Abrabanel: Musings on the Jewish condition

In what is becoming an annual ritual, we poor nations of the Middle East are about to be subjected to another glitzy round of optimistic photo-ops collectively but inaccurately known outside the world as a “peace process.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently came up with the latest idea:

Sarkozy seeks to capitalize on the momentum created by the participation of European leaders at a summit Sunday in Sharm al-Sheikh summit on the recent hostilities in Gaza, according to Le Figaro.

The paper also states that Sarkozy convinced German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had feared the cease-fire would not be kept, to attend the summit in Egypt.

The goal of the conference, the paper reported, is to reach a peace accord within a year, and it will be held a few weeks after a meeting of European foreign ministers in Egypt due to take place in February.

The form of the summit will reportedly be similar to that of the one the United States hosted in Annapolis in late 2007.

Here’s our problem with this “peace with a year” idea. According to our sources, Israeli intelligence believes Hamas would win election in every single Palestinian city were they held right now. Hamas rejects every arrangement with the Zionist entity that does not somehow lead to its destruction. The organization even took pains not to “accept” – but only “acknowledge” – the ceasefire announced yesterday.

If peace with Hamas itself is impossible, and peace with Fatah is meaningless because it doesn’t solve Gaza and may not hold traction in the Palestinian street, what could a French diplomat’s cajoling possibly change here?

We got here through the mistakes of many sides, including the Israelis, the Americans and the Europeans. But most importantly, we got here because the Palestinians have not yet decided as a nation to take their fate into their own hands. The leadership robbed its own people and the international community of an entire national economy. They refuse to begin even the most basic processes of sovereignty until all issues are resolved, things like currency, customs, diplomatic representation.

There is only one path to peace we can see. The US and a significant Arab party – Saudi Arabia? Egypt? – must begin a serious nation-building project in the West Bank, recreating an economy, an education system, the trappings of statehood (recall that both a US president and an Israeli PM have publicly declared the goal of negotiations to be a Palestinian state). Create a Palestine that will allow Israelis to believe that a pullout of settlements from the West Bank won’t bring a second Hamastan and rockets on Tel Aviv.

Is Sarkozy planning to do that? Does Obama, weighed down by the US financial implosion and blood on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq, have the bureaucratic bandwidth to engage in such a project? Can Egypt or Saudi Arabia participate in something like this without ruining it by trying to control it?

We don’t know. But we do know this: this conflict has not continued for lack of French cocktail parties.

With a fresh ceasefire upon us, it’s time to seriously examine the sustainability factor. Is Hamas sufficiently hurt, it’s powers sufficiently curtailed, that Israel’s leadership can responsibly return to what it would much rather be doing with the next three weeks: campaigning for Knesset seats?

Short answer: It all depends on finding a solution to the weapons smuggling. And that means shutting down Hamas’ rabbit-warrens of tunnels criss-crossing the Gaza-Egypt border.

The best collated discussion of what this would involve comes from an unlikely source: Slate.

The “radical peace camp,” for lack of a better term, continues to baffle us. It seems utterly committed to remaining in the ridiculed sidelines of a complicated conflict. Its latest anti-Israel act comes in the form of a statement calling for IDF troops to refuse to fight in Gaza.

Nothing surprising in the text:

We refuse to remain silent while Israeli leaders force Israeli soldiers to commit war crimes: crimes against humanity for which they will one day be called to account. Israeli soldiers of conscience can, and must, stop this dangerous, illegal, and immoral war.

Etc., etc., etc.

A member of one of the sponsoring organizations brought this petition to our notice, noting with pride that it has nearly 700 signatures from 37 countries. We agreed with her that 700 names was remarkable, but in the other direction: the vast majority of Jews are not against the Gaza operation.

But the question of popularity aside, what about the sheer inanity of the text? It’s hard to see as a serious part of the discussion someone who comes out for peace and quiet only now when Israel is shooting back.

