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From the derogatory tone of a recent tirade from the "paper of record," one might get the impression that the foreign policy endeavor of the current Democratic administration was reaping staggering success.
Pot calling the kettle black?
Indeed, as the editorial itself points out, "China is rising, relations with Pakistan are plummeting, Iran and North Korea are advancing their nuclear programs. The Middle East is in turmoil," – leaving the reader to puzzle over who ought to shoulder the blame for all this.
Shouldn't much of the culpability for these woes be attributed, in large measure, to the incumbent administration, already well into the final year of its term?
With the much-heralded centerpiece of Barack Obama's foreign policy strategy – "outreach" to the Muslim world – launched with his lofty June 2009 speech at Cairo's Al- Azhar University, in ruins, what basis is there is to believe his party "is the one to trust with the nation's security"?
A poll conducted in mid-2010 for the Arab American Institute by James Zogby, himself closely affiliated with the Democratic Party, underscores just how miserably the administration's grand design has failed. According to Zogby's findings, "US favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush administration."
Zogby expressed surprise to The Washington Post's Jason Ukman "that favorable attitudes toward the United States had actually dropped to levels below where they were in 2008."
These findings were, as Ukman notes, "largely in line with those of a poll conducted in spring 2010 by the Pew Research Center," which also showed a plunge in favorable perceptions of both the US and the president.
A subsequent Pew poll, conducted after the start of the Arab Spring, revealed a further overall deterioration in Muslim attitudes toward the US. Only in Indonesia was there a small majority (54 percent) with a favorable view of the US under Obama, while in Jordan (84%), the Palestinian-administered territories (80%), Egypt (79%), Turkey (77%) and Pakistan (75%), massive majorities expressed unfavorable attitudes.
Counterintuitive, counterproductive
Clearly then, Obama's approach to international relations – cold-shouldering democratic allies and kow-towing to dictatorial adversaries – has not only been distinctly counterintuitive but disastrously counterproductive.
The headline of an article by Nile Gardiner in the British Telegraph, relating to the Zogby poll, conveys a widespread sentiment regarding the administration's competence in foreign affairs: "President Obama is proving an embarrassing flop in the Middle East."
Gardiner's assessment is scathing: "After two and a half years of bashing Israel, appeasing rogue regimes… and promising a new era of relations with the Muslim world, Washington is now less popular in major Arab countries than it was when George W. Bush was in the White House."
The White House's approach – perceived by many as embracing foes and estranging friends – has alienated the latter without assuaging the former.
The Jerusalem Post's Caroline B. Glick caustically characterized the Obama administration's "intellectual universe" as one "where stalwart US allies such as Hosni Mubarak are discarded like garbage and foes such as Hugo Chavez are wooed like Hollywood celebrities."
In Egypt, this policy has precipitated an archetypical lose-lose situation: Soaring anti- American animosity from the Egyptian public and a total loss of US influence with the Egyptian government, as demonstrated by Cairo's defiant determination to prosecute almost 20 American democracy advocates (including the son of a senior administration official), despite dire warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to allow them to leave the county.
Lose friends and influence
While the frequent tiffs with Israel – the result of an endeavor to wring concessions for the virulently anti-US Palestinians – have been arguably the most media worthy of the administration's brushes with friendly nations, they are by no means the only ones – and certainly not the most damaging to the US.
Thus under Obama, relations with India have cooled down markedly relative to the warm cordiality that prevailed throughout the Bush administration. According to former US ambassador to New Delhi Robert Blackwill, "India… seems to have been downgraded in the administration's strategic calculations."
A 2011 Congressional Research Service paper notes that even after the US president's visit to India, "observers continued voicing concerns at the Obama administration's apparent 'air of ambivalence' toward India, with one going so far as to accuse the US administration of 'diplomatic negligence.'"
There is a pervasive sentiment among many in the Indian elite that the US has relegated its relations with India to the backburner, preferring instead to focus on ties with Pakistan and China. This is reflected in the assessment of one seasoned Indian diplomat who sensed that under Obama, the US's "strategic priorities in the region and India's expectations are diverging."
It is a matter of speculation what role this perceived divergence played in the Indian air force's decision to opt for the hitherto unsaleable French Rafale fighters, rejecting bids from Lockheed (F-16IN Super Viper) and Boeing (F/A-18E/F Super Hornet) in its multi-billion dollar acquisition program for 126 combat aircraft. However, had the intimate Indo-American strategic convergence that characterized the pre-Obama period continued, such an outcome would have been distinctly less probable.
A China-Canada connection?
What is not a matter of speculation, however, is that the Obama administration has driven staunch US ally Canada into the arms of America's most significant rival, China – at least as far the crucial issue of energy is concerned.
Despairing of any progress on the proposed Keystone pipeline, planned to transport vast oil reserves in Alberta to American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, Canadian Premier Stephen Harper flew this week to China with several of his cabinet ministers, to discuss the energy deals with Beijing that were previously expected to be done with Washington.
According to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, Canada's view of the bilateral relationship with the US has been fundamentally transformed by the Obama administration's handling of the Keystone episode.
He laments: "Canada has concluded that it simply can't expect much from the United States, even on an issue that would seem to be vital to our own interests," adding acerbically: "At least one country in North America understands where its national interests lie. Too bad it's not us."
Cold comfort
However, the foreign policy debacles of the Democrats are cold comfort for the Republicans.
Setting aside its undisguised partisan enmity and unwarranted disdain, the Times editorial cited above is correct in expecting that the GOP and its presidential candidates demonstrate "real understanding" and "new ideas" in the field of foreign policy. It is correct in asserting that "American voters deserve thoughtful answers [t]hey're not getting."
Despite the fact that in the looming November elections, the major focus will be on domestic issues – the economy and employment – the Republicans will be gravely remiss if they allow themselves to be seen as ill-equipped to deal with the considerable foreign challenges that US will be called upon to face in the coming years.
They need to take a brutally honest assessment of their own past performance. This will inevitably involve a critical appraisal of the aspirations, application and accomplishments of the largely neoconservative doctrine that dominated the theory and practice of foreign policy during the Bush presidency – in terms of both the validity of its intellectual underpinnings and the consequences of its implementation.
It would be an intrepid speculator indeed who would give more than even odds on any positive long-term result emerging from the massive expenditure of blood and treasure in US-led military campaigns launched by the Republican administration in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Democratic peace theorem
For the better part of the last decade, the conceptual cornerstone of Republican foreign policy planning was the Democratic Peace Theorem (DPT) – the notion that democracies do not go to war against each other.
The far-reaching theoretical significance and the policy-relevant importance of this idea have been widely recognized by prominent figures in the study of international relations.
For example, Harvard's Samuel Huntington declared: "The democratic peace thesis is one of the most significant propositions to come out of social science in recent decades. If true, it has crucially important implications for both theory and policy."
As for the validity of the DPT, two well-known scholars of international relations write: "The proposition that democracies are generally at peace with each other is [so] strongly supported… [it] has led some scholars to claim that this finding is probably the closest thing that we have to a law in international politics."
The embrace of the DPT by GOP policymakers was described by John M. Owen IV, in a 2005 Foreign Affairs review essay titled "Iraq and the Democratic Peace" as "The defining act of Bush's presidency." Owen points out that no other president "since Woodrow Wilson, a former president of the American Political Science Association – tied their foreign policies more explicitly to the work of social science."
Blueprint for Bush doctrine
This idea was the intellectual compass that led to the "Broader Middle East Initiative" and "forward strategy of freedom" by which the expansion of political rights and participation in the Muslim world was meant to combat the appeal of Islamist extremism.
One of Bush's most explicit articulation of this was in a 2004 White House press release following a meeting on Iraq and the Middle East with then-British premier Tony Blair: "The reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other…. I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in… the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy."
Bush extended this vision to Afghanistan. In an address to US and coalition troops, he declared, "It's in our national interest… helping the Afghans develop a democracy. History has taught us democracies don't [make] war. Democracies yield peace, and that's what we want."
Interestingly enough, Bush's predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton, embraced almost identical DTP-compliant ideas a decade earlier. In his 1994 State of the Union address he expressed a strikingly similar rational for the promotion of democracy as the preferred avenue for pursuit of US interests abroad: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security… is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other. They make better trading partners and partners in diplomacy," Clinton said.
Conundrum and challenge
Even the staunchest GOP supporter cannot deny that the noble aspirations of the Bush doctrine have not been even remotely realized. By most estimates, well over a trillion dollars have been spent on Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. In both cases over 90% of this cost – and the casualties – were incurred after the Taliban were dislodged from power and after Saddam Hussein was apprehended.
This blood and treasure has been expended on subsequent efforts to establish democracy on the banks the Euphrates and on the slopes of the Hindu Kush, where signs are rapidly accumulating that this huge effort will culminate in heartbreaking futility, that in both Iraq and Afghanistan the situation will revert to the status quo ante – or worse.
In Iraq, there are warnings that, following the US withdrawal, the country is descending into a corruption-ridden police state, with the Shi'ite leadership increasingly ruling by force and fear. In Afghanistan, ahead of the planned US withdrawal, there are increasing fears that the Karzai government will not be able to defend itself against the resurgent Taliban.
Why then has a doctrine that had such sound theoretical grounding and overwhelming empirical validation of its underlying rationale been so unsuccessful? That is the cruel conundrum Republicans must address and the crucial challenge they must rise to.
In next week's column, I shall propose a possible answer to the conundrum and an operational policy paradigm to meet the challenge.
We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal and those interests it is our duty to follow – Lord Palmerston, British foreign secretary, 1848
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they stay the same) – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849
The Lone Ranger, to his hitherto trustworthy American-Indian comrade, Tonto, on realizing they are surrounded by hostile Apaches: It looks like we're in a lot of trouble, old friend!
Tonto: What do you mean 'we,' Paleface? – an old joke
The eternal potential for perfidy – or at least the impermanence of loyalties – in pursuit of interests, personal or national, is being illustrated by the events unfolding in Jordan today.
Crumbling of conventional wisdom?
It has long been a pillar of conventional wisdom in the Middle East that the Hashemite kingdom is a bastion of moderate pro-Western stability. Accordingly, it has been held that the relationship between the monarchy and radical elements in the Arab world in general, and among the Palestinian in particular, will inevitably be adversarial. Consequently, the assumption has been that, by their very nature and the nature of their goals, these elements necessarily are an existential threat to the regime in Amman.
Furthermore, with the eruption of the Arab Spring, the dominant view has been that the popular waves of support for resurgent Islam are a grave menace to the rule of incumbent autocrats, monarchical or military.
After all, Islamic regimes have risen in the wake of deposed dictatorships in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, while other are under siege in Syria and Yemen. The same scenario was presumed valid in Jordan.
However, here it seems the Palestinian question might be disrupting – even reversing – this pattern, at least for the time being.
For as the recent visit by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to Amman (his first official one since his 1999 expulsion) shows, a surprising, even counter-intuitive, truth seems to be emerging.
Rather than radical Palestinian Islamic elements threatening to overthrow the monarchy, they appear to be articulating a rationale for sustaining it. At least in the medium term and at least as far as appearances are concerned. This may have dangerously deceptive consequences for Israel.
Sinister solidarity?
As some analysts have noted, the public protests in Jordan have been subtly but qualitatively different from those in, say, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria.
Rather than being focused on revolution, they have centered on reform; rather than clamoring for forced removal of the autocrat and his regime, they have centered more on consensual transformation of the regime and the transfer of some powers of royalty to other institutions of government.
