Israel is in a cul-de-sac spiritually. Ari Shavit, who is quoted as a sage in Lawrence Wright’s New Yorker piece on Gaza (still have to get to that), shows his obtuseness in this visionary piece on an idea for the Palestinian future:
[Kadima party leader] Shaul Mofaz … was hard at work. With the help of a small group of experts and the cooperation of many research institutes, the former defense minister analyzed the strategic situation thoroughly and sought a way out. He looked for a new organizing principle that could jump-start a rational diplomatic process that was not divorced from reality. The result is an original and creative diplomatic program that he intends to present in a few days. A plan that will challenge Netanyahu, Barak, Livni and the entire political establishment.
Mofaz’s basic assumptions are those of Sharon: On one hand, at this point in time, there is little chance of reaching a final-status agreement. On the other hand, Israel must urgently effect a change that will produce a two-state solution. The way to do this is via an interim solution – an agreement that will create a Palestinian state in two years in about 60 percent of the territory of the West Bank…. it is the most serious and practical plan any Israeli leader has prepared in years.
Related posts:
- Bold or just old– Netanyahu called for ‘limited Palestinian state’ 6 years ago
- Menachem Begin came up with one-state solution years ago
- NY Fundraiser for Settlers: ‘What If There Was a 2-State Solution in the U.S. and Al Qaeda Got Half–How Would You Like That?’
- Nusseibeh: After 40 years of meaningless 2-state talk, Israelis remain colonial ‘outsiders’
- ‘J Street’ positions itself with Obama and against AIPAC
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Phil Weiss wrote:
“Ari Shavit … shows his obtuseness….”
Boy do I ever suspect Phil not only misread Shavit here, but also in the course of doing so missed something that has more potential real-world importance than all the rest of what we’ve been talking about lately such as BDS and J-Street and Clinton and even what Erekat has now said regarding a one-state solution.
That is, if you read the piece closely Shavit can seem to not being *endorsing* Mofaz’s idea at all as simply doing some hard-headed analysis when he says it’s “the most serious and practical plan any Israeli leader has prepared in years.”
In short, and certainly not endorsing it on my part at least but just looking at it from an analytical viewpoint, I think that’s not only true but also that it has the potential to be the only real change we see in the situation in the near future and to thus form the reality that will form the backdrop for the future too.
I know that people here are way excited about the BDS movement and maybe Erekat’s recent one-state solution talk and J-Street’s possible promise and etc., and indeed maybe one of those things or something else will indeed catch fire and go somewhere.
But to me the reality is that the situation is pretty much locked in stasis right now: If the *Euro* states won’t climb onto a BDS movement, much less the U.S. not doing so, that movement has a long long way to go before it could even begin to pinch Israel. And I think Erekat’s one-state talk, while very interesting, is just pure talk at this stage; no way his people are anywhere near signing on to that yet. And even if J-Street were different the question would be how much it could help change U.S. policy and we are seeing right now how absolutely and utterly U.S. policy doesn’t care about really changing things.
The only other locus of change then if there is going to be any would seem to have to come from within Israel’s political situation, and that’s exactly the locus of Mofaz’s idea of course. And, don’t forget, Kadima lost out to Likud by a mere’s hairs-breadth at the last election.
Again, just as an analytical matter in trying to perceive where any significant change in the present situaton may come from—if it comes at all—I think this clearly has more potential than anything else on the horizon at the present time. Yes Netanyahu beat Kadima last time, but only by a whisker, and only after some coalition maneuvering. But as Shavit notes that was when he was running against a Livni who had renounced any kind of dynamism, be it Sharon-ist or Olmert-ist in nature.
So it may well be that not only will the Israelis turn from getting their name made ever worse to mud under Netanyahu, but turn from the political cul-de-sac that he’s gotten them into as well in favor of at least trying *something*, which is exactly what Mofaz is seeming to offer.
