|
After Israel's Election, Palestinians Weigh a New Intifadeh
2009-02-12
Israel's election and the Gaza conflict have revealed the scale of the challenge facing President Barack Obama in "jump-starting" Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Israeli voters tacked to the right, and the government that results from Tuesday's poll will be, if anything, even less inclined to conclude a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership than the current government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been. (And, of course, the year of talks-about-talks between Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas failed to yield any progress.) Meanwhile, the Gaza war has cemented the stature of Hamas as the dominant political force among Palestinians. Needless to say, there is not much optimism in the region over the prospects for peace. But the urgency of resolving the conflict may have become greater than ever, because the security situation is likely to see a perilous decline in the coming months. Much of the membership of Abbas' Fatah movement, seeing themselves steadily eclipsed by Hamas, is urging a break from their president's strategy of negotiating with the Israelis, and a return to confronting the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. (See images of Gaza after Israel's operation) Fatah leaders on the ground see the Israeli election as confirming what they already knew: that there's nothing to be gained by continuing the charade of U.S.-sponsored talks-about-talks with the Israelis. They could not get what they needed from Olmert, and they know his successors will be even more hardline. From the Palestinian perspective, the past eight years of waiting for negotiations with Israel has left Abbas empty-handed, while the latest Gaza conflict has put Hamas in a stronger position than ever in Palestinian public opinion. Despite the violence by Hamas gunmen against Fatah activists in Gaza since the Israeli offensive, many in Fatah view their movement's only hope of reestablishing its leading role in Palestinian politics as joining a unity government with Hamas - and beginning to directly challenge the Israeli occupation on the ground in the West Bank. And the fact that such sentiment coincides with Israel electing a more hawkish government suggests that the Middle East could be in for a long, hot summer. The Gaza bloodbath prompted President Obama to dispatch former Senator George Mitchell on a listening tour, to signal the new Administration's intention to prioritize peacemaking efforts. But the events of the past six weeks have confirmed that the Israeli-Palestinian peace policy bequeathed by the Bush Administration is dead in the water. If the new Administration is to make good on its promise of progress towards a two-state peace, it will need the sort of thoroughgoing policy review currently being undertaken on Iran - and a fresh set of ideas. President Bush confined himself to promoting symbolic gestures of support for a two-state peace - and, even then, largely in order to win the support of Arab moderates for the U.S. role in Iraq, and later of its stance against Iran. A series of photo opportunities, summits and declarations culminated in talks between Olmert and Abbas over what Washington termed a "shelf" agreement, that is, something that would be concluded and then shelved for a better day when the Palestinian security situation had been resolved to Israel's satisfaction. But none of this substantially altered the realities of the West Bank occupation on the ground, leaving Abbas with little to show for his counseling of negotiation over confrontation. Abbas was further weakened and marginalized when reality forced Israel to negotiate truces and prisoner swaps with Hamas, precisely because it was Hamas that was creating the security challenges that Israel needed to contain. An independent Palestinian polling organization found last week that, for the first time, Hamas has greater political support than Fatah across the totality of the West Bank and Gaza, and would win any election that was held right now. Aides to President Abbas are reportedly anxious that an Israel-Hamas deal to secure the release of the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza could involve releasing the Hamas parliamentarians currently in Israeli detention. The Palestinian legislature is currently unable to meet because of Israel holding those legislators; if it were able to convene, Hamas remains the majority party. Hamas could, in fact, use its majority to bring down the government of President Abbas, but it's unlikely to do that because its own best interests lie in reconstituting a unity government with Abbas. Reports from Cairo, where Egypt is brokering truce arrangements, suggest that Hamas has accepted that forces loyal to Abbas be placed in control of the border crossings into Gaza to allow them to be reopened. And much of Fatah's rank-and-file is pressing for a unity government - an option forcefully opposed by the Bush Administration. Fatah is due to elect a new leadership at a congress scheduled for next month; while Abbas may survive in a titular leadership position, control of the organization is likely to pass to a younger, more militant generation more inclined to make common cause with Hamas. Of course, the Israelis, whether led by Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu or Kadima's Tzipi Livni, will flatly refuse to talk to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. But that may not deter Fatah, since the movement has gained little by talking to Israeli governments that are plainly unwilling to meet the Palestinians' bottom lines. Abbas, in the eyes even of many in his own movement, gambled everything on the willingness of the U.S. to press the Israelis to deliver a credible two-state peace solution - and lost. Now, many of them are more inclined to bet on a "third intifadeh". After all, in the short term at least, the status quo works for the Israelis - as long as there are no missiles raining down from Gaza. But for the Palestinians, the continued occupation in the West Bank is untenable. And it will not have been lost on Fatah activists that Hamas' more confrontational stance has forced the Israelis, however reluctantly, to the negotiating table, as in the case of the Egypt-brokered Gaza truce negotiations. So, the benign neglect shown on the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort by the Bush Administration won't be an option for the Obama Administration. But the policy pursued by the Bush Administration in its final year of isolating Hamas while promoting talks-about-talks between Olmert and Abbas is also no longer viable. Israel has tacked to the right, away from moves towards a solution based on the Arab peace plan for which President Obama recently expressed support. The terms of that plan call for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders and the sharing of Jerusalem. That Palestinian bottom line, however, is explicitly rejected by the bloc of parties that now have a majority in Israel's parliament. And the consensus on the Palestinian side is moving towards a Fatah-Hamas unity government. "Jump starting" an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, then, or simply preventing a further deterioration of the situation, will demand a massive effort and some new thinking on the part of the Obama Administration. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, progress would, in fact, require a readiness by Obama to do something no U.S. administration since that of President George H. W. Bush has done: throw Washington's weight behind positions at odds with those of the Israeli government. And few Palestinians are betting on Obama turning up the heat on Israel. Instead, they're more likely to try and do so themselves. - With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem View this article on Time.com Related articles on Time.com: - The Two-State Solution Now a Three-Way Stalemate
- Rift Between Hamas and Fatah Grows After Gaza
- What's Behind the Arab-Israel Summit
- Gaza Clashes Cloud Rice's Trip
- When the Lights Went Out in Gaza
|
