If they won’t make peace we may have to make it for them

Tony Karon

• Last Updated: August 16. 2009 12:41AM UAE / August 15. 2009 8:41PM GMT

Nobody imagined in 1947 that the terms on which Palestine would be divided into two states could be determined in negotiations between Jews and Arabs. Comprising almost two thirds of the population and owning an even larger proportion of the arable land, Arabs had no incentive to cede half the country to a minority of recent European immigrants. If there was to be a partition, it would clearly have to be imposed.

The unfortunate reality confronting all those who seek a new two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the two sides may be no more likely to reach agreement today than they were 62 years ago.

The balance of power and possession has, of course, shifted dramatically in favour of the Jewish population: they now comprise a little over half of those living in what was once Palestine, but directly control 95 per cent of the territory. They consider handing about a fifth of that territory back to the Palestinians as a “generous offer”, and with a government dictated to by right-wing nationalist settlers who believe they are doing God’s work by driving the Palestinians off land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Israelis are not even feeling particularly “generous”.

That is bad news for the Obama administration, which is preparing to unveil the next phase of an Israeli-Palestinian peace effort that it has made a diplomatic priority of its first term in office – raising expectations that it may struggle to meet.

Mr Obama has spent six months pressing Israel to freeze all construction on land it captured in 1967, and urging Arab states to make gestures of normalisation towards Israel. In response, Israel has rejected a settlement freeze (without which the Palestinians won’t even talk), and Saudi Arabia has flatly rebuffed the call for steps towards Arab normalisation.

The past six months have highlighted the deep suspicions on each side about the intentions of the other. Mr Netanyahu’s resistance to the settlement freeze has reinforced Palestinian belief that the Israeli leader has no intention of pursuing a credible peace. Nor is he under any pressure to do so from an electorate that no longer believes a peace agreement is possible. The Israelis, meanwhile, point to the recent Fatah conference’s reinforcement of the demand that Palestinian refugees be given the right of return (a non-starter for the Israelis), and the affirmation of the right to armed resistance as signs that the Palestinians are not interested in compromise.

So if the Obama team were simply trying to assess the potential of the two sides to reach a deal, the conclusion would be: not much. But the premise of Washington’s efforts is that the US and its allies (including Israel and the moderate Arab states) simply cannot afford to allow the conflict to remain unsettled. Thus the administration is expected soon to announce a new process of talks, possibly launched at a high-powered international conference with a strong regional dimension.

Sound familiar? Just don’t call it Annapolis II. But no, this time it may have deadlines and benchmarks, and the Americans may be in the room when the two sides talk. But the Roadmap also had benchmarks and deadlines, and the Americans were in the room at Camp David.

The idea that Messrs Abbas and Netanyahu seated across a table will succeed in clinching a deal that eluded Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at Camp David, and the more amenable Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert last year, requires a spectacular leap of faith and logic.

Until now the Obama administration has clung to the basic assumptions of the Oslo process: incremental steps on both sides build the confidence necessary to negotiate a bilateral agreement on final-status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees. Plainly that approach has failed so far, and it’s hard to see it succeeding simply because there is a new cast of actors in the lead roles. The problem may be in the script rather than the casting.

There is no domestic political pressure on Netanyahu to make the territorial compromises necessary for a deal. On the contrary, his once precarious domestic political position has been strengthened by his resistance to the settlement freeze demands, and Israelis are unlikely to accept the conflict that would erupt if their government tried to evict thousands of West Bank settlers under a peace agreement. Nor are the Palestinians inclined to make compromises that the refugees would consider surrender of their rights.

In the absence of domestic pressure on either side to force a compromise, restarting talks would be either a repeat of the Annapolis failure or a demonstration that the gap between the two sides cannot be bridged by mutual consent. Either way, the parameters of a two-state solution will have to be prescribed by the international community, just as they were in 1947 – except this time with enough international clout and domestic support to prevent a repeat of the tragedy that followed the last UN partition of Palestine.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief and Quartet representative, Javier Solana, has suggested that any bilateral talks be given a strict deadline: if there is no agreement, the international community would put a detailed final status proposal on the table and move to adopt it through the UN Security Council.

Don’t expect Mr Solana’s proposal to feature in the next phase of the US peace effort. But if Mr Obama is to achieve more than simply keeping the two sides talking for appearances sake, he will need a Plan B – and it may well be influenced by Mr Solana’s logic.

In fact, it may well be that the only way any Israeli or Palestinian leader can sell a compromise agreement to their own electorate is if they can credibly show that they were left with no choice by an overwhelming international consensus.

Tony Karon blogs at rootlesscosmopolitan.com

tonykaron@gmail.com