This is significant I think. Not that Mofaz is trying to do anything but screw the Palestinians out of whatever he can, nor that he’s doing this out of anything other than a long-term fear of pressure for a one-state solution. But regardless of his motives and purely and simply in terms of trying to perceive what’s the likeliest big change we might see next—if any—I think this has the best potential of anything on the scene right now to be same.
Significant I think. Very significant. Is going to change the debate in Israel at the very least.
Interesting take on the article Sin Nombre.
The appealing features of the proposal are in the criteria, more than in the proposed solution.
What realizes simultaneously the removal of the occupation, and commitment to Israel’s safety?
A third component, if designable in, would cement the deal, confident viability and independance of Palestine.
Are there other qualitative criteria that Palestine desires, requires?
They can be laid out on the table, and collaborative creative people could then thrash through the political and actually resolve things.
The process of regarding success or failure solely referenced to demands on either side, seems to be a recipe of design failure. Real, but of obstacles rather than of creativity. I guess that is the “real work”.
Although I am often called “mushy” or “abstract”, I believe that accomplishing really any design goals, starts with the articulation and buy-in into the design criteria. It comes from my math background, set theory.
Obama is a policy criteria kind of guy, not a head-down scrapper. Not a “which side are you on, guy”.
Interim agreement with 60% of the West Bank as the fledgling state coupled with on-going final status talking…and “Once 99 percent of the Palestinians are citizens of a free Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian situation will look different. Once the evacuation-compensation law is implemented, Israel will gradually converge within its own borders.” I feel the need for more details.
That is the detail, Citizen. The “evacuation-compensation law” is about as likely to be written, let alone enforced, as the Israeli constitution.
It may change the debate in Israel, but it is not likely to be attractive to the Palestinians, who will see it as a trap that takes the pressure off – a temporary solution that then becomes the permanent solution.
Once the Palestinians reject it, we will hear another endless chorus of “We offered them everything – well almost everything – and once again they turned us down. You can’t make peace with these people.”
Meh, that just sounds like business as usual on the Israeli side — hateful rhetoric interspersed by debates forwarding ludicrously unjust solutions, punctuated by military campaigns against non-Jewish civilians.
I think the places to watch for change in this debate are among the Palestinians, and (I hope) Europe. It’s pretty painfully clear that the US-Israel war machine isn’t changing its tune any time soon.
But AIPAC kin orgs operating very well across Europe.
Perhaps, but in Europe, Palestinians aren’t thrown in prison for so much as providing charity to their fellow citizens under occupation like in the United States. Not yet, anyway, and while there are some parts of Europe (like Switzerland) who are becoming almost neo-Nazi in their hatred for and scapegoating of Muslims, I think overall Europe is in a more sensible position than we are.
If nothing else, Europe has more visible scars of Zionist terrorism than we do. Operation Wrath of God wasn’t covered up like the USS Liberty incident was over here, after all.
Perfect, Bruce.
Actually, Kadima won the last election by a hair. But N-yahoo coopted all the possible coalition partners.
No one would be foolish enough to believe any Israeli promises for the future.
Recall that the apartheid wall was declared at the time to be a “purely temporary” security measure that could be pulled down at the quirk of a finger and by no means was intended to establish any national boundaries.
How long has it been since the court order the wall in Bi’lin to be rerouted? When has it happened? When will it happen? And in the meantime, while it doesn’t happen, the new settlement that the court called illegal is under construction, another fact on the ground.
Back to the future. As Bruce points out below, we know how this movie has gone before. I was excited by the Lawrence piece because it didn’t softpedal what happened in Gaza and he also included a pretty good description of the effects (and the petty sadism) of the blockade. I’ll have to go back and look at what political line he was pushing–that, perhaps, wasn’t so admirable.
What I think is being missed about this—such as by all the (understandably) excited one-staters over on that other thread—is that long long before Israel started feeling real pressure for a one-state solution it would start compromising. And then if this didn’t work it almost certainly would try and very possibly succeed in ending any real one-state pressure by simply crafting and then declaring its borders to take as much of what they want as possible and cut out as much of what they don’t want as possible (namely Palestinians). And from there they would figure out how to deal with the arabs among them and the their powerfully influential argument from there would be that any attempt to goof with them would be “interfering in their internal affairs.”
