Jul. 15 2009 - 11:18 pm | 3 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comments

Peacenik soldiers, lawyers, wonks = Washington saves the Middle East

By EILEEN WHITE READ

A busy day for peaceniks, policy wonks, two-state-solution obsessives – and those who follow them around Washington. Lawyer Michael Sfard came to the New America Foundation to offer his perspective on pitfalls in the road toward what PM Netanyahu calls “two states for two peoples.”

The born-and-bred Jerusalemite, one of Israel’s most respected human rights litigators, also wrote the forward to the new report by 54 Israeli Defense Force soldiers whose harrowing personal narratives about the Gaza war in January were posted by the NGO Breaking the Silence. [See video above.]

An expert in “settlerology” – his naughty term for Israeli law as it relates to West Bank settlements – Sfard made points about freezing their construction as a beginning of a two-state solution. [This is from my live notes, not a transcript, so apologies to Sfard if I'm off by a word or two.]

“Settlement is about constant growth. Settlements are rooted deeply in Israeli society. The idea that you can freeze settlement growth was designed by people who don’t understand what settlements are. That’s the biggest threat to the peace plan. Settlements are not, and the settlement community is not [simply] construction of new housing units…. It takes time to plan, build new neighborhoods, political effort to overcome political hurdles…. Even if you don’t add another building, the mere fact that the settlement exist creates a process of enlargement….of occupation.

So using the word freeze, one has to understand what that means. Assuming a freeze is only on construction, we will have at least two processes that will undermine the bone fide settlement freeze as a tool to come back to the negotiation table.

1. Rapid, enormous planning will begin. I mean complete freedom for the settlers to plan on paper new neighborhoods. I’m not just guessing. [Here he related an anecdote about Migron, an illegal settlement of 50 houses that the government just ordered destroyed, only to issue an order to move the 50 families to another hill in the West Bank - and to allow the 50 houses to be the nucleus of a new 1,450-unit settlement called Adam.] Now if settlement freeze is only about construction, this plan is not violating the settlement freeze as long as it’s on paper. The same thing will be done in other places, and the government said in the hearing, “This is our model of how we will deal with other outposts in the future.” What comes out of this is a barter deal between the government and the leadership of the settlement movement. These plans will undermine the integrity of the settlement freeze policy.

2. Settler violence. Doing a political analysis, not from the human rights point of view, settler extremists are basically hooligans, and basically they should be behind bars. But that’s not all of it. In recent months, in the last year, a big change, a transformation has occurred in the way settler violence is carried out. It’s no secret there is a coorelation between violence against Palestinians when the political wind blows against the settlers. If once the attacks were carried out by small local groups, today it’s an organized, coordinated effort with a strategic goal. I know because I’m involved in the research on these issues. We follow right wing media and right wing web sites.

What we found out in the last year was this energy, almost Ku Klux Klan energy , redirected by a coordinated leadership to inflame [settlers on] the ground whenever there was an demolition or an evacuation of an illegal outpost. It’s terrorism…. This phenomenon will grow, and it will become a big problem for the efforts of the Americans.

[A legal clarification:} There was … disinformation that was disseminated by the government regarding the settlement freeze. The Minister of Defense said a complete settlement freeze is legally impossible because once settlement construction reaches a [certain] phase, you cannot legally stop it. That is rubbish. It’s one of those things that is not very complicated. The clear legal doctrine gives [the government] permission to stop construction that is not in keeping with national policy. It is clear.

[His summation:] Settlement freeze is an oxymoron. If one wants to deal with the idea seriously, one needs to deal with a multi-layered issue, a complete freeze, not just a construction freeze.”

A different perspective from the usual, huh? Okay across town, Brian Katulis, Middle East policy expert at the Center for American Progress, and his colleagues released a strategy paper, Window of Opportunity for a Two-State Solution, with four sensible recommendations for the Obama administration:

“Plan for the possibility of Palestinian elections in the coming year.
Develop an integrated program to strengthen Palestinian institutions in a broad range of sectors to lay the foundations for statehood.
Take immediate action to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Conduct a public outreach and strategic communications effort in the Middle East outlining U.S. regional strategy, with increased attention to Israeli public opinion.”

I hope the Netanyahu government reads this report, it’s full of reasonable ideas like this one:

“To do this, the Obama administration should consider ways to shape Israel’s strategic calculations, such as a package of additional financial assistance to help Israel with the costs of moving settlements and military bases in the West Bank, both of which might be the result of a deal with Israel on permanent borders or a more comprehensive agreement.”