The way forward for the Israel-Palestine conflict

Palestinians aren’t asking for Barack Obama’s permission, they just want him to get out of the way,” the headline in The Electronic Intifada screamed. It reflected popular opinion among the Palestinian people on the perennial failure of US’ efforts to resolve the conflict with Israel. One year after the devastation wreaked in the Gaza strip by Tel Aviv, it has become imperative to take stock on where the subject that has dominated West Asian politics for decades, is headed in the near future: uncharted waters or a planned progression towards resolution.

In June, American think tank RAND Corporation attached numbers to five different scenarios in the Israel-Palestine conflict to weigh the economics of the situation. It concluded that not only would Israel lose much less in war but that Israelis, comparatively much richer than Palestinians, would gain as much as 5% GDP over 10 years even with a two-State solution. That, several Israelis may contend, is too little gain to risk Israeli security for. Palestinians, on the other hand, could see this as clear proof that higher costs should be imposed on Israel through the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) campaign. Simplistic as the exercise may appear, The Economist observed: To the world, it (RAND’s exercise) confirms that the Israeli conflict with Palestine is less about standards of living and more about history, religion, nationalism, justice, security and much else to which it is impossible to attach numbers.

Paul Scham, scholar of Middle East studies, maintained “Making peace 20 years ago would have been simpler than now, and now would be simpler than 10 or 20 years hence, but a division of the land in some fashion can never be ruled out, whether called partition or a two-State solution or something else….” Dubbing the “peace process” a series of processes, largely unsuccessful, interspersed between bouts of fighting or stalemate, Scham maintained candidly: “Stalemate has usually been the default option, and that tradition continues. Now, though, the most likely scenario is benign general neglect of the issue...”

Status quo, which currently prevails, would clearly be preferred by Tel Aviv. And that is something that the Palestinian leadership, including the Hamas and the people are sharply aware of since summer 2014 and keen to avoid. That keenness to change the predominant narrative has sharpened with the progressively changing hardliner composition of the Israeli government as seen in the new Binyamin Netanyahu-led (fourth term) regime.

Some key factors have emerged, post summer 2014, as holding the potential to shape the trajectory of the Israel-Palestinian issue in the near future. One, the strategic determination of the Palestinian leadership to engage with and involve international fora including the UN more actively than ever before, to gain global support for their objective of a separate Palestinian State. Two, the impact of the Obama legacy on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Three, internal political pressure on the US President in the run up to the 2017 elections and a Republican dominated senate. Four, intensifying hard line in Israeli domestic politics. And four, the drastically changing geopolitical landscape in all of West Asia,

The bullishness of the Palestinian leadership to engage with international fora in the quest for a separate State for its people is a direct result of the November 2012 observer state status in the UNGA and the wide acknowledgement that the US is either politically unwilling, or unable to bring pressure upon its ally Israel to come to the negotiating table.

In October last year, PLO ambassador to the US, Maen Rashid Areikat, called for the US to acknowledge and support the involvement of the UN and the international community. In January 2015, the UN leadership warned that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would move to “uncharted territory” and irrevocably sharpen trust deficit if neither side came up with bold new moves to resolve their issue. That very month Palestinian leaders signed the Rome Statute (the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court or ICC).

A June 2015 UN report on last summer’s unmitigated aggression in the Gaza strip cited Israeli operations in residential neighbourhoods as possible war crimes. The report is expected to lend further credence to the Palestinians’ own documents to the ICC supporting claims of unprecedented human rights violations by Israel in the Gaza strip.

The two-State solution process Obama inherited from the Bush administration was a vapid one. Analysts point out that Bush intervened directly in Palestinian internal politics, pushed for Palestinian elections, and then when Hamas won, attempted to overturn the result. The administration helped arm and train Palestinian militias opposed to Hamas and vetoed a Palestinian “national unity government.”

The extent of bitterness between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama was manifest in a June 2015 interview Obama gave to an Israeli TV channel. “The danger here is that Israel as a whole loses credibility… already, the international community does not believe Israel is serious about a two-State solution,” Obama said.

But Obama’s more telling remarks were reserved for Netanyahu’s later call for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table unconditionally. That comment, he said, had “so many caveats, so many conditions, that it is not realistic to think those conditions would be met any time in the near future.” Reports said that Obama told Bibi directly that the US would have to “reassess our options” based on the latter’s new position against a two-State solution. This was the closest a US President had come to being on the same page as the Palestinians on a two-State solution.

Can there be any other trajectory for Obama? Scham, unlike other analysts, outlines an engaging alternative scenario. Relations between Netanyahu and Obama had reached a nadir enough, Scham says, to not rule out the possibility that the US President, especially if constrained even more by the Republican dominated Senate, decides to abstain on crucial Security Council votes. That would mean going against the current of the pro-Israel consensus within his own party. Contrary to popular perception, the Democrats have consistently backed Israel while the evangelical Christians and Neo conservatives are seen as having taken that position vehemently more recently.

Given the prognosis, it’s hardly surprising that the Palestinian leadership wants a transforming new narrative. The new administration in Tel Aviv is even busy extending a regressive law that does not allow Palestinians to join their spouses from other regions. In the near future, domestic political pressure from the younger generation of Palestinians is most likely to propel the older leadership to explore new frameworks. Every which way, the road the leadership has now taken appears though uncharted, definitely distinctive.

The author is a senior journalist