The Palestinian Ploy

Summer is drawing to a close and the tell-tale signs of Autumn are here.

Last night Channel 10's weather girl predicted rain for the weekend.

Not a vaguely worded forecast, but an emphatic promise backed by a synoptic map. With no tarot cards or goat's entrails to aid her she said, "A high pressure ridge is growing dominant in our region and low pressure over Greece is bringing stormy weather."

The Sea Squills, harbingers of the changing season, are in full bloom.

According to local folk tradition, when the Sea Squills grow to a height of more than 150 cm we can bank on a rainy winter.

Foresight, an innate ability to predict events, is a rare gift in this part of the world.

Rules of thumb, synoptic weather maps and even ancient omens were of no help predicting the outcome of the latest Palestinian ploy. It’s the most talked of topic everywhere in Israel. Academic think-tanks, social gatherings and all the self-appointed informal parliaments, including our breakfast table forum at the factory, have been debating the possible outcome of the Palestinian UN membership bid.

We had a full complement at breakfast this morning. Predictably, the lion’s share of the conversation related to the Palestinian application for U.N membership.

I quoted from Thomas L. Friedman's New York Times article -

"Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone." This prompted one of my breakfast table partners to summarily disqualify Friedman. “Let him tell his story to his Park Avenue friends, not to us."

I tried defending Tom Friedman listing his credits and merits. He has clocked up a lot of time in Israel and the Middle East as a journalist. Furthermore, he has many friends and admirers in this country. He deserves credit because he is a friend and an honest critic.

Last year, in a similar situation I wrote that Friedman knows that Israelis have had their fill of critics and admonishers. Instead he tries a constructive approach, “I know what world you are living in. I know the Middle East is a place where Sunnis massacre Shiites in Iraq, Iran kills its own voters, Syria allegedly kills the prime minister next door( and now Assad is killing his own people), Turkey hammers the Kurds, and Hamas engages in indiscriminate shelling and refuses to recognize Israel. I know all of that. But Israel’s behavior, at times, only makes matters worse — for Palestinians and Israelis. If you convey to Israelis that you understand the world they’re living in, and then criticize, they’ll listen.” Some may but I fear the people who are firmly entrenched mentally and territorially won’t spare him the time of day.

"I've never been more worried about Israel’s future.” He wrote last week.

“ The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.”

The present state of flux in the Arab world is not at all related to the Arab-Israel Conflict. Neither can Turkey’s leadership ambitions be attributed to so-called “Israeli aggression.” , Nevertheless, Friedman doesn’t completely absolve Netanyahu and his government from blame and responsibility for the present impasse. He claims Netanyahu, is responsible for failing to put forth a strategy to respond to the changes that are taking place in a way that protects Israel’s long-term interests.

Friedman corrects his sweeping no strategy claim. " OK Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?"

"I have great sympathy for Israel’s strategic dilemma" says Friedman, "and no illusions about its enemies. But Israel today is giving its friends — and President Obama’s one of them — nothing to defend it with. Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation."

Lack of strategy is the very complaint Aaron David Miller made last week in Foreign Policy when he analysed the Palestinian dilemma in a piece he titled " Humpty Dumpty Palestine." - . ”Decentralized, dysfunctional, and divided, the Palestinian national movement has long lacked a coherent strategy for realizing its people's nationalist aspirations either through armed struggle or diplomacy. The Israeli occupation, the perfidy of the Arab states, and the Palestinians' own dysfunctional decision-making have left them adrift, without much hope of achieving meaningful statehood.”

Having said that Miller goes on to credit them for their determination.

“The Palestinians are a people with a compelling and just cause; their nationalism and attachment to Palestine cannot be easily broken or undermined.

Over the years, centrifugal forces and history itself have broken the Palestinians into five very uneasy pieces.” At this juncture where he explains the divisions and schisms Miller tends to exaggerate the splinter aspect. Admittedly the Palestinians lack cohesion, however their quest for statehood recognition seems to have unifying effect. Their leaders speak with determination and resolve, although some doubt (in private conversations) the wisdom of the UN bid.

Speaking to NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, former president Clinton said that the United States must "contain the fallout" from the Palestinian UN bid.

