I've failed to convey one of the most important events at the AIPAC policy conference, the appearance by Tal Becker, chief policy adviser to Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister. This was the most encouraging and positive event at a conference that I generally found fearful and defensive. Part of this was Becker himself, a softspoken man with an English-Israeli accent and a real respect for Palestinians. I trusted him almost from the first word he said. I felt bathed, as I never ever did at other times at AIPAC, by feelings of compassion for Palestinian suffering, and wanted to cry out, Here is a real Jew!!! Maybe I'm being deluded, I don't care. I'm going to set forth a lot of his statements below in real time.
Becker was on a panel called "Prospects for Peace: Can the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Be Solved?"
The other speakers were David Makovsky of WINEP, who is neocon-lite, and Ken Stein of Emory’s Institute for the Study of Modern Israel, who was historical. Becker was so real and engaged compared to these men that no one could listen to them once he began talking. And throughout, Becker addressed the right wing, the doubting Jews in the audience who oppose the peace process because they are hungry for more Palestinian land, or believe Arabs are animals, etc.
“I see Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and my kids,” he began. Why is he trying to make a deal? He was in Paris a few months back and heard Tony Blair say that there are two kinds of people in the world, people who comment and people who act. He has decided he must act. People say there’s danger in going forward, there are no good options. True; you have to choose between bad options.
“Look at the region around us… We see the empowerment of extremist forces… The conflict is becoming religious in character…We see also a fundamental debate within Palestinian society [between religious extremists and moderates}… We could sit and wait for the terrorist infrastructure to be dismantled [as called for by phase 1 of the roadmap].” Or we can try to empower the moderates. “We are not negotiating as a gift to the Palestinians, we are negotiating to insure Israel’s interests.” We have to offer a real alternative to Hamas, now.
Erekat and Becker meet almost daily. Under them is a group of expert teams who meet constantly. It is all secret, with no leaks–a real first for such negotiations. “Everything is on the table.” Water, the environment, economic relations, refugees. He was not at liberty to tell us any of the actual negotiations. “Some are going well, some are going less well…. We are not regurgitating our narratives at one another. Not a day goes by without talks talking place.”
There is an awareness on the Israeli side, that the Palestinian state must fulfill the aspirations of the Palestinians, including of course the claims of the refugees.
How serious is this process? A month ago, Livni decided not to cancel a meeting with Abu Alaa, her counterpart, after learning by telephone of a suicide bombing on her way to the meeting. “No I’m going to go to this meeting,” she said. Becker added: “I think this is a very significant change.” At the same time, he said, the purpose of the talks is to nullify Hamas’s influence. “We will not give keys to our future to those who are going to blow themselves up.” And here Becker struck a militant chord, which was often struck at the conference, hinting we will soon see an invasion of some sort in Gaza. “There is no easy solution to Gaza. No easy military solution, no easy diplomatic solution…. Our goal is to delegitimize Hamas because of what it offers for the future…. They offer nothing for the Palestinian people and nothing for the Israeli people.” [Guns and minds–when has that worked?]
Meantime the goal is to develop Palestinian institutions in the West Bank and turn “the two-state solution into a reality. Our goal is to reach an agreement if we can. If we don’t, to keep talking and to keep talking and to keep talking… We are not doing this for the U.S. administration.” For Israel’s core interest is to have a healthy Palestinian state on its border. Not a terrorist state or a failed state.
The Q-and-A. A lady said the only option was in the bible. “The land of Israel belongs to us because God gave it to us….we have only one state, Eretz Israel.” Smattering of applause.
Becker was gentle. The only way to guarantee that Israel will be both a Jewish state and a democratic state is to “come to terms with the fact that we don’t live in a vacuum… we have neighbors…millions of Palestinians.” The only way to get what Jews want is to take the interests of others into account. Big applause.
Another adversarial question. How do we know they want peace? Why would they want it?
Becker: “I try not to paint people with one brush. I think there are Palestinians who… are interested in a normal life, a prosperous life… and committed to a two-state solution. There are other Palestinians committed to Israel’s destruction. My goal is to have enough nuance in my message and in my actions.. that I can reach out to those Palestinians and have them dictate the the terms of what the future will look like.” And thereby create a dynamic of more peace, less violence.
A kid from South Jersey named Janofsky took Becker on. His answer this time contained an important point. “Both sides realize that they have to compromise.” One of the most significant developments is that “Each side is thinking about the other side’s victory speech, how the other side will be able to market the agreement” to its people. That is a very important dynamic in the negotiating room. Huh.
A few comments from me. I am for the 2-state solution because it seems to offer the hope of ending a cycle of violence that has ensnared my country, the U.S. That is the reason I got into this stuff, because of 9/11 and Iraq. I’m a selfish American. (And no, Tony Blair is not my role model.) Obviously it has to be a just solution. Americans, and Israelis, must actually think about what Palestinians want. Becker is doing this, so he has my respect. The right of return is of course a huge issue in Palestinian hearts and an issue for anyone who takes the dispossession of ’48 seriously. The AIPAC conference is a festival of Nakba denial. But I don’t think Becker can’t go in for that. Makovsky, who is clearly in the know, indicated that Israel seeks to extinguish the right of return with a “quota” of returnees under the understanding of “reunification of families.” Again, the key is that this solution can be made acceptable to the Palestinian people, presumably with a lot of sweeteners. Not my call.
Of course I question whether the strategy will be effective. I question whether it is possible to isolate and nullify Hamas after so empowering them through humiliation and violence. In that sense, Becker’s talk underlines the fact that Israel is engaged, as a sovereign government and occupier, in the same process that Joshua Landis explained to me that all governments are engaged in in that region: trying to push down the Islamic extremists. A hearts and minds question. And as Nadia Hijab has said, the two-state solution may well have died when Arafat died. He was the only one who could pull it off. Now that Israel is desperate for it, it may be too late. Becker said that the papers exaggerate how much settlement-building is actually going on. I have seen those colonies, and it makes me a one-stater, most of the time.
Myself, I like to be an optimist. To me, Becker is the path toward post-Zionism. So I am pulling for the most humane speaker at AIPAC to be successful. And pulling for my community to get over its selfishness, evident everywhere at this conference, and work on behalf of the true interests of another people. Break down those psycho-religious borders, and the real ones won’t be so significant.
