If
the Annapolis
peace conference fails, then Palestinians should abandon their national
struggle and demand their civil rights.
December 2007
In a draft joint declaration to be issued at next week’s Annapolis peace conference, Israel and Fatah
have pledged to negotiate “immediately and continuously” to reach a final two-state
resolution to their conflict within 12 months.
But before anyone is tempted to
drink a toast to this potentially historic turning point, the draft memorandum
goes into no details on the core issues of the dispute and has some razor-sharp
strings attached: the activation of any eventual peace deal would be contingent
on implementation of the defunct road map and any peace agreement would be implemented
by the parties of the road map, effectively excluding Hamas.
Last week, I was asked during a
televised debate how I judged the chances of success at Annapolis, and I had to admit that I didn’t
hold out much hope. This former US
capital, where the Treaty of Paris which ended the war between the American
revolutionaries and Britain
was signed in 1783, is unlikely to herald a similarly historic moment for the Middle East.
Reading between the lines of the draft
statement, the Annapolis
meeting is an elaborate way of reiterating the current status quo. After all,
lest we forget, the paralysed road map – which was supposed to deliver a
Palestinian state by 2005 – has gone absolutely nowhere since it was launched
in 2004. In
fact, if anything, the situation has gone rapidly downhill in the meantime.
This is the same road map that gives
clear and precise coordinates for where the Palestinians need to be but only
suggests to the Israelis the approximate neighbourhood they ought to reach, if
they feel like it. This is also the same unambitious
road map whose four principal international sponsors – the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN – have stood by
the wayside and watched this “confidence-building” plan crash and burn.
This is because the USA is as pro-Israeli as ever and, occupied with
occupying Iraq,
the Bush administration has taken a hands-off approach to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, the Washington hawks have
already swooped down to keep the initiative from taking off the ground
properly. Meanwhile, the other Quartet members are unwilling or unable to play
a more independent and robust role.
As for the actual parties to the
conflict, the Israeli political landscape is fractured and polarised, leaving
the scene wide open for the extremists to continue full-throttle in their bid
to annex large segments of the West Bank and effectively encircle the
Palestinians living there.
Former hardline
premier and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, employing his trademark
hyperbole, has declared that “Annapolis
will bring death and destruction”. In a bid to pre-empt any eventual peace deal
that might emerge after Annapolis, a bill requiring a two-thirds majority vote
over any changes to the status of Jerusalem passed the first hurdle in the Knesset last week.
As for the Palestinians, they are
divided and weak, whether in the Fatah-controlled
West Bank or in Hamas-controlled Gaza – they are an “authority without
authority”, as Mustafa Barghouti put it during a talk with IlanPappé. And the chance to moderate the
extremists has pretty much slipped away with the Israeli and international
stranglehold on the Palestinians gradually radicalising even the unradicalised.
Crucially, excluding Hamas from Annapolis
will mean the Islamic movement will likely as not do its best to torpedo the
initiative.
So, if not Annapolis, then what? It’s quite simple: let the people
decide.
As I’ve been arguing for some time,
top-level diplomacy has failed dismally due to a lack of international will and
the vested interests of extremists. The way forward would be for the Israeli
and Palestinian leadership to admit that they do not possess the mandate to
reach a feasible two-state solution.
In order to acquire the necessary
mandate and sideline the extremists, they should declare that, since the peace
process affects everyone, then everyone should be
involved. The first step down this road would be for the international
community to help the two sides host a ‘people’s peace conference’ on neutral territory.
The gathering would be a broad one
in which all Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders, from political parties and
movements to civil society and religious organisations would be invited to sit
around the table and debate all the core issues until they reach a general
consensus. Whatever the majority there agree would then be taken to every
household in Israel and Palestine to consider and
vote on.
This would, at once, bring an end to
all the second guessing that has characterised the peace process. If public
opinion polls over the last few years are any indication, a people’s peace
process would lead to a viable two-state solution. And such an unequivocal
indication of popular will would silence the extremists by showing that their
position is not representative. It would also overcome the overwhelming sense
of distrust on both sides by showing that the two peoples are actually on the
same line.
But how likely is it that the
political elites will invite the people to the negotiating table? Improbable. So, what then?
Well, continuing in this
never-ending vicious cycle is destructive. The Palestinians are the victims of
one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes and cannot even leave their
town or village without a special permit. The Israelis are as insecure as ever
and their increasingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians could draw them into
future conflicts with their neighbours.
In addition, the longer this drags
on, the more likely it becomes that the annexation of the West
Bank will become irreversible. The Israeli premier EhudOlmert admitted as much when
he said that Israel
should take the opportunity to create a Palestinian state in order to maintain
a Jewish majority in his country.
Although I’m personally in favour of
a single, bi-national state, if Israelis wish to live in a Jewish state, then
they have to realise that they cannot have their cake and eat it. Short of
ethnic cleansing, Israel cannot hold on to all the territory it currently
controls and maintain a Jewish-majority state, since its only a matter of years
until the number of Palestinians will exceed Jews.
On the other side, the Palestinians
cannot continue to live in such dire conditions for much longer in the vain
hope of fulfilling their national aspirations. There must come a time when they
decide that individual dignity is more important than the deceptive trappings
of nationhood. If Annapolis
fails, the Palestinians should agree among themselves to abandon their struggle
for statehood and transform it into a non-violent civil rights movement in
which they demand equal civil and legal status and full Israeli citizenship.
In fact, they need not wait until
the collapse of Annapolis.
Before they go to the conference, “the Palestinians should announce that if the
Annapolis meeting
doesn’t lead to a Palestinian state within, say, 12 months, they will abandon
their claim to a state and launch a civil rights and citizenship movement. If
they did that, they would probably get their state in no time,” Brian Whitaker suggested to me last week.
Such a move would certainly focus
Israeli minds on the consequences of the course they are steering towards
disaster. If they want to hold on to the overwhelming Jewish identity of their
state, then they need to end the occupation and dispel the mounting tension. If
not, then they are obliged to grant the Palestinians over which they rule their
rights and admit that their country is a complex, multi-confessional and multiethnic
society.
Empowering the Palestinians in this
way would enhance Israel’s
security, improve its international standing and enable the two peoples to
prosper by channelling fully the untapped economic potential of the
Palestinians.
For the Palestinians, either of the
two outcomes should seem attractive. If they get a viable independent state out
of their demand for equality, then they can exercise their self-determination
directly. If they get their civil rights, then they can become full and
functioning members of a vibrant democracy and pull themselves out of poverty
and isolation.