Also, isn’t it just a bit intellectually lazy to label Israeli actions “war crimes?” International agreements clearly stipulate that the party that drags the civilians into the battlefield, or takes the battle to the civilian population, is the criminal. A statement that fails to deal with that is both misleading as to the meaning of “war crime” and irrelevant to any conversation about the realities on the ground.

How do they countenance a statement that calls only Israel to account? We fancy ourselves peace-loving liberals yearning for Palestinian statehood, but we still marvel at the glaring lacuna in the peace statement: where is the recognition that the opponent here is Hamas, not Mohandas Gandhi?

Livni on Thursday:

“My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic State of Israel is to have two nation-states with certain concessions and with clear red lines,” Livni told a group of students at a Tel Aviv high school. “And among other things, I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, ‘your national solution lies elsewhere.’”

Abu Ala over the weekend:

There will be no room for Jews or settlements in the West Bank because their presence there will always be an obstacle to peace with Israel, Ahmed Qurei, head of the Palestinian Authority negotiating team, said at the weekend.

“All these attacks prove that the settlers are dangerous and that it’s impossible to live with them. If these settlers are allowed to stay, that would mean more friction and confrontation. Peace can be achieved only if Israel withdraws to the last centimeter of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967,” Qurei said.

In a perfect world, nations would coexist and borders would be merely electoral districts. This is not a perfect world, and Palestinians and Jews in this land have bled in a zero-sum battle over land and the right to a national identity.

Those still calling for a polite democratic coexistence are dangerously disconnected from the sentiments of the people living in this land.

First, we split apart. Only then “reconciliation” – that is, accepting the other’s legitimate national identity – can begin. We’re not holding our breath here. It will take a lot of time for the Palestinians to recognize there is justice in Zionism.

At least the leadership on each side is talking sensibly about separation, not peace or love or some other unstable, doomed fantasy.

Herb Keinon settles the speculation around the Arab League peace initiative. It’s a great article for context:

Senior Jerusalem officials dismissed on Sunday a sudden surge of interest both here and abroad in the Arab Peace Initiative, saying it was a function of both a diplomatic process that has stalled and the transition periods in Israel, the US and the Palestinian Authority.

“And the Saudis have an interest in pushing this out there now, to put on a ‘constructive face’ with which to greet the new US president.”

Now, the official said, “the negotiations with the Palestinians are stalled, coalition talks are under way and various ideas are thrown out there.

“It’s also Succot; there is not much going on, so half-formed ideas that are discussed in the framework of coalition talks get a lot more traction than they normally would.”

Finally, the official said, “There is no government to talk to about this. Not here, not in the PA and not in the US.”

It’s a shame, because “the plan seems to be all the rage in recent days,” Keinon notes.

President Shimon Peres reportedly talked with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef about the need to go for a regional agreement, not just a bilateral one with Syria or the Palestinians, while King Abdullah II of Jordan told Spain’s El Pais daily that the plan provided a genuine opportunity for a peace settlement.

In Britain, The Guardian newspaper ran a story entitled “Time to resurrect the Arab peace plan.”

Labor Party head Ehud Barak also got into the fray, telling Army Radio on Sunday he discussed the plan recently with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during their coalition negotiations.

We’re not sure what to make of this Jerusalem Post report that Ehud Barak is contemplating new peace discussions based on the Arab League’s Saudi initiative, since, he says, “We have interests in common with moderate Arab elements on Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas.”

Barak even said President Shimon Peres agrees, and that he mentioned the idea to the likely next PM Tzipi Livni.

The Saudi initiative, in its day, came as a way to take the initiative away from Ariel Sharon after the Israeli PM had begun to forcibly dismantle the Palestinian terror infrastructures and sideline Yasser Arafat’s regime. Israelis didn’t take it seriously then – why would Arab states step forward for peace when the terror has been defeated, but remain silent while it raged?

What’s Barak’s game? Is it for domestic consumption? He’s got a bit more than a year to elections, and he heads the main left-wing party.

Could he be serious? Could he be calculating that the Saudis, Egyptians, perhaps even Syrians are so scared of Iran they’ll make a genuine peace with the Jewish state?