This anomalous moderation in the tenor of public protest is intriguing and significant, particularly in light of Mashaal's statement made during the meeting with the king, in which he affirmed Hamas's concern "for Jordan's security and stability."
As The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh observes, the message was clearly "aimed at reassuring King Abdullah that Hamas does not challenge his monarchy."
Another interesting point of note was that Mashaal was accompanied on his visit by Musa Abu Marzouk, a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and slated to be Mashaal's successor.
The professed concern for Abdullah by the Hamas leadership was far from expected – and in assessing it several important facts should be borne in mind.
Neither of the Hamas men has reason for any sense of affinity with the monarchy. Indeed, not only was Hamas banned in 1999, after being accused of misusing Jordanian soil for illegal activities, but in the same year, both men – together with several other Hamas leaders – were arrested by Abdullah on charges of being members of an outlawed organization, illegal possession of weapons, fraud and illegal fund-raising.
Mashaal was expelled from Jordan, and has operated since then mainly out Damascus, something which is becoming increasingly difficult given the current conduct of the Assad regime.
The riddle of radical restraint
Just how remarkable this apparent largesse on the part of erstwhile archenemies is, is underscored by contrasting it with sentiments conveyed at the start of the Arab Spring by Hammam Saeed, head of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and a close ally of Mashaal.
During a rally held at the Egyptian Embassy in Amman barely a year ago, he declared: "Egypt's unrest will spread across the Mideast and Arabs will topple leaders allied with the United States."
Although he avoided any direct reference to Abdullah, it is no secret that Jordan under Hashemite rule has long maintained one of the closest relationships with the US in the Arab world. Indeed. Adm. Michael Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited in early 2011 to reassure the jittery kingdom that "the US has its back."
Pundits cautioned that Islamic elements were well poised to unseat Abdullah, but this has not happened. Rather – as noted above – protests have focused more on reform of the regime than on its removal.
The restraint on the part of Hamas and its Jordanian allies cannot be explained by weakness.
Much has changed in Jordan's political power structure since 1970's Black September, when King Hussein unleashed the Jordanian military on the PLO, killing thousands of Palestinians. The chill winds of change ushered in by the turmoil in the Arab world have put the monarchy on the defensive. Islamic elements are clearly in ascendance, buoyed by widespread popular support.
Mashaal is the object of much admiration among the millions of Palestinians in the country. The opinion of one woman, interviewed recently by The New York Times' Stephen Farrell, seems representative of far wider sentiments: "Everybody loves him, he's very dear to us… He's a distinguished figure, he has stature."
Pervasive popularity
Islamist political muscle is not limited to Mashaal's personal stature.
The Jordanian Brotherhood has its own political party, the Islamic Action Front, unequivocally the most coherent and capable force in Jordan's political landscape – despite the fact that it has had its parliamentary representation slashed by contrived electoral legislation designed specifically for that purpose.
The current situation – in which Islamic Action Front has just over 5% of the seats in parliament – portrays a deceptive picture of its real political clout. As Jonathan Schanzer observes in The Wall Street Journal: "If… Abdullah reinstates Jordan's old elections laws, the Islamists will enjoy new parliamentary power."
Moreover, although Hamas still remains officially banned in Jordan, it enjoys tremendous popularity among the people. There are signs that changes might be in the offing on this issue as well. Jordanian Prime Minister Awn al-Khasawneh, appointed by Abdullah in October, after he dismissed two predecessors in deference to popular dissent, has repeatedly said that expelling Mashaal was a "legal and constitutional mistake which must be corrected."
Cairo and Amman: Pre-Spring parallels
In gauging the potential of Islamic factions in Jordan, it seems logical to compare public perceptions there, before the Arab Spring uprisings, with those that prevailed in pre-Tahrir Egypt, the rationale being that if initial conditions were largely similar, it is plausible expect that the end results – i.e. Islamic dominance, will also be similar.
A poll conducted by Pew Research Center, and published in December 2010, on the cusp of uprisings in North Africa, provides edifying – and disconcerting – findings.
For example, support for radical terrorist groups in Jordan outstripped that in Egypt.
In Jordan, support for Hezbollah was 55 percent (higher than Lebanon's 52%), while in Egypt it was only 30%; for Hamas it was 60%, compared to 49% in Egypt, and for al-Qaida, 34%, far more than the 20% in Egypt.
In both countries, massive majorities (typically 70-85%) endorsed death for apostasy (leaving Islam), stoning for adultery and amputation for theft. In both counties there were overwhelming majorities for the view that "the influence of Islam on politics is positive" – in Egypt 85% and in Jordan 76% – wellabove Pakistan's 69% and Turkey's 38%.
Clearly these findings bode ill for the longevity of the Hashemite regime – at least in its current form – and add to the perplexing conundrum of why Islamic opposition in Jordan – with all its manifest potential for seizing power – has not been more militant.
Compliance or cunning?
After all, why the king needs to tread carefully with Hamas and the Islamist opposition is clear. For in the wake of the anti-incumbent forces unlocked by Arab Spring, the precedents of Tahrir, Tunis and Tripoli have grave implications for him.
As Al Jazeera reported, "Abdullah has realized the important role Islamists groups are playing in [the Arab] revolutions and since he has faced protests at home… he has decided to reach out to Hamas."
But far more intriguing is why Hamas and the Islamist opposition need the king. This puzzle is a matter of crucial consequence for Israel – and the answer to it seems to lie in the question of "Palestine."
For to keep alive their claim for a Palestinian state west of the Jordan, they cannot permit the establishment of manifestly "Palestinian" state east of the river – which would be the case if the Hashemite monarchy was deposed and the Palestinian majority populace took control of the country. If a new political entity emerged, geographically situated on almost 80% of what was the original Mandatory Palestine, that has a Palestinian majority as the source of popular sovereignty, it would be increasingly difficult deny that this was a "Palestinian state."
Such a development might severely undermine the claim that the Palestinians are "stateless."
Hamas appears keenly aware of this "ominous" possibility! Indeed, Al Jazeera's report on Mashaal's reference to the matter is hugely significant: "Mashaal also responded to calls from some in Israel for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland in Jordan as a substitute for the Palestinian refugees' right to return. 'The Hamas movement categorically rejects all alternative homeland projects in Jordan and we insist on restoring all our rights fully so that Palestine is Palestine and Jordan is Jordan.'"
'Therein lies the rub?'
That is precisely the point. To preserve their demand for a cis-Jordan River state, the Islamists must preserve the illusion that the trans-Jordan River state is non-Palestinian – by propping up non-Palestinian monarch.
In a recent blog, Barry Rubin commented that "Radical Islamists who want to open a new round of battle against Israel now rule or are likely to do so very soon in Egypt, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Turkey."
For some reason he did not mention Jordan. This is a regrettable omission – one that those charged with Israel's strategic planning can ill-afford.
Indeed, they must come to terms with the prospect that although Jordan may well have long been an important – albeit covert – ally, this can no longer be assumed. Rather than being a force for protecting Western interests, it may well be on the way to becoming a façade for promoting Islamic ones.
The end of the Hashemite era may thus arrive well before the formal removal of the monarchy. One might make a persuasive case that the process of transforming the Jordanian potentate into a Palestinian puppet has already begun.
Israel will be gravely remiss if it does not heed Palmerston's words of warning – that it has no permanent allies, only permanent interests – and plan accordingly.
]]>Water reveals a new apartheid in the Middle East. The 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank use as much or more water than some 2.3 million Palestinians… even if only a few dare to use the word, all indications are that the Middle East is the scene of a new apartheid…. And in this situation, water is a particular element of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. – Excerpt from the French parliamentary report on "The Geopolitics of Water"
My most recent columns have been devoted to analyzing Israel's public diplomacy, the reasons for its manifest ineptitude, and the mechanisms that produce this abysmal performance.
Last week, by coincidence, an illustrative example, underscoring precisely what I have been trying to convey, broke into the headlines.
It came in the form of a French parliamentary report on Israel's water policy, authored by Jean Glavany, a Socialist member of the National Assembly, and accusing Israel of using water as an instrument of apartheid and oppression against the Palestinians.
Responses, recriminations, repudiations
The report sent Israeli officialdom into a tizzy.
The media were peppered with responses, repudiations and recriminations. Foreign Ministry officials claimed to have been unaware of the document until several days after its posting on the National Assembly website.
One diplomatic source characterized the report as "a serious mishap that… has seriously damaged Israel's image in France." The embassy in Paris was accused of falling asleep on the job for not alerting the Israeli authorities of the impending publication and the malevolent nature of its contents.
Israel robustly repudiated the report. The Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned it – correctly – as "unacceptable," "loaded with the language of vicious propaganda, far removed from any professional criticism" and tainted with "blatant tendentiousness."
Moreover, according to official Israeli sources, some members of the working group involved in compiling the report disassociated themselves from its anti-Israel tenor.
However, the damage had already been done. Israel had – once again – been linked to the dreaded "A-word."
Cyberspace was replete with websites seizing on the report as yet another affirmation of the odious nature of the Jewish state and its dastardly discrimination against the "other."
Delusional derogatory drivel
Israel's firm rebuttal of the report was factually correct and morally justified. This was a document that comes as close to unadulterated, uninformed drivel as the written word can get, with accusations as malicious as they were mendacious.
Its allegations range from the highly implausible to the totally impossible. For example, one of its more ludicrous allegations is that Israel's security barrier – "the wall"– "prevents Palestinian access to the Jordan River."
However – as the most cursory glance at any map will show – the "wall" is located along, or close to, the 1967 Green Line, so it cannot constitute an impediment of any kind to Palestinian access to the Jordan River.
The river has anyway been reduced to a highly polluted trickle south of the Kinneret.
As such, it has been insignificant as a water source for decades, and access to it – or lack thereof – is irrelevant to Palestinians' hydrological situation. So contrary to the impression the report creates, it has no bearing on the quantity of water available to them.
Only marginally less absurd is the document's supposition that avaricious hydrological calculations lay behind the construction of "the wall," to ensure Israeli supplies and to prevent Palestinians from extracting water from sites in the adjacent "buffer" zone.
In fact, construction of the security barrier was undertaken solely in response to the horrific Palestinian terrorism that took place between 2000 and 2003. It seems that a few "minor" details eluded Monsieur Glavany's memory when forming his opinion of the function of the security barrier and the events that lead to its construction – such as the Passover massacre at Park Hotel in Netanya, and the carnage at the Sbarro restaurant and the Moment Café (both in Jerusalem), the Dizengoff Center and the Dolphinarium (both in Tel Aviv), and at the Beit Lid and Meggido junctions, to name but a few.
Had it not been for Palestinian terrorism there would have been no barrier. To suggest otherwise is either ignominious or ignorant.
Passivity over preemption
Despite all this, the French hydro-report episode was indeed a diplomatic debacle for Israel, not because of what was done after its publication, but because of what was not done before it.
Once again, Israeli diplomacy was seen to be slamming the stable doors long after the horses had bolted, reacting to events rather than anticipating them. It was a classic illustration of what I described in last week's column, of "Israeli [diplomatic] endeavors [being] reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure."
There is little room for excuses, particularly when it comes to the water issue.
For while it may not have been possible to predict publication of this particular report at this particular time, the appearance of some similar document from some source or other was a near certainty, which should have been foreseen and preempted.
Sense of déjà vu
The situation that has arisen in the wake of the Glavany report has an eerie sense of déjà vu about it. It was barely two years ago that a similar document was produced by Amnesty International, brandishing similarly baseless accusations berating Israel's water policy as an instrument of apartheid.
