The peace process is well and truly dead…


January 8, 2016
Richard Kuper

camp david
Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony on 13 September 1993

Killing the Zombie Peace and Building a New Movement

Mandy Turner, Mediterranean Politics
7 January 2016

The prospects for a just and sustainable peace are dire. The Oslo framework and the two-state solution are no longer fit for purpose (if indeed they ever were). And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could limp on for a while longer – like a zombie that refuses to die. This short opinion piece argues that, in this context, a new movement and a new strategy are urgently required.

The first important thing in any analysis of the current situation and the potential for alternatives is the need to be realistic. But I do not mean realistic in a conservative way. What I mean is that in order to develop and pose an alternative to the current impasse, there needs to be a leadership and movement that can take it forward. This is absolutely crucial – no amount of stating what is required will help; it needs to be backed up with a plan of action, and a leadership and organization (or coalition of organizations) to carry it out.

There are only two solutions: two states existing side by side, or a variant of one state over the whole of historic Palestine (binational, apartheid or liberal democratic state). We currently have a situation in between – neither two states nor one state, although if it continues along its current trajectory, a single apartheid state will become a reality fairly soon. Indeed, there is lots of evidence that we are already there ‒ that is, while Israel is the sovereign power over the whole of historic Palestine, and is the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (as recognized by the United Nations and all its member states), there are currently two different legal frameworks for people living in the same geographical space (i.e. the West Bank): one that lives under the rule of law and with access to the Israeli civil court system (Israeli settlers), and the other that lives under military rule with a military court system (Palestinians). Furthermore, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have the right to vote in Israeli elections, while Palestinians do not enjoy this right. The result is that two different and discriminatory legal and political systems operate in the same territory, with a person’s rights and benefits determined by his or her national origin – this, and many more examples that I will not expand on for reasons of space, accords with the UN definition of ‘apartheid’. The two-state solution could possibly have been implanted and been viable immediately after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord (although I am a bit sceptical about this), but that window of opportunity has closed.

Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. The situation is dire. Despite more than 20 years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue, and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace. In May 2015, Israel constructed yet another right-wing government of political parties and ministers with clear intentions of continuing settler activity and ensuring the occupation is ‘managed’, while Palestinians are dispossessed and corralled into the Bantustans created by the Oslo peace framework. Israel’s willingness to use increasing levels of violence to continue its ‘iron wall’ policy found its crescendo in the violence meted on Gaza in the summer of 2014, where soldiers have spoken about ‘losing their sense of morality’ (Breaking the Silence, 2014). Indeed, Israel killed more Palestinians in 2014 than in any other year since 1967 (Zonszein, 2015). Given that each time Israel hits the occupied territories, it starts from the basis of the previous operation, this does not bode well for the future. On the Palestinian side, the split between Hamas and Fatah, and therefore between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, continues; there is no reconciliation between the two parties in sight despite frequent rhetoric to the contrary. The economic situation in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) is a mess: Gaza is almost entirely dependent on aid due to the blockade, East Jerusalem suffers from lack of investment and high unemployment due to being cut off from the West Bank, and the West Bank is highly fragmented. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is at the mercy of the Paris Protocol that ties it economically to Israel, a country which remains its belligerent occupier.

Despite all this, however, there is little recognition or acknowledgement that the two-state solution is dead; indeed people appear to be holding on to it for dear life. This is understandable because when its death has been accepted then the big question must be: what comes next? One major problem facing the development of an alternative is that it is likely that the current situation will limp on for a while yet – like a zombie that refuses to die. The donors are not helping the situation; indeed, they have become as big a part of the problem as the occupation – as has been documented extensively in my work and the work of others (Le More, 2008; Roy, 2007; Taghdisi-Rad, 2011). Their foreign policy agendas do not allow them to conduct an honest and realistic assessment of the situation in the oPt. As far as I am concerned, donor development and peacebuilding policies and practices have become intricately intertwined and embedded within the processes of colonization and fragmentation taking place in the oPt, while at the same time purporting to reduce (or at least try to manage) the impacts of these processes (Turner, 2015).