After President Barack Obama's address to the General Assembly, widely interpreted as a pro-Israel and not at all supportive of the Palestinian membership bid, it's reasonable to expect considerable "fallout."

Obama took a calculated risk believing that the present state of disarray in the Arab world and the lack of genuine concern for the Palestinians wouldn’t

evoke violent anti-American reaction.

Clinton said he felt that above all the Palestinian bid was an "act of frustration by the Palestinians, and what I think we've all got to do is contain the negative fallout."

Writing a few days before President Obama’s address to the General Assembly Jeffrey Goldberg doubted the practical value of the Palestinian UN bid. “Abbas says he seeks a state for his people on the West Bank and in Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. If that’s true, then there are only two member states of the UN that can bring it about: Israel and the U.S. Neither supports this resolution. Most Israelis view it as an attempt to limit their options in future negotiations, or to deny to them the holiest sites of the Jewish people and delegitimize the idea of a Jewish state.

Unlike Thomas L. Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi a contributing editor to The New Republic and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem believes Israel isn’t to blame for Its growing isolation.

He claims, “The Palestinians were offered the equivalent of the 1967 borders by former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Yet Palestinian leaders rejected the offers because they refused to concede the “sacred” right of return, as P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas calls it.

Today former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote in the New York Times,

about his negotiations with the Palestinians “According to my offer, the territorial dispute would be solved by establishing a Palestinian state on territory equivalent in size to the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza Strip with mutually agreed-upon land swaps that take into account the new realities on the ground.

The city of Jerusalem would be shared. Its Jewish areas would be the capital of Israel and its Arab neighborhoods would become the Palestinian capital. Neither side would declare sovereignty over the city’s holy places; they would be administered jointly with the assistance of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The Palestinian refugee problem would be addressed within the framework of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. The new Palestinian state would become the home of all the Palestinian refugees just as the state of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. Israel would, however, be prepared to absorb a small number of refugees on humanitarian grounds.

Because ensuring Israel’s security is vital to the implementation of any agreement, the Palestinian state would be demilitarized and it would not form military alliances with other nations. Both states would cooperate to fight terrorism and violence. “ Olmert disagrees with Yossi Klein Halevi on at least one important point.

“These parameters were never formally rejected by Mr. Abbas, and they should be put on the table again today. Both Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu must then make brave and difficult decisions.

We Israelis simply do not have the luxury of spending more time postponing a solution. A further delay will only help extremists on both sides who seek to sabotage any prospect of a peaceful, negotiated two-state solution.”

An editorial or lead article in the New York Times apportioned the blame equally to all the parties concerned. “The PA move to ask for statehood may be a mistake. The Israeli move to reject it may be a mistake. But if the UN votes to recognise statehood, the American rejection of that result will also be a mistake. It will severely damage America's aspirations to improve its standing in the perhaps-democratising Arab world. It will undercut America's ability to broker an eventual stable peace deal. It will delay Israel's necessary acknowledgment that it cannot hold out against the Palestinians forever. It may provoke a new intifada. It's conceivable that it could incite terrorist attacks and cost American lives. And if Congress does cut off American aid to the PA, it will yank the rug out from the president and State Department and call into question whether America can live up to its promises, or conduct a coherent foreign policy on this issue at all.”

There are more speeches scheduled for tomorrow at the UN. The Palestinians may opt to apply to both the Security Council and the General Assembly, or maybe accept the French compromise suggestion of observer non-member status. We will have to wait and see.

The final round of the Israeli Labour party primaries were held this week. Shelly Yachimovitich was elected chairwoman of the party. The first woman to be elected to lead the party (Golda Meir was appointed to the post). Journalist turned politician, Yachimovitch was elected chairwoman after only five years in the Knesset. She has boundless energy and drive (as you can probably guess she got my vote) and is already managing to resurrect the almost deceased Labour party. In a country where generals in politics are “a dime a dozen” some critics have failed her for her lack of battle-proven skills.

I’m sure she will find a general or two in the party to aid her. Public opinion polls are predicting a second lease of life for the Labour party under Shelly’s leadership.

Some observers claim that the US and the EU nations welcome a more favourable alternative to Netanyahu’s moribund coalition.

Next week is Rosh Hashanah. I wish everyone good health and happiness in the coming year – Shana Tova

Beni 22^nd of September