Irreconcilable Differences

There is no longer any such thing as a "peace process" in the Middle East. The lofty goal of a permanent settlement between Israelis and Palestinians has been displaced by the short-term imperative of brokering a cease-fire. The future of Israeli settlements and Palestinian statehood remains in limbo as Gen. Anthony Zinni, the American envoy, mediates day-to-day squabbles over troop deployments and the arrests of Islamic militants. Massive attacks against Israeli civilians by suicide bombers and the capture of a ship smuggling arms to the Palestinian Authority have revealed that the situation is getting worse, not better.

Yet even if General Zinni were to achieve the impossible and convince the two sides to cease killing one another for a reasonable period, Israelis and Palestinians would find themselves exactly where they started: Facing one another across an abyss of irreconcilable differences. To imagine things could be put together again — as if the massive failure of earlier negotiations at Camp David and Taba, Egypt, never occurred — contradicts what both Israelis and Palestinians now think and feel.

To realize the enormity of the failure at Camp David, remember what the Labor-led government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, with the encouragement of U.S. President Bill Clinton, was ready to offer the Palestinians between July 2000 and January 2001: acceptance of an independent Palestinian state; Israeli withdrawal from almost 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza; dismantlement of roughly 25 Jewish settlements, which involves evacuating nearly 25,000 settlers; consolidation of the area under Palestinian control on the West Bank into a contiguous territory; the division of Jerusalem so that Arab areas would be under Palestinian control; power-sharing of the Temple Mount area; and acceptance of a limited number of Palestinian refugees who fled during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Yet Yasir Arafat rejected Barak’s proposals, and the Palestinian leader’s only counter-offer called for Israel to accept the principle of the return of 3.7 million 1948 refugees, which to most Israelis implied that the Palestinians had not accepted the legitimacy of Israel. Barak ultimately resigned. In the ensuing elections, Likud leader Ariel Sharon won an unprecedented landslide, mainly due to the perception of a majority of Israelis that if Arafat rejected what Barak offered, there is nothing, except the dismantlement of Israel, that will satisfy him.

Since then, the brutal cycle of violence has further alienated both sides. It is equally utopian to imagine either that the Sharon government will offer Arafat more than Barak or that Arafat would now accept an Israeli offer that is much less generous than Barak’s. The failure of Camp David is not a mere diplomatic blip: It vanquishes — at least for the foreseeable future — the hope for a historic compromise as envisaged by the 1993 Oslo accords, which were initially supported by over 70 percent of Israelis.

Those Israelis who would like to see the end of occupation and some sort of rapprochement are left with one deeply flawed option: unilateral disengagement. This alternative obviously lacks international legitimacy and certainly does not have the aura of a negotiated settlement. But under present conditions, it may be the least worst of all other options.

Such a plan would entail Israeli withdrawals from most of the West Bank and Gaza, mainly along the lines of Barak’s proposals at Camp David; removal of around 30 isolated Jewish settlements, thus allowing the Palestinians contiguity of the areas under their control; resettlement of the 30,000 evacuated settlers within Israel proper; de facto recognition of an independent Palestinian state; acceptance of the status quo in Jerusalem, including Muslim control of the Temple Mount mosques and the surrounding compound; and erection of an effective line of separation between Israel and the Palestinian territories, with no Palestinian workers being able to cross into Israel (also making it much more difficult for terrorists and suicide bombers to enter the country).

The issue of Palestinian workers is perhaps the most controversial, yet Israel has responsibility for the economic welfare of the Palestinians only so long as it occupies them. In any case, a situation in which tens of thousands of underpaid, nonunionized Palestinian workers commute daily to Israel is not a recipe for economic cooperation and reconciliation. Rather, it is reminiscent of the Bantustan (black homelands) created by the apartheid-era South African government. Such an Israeli unilateral disengagement is obviously a counsel of despair, yet it is receiving widespread political support: On the left, both Barak and former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami endorse different versions of it, as does one of the most outspoken doves of the Labor Party, Haim Ramon. On the center and right, Dan Meridor (a former Likud leader, now a Center Party member of Sharon’s cabinet) likewise supports it, as does Michael Eitan, one of Likud’s leading hawks in the Knesset. The former head of Israel’s Security Service, Adm. Ami Ayalon, has founded a public movement calling for its implementation.

Unilateral disengagement does not solve the conflict, but as the historic failure at Camp David has shown, when high and unrealistic expectations fail miserably, they engender violence. Conceptually, unilateral disengagement also means a transition from attempts at conflict resolution to conflict management. Consider the example of Cyprus, which has been informally partitioned for nearly 30 years and where ongoing negotiations have until now not led to a meaningful breakthrough. Yet no violence has occured on either side of the Green Line, suggesting partition may not be the worst nonsolution in a world where solutions have eluded even the smartest diplomats for decades. Only when Arafat disappears from the scene and a less traumatized Israel elects a more moderate leader may there be a new opportunity for meaningful negotiations. In the meantime, a stabilized stand-off, which helps to minimize the violence, may by itself help bring about such a change.