Sunday, April 25, 2010

Temporary Permanence

Are Israel and the Palestinians inching towards some sort of renewed negotiations? I have no idea. George Mitchel is going back and forth, so on that level you could say they're deep into negotiations and have been for a while. On the other hand, no officials from either side have met officials from the other side, so far as we know, since Abbas forgot to reply to Ehud Olmer's offer of September 16 2008. So who knows.

In any case, in the present flurry of whatever they are it seems Netanyahu has floated some sort of idea, whereby the Palestinians get a state without its final border being defined. Abbas rejected that idea out of hand yesterday, and Avi Issacharof takes a closer look. In the Hebrew edition of Haaretz his article is titled "Ein al ma ledaber", Nothing to talk about, but the English version toned that down to a non-committal Chilly reply. The English version also left out a crucial explanation for the Palestinian rejection: the fear the temporary borders might eventually become permanent (this sentence, along with another few, were dropped in translation).

There's a deep irony in this Palestinian fear, of course. Back in 1949 it was the Arab states (Egypt, Jordan and Syria) who refused to recognize Israel's borders, in the hope or expectation or intention of changing them in the future to Israel's detriment. (The Palestinians were not part of those discussions at all, since the Egyptians and Jordanians had no interest in a Palestinian state). Moreover, as Michael Oren has documented in his excellent Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, in the 1950s the Americans and the British both floated plans to reduce Israel's size for this or that purpose. The line of 1949-1967 became an official border sanctioned by international consensus only after the Israelis overran it in 1967.

Near the end of his item, Issacharoff mentions that there is one camp in the Palestinian polity which still sees the world in the terms of 1949, i.e Palestinian borders with Israel should be temporary:
Among the Palestinians, only Hamas does not reject the idea of something temporary. In the past, but also recently, the Islamist group suggested the creation of an interim Palestinian state. But Hamas' interim borders are very clear: June 4, 1967.

7 comments:

Barry Meislin said...

Near the end of his item, Issacharoff mentions that there is one camp in the Palestinian polity which still sees the world in the terms of 1949....

This, of course, is what Avi Issacharoff (and many of us others) would dearly like to believe.

It is, alas, not true. The PA, no matter what some of its members may mouth, is dedicated to the same goal as Hamas. The Palestinian "tragedy" (or one of them) is that the two "parties" cannot agree with one another as to how to achieve it.

And now for some deja vu... (ad nauseum, ad infinitum).

Anonymous said...

8th Palestinians in Europe Conference

read the small print on top
"Our return is certain ..."
and in Berlin of all places
and the London Times has a headline that Abbas is asking Obama to impose peace.

Silke

http://alawda.eu/berlin2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=1&lang=en

AKUS said...

One of the things I detest about Ha'aretz is the way it has copied the classic trick of the Arab leaders - say one thing in your own language, and another in English for consumption by the rest of the world.

NormanF said...

Both Fatah (the PA) and Hamas are committed to Israel's destruction. They differ in tactics on how best to achieve the aim. The Palestinians reject a state if it means having to give up their goal of annihilating Israel. There is no reason to believe that will change in the future and hence peace in the full sense of the word, will not happen between Israel and the Palestinians in our lifetime. Since that is impossible, the most that can be done is to keep the conflict on the "back burner" as much as possible.

YMedad said...

You reaffirm an important point in this sentence - "The line of 1949-1967 became an official border sanctioned by international consensus only after the Israelis overran it in 1967" - but it should be written differently so that no mistake is made. Maybe thus: "What we know as the 'Green Line', the former armistice lines, was never an internationally recognized legal/political boundary but only became so, ex post facto: after the 1967 war".

Yaacov said...

Your formulation is indeed more precise, Yisrael.

Anonymous said...

the Peace Process is discussed further in Foreign Policy as a piggyback on that David Aaron Miller piece

note that the only one who keeps mum on what to do is the General

oh and btw this Aaron David Miller had a book with that same title in March 2008, so his "conversion" must have taken place at the latest in 2007.

Silke

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/19/so_why_have_we_failed