The Middle East Quagmire

Recently, Shibley Telhami, a noted political scientist, came to Toledo at the invitation of our Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. He is the Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank. A Palestinian Christian from Haifa, Israel, he has seen the Arab-Israeli conflict first hand. His lecture at the University of Toledo was one of the most balanced making fair assessments of the intractable issue. It takes courage and vision to sift through the emotional and incendiary brew of nationalism, politics and religion to be able to look at the issue through the eyes of victims, both Palestinians and Israelis.

He blames both sides for the impasse. To him the gulf between their respective positions has widened to the point where any major concessions to bridge the gap have become very difficult, if not impossible. The Israeli public, once flexible on making major concessions, has become more rigid. On the Palestinian side the moderates are being sidelined and silenced. Somehow battle-weariness has not made them receptive to peace but has hardened them.

While it is tempting to align with one side or the other, Mr. Telhami was eloquent in discussing the suffering on both sides. He talked in great detail of the devastating effect of terrorism on the psyche of Israeli people where they feel extremely vulnerable to random acts of violence against them.

He also outlined the humiliating treatment that Palestinians suffer at the hands of Israeli forces by losing their homes to demolitions and their land to confiscation. This pushes many of them into the arms of hard-line terrorist organizations. He also made a distinction, often lost in the incendiary rhetoric coming from both sides, between extremist Israelis and Palestinians and a majority of ordinary people who would like a peaceful solution to the age-old conflict.

Israelis are no safer on Ariel Sharon’s watch even though he had made security as the central issue of his election campaign. Now in desperation he is building a wall that snakes deep into the West Bank to encompass Jewish settlements and keep them contiguous with Israel. Like the thorny issue of illegal settlements on Palestinian land this would eventually become a ‘reality on the ground’ and thus will add another obstacle on the road to an eventual settlement.

The reality however is that militant hardliners in Israel and their vocal proxies in America do not want Palestinians living in Palestine. Their solution, and this is now being talked about more openly by some Israeli cabinet ministers and their American supporters, is the forced transfer of all Palestinians to Jordan. This may be the final solution for some but in practical and moral terms it is abhorrent.

A few weeks ago, amidst all this doom and gloom, a meeting took place on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan between former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo to ‘seal a model peace agreement’. They have been meeting for two years to negotiate the unresolved thorny issues like the right of return to Israel by Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The Geneva Accord (so named because Switzerland had sponsored the talks) is on the lines of the ill-fated Camp David draft negotiated by Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak under the auspices of President Clinton in 2000.

In a major concession the Palestinians would give up the right to return thus dashing the hopes of 3.5 to 5 million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and their lands. Israel would allow 30,000 to return whereas the rest would be settled in other Arab countries and also in the new Palestinian state that would be created on the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians would have, as envisioned in the Camp David document, sovereignty on parts of East Jerusalem.

As expected both Israeli government and Palestinian Authority disowned the new document. Ariel Sharon denounced the effort as illegitimate means by Labour Party and Israeli left to topple his government. On the other hand Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister, hailed it as a good starting point if Palestinians would give up the right to return.

Mr. Talhemi’s assessment of the Middle East was fair and to the point. So is the recent attempt by the former Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to find a fair solution. Official circled on both sides should not dismiss this latest effort as a mirage. There is really no other choice.