The report immediately became a centerpiece of a US lecture tour by Omar Barghouti, arguably the most prominent leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. Flyers billing his talks splashed the title: "Thirsting for Justice: Israel's control of water as a tool of apartheid and means of ethnic cleansing."
The Israel diplomatic establishment had ample warning of Barghouti's appearances.
Despite this, no action was taken on suggestions – including from this writer – to preempt his appearances with the massive distribution of factual material, refuting the cavalcade of distortions, falsehood, exaggerations, omissions and half-truths that comprised his talk.
Lessons unlearned
The lessons of the Amnesty/Barghouti episode remained unlearned.
Rather than adopt an offense strategic initiative to remove Israel's water policy for the list of topics that can be used to denigrate the country, those charged with the conduct of its public diplomacy have opted for defensive tactical responses to hostile initiatives. Rather than launch an ongoing enterprise to set, a priori, the context in which later events are interpreted/perceived, they have opted to fend off individual accusations and condemnations, made in the inimical context prevailing today.
This is particularly exasperating in the case of water, which is one of the topics most amenable to mounting such an preemptive enterprise.
For while it is always possible to find heartrending anecdotal evidence involving highly localized incidents in which an elderly Palestinian may have been inappropriately treated, or in which the IDF damaged a cistern, these in no way reflect the intent or consequences of Israeli policy. This can only be fairly assessed by the overall impact that policy has had on the Palestinians' water situation.
Here the facts are unequivocal. They should be used to quash any allegation of discriminatory deprivation, as part on an ongoing proactive initiative to inform opinion-makers, hydro-professionals and the general public, and to create a context in which any accusatory documents are likely to be dismissed with the contempt they richly deserve.
Facts, figures, fabrications
The Palestinians' hydrological situation improved beyond all recognition under Israeli administration, not only in absolute terms compared to initial pre-"occupation" conditions, but in relative terms compared to that of Israelis.
Whether one focuses on overall consumption of fresh water; per capita consumption of fresh water; consumption of fresh water relative to Israelis; accessibility of running water to households; the area under agricultural cultivation; or the size of the agricultural product, the conditions for the Palestinians have been dramatically enhanced by Israeli rule.
Between 1967 and 2006, the overall annual consumption of fresh water by "West Bank" Palestinians grew by 300 percent, from 60 million cubic meters to 180 m.cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15%, from 86 cubic meters to 100 cu.m.
Overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1,411 m.cu.m. to 1,211 m.cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted by 70% (from 508 cu.m to 170 cu.m.), a remarkable decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also by massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for irrigation, and of naturally occurring fresh water by desalinated water for domestic use.
By contrast, the Palestinians have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed-upon sewage purification projects, allowing untreated effluents to endanger "downstream" Israeli supplies.
Palestinian claims that it is Israel which has prevented the construction of recycling plants are preposterous. For what twisted logic could conceivably induce the fiendishly cunning Zionists to oppose the construction of installations that would protect their own water resources from Palestinian pollutants?
The wimpiness of 'Zionist oppression'?
Moreover, from 1967 to the years just before Oslo, Palestinian household consumption rose dramatically – by almost 600%, significantly higher than the 230% in Israel.
Similarly, water-conveyance to households also increased impressively.
Whereas in 1967 only 10% of the "West Bank" Arab population was connected to a running water system, the figure today stands at 95%. So much for discriminatory deprivation.
Palestinian agricultural performance improved dramatically as well, even though water allocations were not increased. (In recent years Israeli farmers have had their freshwater allocations slashed by 50% and more.) This was facilitated by the introduction of more advanced methods of irrigation and cultivation, resulting in an increase of the area cultivated by about 160% and of the agricultural product by 1,200%.
As world-renowned soil-physicist and hydrologist Daniel Hillel observes, by the 1990s, farming "was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry."
Furthermore, the inflammatory claims that luscious lawns and shimmering swimming pools in Jewish settlements unfairly and provocatively deprive Palestinians of water are belied by a single statistic: Israel conveys more water (nearly 56 m.cu.m.) from inside the pre-1967 borders into the "West Bank" than the total consumption of the entire Jewish population in the settlements across the "Green Line" (just over 48 m.cu.m.).
In other words, there is a net inflow of water from pre-1967 Israel to the Palestinians which more than compensates for the much-maligned lawns and pools.
Demand – not discrimination
While claims that per-capita consumption of water by Israelis is much higher than that of the Palestinian population are true, this is principally a result of differences in demand – not supply – because of differences in lifestyles. (Clearly, the fact that a millionaire in an opulent penthouse in Manhattan will use far less water than equally affluent owner of a sprawling estate in Bel Air is not a matter of discriminatory deprivation).
Different rates of consumption are found between the Jewish and Arab populations within pre-1967 Israel – and between different socioeconomic groups within the Jewish population – without anyone raising the claim that this is the result of purposeful deprivation.
Interestingly, per-capita consumption in the frequently vilified settlement of Kiryat Arba is 25% lower than in the Beduin city of Rahat – and 90% lower than in up-market Savyon). What perverse discrimination does that indicate?
The perils of PC-diplomacy
These facts and many others should be assertively and proactively inserted into the public discourse, not only as a response to attacks, but as part of an ongoing endeavor to mold public awareness and perception of the realities that pertain to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
One of the principal reasons that this is not occurring is the PC (Palestinian-compliant) perspectives of the Israeli civil society elites, discussed in my previous columns, who exert a dominant influence on the conduct of our public diplomacy.
These entrenched elites cannot permit accurate portrayal of Palestinian society without undermining their own worldview.
(With regard to the water issue, I can attest to this personally.) After all, this would entail exposing the fundamental reasons why the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a) a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; b) an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and c) an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions – and inaction.
And that is something one does not say in polite company.
]]>I am absolutely astounded to find so many of your "luminaries" in the universities who are teaching the [youth] that Israel was basically born in sin. Quite a lot of the [anti-Israel] animosity in the [international] media is fed by organizations such as the Haaretz newspaper. It is coming out from Israel academics. This cuts ground from under the feet of those who tell the truth. Somebody should be putting the truth into the public domain, and the government of Israel has not done this for many years
– British columnist Melanie Phillips, IBA TV, 2011.
In the first part of this analysis, the reasons for Israel's feeble performance in the conduct of public diplomacy and in countering its accelerating international delegitimization were investigated. The causes were traced to a lack of resolve to prevail among those charged with the conduct of Israeli diplomatic strategy.
To recap briefly
This lack of will to win is reflected in the hopelessly inadequate resources allotted for the fight for Israel's image and is rooted in large measure in the worldview of dominant civil society elites in the media, academia and legal establishment.
Their positions of unelected power and privilege, together with the nature of their personal and professional interests, provide these elites with the ability and the motivation to impose on the elected politicians – no matter what their electoral platform – an agenda that reflects their own unequivocally "PC" (Palestinian-compliant) perspective on the conflict.
Inevitably, this is an agenda that militates strongly – both implicitly and explicitly – towards endorsement of the Palestinian narrative, at the expense of the Zionist one.
Deprived of material resources and motivational drive, Israel's public diplomacy is doomed to anemic, ineffectual failure.
Perplexing political paradox
For those skeptical as to the validity of this analysis, the following astounding facts regarding Israel's political history may prove illuminating.
From 1977, when the Likud first came to power on a platform of "Greater Israel," to 2005, when the Likud withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in stark contradiction to its electoral pledges, there were 28 years. For 20 of these years, the prime minister came from the ranks of the Likud.
Yet today, over a third of a century after Menachem Begin's dramatic electoral victory, all the above are not only common items in the mainstream discourse, but are publicly proclaimed as inevitable in the not-so-distant future by many mainstream politicians and pundits.
By any rational criterion, this must prove that while the "right wing" keeps winning elections, it never really gets into power. This, in turn, must mean that there is some external source of influence imposing outcomes on the political system that are completely different from those one would expect.
Eliminating the spurious
What could this source of extraneous influence be? Some might suggest international pressure driven by a combination of cynical interests, petro-dollars and anti- Semitism. Other might suggest coalition pressure because of allegedly defective Israeli electoral system. Yet others might claim that these results reflect some intrinsic wisdom in dovish policies of appeasement and withdrawal that make the repudiation of hawkish pledges inevitable.
None of these hypotheses holds water.
It cannot be attributed to international pressure, which clearly cannot be invoked to explain the either the Oslo process or the disengagement, two of the most significant political events of the past two decades. These were both Israeli initiatives, cooked up exclusively by Israeli chefs and served up by Israeli waiters.
Indeed, the entire Oslowian enterprise was the surreptitious initiative of influential figures in Israeli civil society, who prevailed upon a initially reluctant polity to adopt it and engage the PLO, still officially deemed by many a terrorist organization deep into the negotiation process. As for the disengagement, there was no international pressure for Israel to undertake unilateral measures.
Indeed, it was an embattled Ariel Sharon who, under intense legal and media onslaughts, persuaded a leery Washington to endorse the notion of unreciprocated surrender of territory.
Neither can coalition pressures account for these decisions, since there were no coalition pressure to adopt them. Quite the opposite. Several coalition members resigned in protest against them.
Finally, it was not some inexorable wisdom in these policies. Indeed two bloody decades later, they have precipitated all the dangers that their opponents warned of, and none of the benefits that their proponents promised.
So it must be something else that generates this ongoing distortion of voter preference and divergence from electoral pledges.
Unholy trinity?
This brings us back to last week's diagnosis of the source of this perversion of the democratic process: A trinity of interactive elites within Israel civil society.
The makeup these elites and the mechanisms of this distortion must now be elaborated upon. As mentioned, these elites include the individuals who dominate the legal establishment, those who dominate the mainstream media and those who purport to represent the dominant view in the Israeli academia.
The reservation of "purport to represent" regarding the academia is important because many among the faculty members in Israeli universities are not adherents to a radical Palestinian-compliant worldview. However, this does seem to be the dominant proclivity in the faculties of social sciences and humanities (including law).
The members of these faculties have close ties with the mainstream media.
This affords them a greatly enhanced platform for airing their political views relative to their colleagues in fields such as, say, paleontology or particle physics.
Moreover, and perhaps more important, they play a crucial role in molding the next generation of aspiring politicians, journalists, political advisers and strategists, and so on.
The ability to impose
But why does this trinity have the ability impose its political preferences on the elected polity (often in stark contradiction to electoral pledges), and what motivates it to wield this power (often in stark contradiction to the national interest?).
As for the ability:
• Those who dominate the legal establishment can almost invariably impede any initiative the elected politicians wish to implement – as they did in preventing cutting off the electricity supplied to Gaza needed to drive the lathes that machine the rockets fired at us.
• Those who dominate the media can almost invariably initiate any concessionary initiative that elected politicians may be loath to implement – as was the case with Oslo, certainly with the disengagement (and even more so with the Schalit prisoner exchange).
• And when the professional stamp of approval is needed for these policies, the biased professors in the social sciences and the humanities are always ready to provide it and endorse even the most dangerous delusions as far-sighted prudence.
Motivation to impose
As for the motivation: The conduct of these unelected elites is driven by set of personal and professional interests that are served far more effectively by acquiring the approval of their peer groups abroad, rather than the approval of the Israeli public.
