Parties stuck in paradigms of their own making

The most alarming aspect of the current situation, said Hussein Ibish, is that all three parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas — are stuck. As a result, all three have relinquished agency, allowing future events and external realities to shape their futures. Ibish is senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and a weekly columnist with The National (UAE) and NOW media.

“Their policies have proven a dead-end. They know it, but they don't know what else to do, so they are lumbering forward with the same old policies,” said Ibish.

He claimed Israel remained addicted to maintaining the status quo in both Gaza and the West Bank, noting, “That’s a policy of no policy.” Moreover, the political divide in Israel has shifted to the right. Once a divide between “peaceniks” and “status-quo types,” it is now a divide between status quo types and annexationists.

Hamas, surmised Ibish, remains stuck both in its dedication to armed struggle until victory and in its break with Iran. The Islamist party can only repair relations with the latter at great cost to relations with Qatar and Turkey, he observed. In short, he contended, Hamas is unable to change its position toward the two-state solution because it would lose its only competitive advantage vis-á-vis the Palestinian Authority.

Faced with two political movements seeking a two-state solution with Israel, Palestinians would choose the secular, nationalist Palestinian Authority over the Islamist right-wing Hamas, argued Ibish. Yet the PA has staked everything on a two-state agreement with Israel and has no idea what to do in the absence of a peace process.

Despite the current stalemate, Ibish believed a peace agreement was still within reach. Notably, should the Palestinians gain a sovereign state, he believed they would not want to militarize it. “I really don’t think you could find a group of people with a stronger interest in making a peace agreement stick than the Palestinians who get their state — finally — out of an agreement with Israel,” he said.

He defined the minimum the Palestinians would accept as a viable, contiguous state in the West Bank; a crossing with Gaza; a deal on Jerusalem with East Jerusalem as the capital (without necessarily re-dividing the city); and a land swap of roughly 4.5 percent to accommodate Israeli settlements.

Steven Spiegel, Asher Susser, Hussein Ibish, Uriel Abulof and Neil Netanel.
(Photo: Peggy McInerny/ UCLA.)

Asymmetry stymies a permanent agreement

Uriel Abulof contended that a power asymmetry and a narrative asymmetry were inhibiting an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Abulof is assistant professor of political science at Tel-Aviv University and senior research fellow at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

These asymmetries are further complicated by perceptions that may not be true, but deeply color the way people see the issues. Israel, for example, has overwhelming power with respect to the Palestinians, but sees itself as besieged.

And while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is typically depicted as a conflict between two ethno-national movements fighting over the same piece of land, most Palestinians perceive Zionism not as a rival entho-national movement, but as a colonial movement that has taken their land.

Israelis who support the two-state solution view such a solution as trading land for peace, but Palestinians see themselves as the ones giving up the land. In their perception, Abulof explained, “It’s not Israel that gives up about 20 percent of the land [to restore 1967 borders], it is the Palestinians giving up 80 percent of the land. And because the land for the Palestinians is the anchor of their identity, compromising those 80 percent is compromising who they are.”

Recent public opinion polls show substantial support for a two-state solution among Palestinians and Israelis, said Abulof, but both publics believe that the other side actually wants more. He argued that coexistence could be reached through a top-down approach in which a strong Palestinian state with a monopoly on the use of force negotiated an agreement and imposed it on their public. Alternatively, a bottom-up approach would put a negotiated deal to a plebiscite in both the Palestinian lands and Israel.

Immediate steps

Asked what could be done immediately to improve the situation, Susser suggested a partial redeployment in the West Bank to signal that Israel does not seek a one-state solution. However, he remarked, “You cannot argue that you seriously believe in a two-state solution and [conduct] the settlement activity that Israel does.”

Hussein suggested delivering Part II of Kerry’s peace plan: infusing close to a billion dollars of capital into the West Bank, broken into small projects to avoid the possibility of high-level corruption. That would go a long way toward supporting PA president Mahmoud Abbas against critics who believe he is a fool for having pursued negotiations.

Abulof offered two alternatives. In a top-down solution, the United States would not veto the decision to recognize a Palestinian state in the next UN Security Council meeting, thereby challenging the two parties to strike a deal. In a bottom-up approach, the United States would put a peace plan with well-known parameters on the table and give the parties a year to reach a substantial agreement. If they failed, simultaneous referenda would be held on that same plan in both Israel and Palestine. 

“That would provide legitimacy for an agreement,” said Abulof. “If the publics [were] behind that, then at least they would take responsibility for what’s going on.”