In this context, alternative visions of the future urgently need to be developed – both in the oPt and in Israel. The current elites on both sides are offering nothing new – just more of the same. The Palestinian leadership continues to support the two-state solution – and is now trying the route of international law to insist on its emergence. It is tied into a process that it does not, and cannot, control. Successive Israeli governments are sticking resolutely to the same process instituted after 1967: settling more Jewish-Israeli communities in the West Bank, passing more sophisticated laws and regulations to restrict Palestinian rights and movement, and developing more repressive counterinsurgency measures to ensure that dissent is managed while it expands its state over the whole of historic Palestine.

In terms of the two publics, opinion is hard to gauge, particularly given that opinion polls are notoriously difficult to read in this situation – and many seem to contradict each other’s findings. Half of Jewish-Israelis would appear to support the two-state solution, although the type of ‘state’ they support does not seem too different from that of the current PA, which is unacceptable to Palestinians and is unsustainable (it would be dependent upon aid for the rest of its existence). Palestinians seem equally supportive of both solutions: a separate Palestinian state sitting side by side with Israel, or one state over the whole of historic Palestine (Finkelstein, 2014).

So, what can be done in the current situation? There are a number of movements and organizations that are resisting and trying to mobilize. However, these are very small and fragmented, and do not, at present, offer an alternative vision that has been able to motivate enough people to oppose and change the status quo. The situation in Israel is obviously very different from the situation in the OPT. In Israel, the mainstream left offers no real alternative to the current situation; indeed the Zionist Union, which was the main opposition to Likud in the 2015 general election, did not even campaign on the issue of peace with the Palestinians, instead preferring to focus on traditional ‘bread and butter’ social democratic issues. One interesting development, however, has been the emergence of the Arab List, which did surprisingly well in the general election, and seems to indicate a revival of Palestinian political mobilization within Israel (Palestinians constitute around 20 per cent of the population inside the Green Line). However, Palestinian rights and the occupation have largely dropped off the Israeli political agenda. This has killed the widely held belief that when Israel feels secure, it will make peace with the Palestinians – in fact, the exact opposite has happened (Beinart, 2015). Indeed, while Israel often bemoans the lack of a Palestinian ‘partner for peace’, it is actually the Palestinians who should complain about this as there is no mainstream Israeli political partner with which the Palestinian leadership can work. In the oPt, there is increasing discontent with the situation and rising criticism of the PA, and internal opposition to Hamas; the impending crisis of leadership is palpable (Bryant, 2015). Despite this, however, the old political factions continue to dominate the political arena. Calls for the PA to disband may seem logical, but would likely cause chaos in terms of service provision for Palestinians in the oPt – a major issue that complicates the situation.

The immediate short-term future, therefore, is bleak. Israel will continue its policy of conflict containment/management (through both military and bureaucratic means), and the geographical fragmentation of the oPt will continue to make it difficult for an alternative Palestinian political movement or strategy to emerge and gain support. In the medium to long term, however, there will be one state over the whole of historic Palestine. The form this will take, though, cannot be predicted. The first thing that needs to happen is for a movement to be created and for it to gain widespread support for an alternative vision to the bleak one currently offered by the Oslo framework, for it to be led by Palestinians, but for it to also include Israelis who reject Zionism and the denial of Palestinian rights. This movement does not currently exist – although there are small fragmented groups of activists with similar critiques of the status quo and similar attitudes about what needs to be done to create sustainable, just solutions that might converge in the construction of one. A movement that crosses the ethnic-religious terrain will be difficult to construct given the history of the situation. However, it is absolutely crucial in order to facilitate the decolonization of Israel and Palestine, and the development of rights for all in this tiny geographic space. Only then may all people be able to enjoy a life that is relatively free of the violence and repression that has sadly marked this beautiful land for so long.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References

© Copyright JFJFP 2024