Another Round of Fruitless Negotiations?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry this Sunday, June 26, in Rome to discuss ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.  Reports say that Netanyahu will tell Kerry that he backs potential Egyptian-led efforts to revive negotiations, rather than the international approach being pushed by France.

 

In the current political season going on here, in Europe and all year round in Israel, one of the favorite issues raised by candidates trying to flaunt their "international" creds is the so called "Middle East Peace Process. It's really a no-brainer politically, because the general assumption is that in Western democracies most people prefer peace to war, and believe (completely erroneously!) that the Israeli-Palestinian problem is the root cause of all regional conflicts.

 

Those who don't understand the dynamics naively believe that a "two state" resolution is the magic bullet that will instantly stop all the conflicts. If only "they" could sit down and negotiate in good faith then everything else will work out...

 

However after five wars, years of terrorist attacks, months of failed negotiations, numerous broken promises, repeated land concessions by Israel and plenty of blame to go around, there are two schools of thought on how to bring that about.

 

First some definitions:  The political terms "left" and "right" used here are the Israeli definitions, and refer to Ideological and political views on the best way to assure Israel's security and long-term survival: "Right" is more conservative (hawkish), while "Left" is more liberal (dovish).

 

In both cases I'm talking about normative Israelis and Americans, who support Israel and the Zionist dream and understand the need for an eventual resolution to the conflict, but have different opinions as to how to make it happen. Note - in both cases I'm NOT talking about the extreme, sometimes violent fringes of both camps.

1. On the "Right" - mainly secular and religious conservatives who feel that Israel should maintain a tough, non-compromising negotiating posture leading to perpetual Israeli sovereignty over most of the areas of Judea and Samaria, while establishing a less-than-fully sovereign Palestinian nation-state that includes the Gaza Strip, is demilitarized and formally recognizes the Jewish State of Israel.  
2. On the "Left" - secular and traditional liberals who prefer compromise driven negotiations that would essentially return most of the West Bank to the PLO with Israel maintaining permanent security control over the Jordan Valley and certain other small areas crucial to Israel's ongoing and evolving security needs. Israel will also maintain most of the established Israeli communities ("settlements") that are built within the four small "Consensus Blocs", in exchange for agreed land swaps of equal area. Here, too, the ultimate goal is a demilitarized Palestinian nation-state that recognizes Israel as the historical and current sovereign Jewish homeland. 

Israelis tend to wander between the camps, but most are not fully committed to either. They will lean one way or the other at any given time, based on either perceived threats, like war or terrorism, on the one hand...or real movement towards peace on the other.

 

The government of the day has a major influence on national "leaning". But since the government is elected by the voters, we have an interesting "chicken or egg" question...or do we?

 

The fact that in recent elections Olmert, Sharon or Netanyahu were able to cobble together right-of-center coalitions has less to do with general sentiments among Israeli voters, who are basically centrist, and more do with the fact that the traditional centrist parties keep breaking up and reinventing themselves with no coherent or unified platform or legacy leadership.

 

On the other hand the Likud party, with few changes, has anchored the right wing of Israeli politics since 1973.

 

Today, Netanyahu heads a solid coalition of Likud and like-minded coalition partners. Therefore, any proposals that Secretary of State Kerry will present on Sunday will be negotiated from Israel's "right-of-Center" philosophy regarding security and boundaries.

 

Together with the current Palestinian leadership vacuum and ongoing rejectionist statements, I feel pretty safe in predicting that this will just be another round of fruitless negotiations