The ‘New State Solution’ in the MidEast

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad

Moderate Middle East experts have been saying it since President Barack Obama’s landmark Cairo speech in June. It’s been repeated ad nauseum at peace-process meetings this fall from Tel Aviv to New York to Washington. Now it’s back again – following Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s threats to leave office over frustration, neary six months after Obama’s speech, at no sign of peace talks aimed at ending Israel’s 42-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.

What’s back: The notion that instead of talking about the peace process, we should be focusing on outcomes: the structure, operation, and borders of a Palestinian state; moving the infrastructure of the Israeli occupation out of the West Bank; sharing water; sharing Jerusalem; and deciding on the fate of refugees. To that end, the Palestinians today formally asked the European Union to support the creation of a Palestinian state:

EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the issue in Brussels [Tuesday] but are unlikely to reach any decision. Diplomats said there was no question of EU backing for a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinians, which would [however] be likely to be vetoed by Washington. …

But Erakat made clear that the Palestinians were seeking a [United Nations] security council resolution spelling out the parameters for resolving the conflict — crucially without waiting for Israel to negotiate and without Israeli consent. A key element would be that a Palestinian state must include the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, within the 1967 borders in line with existing UN resolutions.

This move, supported by the Arab League, reflects mounting Palestinian frustration that negotiations with Israel have reached a dead end due to the refusal of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Likud prime minister, to agree to a freeze on settlement activity, as Barack Obama had been demanding until recently when he appeared to back-pedal.

Predictably, the Palestinians’ action caused a major flap among the neocon hawks in Tel Aviv’s current rightist coalition, especially Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose comments were threatening: “Whoever holds a unilateral policy with complete disregard for past accords,” said Lieberman, “will get the same from us.” Neocon U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman was in the West Bank at a conference over the weekend, so he too, puffed up his chest. At the State Dept., spokesman Ian Kelly disavowed unilateral plans, stating U.S. support for negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Palestinians have some limited control of the green areas of the map (although travel between the green areas is controlled); they are seeking to control the West Bank and Gaza strip, with a corridor linking the two.

The Palestinians’ attempt to clarify was clear as mud. Erekat told Reuters: “Heading to the Security Council to issue a resolution recognizing an independent Palestinian state … differs entirely from a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The PLO is not proposing the option of declaring a state unilaterally.” How about this translation: We don’t want to anger the Americans nor cause the current Israeli government to retaliate. BTW, this isn’t exactly a new issue; the Palestinian Prime Minister’s 38-page outline for an independent Palestinian government has been sitting on the PLO’s website for months. (Indeed, the Palestinians declared statehood back in 1988.)

What’s different here – and dare I say, maybe a bit encouraging – is the energizing effect that discussion of ending the occupation has had on the pro-peace liberals in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Ben Eliezer of the Labor party said his party would leave the right-wing ruling coalition if Israel annexed any more West Bank settlements on Palestinian land. Yossi Sarid, head of the liberal Meretz party, wrote in Haaretz:

Both sides have a right to act unilaterally. Abbas owes it to his people, to himself, and to us. This week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds this possibility very scary, and he expects the Americans to nip it in the bud. But his nightmare is our only chance for an end to the occupation in our time.

Earlier, there was support expressed for the declaration of a Palestinian state (on about 60% of Palestine) by Shaul Mofaz of the Kadima Party. Today. Kadima Party head Tzipi Livni, had – as usual these days – the most sensible take on the situation, calling for negotiations that would “pick up talks from the point we stopped. They will eventually end up there, and the time has come to do what is right. ”

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