End of the beginning-beginning of the end

This month’s travels to the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, yielded a view of a situation much worse than I saw last year. The light of hope has gone out of the eyes of West Bank Palestinians. Economic sanctions, the cut off of aid, border closings, the arming of factions and the disruption of communication and travel have resulted in frustration and a loss of hope. Internecine warfare and chaos have added to the despair caused by high unemployment and a collapsing economy. It is becoming increasing clear to me, if not to our political leaders, that a negotiated two state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is unrealistic. For there to be a negotiated settlement there must be overlap between the positions of the parties. As the Israeli rejection of the Arab peace proposal indicates, there is a large gap between the minimum that the Palestinians would accept and the most that the Israelis would offer. Israelis are not going to give up modern settlements on the West Bank, like Maal Adumim, which are made suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by bypass roads. These settlements are home to 500,000 Israeli Jews. Years of weak and even incompetent leadership in the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have brought us to this point. They have been unwilling or unable to make the difficult political decisions required for a solution. We are at the end of the peace process and the beginning of the road to apartheid and ethnic cleansing. (Jeff Halper, Coordinator of Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolition makes this point here) Heading down this road, we are in danger of arriving at out-right war. The Palestinian/American lawyer who is the legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority told the story of a conversation that he had on the streets of Ramallah on the West Bank. After he had led a team of Palestinian Authority lawyers at the International Court of Justice who won their case and had the ICJ declare the Israeli separation wall/fence illegal, he was told “You may be happy, but it will have no effect. The US and Israel will ignore it and the rest of the world will go along. No one knows we are here unless we make a noise”. The lawyer said “I knew what he meant”. Sooner or later a Palestinian Israeli citizen, enraged by the death of a sister in childbirth at an Israeli checkpoint or the death of a brother as collateral damage from an Israeli targeted killing will “make a noise” at a coffee shop in Tel Aviv or Haifa. (The novel The Attack by Yasima Khadra explores this scenario.) The resulting Israeli crack down will surface all the fissures in Israeli society and expand the conflict throughout the region. More innocent Israelis, Palestinians and maybe Americans will die. But perhaps there are no innocent Israelis, Palestinians or Americans. In a discussion with an Iranian about the fact that Iranians don’t hold the actions of the US government against individual Americans he said “This may change. You are a democracy and in a democracy, you are responsible for your government.” Israel, the Palestinian Territories and America are democracies. In a democracy you get the government that you deserve.