For instance:
• For any career-driven member of the legal establishment, the assessment of his/her actions/decisions/verdicts by say the Harvard Law Review or by professional colleagues at Yale, Princeton or Oxford carries far more weight than what might be said about them in the market place in Mahaneh Yehuda or the town square in Or Akiva.
• Likewise, any ambitious scholar in the social sciences or humanities seeking to secure funding for a research project with relevance for the Arab-Israeli conflict – or to publish its findings in a prestigious journal – knows he/she has a much greater chance of success if his/her reputation reflects a history of identification with the Palestinian narrative rather than commitment to the Zionist one.
• For an image-conscious media personality, the odds of being invited as a keynote speaker to a high-profile event abroad are clearly far higher if he/she is known to express empathy for Palestinian suffering rather than concern for Israel security.
It is this combination of elite power and preference that draws the contours of the public discourse. It facilitates the circumvention and the manipulation of public opinion, and hence the capacity to set the overall direction of national policy – no matter who gets elected.
Precluding truth
It also reveals why professionals, charged with the conduct of Israel's public diplomacy – and who are drawn from, and interface with, these elites – cannot adopt a winning strategy.
In his seminal opus, The Art of War, the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Zu stipulates "…the ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive."
The battle on the public diplomacy front is no different – to win one must go on the offensive.
But in public diplomacy, launching a strategic offensive entails portraying Israel's adversaries as they truly are. If not, the public will have no way of understanding Israel's security constrains and imperatives, and why certain measures which otherwise might seem unwarranted and excessive are crucial for the protection of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. However, if one presents the Palestinian society as it really is – a society with behavioral norms and societal values very different from those that prevail in Manhattan or Mayfair; a cruel, violent society that suppresses its women, oppresses it homosexuals, represses its political dissidents; a society that, while not legally permitting it, at least socially condones the "honor killing" of young women, the brutalization of political rivals, and the summary execution of homosexuals – if one presents the Palestinian society as its true, unvarnished self, it makes nonsense of the worldview of Israel's empowered elites.
Indeed, it exposes their support for a Palestinian state, adjacent to the nation's only international airport and abutting the length of the Trans-Israel Highway, as dangerous folly.
Precluding winning
Sadly, this is essentially the position to which Israeli civil society elites have mortgaged themselves – and their personal prestige and professional standing.
Accordingly, they cannot permit portrayal of Palestinian society as it really is, i.e., permit Israel to go on a strategic diplomatic offensive. Clearly this precludes the captains of Israel's public diplomacy from adopting a winning strategy, as this would disastrously undercut their own worldview.
As a result, Israeli endeavors are inevitably reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure.
This – far more than international animosity, global anti-Semitism or George Soros – is the underlying reason for Israel's abysmal performance on the public diplomacy front.
Elements of remedy?
As noted in Part I of this analysis, the remedy for this malaise does not lie in Israel's political anatomy, but in its sociological topography, and while the details of such a remedy and their envisaged mechanism of operation must await a future column, the following must be made clear.
The remedy does not entail changing the elected political leadership, as two decades of disappointment from ostensibly hawkish candidates has depressingly demonstrated. Instead it involves fundamentally transforming the elite structure of Israel's civil society and the discourse it generates.
It requires empowering and emplacing new counter-elites, which in turn requires creating nuclei and raising banners around which such alternative elites can coalesce and the hitherto hesitant can rally.
It calls for setting up a "theater of engagement" to accommodate an ongoing adversarial intellectual clash between these emergent new elites and the incumbent old ones – a clash which the latter cannot evade. This must be a theater for which the followers of the old elites comprise a permanent audience.
It must be a clash in which the ideas of the new elites are proven superior – substantively and morally – a clash in which those of the old elites are defeated and discredited in full view of their flock.
This is the only way to erode their power and diminish their influence.
Unless this is grasped, unless such a venture is initiated by those who truly endorse the Zionist ideal, all will soon be irretrievably lost.
Israel has made itself defenseless. Israel has vacated the battleground of the mind. Israeli 'hasbara' is a JOKE!
– British columnist Melanie Phillips, IBA Television, 2011
Israel is losing the battle because it doesn't want to win.
Or to put it differently: The people charged with the nation's public diplomacy have a worldview that prevents them from adopting a winning strategy. Indeed, this chronic malaise was aptly diagnosed by Daniel Pipes when he observed: "No one at the upper echelons of Israel's political life articulates the imperative for victory." (More on this later).
Although difficult to accept, the lack of will to win is easy to prove. In gauging the motivation of any organization to achieve an objective, one of the most important indicators is the resources it allots for to achieve it.
Clearly, if the objective is considered important, more resources will be allotted, and vice-versa.
Surrender syndrome
Israel's public diplomacy budget is ludicrously small.
Indeed, as one government minister bemoaned: "It is dreadful to hear that Bamba (a snack produced by the Osem corporation), has a promotional budget two to three times the size of the total state budget for public diplomacy."
This frugality is not dictated by a lack of resources. Indeed, when Israel has desired to achieve an un-budgeted objective, money has rarely been an obstacle.
For example, when billions of shekels were needed for the construction of the West Bank security barrier, that was no problem; when billions of dollars were needed for the Gaza disengagement, that was no problem either.
Likewise, the tens of billions of dollars required for the planned "convergence" (i.e.
withdrawal) from Judea and Samaria were not considered an insurmountable obstacle, even though it was clear the money would not be coming from the American taxpayer.
In last week's column, I pointed out that if a small fraction of 1 percent of GDP were devoted to public diplomacy, this would generate a budget of $1 billion – rather than the paltry sums provided today.
So if the Israel leadership chooses not to allot available resources to assertively promote Israel's case abroad, to resolutely defend its international image, to explain its operational constraints and security imperatives, to elucidate why certain measures are indispensable for the safety of its citizens, it must mean that – for one reason or another – it does not wish to. There is no other rational explanation.
How can one account for this syndrome of submissive surrender?
The key to the conundrum
This is a conundrum that cannot be deciphered without a firm grasp of the sociological – rather than the political – topography of country in general, and of the priorities and preferences of powerful civil society elites in particular.
Without this insight it is impossible to understand the dramatic and disturbing events that have taken place in Israel over the past two decades. Without it, it is impossible to understand:
• Why a country that displays such technotactical brilliance is afflicted by such strategic imbecility;
• Why hawkish candidates consistently win elections, but then immediately adopt the failed policy of their defeated dovish rivals;
• Why the doctrine of political appeasement and territorial concessions is repeatedly and consistently disproven, but somehow never discredited – and certainly never discarded;
• Why the Israeli political establishment has not embraced more appreciatively and mobilized more effectively the huge potential in the support of communities such as the Evangelical Christians across the world, and particularly in the US, as a strategic asset.
None of these phenomena makes any sense unless one understands the decisive role that civil society elites have in setting the direction of the country's strategic agenda – no matter who gets elected. As will become clear later, understanding this role is also the key to deciphering the riddle of Israel's dismal public diplomacy performance.
Detrimental, dysfunctional, disloyal
Sadly, this is a role that is not only decisive, but also in many ways detrimental, dysfunctional and at times disloyal.
If to some this uncharitable description appears excessively harsh, consider the following examples and decide for yourselves how to characterize the conduct of civil society elites in the media, the academia and the legal establishment, who (a) accuse Israel of being an "apartheid state" and support international boycott and sanctions against their own county, such as Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, who declared: "Israel today is an apartheid state. I have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement…launched by Palestinian activists."
(b) portray Israel as a bloodthirsty, intolerant nation bent on the persecution of minorities, such as Prof. Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv University, who characterized Israel as "a society where shooting at children of the 'other' is the norm" and the Israeli public as "indifferent or worse to Israel's widespread killing of Palestinian youth?" (c) condemn Israeli policies as being on a par with or worse than those of the apartheid regime in South Africa, such as the poet, writer and lecturer, Yitzhak Laor, who alleged that "Israel's apartheid is worse… more ruthless than that seen in South Africa…. We have to get rid of Zionism. What lies behind Zionism are interests and a huge army hungering to justify its existence."
(d) condone – and indeed appear to endorse – Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, such as Prof. Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University, who suggested that "Palestinian shelling from Gaza should be perceived as a prison uprising… suppressed with terror by the Israeli state."
(e) deny the legitimacy of Israel preventative measures to ensure the security of the country and the safety of its citizens, such as journalist Gideon Levy, who in an article titled "The neighborhood bully strikes again," written at the outset of the retaliatory Operation Cast Lead, undertaken to quell the firing of thousands of rockets at civilian communities, decried "Israel's violent responses [which] cross every red line of… morality, international law," asserting, "What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime," and such as Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger of the University of Haifa, who following the Gaza Flotilla episode, when Israeli commandos were forced to defend themselves against a mob endeavoring to disembowel them, endorsed the international censure of Israel in a hastily published article titled "Ashamed of My Country," proclaiming that "the almost-unanimous condemnation is spot on. I am ashamed," and elsewhere asserting that "the true-blue pirates were the uniformed Israeli commandos."
(f) ignore or obscure the fact that Israel policy towards the Palestinians is not driven by a discriminatory doctrine of racial superiority but by proven security concerns, such as columnist Akiva Eldar, who, in an article titled "Are Israel and apartheid South Africa really different?" dismissed the security realities, declaring: "As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it's hard to find differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule," or such as former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, who charged that Israel "enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society engaging in theft…. We established an apartheid regime."
THIS IS but a small sampling of the assault on Israeli legitimacy from within its own civil society elites. Many examples abound of similar distortions, misrepresentations and exaggerations, of similar half-truths, non-truths and full-blooded fabrications from many other "intellectuals," whether self-professed radical post-Zionists, or self-proclaimed "liberal" pro-Zionists.
The noxious nexus
But more than a expression of the political predilections of those who articulate them, these derogatory attitudes towards Israel reflect a socio-cultural milieu, in which the personal and professional interests of its members impose a code of conformity to political correctness – irrespective of any divergence this may have from the facts. It is a code strictly enforced – not by any formal fiat, but by the consequences of any violation.
No deviation beyond "acceptable" limits is brooked, and any such "delinquency" is likely to have grave repercussions in terms of livelihood, promotion and even social acceptability of the "perpetrator."
This brings us to the nexus between the role of Israeli civil society elites and government policy in general and public diplomacy in particular. This is a topic which I shall elaborate on in detail in next week's column (Part II).
In it, I will show how the combination of their unelected positions of power and privilege in the media, academia and legal establishment, on the one hand, and the nature of their personal and professional interests, on the other, confers on these elites both the ability and the motivation to determine the direction of the strategic agenda of the nation.
Naturally, this is a direction that reflects the worldview of the socio-cultural milieu they belong to, and which they can impose on the government no matter who prevails at the polls. This neutralizes voter preferences in the governance of the nation and dangerously undercuts the underpinnings of the democratic system.
This also impinges on the formulation and implementation of Israel's public diplomacy.
After all, the senior professionals charged with conducting the county's public diplomacy are drawn from – and interface with – the elites discussed previously.
In effect, this precludes them from adopting any strategy that would undermine their own worldview and dooms Israeli efforts to failure. But more on that next week.
No conspiracy
In closing, it is important to underscore that what is set out here is not a theory of a conscious conspiracy, contrived by some purposely malevolent elitist cabal. Rather, it is the elucidation of a mechanism comprising the accumulated consequences of individual decisions and actions driven by the short-term pursuit of prestige and profit of a group of empowered individuals, and which trump considerations of the long-term interest of the wider collective.
It is essential to understand this mechanism.
