In the latest offensive of Israeli
ministers against U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry, worldwide attention
was given to the words of Yuval Steinitz, the man who came down from the ivory tower of
the Haifa University Philosophy Department
and is at the moment the ‘Minister of Strategic and Intelligence Affairs’. "
It is unacceptable to force Israel to negotiate with a gun to the head, with the
Palestinians hearing that in case of failure of the talks The State of Israel would
be hit by an international boycott."
Two days before the philosopher-minister
protested against the intolerable conditions under which the government of
Israel is required to negotiate, IDF soldiers, accompanied by bulldozers arrived
at the tiny village of Ein al
Hilweh in the northern Jordan Valley, and in a single hour razed it to the
ground. Ein El Hilweh had been destroyed several times before, but this time it
seems that policymakers are determined that it will not be rebuilt. The Red
Cross was explicitly forbidden to provide tents to the sixty-six villagers who were
left homeless, among them thirty-six children, and the military made clear that
any tent found on the ground would be immediately confiscated. One villager asked
the soldiers the desperate question "But where shall we go?" A
soldier pointed toward the town of Tubas, one of the Palestinian enclaves defined
under the Oslo Agreements, not part of the Jordan Valley which is to remain
under long term Israeli control.
This was not the first or only case of
its kind. For many years, the State of Israel has an policy to prevent the
entry of Palestinians into the Jordan Valley if they don’t live there, and to destroy
the homes of those who do live there. When the Jordan Valley became a major bone
of contention in the ongoing negotiations,
the pace of Palestinian home demolitions in the same region greatly increased. 172
Palestinian structures were demolished in 2012, 390 in 2013, and since the new
year began 92 were already destroyed in one month alone. Such are the
conditions under which Palestinians are required to conduct negotiations on the
future of the Jordan Valley .
Palestinians had more than once complained
that they were required to negotiate with a gun to their heads, but this did not
gain much attention in any media. As is well known, the media looks for man-bite-
dog and not vice versa. In the endless rounds of negotiations spanning over
twenty years, the Palestinians faced across the negotiating table an
interlocutor maintaining full control on the ground and in no hurry to give it
up, an interlocutor whose fleet of bulldozers is tirelessly engaged in the demolition
of Palestinian homes and in preparing the ground for the expansion of Israeli
settlements. In each round the Palestinians are presented with a choice: to accept what is offered to them - or to face
the prospect that the occupation which had already lasted for decades will go
on for further decades.
On several occasions of this kind, Palestinians
opted for the path of armed resistance. But then they were exposed to the blows
of the most powerful army in the Middle East, and in the international public opinion
they were presented as terrorists who reject peace. In other cases the
Palestinians tried again to proceed through negotiations, and once again found
that "Israel is conducting negotiations on the future of the pizza while
eating it", in the words of veteran negotiator Saeb Erekat,
Since the days of Kissinger, the United States had been the sole and
exclusive mediator between Israel and the Arabs, and the other partners in the
“Middle East Diplomatic Quartet” - Europe, Russia and the UN - were relegated
to little more than a decoration .
Even when the rest of the world
supported the Palestinians, the Government of Israel could afford to ignore it
as long as it had the solid support of America. When the Secretary of State voiced
too many complains and demands, it was worthwhile to check if the President truly
backs the Secretary. (Remember Colin
Powell and George W.) And if the President fully backed the Secretary of State, there was
still AIPAC to provide a majority in the Senate and the House with standing
ovations for any visiting Israeli Prime Minister. And the United States holds
elections every two years, and candidates always need the support of the lobby,
and campaigning lasts for nearly a year, so that an Israeli government just
needs to get through the year between elections. Thus the four years of Barack
Obama’s first term passed with nothing changed on the ground except for a
significant increase in the number of Israeli settlers.
But "the bastards changed the
rules." At some point in the last
year, the Europeans ceased to be a decoration
and became key players. Secretary of State John Kerry, along with EU Foreign Policy
Chief Catherine Ashton and Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders quietly
paved a bypass road around AIPAC, and Netanyahu is suddenly facing difficult
pressures even in an American elections year. At the Munich Security Conference,
Kerry warned that “The status quo
between Israel and the Palestinians cannot go on. While there is prosperity and
momentary security in Israel, it is an illusion that is bound to change if
talks flounder. The risks are very high for Israel. People are talking about
boycott. That will intensify in the case of failure. We all have a strong
interest in this conflict resolution."
Is the United States going to impose a
boycott? Is the United States putting pressure? God forbid: America is very much
opposed to boycott. It is the Europeans who do the pressing and threatening. Talk
to them, listen to them , Mr. Netanyahu , they are your country’s biggest trade
partner. “The Third Intifada had begun. It started in the Europen Union” wrote
the influential commentator Thomas Friedman.
The opinion poll published this morning
by the Sofhashavua weekly indicated that some 70% of Israel's citizens no
longer regard the U.S. as an honest broker. (Probably even now, there would be a
higher percentage among Palestinians...) And, 67% of Israelis citizens are
concerned that a European economic boycott might directly hurt them and their
families.
Negotiations never take place in a
vacuum. Developments around the table always reflect the military, political
and economic balance of forces, the two parties’ ability to threaten each other
and hurt each other. History has known two types of negotiations which mark the
end of wars and conflicts. When only one party is required to negotiate with a
gun to its head, it is negotiating terms of surrender. Only if both parties to
the negotiations feel threatened, it might be possible to eventually reach an agreement
whereby both parties gradually lower the gun aimed at the other’s head and gradually
build peaceful relations.
