JERUSALEM FIRST

 JERUSALEM FIRST--JUMP STARTING AN ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE PLAN
                                       by Norman Spinrad

This is being written, or rather revised from an earlier post, on September 1, 2010, the day when Obama is convening the opening of the opening of the latest of the endless rounds of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations aimed at a two-state solution, in the hope that it can finally untie the Gordian Knot by proposing the previously unthinkable--that the issue of Jerusalem be decided first.

Does it take a lot of chutzpah to propose such a thing?  You bet it does.  But American presidents and their administrations since Jimmy Carter have been trying broker a peace deal for decades and gotten exactly nowhere, and the Obama administration, by arrogantly setting a one year deadline for a peace deal is cluelessly making the situation worse, potentially much worse.

It’s long past time to think out of the box.

Starting in 1948 and continuing ever since, Israel has been kicking Arab ass in one configuration or another on a rather regular basis.  Historically, the Jews were a tolerated, disarmed, small minority tribe within overall Arab empires and caliphates, whose reputation and credibility as warriors was less than zero, regarded as pussies, not to put too fine a line on it.  That in the 20th Century these outnumbered Jewish pussies proceeded to repeatedly kick the crap out of Arab military forces all by themselves is something that Arab pride has simply not been able to swallow. 

So the fantasy has arisen in Arab political circles and on the so-called “Arab Street” (street rather than electorate because there are no freely elected Arab leaders who might fear losing an election rather than being overthrown by a revolution or coup)that Israel is a proxy of the United States, the military hegemon of the planet, and American backing is what has enabled it to perform such feats of derring-do. This is much easier to swallow without feeling inferior to what was once a vassal tribe under various forms of Arab rule.

This has led to the perception in Arab political and diplomatic circles and particularly among the Palestinians that the way to attain statehood is by pressuring their American masters to lean on the Israelis to cough it up against their own self-interest.  Again, much easier for Arab machismo to take than accepting the necessity to find some way to convince the Israelis that it would be in their own national self-interest to do so.

Unfortunately, the Arab illusion that the way to negotiate what they want from Israel is via Washington has been encouraged by a string of American presidencies, beginning in 1956 with the Eisenhower administration which indeed did strong-arm Israel, Britain, and France into vacating the Sinai and thereby creating a precedent which has encouraged the delusion ever since. 

Of course this whole pipe dream based on self-serving fantasy illusion is utterly false. For the United States, this is a geopolitical policy matter, for the Israelis it is an existential matter involving the country’s very existence.  No amount of American pressure is going to force the Israelis to do anything they see as endangering that.

Emphatically including giving up their undeclared nuclear deterrent which insures that any country that tries to “thrown the Jews into the sea” or threatens to nuke Israeli population centers in the measurable future knows it will be vaporized before it can try it.  Call it unilaterally assured destruction. It has and will continue, if not to keep the peace, than at least to limit the aims of warfare.  For this, the ambiguity of a virtual nuclear deterrent is sufficient, and indeed desirable.

But Barack Obama has somehow been conned by the Arabs, or conned himself by swallowing Arab delusions, into agreeing to a clause in the set-up language of a conference aimed at turning the Middle East nuclear free zone designed to pressure Israel to join in by giving up its undeclared nuclear deterrent and thereby announcing its existence.  Of course, the Israelis can’t afford to do that, and if pushed too far, might even decide that their best course is to go openly nuclear by setting off a demonstration blast or two or three in the manner of India, Pakistan, and North Korea, something which no one wants, and certainly no Arab country.

So that’s the current impasse.  The Palestinians, a defeated people in an occupied territory, are trying to act as if they are victors, and will only discuss a solution that will gain them their sovereign state if the Israelis first treat them as victors by forcing them to make prior concessions to get them to the bargaining table. Of course the Palestinians are utterly powerless to do this themselves, and want the United States to serve as their enforcer.

Anyone who understands the logic of the souk knows how delusionary this is. The Palestinians want something that only the Israelis can give them and instead of trying to pony up something, anything, to give the Israelis a self-interest in  making a deal, they do exactly the reverse.  It’s like a beggar telling a merchant to kiss his ass or his alms will not be accepted.

So what should American policy be?  For the same reasons that cops do not want to involve themselves in domestic disputes, the United States should do exactly the reverse of what Obama is doing, which is butt out, and make it abundantly clear in no uncertain terms that it is up to the Palestinians and the Israelis to negotiate a settlement among themselves.  And indeed, with Sadat’s dramatic trip to Israel, the Oslo accords hosted by mighty Norway, and King Hussein of Jordan’s approach to Israel, only when the initiative has come from one of the principals has any progress towards peace been made in the Middle East.