Otherwise, it will be impossible to "comprehend the incomprehensible," to understand why "Israel has made itself defenseless," why Israel has "vacated the battleground of the mind" and why Israeli hasbara is an ineffective joke.
More important, without such an understanding it will be impossible to formulate any remedies.
It is not only the disillusioned among the Israeli Left who are expressing ever-more despair at the prospect of implementing the two-state solution. It is increasingly being dismissed as a realistic – or even desirable – aspiration by Palestinians, and not only radical Islamists who reject it because it entails recognizing a Jewish state. Thus for example, in his recent book, What is a Palestinian State Worth?, even Sari Nusseibeh, a show-case "moderate," expresses "heretical" doubts as to whether the struggle for statehood merits the effort.
Significant shifts
This should be seen against the shift in the general Palestinian attitude toward the twostate principle, reflected in a strangely underreported and grossly misreported poll conducted recently for The Israel Project by Stanley Greenberg together with Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.
According to the poll, there was a "huge drop in acceptance of a two-state solution." Fifty-two percent said they would not accept such a solution – up from 36% less than a year previously – while two-thirds rejected the principle that one of the states should be a Jewish homeland.
A similar proportion said, "The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state," and 84% said that "Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state."
Only the grossly undiscerning will fail to notice the tangible change in official Palestinian negotiating strategy in recent years. The pursuit of a two-state solution has become a leisurely distraction rather than a seriously sought after end-of-conflict arrangement. Far-reaching concessions – difficult for Israel to accept even as part of a final agreement – are being presented as conditions for merely resuming negotiations, delaying them for extended periods – hardly a rational tactic for a people eager to extricate themselves from onerous "occupation."
Facing the inevitable
In view of accumulating evidence, it would be imprudent for Israel to continue deluding itself that Palestinians entertain any serious intentions as to the two-state solution – other than in the two-stage sense. Indeed, the accelerating erosion of support for the idea makes the formulation of operational alternatives a pressing imperative.
The alternatives that have been discussed most often fall into two categories. Those which entail: (a) conferring Israel citizenship on the Palestinians – i.e. various versions of the one-state approach; and (b) transferring civilian rule over the Palestinians to some non-Palestinian Authority Arab administration – such as Jordan or prominent local clan-leaders traditionally well-disposed to Israel, who would preside over scattered enclaves.
For a variety of reasons, neither of these offers a stable long-term formula. As a detailed critique of these alternatives is beyond the scope of this article, I will restrict myself to the following observations.
Fatal flaws
Regarding the first category, the inclusion of the Palestinian Arab population across the 1967 Green Line into Israel as fully fledged citizens would create an unbearable socioeconomic burden on the country that would not only jeopardize its character as a Jewish state but as an advanced Western democracy as well – a problem many EU countries are beginning to experience, even with proportionately far smaller "discordant" populations.
It is a measure that would create difficulties far more complex and profound than could be dealt with – as some naively hope – by adopting a regional electoral system and gerrymandering the boundaries of the constituencies to minimize the impact of non- Jewish voters. Quite apart from the legal challenges – before an inherently amenable Supreme Court – as to the equity of such an arrangement, and possible mass relocation of voters to other constituencies, the cultural and economic disparities would tear society apart.
Regarding the second category, it is wishful thinking – especially in the wake of the Arab Spring – to hope that any "traditional" regime would consent to be seen as "pulling the Zionists' chestnuts out of the fire."
It is more than doubtful that any Arab ruler – whether a clan leader or the Jordanian monarch – would be willing, or indeed able, to function for any length of time as what would certainly be perceived as a perfidious "prison warder."
Moreover, in light of the instability in the region, it would irresponsible to adopt a long-term policy based on the assumption that the regime in Amman would not be replaced or at least dominated by elements inimical to any cooperation with Israel.
In both cases, the consequences of these alternatives are liable to be worse than those they are designed to avoid.
The humanitarian paradigm
These factors – the eroding relevance of the two-state paradigm, the ominous emergence of the one-state paradigm and the inadequacy of proffered alternatives – led to the proposal in my two preceding columns of the humanitarian paradigm, which addressed the fate of the Palestinian Arabs in a comprehensive, non-coercive manner. Operationally it comprised three constituent elements.
• Ending discriminatory treatment of the Palestinian refugees by abolishing/transforming UNRWA.
• Ending discrimination against Palestinians in the Arab world and the prohibition on their acquiring citizenship of countries in which they have been resident for decades.
• Providing generous relocation finance directly to individual Palestinian breadwinners to allow them to build better futures for themselves in third countries of their choice.
Unsurprisingly, numerous reservations were raised as to the feasibility of the proposal. These will now be addressed – at least in part.
The feasibility factor – I
The proponents of the Oslowian two-state principle are the last who can invoke feasibility as a precondition for the admissibility of an operational proposal –at least as an item on the agenda of public debate.
After all, this is a formula that has been tried for almost two decades, and despite massive international endorsement and financial support, has wrought nothing but death, destruction and despair. Surely a proposal that has proved so disastrous should by any rational yardstick be branded unworkable and hence unfeasible.
And if the demonstrable infeasibility/ futility/failure of the two-state paradigm has not disqualified it as meriting serious consideration, why should a conceptually consistent, untried humanitarian paradigm not be accorded the same opportunity – at least as a legitimate topic for debate.
The feasibility factor – II
Inevitably, any radical departure from long-established conventional wisdom will be met with stiff resistance. However, the existing configuration of public opinion should not be considered immutable.
Indeed, imagine how hopeless the notion of a Palestinian state was in the late 1960s in the wake of Israel's sweeping Six Day War victory. Even in the late 1980s the idea was dismissed as unrealistic, unreasonable radicalism by all but a minuscule albeit determined minority on the far Left.
However, it was a minority that managed to enlist the resolve, resources and resourcefulness to transform the marginal into mainstream in remarkably short order.
Given the paltry funding and the puny efforts that have characterized Israel's public diplomacy in the past two decades, the current public perception can hardly be taken as persuasive gauge of what might be achieved with adequate financing and appropriate focus. Today the entire public diplomacy budget is reportedly of the order of magnitude of what a medium-to-large Israeli corporation spends on promoting fast-food or snacks. If one does not invest in winning hearts and minds, it is no wonder that they are not won.
The feasibility factor – III
According to the IMF, Israel's GDP is approaching a quarter trillion dollars. If it were to allot less than one half of 1% of GDP to public diplomacy, that would be over $1 billion – enough to swamp anything the George Soroses of the world devote to Israel's delegitimization.
Given the nation's achievements in nearly every other field of human endeavor, one can only surmise what impact a determined assault on the authenticity and legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative, financed by an annual $1b. budget over two decades – the length of the post- Oslowian era – might have on the acceptability of a humanitarian rehabilitation of Palestinian Arabs, cruelly misled by their leaders for decades.
Indeed, important elements of the humanitarian paradigm are already gaining international legitimacy. The anomalous and detrimental role of UNRWA – a pivotal element in the proposal – has been recognized by countries such as Canada and the Netherlands which have either curtailed their funding to the organization or are considering doing so. It is distinctly plausible that the US could be convinced – especially in these days of austerity – to terminate its funding for this wasteful and counter-productive body which perpetuates the Palestinians' dependency and statelessness.
Likewise, the brutal discrimination against Palestinians in Arab states, allegedly to "help preserve their identity," is also the subject of increasing international attention and censure. Pressure should – and could – be brought to bear on Arab regimes to end this unacceptable practice, even if it means temporarily channeling budgets formerly allotted to UNRWA to facilitate their integration as citizens of the countries of their longstanding residence.
These elements cannot be detached from the overall thrust of the humanitarian paradigm, which is to focus on ameliorating the situation of the individual Palestinian rather than promoting the nefarious goals of an invented national entity.
Estimating costs
The estimated cost of implementation is strongly dependent on the level of compensation and the size of the Palestinian population in the "territories," which is the subject of intense debate.
A few years ago, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a survey on the level of compensation Palestinian refugees considered fair to forgo the "right of return." If we take more than double the minimum amount specified by most pollees as fair compensation for relocation/rehabilitation, and if we adopt a high-end estimate of the Palestinian population, the total cost would be around $150b. for the West Bank Palestinians (and $250b. if Gaza is included). This is a fraction of the US expenditure on its decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have produced results that are less than a resounding success.
Spread over a period equivalent to the current post-Oslo era, this sum would comprise a yearly outlay of no more than a few percentage points of current GDP – something Israel could well afford on its own.
If additional OECD countries were to contribute, the total relocation/rehabilitation of the Palestinian Arabs could be achieved with an almost imperceptible economic burden.
From Hamlet to Herzl
I began this column on the humanitarian paradigm with a short excerpt from Hamlet – to convey why it is needed.
It is perhaps appropriate that I end it with one from Herzl – to convey why it is feasible: If you will it, it is no fantasy.
Responding to the response: Answers to questions raised by my 'Notes to Newt.'
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
– Sherlock Holmes in This Sign of the Four
There has been much talk in Palestine about emigration, especially among the young people…in search of a better life abroad. Many are continuing to rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates… with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries.
– the PA's mufti of Jerusalem, 2007
My past two columns, focusing on the authenticity (or lack thereof) of the Palestinian's national identity following Newt Gingrich's characterization of them as an "invented people," generated a brisk public exchange.
Numerous questions were raised and reservations expressed as to the various aspects of the operational program I proposed, especially regarding the prospects of implementation.
A reminder
The proposal had three interlocking components: • Ending discriminatory treatment of the Palestinian refugees by abolishing the UN's Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), or bringing it into line with international practice for all other refugees on the face of the globe.
• Ending discrimination against Palestinians in the Arab world and abolishing the prohibition on their acquisition of the citizenship of the countries in which they have been resident for decades.
• Providing generous relocation finance directly to Palestinian breadwinners resident across the 1967 Green Line, to allow them to build better futures for themselves and their families in foreign countries of their choice.
Some readers, even those who commended the proposal, were skeptical. For example, one talk-backer remarked, "It's a nonstarter, for the simple reason that no Arab state would agree to it."
This comment, entirely correct factually, is equally irrelevant strategically and reflects a common misunderstanding of the proposal which it is important to dispel.
For – as I hope will become clear later – the agreement of Arab states – or indeed of any Arab collective – is totally immaterial to the implementation of the proposal. But first…
Eliminating the 'impossible'
In establishing what is "impossible," it is crucial to define one's point-of-departure.
For, in terms of policy decisions, what is admissible given one point-of-departure, may well be unacceptable given another.
Thus, if the conceptual point-of-departure is the imperative to preserve Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, policy choices that entail forgoing this aspiration would be deemed "impossible" to accept.
Accordingly, proposals whose rationale is that the Israel-Palestinian conflict could be resolved by transforming Israel into a multi-ethnic state-of-all-it-citizens would be unacceptable on a conceptual level – quite apart from the fact that they would be unworkable on a practical one.
Likewise, proposals that suggest a resolution could be arrived at by reducing Israel to unsustainable territorial dimensions which, as Shimon Peres once remarked, "would create a compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all sides" must also be deemed "impossible."
After all, Israel cannot be preserved as functioning nation-state if its metropolis is exposed to ongoing Sderot-like bombardment by alleged "renegades."
Indeed, even the palpable threat of primitive rockets fired on the country's only international airport, congested highways, major ports and rail links, not to mention 80 percent of the population and commercial activity, would make the maintenance of socioeconomic routine impossible, or at least highly improbable.