We’re a day late, but we couldn’t help poking fun at Condoleezza Rice for insisting on trying for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians by January – despite representing a lame-duck administration and reporting to a Congress that, given recent financial news, probably won’t be forking over much American cash, the preferred sugar for sweetening such peace deals. Did we mention the minor point that Israel’s own administration has been replaced this month?

Reuters reports:

Speaking to a U.S. conference on business investment in Palestinian areas, Rice said she still hoped to reach the Bush administration’s goal of a peace deal by the end of 2008 that was set at a conference in Annapolis nearly a year ago.

“I still believe that we must make every effort in the time that we have to lay this foundation for peace, and that still means that we must do everything that we can … to find an agreement between these parties by the end of the year,” Rice said.

“Know too that until that moment when I leave office, I will leave no stone unturned to see if we can finally resolve this conflict,” Rice said.

Oy.

Uriel Heilman offered an excellent juxtaposition over the weekend of two editorials published in Israel about the new Syrian peace overtures.

The Jerusalem Post, from the skeptical center-right, wants proof of Assad’s intentions but remains open to peace. Ha’aretz, from the left, worries Israel could miss an opportunity but notes in passing that the skeptics’ concerns are important and we should be wary.

Come again? Aren’t they saying the same thing?

Heilman seems to believe the “dueling editorials” show uncertainty in Israel over Israeli-Syrian peace discussions. We think this juxtaposition highlights something deeper. Israelis are really at a loss about peacemaking with the Arab world. It is a shocking and disturbing thought that we’re dealing with societies capable of purposefully and methodically destroying themselves, as witnessed most recently in Gaza and Lebanon. And for what? To compensate for a sense of shame that demands reclaiming all lands lost in aggressive war? For a refusal to recognize that “colonialist” Israel is a rooted, indigenous civilization with no outside mother country to flee to?

The Post is right to note that Assad is merely pursuing tactical objectives, and Ha’aretz is not stupid in hoping this is for real, as it was with Sadat and King Hussein. In the end, Ha’aretz and the Post reach remarkably similar conclusions – skeptical hopefulness vs. hopeful skepticism – because nobody has any idea where the inner torments of the Arab political psyche will take us all this time around.

Hassan Yousef is probably going through one of the worst crises of his life. The Hamas chieftain (an Israeli intelligence analyst told me he was “no. 10″ in the Hamas political hierarchy) has sat in Israeli jails on and off for years. He is known as a Hamas moderate, since he is by all accounts a sweet man, and has expressed a willingness to marry his violent ideology with an honest attempt to explain himself to Israelis, Americans and other enemies of Islam. He maintains contacts with Israeli anarchists and far-left activists and believes that a comprehensive jihad includes not only suicide bombings, but explanation of Islam targeted at converting the enemy. This (very relative) moderation has brought him to accept in principle the notion of temporary ceasefires in Hamas’s long-term struggle for restoration of the Islamic caliphate over the Holy Land (and the rest of Islam, and of course Spain, Greece, etc.).

But now, reports the Telegraph, his son Mosab has left Ramallah, and with it Islam, to become an American evangelical Christian. The move is so drastic that Mosab is driven to declare:

If they want to kill me, let them do it. I’m not going to stop anyone. It’s going to be my freedom. My soul’s going to be free of my body, not flesh any more.

I don’t know what drove Mosab to make the vast journey from one reality to another, across such a vast divide of culture and enmity, but the Telegraph interview demonstrates the depth of his alienation from the culture of his birth. Few Palestinians can say of their society:

Palestinians look really ugly in front of everybody in the world and they are very, very good people … they are misled, and their picture is very dark because of this leadership. They need some help, they need people to stop lying to them, and lying to the world.

It is tragic that one must be an outsider to say such words about Palestinian society, which has manifestly failed to respond to the challenges it faces. Or this:

Hamas, they are using civilians’ lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate.

There will be peace with Israel, and also within Palestine, when a Palestinian can say this from Ramallah, not just from an evangelical church in California.