Yesterday Amjad Atallah, Daniel Levy, and Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation held a conference call (audio here) about the direct talks that begin today. There was a lot of experience and wisdom on the call, including from the callers-in, among them Tony Karon, so let me summarize.
The overall thrust of the talk was bleak indeed. The failure of the talks is already being anticipated so the blame game has begun even before the talks have begun, said Levy. The parties to the talks are more limited than they were under George Bush at Annapolis and far less than Madrid in 1991, Atallah said. Few “stakeholders” are there. Of course Hamas is not there. Neither are Syria nor the Arab League. Egypt is here, in the person of Mubarak’s son. Democracy in action.
Not even Fatah is fully represented. Abbas won’t be able to get to a deal, Levy said, because of his limited “political carrying capacity.” He is only going under tremendous pressure, and many inside the West Bank are against the talks. Levy: “The leaders at dinner tomorrow night are not blessed with legitimacy in their constituencies, let alone the Arab world.” This can’t be Oslo II, Atallah said. If Abbas emerges from this with greater freedom of movement and economic activity in the West Bank—and no political gains, let alone concessions on territory—then there will be violence in the West Bank that could make the recent murder of four settlers look minor.
Over the conversation was the shadow of violence in the occupied Hebron hills. And so the hopes placed in Obama by the Arab world are about to be dashed, with what result?
Levy has a rapier wit. One of his lines, also in this Huffpo piece, is that George Mitchell keeps asking for 700 days, that is what it took with Northern Ireland, well he is at 600 now. Then he said that if the Unionists in Ireland had insisted as a precondition for negotiation that the nationalists recognize the north as part of a union with Great Britain–
Senator Mitchell would have passed his 7,000th day of trying in Ireland. Yet that is essentially the pre-conditional ask being made of Hamas.
Atallah and Levy are two-state guys. I will get to their hopes in a moment, out of fairness, but the thrust of the conversation was that we might be looking at the funeral of the two-state solution. With fewer adherents than ever. With the Israeli government incapable of making any concession on the colonial expansion that is its political base, and with a half of a half of a political loaf from the Palestinians. How many people still believe in it? And Levy said that if Abbas comes back with incremental gains, there’s a huge risk, “violence far exceeding what is taking place now” in the West Bank.
A caller who had just been in Beirut, I believe Kim Ghattas of BBC, spoke of the real fear there: that this is the very last chance. There is great pessimism that if this administration doesn’t get something off the gorund, no peace negotiations for a very long time. Levy also said that if the Obama administration ends up being seen as Israel’s lawyer, again, there will be grave consequences across the Middle East.
Wise. Now let me get to their own beliefs here. Levy said the way forward was for Obama to get a referendum from the Israeli people, over the head of Netanyahu if necessary– now was the time for major concessions. Can Bibi’s coalition say yes or no? Or a new coalition say Yes? Well then screw Bibi, can the Israeli public say Yes? The only hope we have is not an imposed solution, but an imposed question, he said: a moment of choice presented to the Israeli people by Obama.
“That Israeli Yes won’t come out on its own. We have to perform a C section ot get it out… Only the Obama administration can do it, with help from others… “ –Levy.
Atallah was asked about Abbas, in the famous analogy an Israeli leader once used, if he is the man who can jump from the window on to the galloping horse of history. “Abbas is on the ledge,” Atallah responded sharply. The man at the window is Obama, Atallah said. “It’s not because he wants to be…” But because of the conditions facing the U.S. in the region, he has no alternative but to forge a peace here, there is no more “muddling through.” Dark horizon.
America is implicated completely. Yesterday at his briefing Robert Gibbs tried to say that there is no linkage between the end of the occupation of Iraq and the end of the occupation of Palestine, but who does not feel that way in the region, that the occupation must end?
Both men were clear about where things go if the talks fail. It will lead to more debate about the one state solution, Levy said. “That’s the trajectory it eventually goes on.” And Atallah: “I agree with Daniel, that’s where it’s headed.”
One state. The right in Israel seems to be working its way toward that understanding, the left in Europe and in Palestine is moving toward that understanding. Something that Roosevelt understood in the last months of his life and that Truman denied may come to pass, the Arab world will be consulted on what it wants for historical Palestine, though 60 years on any solution must integrate the Jewish achievement in Israel, what liberal Zionist Leonard Fein has called "the most important project of the Jewish people in our time." Though I don’t share the belief, there must be some respect. Is it realistic? That is why we need leaders. The Palestinian resistance has been largely nonviolent for years, BDS is nonviolent. Celebrate these forces.