Recognizing 'whatever remains'
So if territorial concessions entailed in a two-state approach would make the Jewish nation-state untenable in terms of security, and if absorbing a large Muslim population entailed in a one-state solution would make the Jewish state untenable in terms of demography, "whatever remains – however improbable" – must be the only alternative.
Since the geography is immutable, the focus must be on the demography.
It is thus no more than "elementary" that the long-term preservation of the Jewish state must involve the relocation of the non-Israeli Arabs between the river and the sea. Any other option is self-deluded wishful thinking – or at least the burden of proof to show otherwise is on the proponents of such an option, especially in view of the post-Oslo/post-disengagement experiences.
It is either hopelessly myopic or hypocritically malevolent to profess support of a Jewish state and then advocate policy that makes its long-term survival impossible, or at least highly implausible. Note that there is nothing remotely "racist" in this purely "Holmesian" deductive process, unless the very notion of a Jewish nation-state is considered racist, something which itself is the epitome of racism.
For as Chaim Herzog, the late president of the state, once pointed out: "To question the Jewish people's right to national existence and freedom is… to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe."
Is the 'improbable' really improbable?
In principle there are two way to effect such relocation – coercively or non-coercively.
In the proposed alternative, coercive options are rejected for a variety of moral and practical reasons and a noncoercive approach is adopted, with economic inducements to enable Palestinian breadwinners to seek a better future for themselves and their families elsewhere.
To suggest that this is unfeasible is to fly in the face of facts. It is to ignore the fact that the number of international migrants today is approaching a quarter of a billion, and is growing rapidly. Although this is partially a byproduct of wars, political conflicts and natural disasters, it is predominantly motivated by economics. It would be absurd to suggest the Palestinians are immune to such motivations.
Indeed, to make such a claim is to ignore compelling evidence – both anecdotal and statistical – that a desire to seek a better life elsewhere is widespread among the Palestinians, even without the availability of generous relocation grants, as both the above citation from the Palestinian Authority's mufti of Jerusalem suggests and as numerous opinion polls indicate. It would highly implausible to hold that the perception of tangible and credible prospects for a better life would not greatly enhance this desire.
Rejecting intellectual surrender
Some claim that a sense of national pride would override the desire to accept material gain as an inducement to emigrate.
In the case of the Palestinians, this claim would be extremely tenuous. For as has been amply demonstrated recently, is there no basis for the claim of the Arabs of Palestine to genuine history of nationhood. But more important, and more policy-pertinent, the claim is as much a prevailing political pretext as it is a historical hoax.
Sadly, this has not been grasped by many, including several prominent pro-Israeli pundits such as Elliott Abrams, who recently said: "There was no Jordan or Syria or Iraq… so perhaps [Gingrich] would say they are all invented people as well and also have no right to statehood. Whatever was true then, Palestinian nationalism has grown since 1948, and whether we like it or not, it exists."
With all due respect, I strongly disagree.
There is no obligation to accept the fabrications of adversaries merely because they are insistent.
Indeed, it is neither pragmatic nor progressive to acknowledge "Palestinian nationalism."
To the contrary, it reflects either inordinate credulity or complicity in undisguised duplicity.
Acceptance of Palestinian nationality is a symptom of either intellectual fatigue or intellectual laziness that has sapped the will to resist this pernicious ruse.
As such, it reflects intellectual surrender and an abject admission of the inability to oppose political duplicity – openly conceded by the Arabs.
Why Palestinians are different
The Palestinians are qualitatively different from other new "nations" that emerged from the breakup up of empire. There are the only collective whose manifest raison d'etre is the not the establishment of their own political independence but the denial of that of others. As such they can more appropriately deemed an "anti-nation" rather than a "nation.
The fact that Palestinians have shown they are capable of cohesive action against another collective does not prove they are a nation. Virtually their entire collective effort has been directed at an attempt to annul the expression of Jewish sovereignty rather than assert their own. Indeed, were they to achieve that goal, the entire point of their distinct collective identity, which hitherto has only been maintained by exogenous factors – international naiveté and Arab coercion – would be obviated.
This lack of endogenous national drive explains their monumental failure at statebuilding.
For almost two decades after the Oslo Accords – despite massive financial aid and political support – they have produced nothing but a deeply divided entity, crippled by corruption and cronyism.
The result is a dysfunctional polity unable to conduct even the semblance of timely elections, and a puny economy, comprising a minuscule private sector and a bloated public one, totally unsustainable without massive infusions of foreign funds.
Failing the test of history
In every meaningful aspect, the Palestinians claim to statehood has failed the test of history, as has the two-state principle.
This in itself should be no cause for celebration by its opponents. For while I find myself in total disagreement with virtually all of Jerusalem Post columnist Gershon Baskin's positions, his latest opinion piece raises a question of great relevance and urgency which his ideological adversaries will ignore at great peril.
Baskin asks, "What now? What happens when there really is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" and warns, "We better start coming up with answers because we are almost there."
Baskin is right in his analysis and right to demand answers. For such a scenario may indeed be upon us, with little warning.
The PA could well implode when the fraudulent façade of Fayyadism – with disposable income reportedly almost double GDP – grinds to an inevitable halt; it might collapse if foreign funding is curtailed because a Hamas-dominated administration emerges from the conciliation talks; or it might dissolve itself, unwilling to face public wrath at its inability to deliver promised goods.
Depoliticizing and atomizing
If the two-state solution is nearing extinction as a viable option and the "one-state-of- all-its-residents-between-the-river-and-the- sea" principle is unacceptable, what remains? Israel must gear itself to deal with this emerging dilemma.
Fortunately, once the inauthenticity of Palestinian nationality is acknowledged, the answer is "elementary."
It lies a shifting the focus from the Palestinian collective to the Palestinian individual, from the political to the humanitarian, from an endeavor to solve the problem to an endeavor to dissolve (i.e. disperse) it.
Depoliticizing the context (by underscoring the humanitarian issues) and atomizing the implementation (by engaging individual breadwinners) provide two significant operational advantages.
It renders the question of "who will accept them" moot.
It does not require the agreement of any Arab state to effect implementation. Since the envisaged compensation will be large enough to allow recipients to comply with immigration criteria in numerous countries – not necessarily Arab or Muslim – and since they would be coming as adequately funded private individuals, what would be the possible basis for refusal of entry – other than ethnic discrimination? And if they were refused entry despite their desire to seek a better future, on the grounds that would undermine the prospects of a Palestinian state, would this not further confirm that Palestinian nationality can only be sustained by artificial constraints? Likewise, the provision of relocation finance is a measure that can be implemented unilaterally by Israel and requires no agreement or approval of any Arab country/collective. All that it requires is for the individually needy to accept help.
Clearly, steps would have to be taken by Israel to prevent reprisals against recipients by their kinfolk, but would not politically motivated fratricide against Palestinians seeking to improve their lives again demonstrate that Palestinian nationality is artificially imposed rather than naturally desired? And how would that fratricide be portrayed as more morally justified than Israeli largesse in helping Palestinians extricate themselves from their socioeconomic predicament?
'Elementary, my dear Israel'
Although I have exhausted the generous word quota assigned by the editor, many questions remain without the answers I owe my readers. Accordingly, and because the Palestinian issue and alternatives to the two-state principle constitute what is arguably the most crucial issue on the national agenda, I will devote one more article next week to address further aspects of this humanitarian alternative, its economic feasibility and political acceptability, and endeavor to demonstrate that the response from Sherlock Holmes would be "Elementary, my dear Israel!"
Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations… the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war.
– Former US president Herbert Hoover, five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee
With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.
– Andrei Sakharov, 1975 Nobel Peace laureate
The collapse of the Oslo process demonstrate[s] that certain long-held "truths" about the conflict need to be turned on their head…. The US should launch an international initiative that would provide economic support for refugees in neighboring states… [and] incentive packages for patriation to non-neighboring states, including in the West.
– Scott Lasensky, 1999, recipient of the Yitzhak Rabin-Shimon Peres Peace Award, Tel Aviv University
As expected, US presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's characterization of Palestinians as an "invented people" unleashed a maelstrom of responses – some commending his daring, others condemning his temerity to challenge the precepts of conventional wisdom.
However, if this pronouncement is not to remain just another headline-grabbing campaign slogan – with a commensurately short "shelf-life" – it must be accompanied by an actionable policy proposal that reflects its political content. After all, what is the point in identifying the Palestinians as a bogus national entity and then adopting a policy that relates to them as a genuine one?
Prerequisite preamble
Some will consider this article provocative – especially if they disagree with Hoover, Sakharov, Lasensky, and deem an endeavor to "resettle and provide good lives" for embattled populations more heinous than "constant suffering and… recurrence of war."
It will raise numerous questions which, because of the constraints of space, will go unanswered here, but which I hope to address in later pieces.
Clearly, the view of the Palestinians as an invented people – particularly one invented for the sole purpose of getting rid of the nation-state of the Jews – makes advocating establishment of a Palestinian state "inappropriate."
However, it also calls for the presentation of an alternative approach to address the fact of their physical presence – if not as a coherent national entity, then as a diffuse amalgam of individual human beings.
Moreover, since any such policy prescription would constitute a dramatic departure from the "holy grail" of conventional wisdom – the "twostates- for–two-people" principle – it would require lengthy public debate to establish it as a legitimate alternative approach.
This would include not only a comprehensive exposition of all its elements, but also a thorough discussion of its ethical justification and operational feasibility, the scope, size and substance of the public diplomacy initiative required to accompany it, its economic costs and international acceptability together with an assessment of its merits relative to other proposals.
This is clearly beyond the scope of a single opinion column. The best that can be hoped for here is to spark a vibrant and sustained public exchange over the proposal that will thrust it into the discourse as a viable – and desirable – option.
Two imperatives
To survive as the nation-state of the Jews, Israel must address two requirements:
• The demographic imperative
• The geographic imperative Second, in contending with these, Israel must contend with two dangers:
• The long-standing danger inherent in "two-state" proposal which – except under wildly unrealistic, and hence irresponsible, assumptions – cannot adequately address the "geographic imperative."
• The emerging and arguably, more severe danger inherent in the "one-state" proposal which even under the most benign assumptions cannot adequately address the "demographic imperative."
Only the obsessive or the obtuse would dispute that it is highly implausible that the geographic imperative could be addressed if Israel withdrew from large portions of Judea and Samaria; or that the demographic imperative could be addressed if it incorporated large portions of the Arab population resident there. And the highly implausible is a perilous basis for policy.
So, if the underlying sine qua non for any acceptable policy proposal is the long-term preservation of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it must address both the geographic and the demographic imperatives – and the dangers that the two-state and the one-state approaches entail.
Avoiding tunnel vision
To effectively address the Palestinians issue it must be approached in a comprehensive, systemic manner.
Maintaining near exclusive focus on the populations in "the territories" ignores the huge "overhang" of the Palestinian "diaspora," who outnumber their brethren living in the areas deemed "occupied."
Without a conceptual road map for the fate of this "diaspora," any agreement with the "domestic" Palestinians will be futile.
On the one hand, if it disregards their fate, such an agreement will be politically untenable; on the other, if it provides for their large-scale resettlement within a putative micro-mini Palestinian state, it will render that state physically untenable.
Composing a comprehensive alternative
The working assumption must be that it is not plausible that a Palestinian state could "deliver the goods" as a durable solution to the Israel-Palestinians conflict. Prudence dictates it be removed from the agenda as a political goal.