You don’t make peace with your friends, you have to make peace with your enemies. And you have to grow up and do it yourself without Big Brother standing behind you with a baseball bat.  Of course if bilateral negotiations reach a stage where binding arbitration is the only way to settle the final details of a deal, and both sides request it, the United States should agree to supply an arbitrator as a friend of the family.

Other than that, don’t call us, and we won’t call you.

But on the way out the door it would do no harm to simply propose a settlement for pressureless consideration by the Palestinians and Israelis. 

Obama is not doing this, so here it is, and indeed much of it was on the table in 2000 when Ehud Barak placed it there before Yassir Arafat at Camp David under the watchful eye of Bill Clinton and Arafat turned it down because it was an offer too generous for him to understand and he was too blinded by his own machismo to realize that the Palestinians could never ever be offered anything better.

Two states, Israel and Palestine.  By now, everyone on both sides who is not a nut-case extremist believes this is inevitable and even some who are.  The main sticking points are borders, the so-called “right of return” of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel, the disposition of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the final status of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian government in the West Bank is threatening a unilateral declaration of independence in 2011.  If the current negotiations fail by then, they should go ahead and do it.  And the Israeli government should then be the first to recognize the Palestinian state and support its admission to the United Nations.  They should recognize it as the legitimate government of all of Palestine including Gaza, and support it in any effort to retake Gaza  from a rebel terrorist gang calling itself Hamas.  Indeed if possible this should be a deal quietly and maybe secretly arranged beforehand.

Then you would have two sovereign states which recognize each other as such and must settle their differences in a series of treaties.  A non-aggression pact or even a mutual defense treaty.  A customs union, perhaps a common currency.  Agreed-upon borders and the status of what Jewish settlements would end up within Palestine.

After all, there are something like 1.5 million ethnic Palestinians living and working as citizens in Israel.  If there can be Israeli Arabs, why not Jewish Palestinians?  Maybe there could a voluntary dual citizenship offered to both minority populations.  Jews who wanted to could continue to live in their homes in Palestine and maybe pay taxes there instead of in Israel, would benefit by working in a first world country like Israel and paying income tax at third world levels, and the Palestinian treasury would have itself a hundred thousand or more relatively rich taxpayers.  The Palestinian Jews could commute to work in Israel or work in Palestine, and Palestinian Arabs could be allowed to go back to work in  Israel as part of the deal.  A trade that benefits both ball clubs.

The right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israeli territory is a deal breaker that Israel will never accept, but two sovereign states have the inherent right to determine their own immigration policies, and the Palestinians will just have to accept that, admit however many they choose to Palestine, and maybe negotiate some kind of monetary settlement.  Which, alas, would probably need some contribution from the United States.

Leaving the intractable problem of Jerusalem.

You will notice that the issue of Jerusalem is usually mentioned last, as I have deliberately done here, as the most difficult problem to solve, to be tackled only when all the others are resolved.

Problem?  Does it have to be a problem?

No.  Instead of being a deal-breaker it can and should be a deal-maker, with a little thinking outside the decades-long box.  A beau geste, a stroke of magnanimity like Sadat’s unilaterial flight to Israel that will break the ice, after which, everything else, will fall quickly into place.

The Israelis adamantly declare that Jerusalem must be recognized as the undivided capital of Israel.  The Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as their capital but would no doubt be surprised and delighted to have Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Palestine.

As long as this is addressed as a problem, it’s the deal-breaker.  But stepping back a bit and seeing it as solution that can be agreed upon by both parties up front, it is transformed into a practical, poetic, symbolic, and spiritual one that opens the path to a two state peace agreement between Palestine and Israel with brotherly kiss.

A solution that has always been hidden in plain sight.

Just divide the city up into arrondisments like Paris or boroughs like New York, each electing its own mayor as the Parisians have it or borough president as the same office is called in New York.  These local borough presidents form an elected city council.  The Palestinian government and the Israeli government each appoint one member of a tripartite executive and the third member is elected by the entire city.

Israel and Palestine both recognize Jerusalem as each other’s undivided capital.  And their ministries and governmental offices are not confined to boroughs where their ethnicity dominates demographically but are scattered throughout the city, Israeli ministries in Palestinian areas, Palestinian ministries in Israeli areas, throughout the undivided capital of Israel and Palestine, hostages to peace and symbols of its existence.

The Israeli and Palestinian national parliaments could be housed in buildings facing each other across a new Peace Square with the other two sides dominated by a mosque and a synagogue.

There might even be an official parliamentary dining establishment in the middle of the square where Israeli and Palestinian representatives could mingle socially at mealtime.

After all, what’s halal is kosher, and what’s kosher is halal. 

After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of  a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew. 

Which translated into English means peace be upon you.