John Mortell’s blog

Fantastic article on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley about why most of the talk about a ‘two-state’/'single state’/other solution to the conflict remains just talk and the current ‘solutions’ are not really such. The whole article is worth a read but the real core of it comes when talking about the current negotiations and the two state solution which is their foundation:

The problem was built into the structure of the negotiations. It is only a slight exaggeration to describe them as a confidence game, a tacit understanding by all sides to elude the historic core of the matter through disingenuous ambiguity. Palestinians hoped they could achieve their goals even as they persisted in denying the Jewish people’s entitlement to even part of the land; Israelis trusted that if they granted Palestinians some kind of state the whole problem would fade away. The US assumed the role of a willing participant. Others, Europeans included, lazily followed.

Failure to deal with basic issues guaranteed their reemergence whenever the parties inched closer to a deal and recoiled from the implications of that last, fateful step. Then what had been obscured came into fuller view, namely that Palestinians were not truly prepared to stipulate that the conflict has been terminated and all claims set aside solely in exchange for an end to the occupation, and that Israel was not prepared to end its occupation in exchange for less.

Establishing two states would resolve the occupation, but that is only one aspect, albeit an important one, of a problem that arose decades before the occupation began. An Israeli leader will be loath to relinquish territory and permit the emergence of an indisputably sovereign Palestinian state at least as long as suspicion lingers that Palestinians have not genuinely made their peace with the new reality, that they are biding their time, and that a future of renewed strife lies in store.

In turn, a Palestinian leader cannot credibly proclaim that the conflict has come to a close if the solution ignores the genesis of the Palestinian plight and the historic core of its national cause. To adopt such a stand would be tantamount to conceding that the refugees—who make up a majority of the Palestinian population, were once its political vanguard, and could well regain that position—had waged six decades of struggle by mistake and endured six decades of suffering in vain. Internal challenges to such an arrangement might not be immediate. But they would be certain and severe, laying bare the fragility of a supposedly historic accord(my emphasis).

Not sure what to make of the writers ideas about either resurrecting the peace process as a version of ‘greater Jordan’ or going back even further to 1948 instead of 1967 and trying to sort things out from there. On the ’1948 plan’ (as it were) I have to admit that I would wonder whether any peace would by default not solve the ’1948 problem’ (something the authors themselves seem to recognise). While they try to suggest that the focus on 1967 has ignored the underlying causes of the conflict that existed in 1948, surely those remained the same leading up to 1967 and any solution on that front will be default solve the 1948 problems?

Regardless, its still worth a look and hopefully on a personal note, blogging will resume on a more regular schedule soon.