However, even if spurious Palestinian political demands for statehood are extracted from the discourse, this will not obviate the harrowing humanitarian realities of the Palestinians' daily life. This is the issue that Israel and the international community should focus on.
The conclusion, however, should not be that the only alternative is a one-state-of-all-its-citizens option, which would almost inevitably descend swiftly into a Muslim-majority autocracy – despite the hopes of some well-meaning souls that this could be averted by introducing regional elections and gerrymandering the boundaries of constituencies.
How can all these elements be incorporated into a coherent, non-coercive alternative that preserves Israel as the nation-state of the Jews – and addresses the twin imperatives needed to sustain this status, the fate of the "diasporic" Palestinian Arabs, and the fact that the contrived Palestinian national identity was invented solely to undermine the notion of Jewish nationhood?
Three components
To be comprehensive it must have three elements, all firmly founded on the bedrock of liberal political doctrine.
Two involve the elimination of discriminatory practices vis-à-vis the Palestinians as (a) refugees and as (b) residents in Arab countries. The third involves facilitating free choice for Palestinian breadwinners to determine their future and that of their families.
A brutally condensed tour de raison of the elements of the proposal begins with the Palestinian "refugee" issue and the body responsible for dealing with it, UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency).
The pernicious, obstructive role UNRWA plays has often been described, so it suffices to stress it is a highly anomalous organization that perpetuates a culture of Palestinian dependency and the unrealistic narrative of "return."
Invented refugees
Every refugee on earth is under the auspices of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – except for the Palestinians.
For them a separate institution exists – UNRWA.
While a more comprehensive analysis of this anomaly must also be delayed for another occasion, it is can be condensed into an astounding fact: If the universally accepted UNHCR criteria for refugees were applied to the Palestinian case, the number of "refugees" would shrink from close to 5 million to fewer than 200,000.
These figures starkly illustrate that the scale and durability of the Palestinian refugee problem is fueled by the anomalous parameters of it definition.
There is growing consensus – in Israel and abroad – that without abolishing UNRWA and folding its operations into those of UNHCR, no way out of the Palestinian-Israeli impasse is possible.
Ending discrimination
Folding UNRWA into the framework of UNHCR would of course have significant ramifications for large Palestinian populations resident in the Arab countries, who would no longer receive the anomalous handouts paid them.
This leads to the second element of the proposal: The grave ethnic discrimination against the Palestinians resident in the Arab world where, as I recently pointed out, severe restrictions are imposed on their freedom of movement, employment and property ownership.
But most significant, they – and they alone – are denied citizenship of the countries in which they have lived for decades.
Palestinians overwhelmingly want to acquire citizenship of the countries of their long-standing residence, opinion surveys indicate.
With the abolition of UNRWA and the accompanying reduction in the number of people eligible for aid, a diplomatic drive must be mounted to pressure Arab governments to end their discrimination against the Palestinians; to stop perpetuating their stateless status and to allow them to acquire the citizenship of countries where they have lived for decades.
Free choice
This brings us to the third and final element of the proposal: Allowing individual Palestinians under Israeli administration to exercise free will in determining their destiny.
While the first two elements of the proposed solution are directed toward addressing the plight of the Palestinians in the Arab world, this measure is aimed at those in Israeli-administered areas.
It involves allowing individual Palestinians free choice in charting their future and that of their families.
These efforts should focus on two elements: (a) Generous monetary compensation to effect the relocation and rehabilitation of the Palestinian Arabs residents in territories across the 1967 Green Line, presumably mostly – but not necessarily exclusively – in the Arab/Muslim countries.
(b) "Atomization" of the implementation by making the offer of compensation and relocation directly to the breadwinners and family heads, and not through any Palestinian organization that may have a vested interest in thwarting the initiative.
Statistical support
Although some may raise a skeptical brow as to the acceptability of the proposal to the Palestinians and its economic feasibility, two points should be underscored.
First, substantial statistical data exist indicating that such a measure would be enthusiastically embraced by a large portion of the Palestinian population.
According to one poll, only 15 percent would refuse any financial offer that allows them to seek a better life elsewhere, while over 70% would accept it.
Other surveys – by Palestinians bodies – substantiate the existence of wide-scale desire/willingness to emigrate.
As for the overall cost, it is easy to show that the price of the proposed plan would be comparable to any alternative under discussion, involving the establishment of a new state, developing its infrastructure, and presumably absorbing a large portion of a relocated Palestinian "diaspora" within its constricted frontiers.
Windfall for hosts
Finally, it should be remembered that for the prospective host nations, the plan has a distinct economic upside. Given the scale of the envisioned compensation, the Palestinians would not arrive as destitute refugees, but as relatively wealthy immigrants in terms of average world GDP per capita. Their absorption would bring significant capital inflows to the host economies – typically around half a billion dollars for every 2,000 to 3,000 families given citizenship.
The time has come for new, imaginative initiatives to defuse one of the world's most volatile problems, one for which remedies hitherto attempted have proved sadly inappropriate.
There seems ample reason to seriously consider an alternative proposal, which at least prima facie, would defuse the Palestinian humanitarian predicament, inject billions of dollars into the economies of host nations, and ensure the continued survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Israel, the Palestinians and the international community can ill-afford to dismiss it without a serious discussion of its potential payoffs and its possible pitfalls.
]]>I think there is an Arab nation. I do not think there is a Palestinian nation. I think it's a colonialist invention… When were there any Palestinians? …until the 19th century Palestine was the south of greater Syria. – Azmi Bishara, 1994
I think we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. – Newt Gingrich, 2011
Newt Gingrich is to be warmly commended on his recent statement underscoring the lack of authenticity of Palestinian nationality.
It is rare that someone of such public stature has the courage to give facts precedence over political correctness in his public pronouncements. It certainly has set the proverbial cat among the pigeons, sending analysts and activists scurrying for their history books in feverish search for passages or interpretations of passages that reaffirm or refute Gingrich's assertion, depending on their political predilections.
Coming from the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination it is a declaration that could have a profound impact, not only as a much needed clarification of Middle East history, but more important, as a vital signposting for Middle East policy in days to come.
For Gingrich is totally correct when he observes that "… there's a lot to think about in terms of how fundamentally you want to change the terms of debate in the region."
It is to be hoped his provocative and perceptive declaration will serve as a catalyst for a sorely overdue rethink of that debate's fundamental issues.
Conditions for lasting impact
Whether or not his depiction of the Palestinians as an artificially "invented people" has a lasting effect depends on two conditions being met.
The first is to demonstrate that Gingrich's assertion is not only historically accurate, but a policy-pertinent characteristic of the Palestinians today — not because pro-Israeli sources claim it is, but because pro-Palestinian sources concede it is.
The second condition is almost a corollary of the first. For if the Palestinians can be shown not only to be an artificial construct in a historical context, but an inauthentic national entity in the modern political context, then clearly this must strip the notion of a Palestinian state and the "two-state solution" of any validity. What would be the rationale for the establishment of a state for a bogus people?
But for this to translate into practical political action, one must be able to put forward a cogent, comprehensive alternative paradigm for dealing with the issue of the Palestinians Arabs.
For even if they were — and are — an invented people, some persuasive program must be advanced for addressing the fact of their physical existence. In the absence of such program being assertively promoted, inertia is likely leave the "two-states-for-two-people" option as the de facto default policy — even if one of those two peoples is a non-people.
Dividing the discussion
The potential ramifications of Gingrich's bold diagnosis — for both discourse and policy prescription — are so far-ranging and significant that adequate discussion of them would exceed the limits of a single opinion column.
Accordingly, I will split this discussion into two parts.
This week, I will focus on showing that not only is the characterization of the Palestinians as an invented people historically true, but it continues to be politically valid today.
Next week, I will elaborate the components and rationale of a comprehensive alternative paradigm to the two-state principle to resolve the Palestinian issue, and to allow the pursuit of policy that recognizes the futility of establishing a state to accommodate an illusionary people.
These two complementary endeavors are aimed at meeting the previously mentioned conditions required to translate the potential created by Gingrich's intrepid interview into practical and lasting policy initiatives, to replace conventional wisdom — which has been so regularly disproved but somehow never discredited.
Negation of 'other'
Gingrich's reference to "invented people" induced a flood of articles, analyzing the relevant periods of history and convincingly conveying the lack of historical depth for the any claim that the Palestinians constitute a genuinely cohesive national entity.
However, as others have pointed out, similar claims could be plausibly advanced for numerous other entities that emerged from the breakup of empires in general and of the Ottoman Empire in particular, and have — with varying degrees of success — coalesced into functioning nations.
But the case of the Palestinian collective is different.
It is defined not by what it is, but what is not; not by what it wishes to achieve, but what it wishes to prevent; not by what it wants to create, but by what it wants to eliminate.
It has no independent rationale – apart from the denial of Jewish nationhood — to sustain it. As such it is not an affirmation of national "self" but a negation of a national "other."
Jordan's King Hussein underscored precisely this when he remarked that the emergence of collective Palestinian identity was merely a ploy to counter Jewish claims to territory considered "Arab."
At the Arab League meeting in Amman in November 1987, he said: "The appearance of the Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel's claim that Palestine is Jewish."
This is precisely the sentiment conveyed a decade earlier by the now oft-cited and largely uncontested remark by Zuhair Muhsin, former head of the PLO's Military Department and an Executive Council member, in which he candidly conceded to a Dutch daily: "… the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel."
This is not the stuff that real nations are made of, or tenable nation-states founded on.
Historically fictitious, politically fraudulent
The usually dovish former Mossad head Efraim Halevy cast doubt on the Palestinians' "capability of nationhood" in a 2009 interview with the Canadian weekly Maclean's. He identified a lack of internal drive for nationhood, warning, "A nation has to be built from within… the Palestinians are not creating their own nation. The nation is being created from without. This… cannot succeed."
In two recent columns, I addressed the nature and purpose of the Palestinians' collective identity — on the basis of their own deeds, declarations and documents. These are some of the points made in them:
Even the Palestinians' own "National Charter" reveals that they are not — and do not see themselves — as a genuinely distinct people or a cohesive nation, with a coherently defined homeland. Thus the Palestinians not only affirm that their national demands are bogus, but that they are merely a temporary ruse meant to annul what they term "the illegal 1947 partition of Palestine" (i.e. Israel in its entirety): "The Palestinian people are a part of the Arab Nation… [and] believe in Arab unity…. However, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity and develop their consciousness of that identity."
How is any fair-minded person to avoid concluding that at a later stage there will be no need to preserve their identity or to develop consciousness thereof? How is one to avoid concluding that Palestinian identity is merely a short-term deception designed to achieve the political goal of eliminating the Jewish nation-state?
Significantly, the urge for Palestinian sovereignty only seems to arise in response to the manifestation of Jewish sovereignty. Thus the 1964 version of their National Charter unequivocally forswears Palestinian claims to "any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Gaza," areas which are now stridently claimed to comprise their "ancient homeland."
Palestinians did not object to almost two decades of Jordanian and Egyptian authority, nor does the solid Palestinian majority in Jordan today seem highly motivated to express its distinct "national identity."
And while the possibility of a revolution in Jordan cannot be discounted, this would most likely be motivated by the same factors that precipitated revolutions in other parts of the Arab world – dissatisfaction with the regime rather than desire to throw off alien sovereignty.
We are thus compelled to concede that "Palestinian nationality" is devoid of any independent existence, but is fabricated only to counteract Jewish territorial claims.