Entirely within Israel’s power to try, an may very well be strong enough to really be an absolute trump to any attempt to force a one-state solution.
So what’s the significance of this Mofaz business? Well, it’s that it *is* a representation of that first step: a mainstream group in Israel starting to see that they’d better start compromising now or their position just gets worse and worse.
Not that what Mofaz is suggesting is anything great for the Pal’s, or indeed anything much really. But it’s still a big change from the present “keep building like crazy” path that the I’s have been on and are of course still on. And it will be coming from a big mainstream force in Israel so it’s also not like it’s coming from ten peaceniks in their basement there.
Ergo, all I’m saying is that if you are looking for what big change is coming next in the situation I think this kind of thing has much much more potential to be it than any talk of a one-state solution, or Obama/Clinton actually getting the settlement expansions stopped, or the Pal’s caving and going to any negotiation talks suddenly.
That’s reasonable, Sin, but I’m not convinced. Hopefully you’re right. But there’ve been people like this before–in America it’s always Tom Friedman or someone like that condemning the Israeli right and proposing interim solutions which fall far short of anything that the Palestinians have a right to (even leaving aside one state talk and thinking of the 67 borders) and as Bruce said, when the Palestinians object, as they will, magically they become the people who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and all the blame falls on them. I don’t think Arafat was blameless in 2000-2001 (I think Robert Malley’s account was reasonable in blaming all sides), but it was amazing how quickly the Camp David talks morphed into an incredibly generous offer that Arafat supposedly refused–there’s also been a consistent conflation between Camp David and the Clinton parameters and Taba and somehow, no matter at what stage, it was all Arafat’s fault.
Whatever the motives of the individual actors, that’s how it goes.
I don’t disagree with a word of what you say Donald, except maybe to just note that I wasn’t really meaning to say this was either good or bad at this point. All I was saying was that I think it is a manifestation of at least some significant segment of Israeli society saying that something has to be changed, and if any near-term change is to come that’s where we will see it coming from.
In terms of good or bad however even on its face it seems “bad” in terms of fairness for the Pal’s and that’s not unexpected; of course the first break in the Israeli resolve to stick with their continued occupation and building will not be any offers that are particularly good. Indeed they will be woefully bad. But that wasn’t my point. This Mofaz idea does just seem to truly be such a break, and a significant one in terms of moving closer to unilateral Israeli action such as Sharon took in evacuating Gaza. And if that happened in any significant segment of the West Bank—not to mention 60% of same—I don’t think that anyone would claim that the game hadn’t changed. And my only observation is that this is a potential near-term game-changer, unlike anything else on people’s lips right now, and indeed at least some concrete thing to talk about in terms of what the idea of a one-state solution has already accomplished as opposed to what seems entirely theoretical, far-future things like Israel really being put up against the wall to accept same.
We’ll see; as potsherd observed Kadima actually won that last election and there’s no good reason that I see that Labor can’t ally with it which would greatly carry the day in the Knesset and the PM’s office. And the Israeli electorate does seem to have a periodic appetite to try something different once in awhile to settle this thing once and for all, despite the settler and Likud types who it seems to me are just saying “it doesn’t matter if we have peace or not we aren’t stopping until we hit the river, or further even, no matter what.”
As I said then, this simply seems to me to have best potential to be the next game changer if there is anything that’s going to do that. Amazing how utterly and totally Obama has collapsed and is cleary unwilling to do anything in terms of changing things. And the BDS and one-state movements, while nice, are in cold-eyed reality still only very distantly realizable theories.
A Kadmina/Labor/Likud would have held a substantial majority with no need to include any of the fringe/nutcase parties in the coalition. But neither Livni nor Bibi would agree to such a thing. On the petty selfishness of a few individuals rests the fate of nations.
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