israeli perspectives
| Reconciliation from a Palestinian perspective | Settlement from an Israeli perspective |
Final agreement | A Jewish state beyond the June 1967 border | An unarmed Palestinian state, beyond the 1967 border |
Refugees | Exoneration of Israel for the creation and resolution of the refugee problem | Return of refugees to the Palestinian state, in best-case scenario |
Historical narrative | Admission of Palestinian failure to accept the 1947 Partition Plan | No recognition of the Palestinian narrative of the conflict |
Core of the conflict | Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, dating back to 1948 | Recognition of an unarmed Palestinian state |
Israel in the Oslo era â the changing nature of political approaches towards the peace process
Since it first came to power in 1977, the Likud party has adopted a range of objectives typified by an unwillingness to part with the Occupied Territories (Begin, Sharon and Arens). Menachem Begin exploited Egyptian President Anwar Sadatâs desire to reach a separate peace agreement with Israel so that he could regain control of Sinai. Begin proposed personal autonomy for Palestinians in the occupied territories, in line with his mentor Vladimir Jabotinskyâs ideas of controlling the land while allowing a degree of freedom to its inhabitants. Begin drew on the notion of autonomy first advanced by Yigal Allon as part of an earlier settlement Allon had devised. The concept suited Begin, because it allowed him to avoid a discussion with Sadat about giving up parts of the Land of Israel. Begin conducted sterile negotiations over the occupied territories with Egypt, whose purpose was to gain time and avoid progress.3 Sadat, followed by Hosni Mubarak, understood what the Israeli government was trying to achieve. Sadat, it should be noted, had prepared to negotiate a separate agreement with Israel, totally...