Indeed, without such claims there would be no Palestinian nationality. As such it is a fictional derivative — an invention — precisely as claimed by Azmi Bishara, Zuhair Muhsin, King Hussein, the Palestinian National Charter — and of course by Newt Gingrich.
Contrived statelessness
If any further evidence of deception were needed, consider the issue of the "statelessness" of the Palestinians – one of the major themes played upon to invoke sympathy for their "cause" and fierce recriminations against Israel.
In reality, however, this state of "stateless" is not a result of callous Israeli malfeasance but of deliberate Arab malevolence.
For the Palestinians are stateless because the Arabs have either stripped them of citizenship they already had, or precluded them from acquiring citizenship they desire to have.
In the "West Bank," for example, up until 1988, all Palestinians, including the refugees, held Jordanian citizenship. This was annulled by King Hussein when he relinquished his claim to this territory. This abrupt and brusque measure was described by Anis F. Kassim, a prominent Palestinian legal expert, in the following terms: "… more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons."
But Palestinians have also been prohibited from acquiring citizenship in their countries of residence in the Arab world, where they have lived for over half a century. The Arab League has instructed its members to deny citizenship to Palestinian Arabs resident within their frontiers, "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland."
Thus Arab League spokesman Hisham Youssef conceded in an 2004 interview to the Los Angeles Times that Palestinians in the Arab world live "in very bad conditions," but added that this official policy is meant "to preserve their Palestinian identity," which apparently is incapable of existence without coercion. With breathtaking callousness, he went on to assert that "if every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won't be any reason for them to return to Palestine." Indeed.
Clearly, Palestinian nationalism is being preserved and pursued with greater zeal by their Arab brethren than by the Palestinians themselves. How then can it be considered anything but an artificially contrived invention?
Embarrassing silence
Gingrich's declaration has indeed opened up a chance to "fundamentally change the terms of debate in the region."
Sadly, Israeli officialdom has not risen to the occasion. Overall, the response to the momentous opportunity that Gingrich has opened up has been met with an embarrassed silence.
This is a lamentable and embarrassing reflection on the state of Israeli diplomacy, which has apparently maneuvered itself into a position of such weakness that it cannot embrace support provided it by the leading Republican presidential candidate.
The captains of Israeli foreign policy would do well to heed his perceptive insight: "This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage… We refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies…. You're not going to win the long run if you're afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth." Precisely.
To have any hope of victory Israel must cease its complicity in Arab duplicity. The time has come for a concerted effort to uninvent the Palestinians.
Can this done? An observation by Daniel Pipes suggests that it may well be possible: "…the fact that this [Palestinian] identity is of such recent and expedient origins suggests that…. it could eventually come to an end, perhaps as quickly as it got started."
Next week's column will propose a strategy to pursue this objective.
]]>The road to hell is paved with good intentions – Aphorism attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a statesman that his foreign policies will be either morally praiseworthy or politically successful….How often have statesmen been motivated by the desire to improve the world, and ended by making it worse? And how often have they sought one goal, and ended by achieving something they neither expected nor desired? – Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980), on political realism
The sweeping victory of the Islamist parties in the election in Egypt is – somewhat belatedly – beginning to concentrate minds. Israel is being forced to confront the stark possibility that in the foreseeable future, it may be left with no peace, no Sinai… and eventually, no demilitarization.
Inevitably, this unpalatable prospect will force a national reassessment of the process – and the personalities – that brought this ominous situation about, of the prudence of the decisions taken at the time and of the beforethe- fact predictability of its potentially perilous outcome.
Inevitably, too, this will focus attention on Menachem Begin and his role in precipitating Israel's evacuation of the strategic expanses of the Sinai Peninsula in return for a peace treaty with Egypt, then Israel's principle adversary.
A brief history
The deal, brokered by US president Jimmy Carter, was concluded in 1979 after two years of intense negotiation following Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's historic 1977 address to the Knesset. It was greeted with great international acclaim – except in the Arab world where it was long regarded as an act of treachery – and the award of Nobel peace prizes to the Egyptian and Israeli leaders.
The intended strategic substance of pact was mutual recognition of each state by the other, and the cessation of the state of war that had existed since the 1948 War of Independence.
Israel undertook a complete withdrawal from Sinai, held by it since the 1967 Six Day War, while Egypt agreed to the demilitarization of the peninsula. The agreement also provided for the free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal, recognition of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways, and massive US economic and military to Egypt, whose military has since received almost $40 billion from Washington, allowing it to to modernize and revamp its aging Soviet equipment.
Stark asymmetry
Whichever way you slice it, the treaty was afflicted by a stark structural asymmetry in the undertakings of the contracting parties: On the one hand, Israel was called on to relinquish vast physical assets of great strategic and economic value, which could only be retrieved – if at all – by a massive outlay of blood and treasure.
In return for the receipt of these assets – plus generous US financial support – all that was demanded of Egypt was paper promises, which could be violated whenever it deemed it expedient or the profit worth the pain.
This asymmetry was perhaps most aptly articulated by Sadat himself, when in a 1980 interview with The New York Times, he remarked bluntly, "Poor Menachem… I got back… the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got? A piece of paper."
From the outset then, the durability of the peace agreement hinged not only on Cairo's continuing willingness to honor its commitments, but also its continuing ability to do – despite domestic opposition. This clearly applies – and applied then – not only to the Sadat regime, but to any successors who might accede to power – be it by the bullet or by the ballot.
Predictable perils
There is – and was – no need for the benefit of hindsight to grasp this pivotal feature of the agreement. It was distinctly discernible as an inherent element of the treaty from the get-go. It was always a precarious arrangement — its abrogation, whether sudden or in stages, always a plausible possibility.
Indeed, it would seem that Sadat himself was keenly conscious of the fragility of the treaty and how future Egyptian regimes may well feel unbound by its terms. In a 1975 interview he openly stated: "The effort of our generation is to return to the 1967 borders.
Afterward the next generation will carry the responsibility."
Yet within the Israeli public discourse, any suggestion that the potential long-term strategic dangers might outweigh the undeniable short/intermediate-term benefits, were dismissed as the demented raving of extremist warmongers. Anyone who dared caution that the situation now emerging in Egypt and along our southern border, might in fact emerge, was scorned either as a deranged scaremonger or a uniformed ignoramus.
Consequently, there was no serious public discussion of how to respond to an intentional violation of the agreement, or an unintentional collapse of Cairo's ability to uphold it. And in the absence of a clear and credible comprehension of what penalties such violations would incur, only a giant leap of faith in Arab altruism could induce the belief that these scenarios were implausible.
However, beyond the mindless malice and myopia of political debate in Israel, questions must be raised as to the judgment and foresight of the Israeli leadership that consented to forgo the tangible fruits of military victory for the ephemeral promise of political peace.
As Begin was the overwhelmingly dominant figure involved in Israel's acquiescence to the treaty terms, it is likely such a reevaluation would, as an unintended side effect, damage his standing in the national pantheon.
'The road to hell…'
The objective would be to enhance awareness of the non-static nature of Israel's political environment, and to develop deeper understanding of how the nation should manage long-term risk in the dynamic instabilities of the Middle East. But more specifically – and more important – it is imperative to avoid creating similar situations of strategic danger through similar strategic misunderstandings of the dynamics in play on Israel's other fronts with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Jordanians.
There can, of course, be no doubt as to the totality of Begin's commitment to Israel and to its security, or as to fever of his devotion to Zionism and its ideals. Indeed for many, he was the epitome of the leader whose absolute dedication to his country and his people was never subordinated to, or sidetracked by, the pursuit of partisan interest, private gain or personal prestige.
However, pure motives and noble intentions are no guarantee of effective statesmanship or strategic acumen.
Indeed, as Hans Morgenthau, one of the most influential figures in the study of modern international politics, remarked: "Chamberlain's politics of appeasement were, as far as we can judge, inspired by good motives; he was probably less motivated by considerations of personal power than were many other British prime ministers, and he sought to preserve peace and to assure the happiness of all concerned. Yet his policies helped to make the Second World War inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions."
While any comparison between the two men is wildly inappropriate, the bloodcurdling frenzy of the lynch mob that stormed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo in September may prove that Begin's declaration of "No more war, no more bloodshed, peace forever" was no less premature and naïve than Neville Chamberlain's "Peace in our time."
Grim prospects
The three decades of non-belligerency (a more accurate word than "peace" to characterize Israeli-Egyptian relations since 1979) conferred significant benefits on Israel.
Regrettably, however, it seems unlikely that they will be permanent or that they will justify the perilous storm brewing on the horizon.
With the Sinai Peninsula swiftly descending into a lawless "no-go" region under the control of the most ruthless extremists on earth, Israel is facing an emerging lose-lose strategic predicament, which may soon force it to choose between the following unpalatable options: • Allowing Sinai to degenerate into an Afghanistan-like haven for radical jihadi organizations and savage criminal gangs; • Allowing a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled – at least indirectly – Egypt to remilitarize the area, ostensibly to reestablish law and order, and a gradual return to the status quo ante that prevailed prior to the 1979 accord; • Reasserting Israeli control over Sinai – at least partially – effectively repudiating the peace agreement.
Whichever alternative Israel opts for, it will render the peace treaty worthless, and totally devalue what until recently was considered a stroke of inspired statesmanship. More poignantly, it will render the enormous sacrifices of the 1967 and 1973 wars almost pointless, and the dangers, which so many gave their lives or limbs to avert, may well be reinstated with a vengeance.
Deep conceptual defects
But the Israel-Egypt peace treaty was defective and dysfunctional not only because events happened to turn out the way they did. It was deeply flawed on a more profound and predictable level, in terms of the political theory and the conceptions that comprised its political rationale.
These were (a) demilitarization vis-à-vis the Egyptians and (b) autonomy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Neither of these could be expected to endure much beyond a generation — except under the irresponsible assumption of wildly optimistic and unrealistic conditions, which clearly ought not to have been presumed to prevail.
Given the limits of space, I shall confine the discussion to demilitarization and defer the debate of the futility of autonomy for a later opportunity.
Demilitarization is a severe constraint on a nation's sovereignty – stripping it of the freedom to deploy coercive means of its choice within designated portions of its territory, in deference to the interests/demands of some alien state(s).
As such, its continuation is dependent on the compliance of the demilitarizing party.
Indeed, as soon as it has the will and the ability to terminate it, it may well do so – as the case of the demilitarization – and later remilitarization – by Germany of the Rhineland, in violation of both the Versailles and Locarno treaties, demonstrates.
It would be – and should have been considered – a reckless gamble to assume that such a situation might not arise in Egypt – not only because, as we have seen, Sadat himself had alluded to this possibility, but because other sources warned of the danger as well.
For example, Maj.-Gen. George Keegan, a US Air Force intelligence officer, warned in a 1977 Jerusalem Post interview that "the feudal leadership in the Arab world strikingly remains committed, messianically, to the extermination of Israel as a nation and as a people," but in the face of repeated military defeats, "they are beginning to use the strategy of the indirect approach" of diplomatic deception.
In retrospect
Almost half a decade before the Arab Spring, Daniel Pipes, in a commendably incisive analysis titled "Rethinking the Egypt- Israel 'Peace' Treaty," warned: "In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:
• Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel.
• These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity.
• Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit.
• War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up.
"The time has come to recognize the Egypt- Israel treaty – usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy – as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes."
It would be perilous folly to ignore this sober warning.
Israel cannot afford the same grand "Beginesque" naiveté in its future dealings with the Syrians, with the Palestinians, and with the Jordanians. Mistakes may well be irretrievable