David Meir-Levi
In the wake of the Mitchell and Tenet failures, President Bush sent General Anthony Zinni (retired) to broker peace between Israel and Arafat on March 26, 2002. His plan was simple, clear cut, and straight-forward: both sides immediately and simultaneously declare cease-fires, Israel stops pro-active operations (i.e., arrests or assassinations of known terrorists) at the same time that Arafat orders field commanders to stop all attacks and arrest anyone involved in terror activities, the IDF then begins redeployment from most of the West Bank, and the Palestinian Authority assumes security responsibility for West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel agreed, and enforced its first part of the deal. Arafat said he agreed but then did nothing to stop terror attacks. As terror attacks continued, Israel had no choice but to deploy the IDF to stop them. Arafat’s unwillingness or inability to stop terrorism scuttled the Zinni plan. Some analysts suggest that Arafat continued the terrorism because he felt he could do better in negotiations with then Secretary of State Colin Powell who was scheduled to visit the Middle East very shortly after Zinni’s visit.
When he came to Israel to try again to broker a peace agreement, on April 4, 2002, Secretary of State Powell had no organized plan, just demands for a cease fire. He did, however, specifically call upon Arafat to step up to the plate, end terrorism and start negotiations. He demanded that Arafat make a public announcement over Palestinian media, renouncing violence. ”It’s time for him (Arafat) to make a strategic decision to combat attacks on Israeli civilians. Chairman Arafat must take that message to his people, he must follow through with instructions to his security forces (that) they must start to arrest and prosecute terrorists, disrupt terrorist financing, dismantle terrorists’ infrastructures and stop incitement” said Mr. Powell.
Sharon agreed to step down operations, but only if there will be a “dramatic change from the Palestinian side.” Arafat complied verbally, but the terror attacks and suicide bombings continued even as Israel intensified its Operation Defensive Shield , the re-occupation of the West Bank and destruction of terrorist bases of operation there.
Fed up with Arafat’s unwillingness, or inability, to stop the terrorism, President Bush took a step that no former President had ever done: on June 24, 2002 he promised the Palestinian people their own state, as long as they eschewed terrorism and violence.” Terror must be stopped,” he said. “No nation can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.” He went on record that the United States supports the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a Palestinian state, such that the two states would live side by side in peace and security. He also went on record blaming Arafat for the merciless terror war he initiated against Israel on September 29, 2000, and recognized Israel’s need to use force against the terrorist networks attacking Israeli civilians. But Arafat ignored this offer and did nothing to stop the terror attacks. There was no one among the Palestinian leadership willing to oppose Arafat. The terror war continued.
Less than a year later, in April, 2003, for the first time in history, The USA, the EU, the UN and Russia convened in Washington to create a performance-based “roadmap” intended to lead to a permanent Two-State solution: the “Road Map for Peace.” The text acknowledged the ground-breaking nature of President Bush’s June 24th speech and acknowledged that the “destination” of this “Road Map for Peace” was a comprehensive settlement by 2005, following the guidelines of the President’s June 24th vision of a two-state solution. The first line of the first paragraph of the first section of part I of the Road Map stated that the Palestinian Authority must unconditionally and immediately stop the terrorism and incitement. Thereafter Israel must stop settlement expansion. Then Arafat was to enable the creation of a democratic Palestinian parliament with the appointment of a prime minister who will select a cabinet. Then both sides return to the peace talks, the clearly defined purpose of which was to create a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel accepted the Road Map with some reservations, while committing to painful concessions and acknowledging that the Palestinians could ultimately achieve statehood by ending terrorism and committing to peaceful co-existence. Arafat said he accepted the Road Map, but then postponed talks with Israel and put the Road Map’s peace process at risk by rejecting the cabinet of the newly appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minster Mahmud Abbas . Reports from Palestinian West Bank officials revealed that Arafat continued the funding of his terrorist groups, while contingents of these groups attacked, abducted, and tortured supporters of Abbas. Thus, in the face of another international offer for the creation of a Palestinian state, Arafat chose to continue his war.
From February 3 to April 14, 2004 President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon developed together a plan for an unconditional and unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Information about this plan was shared with Ahmed Qure’a, the Prime Minister of the PA (by this time, Arafat was too ill to function. He died on November 11, 2004), as was the assessment of this plan by US lobbyists. On April 14 Sharon sent Bush an official letter stating Israel’s willingness to disengage from the West Bank and Gaza Strip simultaneous with the PA’s assumption of effective security controls and the cessation of terrorism and other hostilities. Bush and Sharon held a press conference announcing the plan that same day.
The next day, PA Prime Minister Qure’a sent letters to UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, President Bush, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair expressing the PA’s outright dismissal of Sharon’s plan. So Sharon, with Bush’s backing, offers the PA its freedom from Israeli control and its complete independence, and PA leadership says no.
Prior to the beginning of his discussions with President Bush about unilateral withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on Dec. 19, 2003, Prime Minister Sharon had announced his plan to unilaterally and unconditionally withdraw all Israelis from only the Gaza Strip and turn it over, in toto, to the Palestinian Authority. President Bush, the UN and the EU all enthusiastically endorsed the plan and urged Palestinian leadership to step up to the plate and reciprocate by fulfilling the demands of the Road Map and beginning the process that would end with a peaceful two-state solution.
At first Sharon’s plan was rejected by the Israeli government, but after six months of internal negotiations and political gerrymandering, and after the negative responses from the PA about Sharon’s plan for more comprehensive withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza strip, the less ambitious plan for the Gaza Strip alone was approved on June 6, 2004. On August 15, 2005 Israeli security forces evicted more than 9,000 Israeli residents from 21 Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip. And on September 22, 2005 four additional Israeli communities in the West Bank were forcibly dismantled and their residents evicted. The execution of this plan was painful and difficult, causing enormous political and social upheaval in Israel, especially because of the forced evictions. But the Israeli government carried it out in order to make an incontrovertible and unequivocal statement that it was ready for peace and for the creation of a Palestinian state.
But Palestinian leadership did not reciprocate. Almost immediately, Hamas began qassam rocket attacks on Israel from the newly liberated Gaza Strip, forcing Israel to close its Gaza border crossings and police the coast and airspace to prevent Hamas from importing weapons. Over the next five years Hamas would fire more than 10,000 rockets and missiles and RPGs at Israeli civilians in communities around the Gaza Strip.
Five years after its first attempt at peace making, the Saudi royal family renewed its leadership with the Riyadh summit of March 28, 2007, which proposed a retread of its 2002 plan. This time, the demands on Israel were harsher, with the expectation that Israel, a priori, would return to the 1949 armistice lines and accept millions of so-called “Palestinian refugees” into what they claim to be their former homes and farms in Israel. Only after Israel completed these potentially catastrophic concessions would the Arab world agree to peace and a normalization of relations.
Despite this hardening of the Saudi position, Israel’s government, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was warm to the plan and referred to it as a “new opportunity” offered by “moderate Palestinians and pragmatic Arab leaders.” Olmert invited Arab leaders to a meeting at which they would discuss the plan in more detail. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia , however, declined Olmert’s offer. This snub, and the wording of the plan itself, which presented Israel with a fait acompli, a take-it or leave-it offer which guaranteed that Israel would be flooded with millions of Arabs claiming descent from the refugee population of Arabs who fled Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 war, cooled Israel’s initial enthusiasm. Upon more thoughtful consideration, it became clear to Israeli leaders that the plan was not an invitation to peace negotiations, but an ultimatum that would put Israel in a severely compromised position in the event that the Arab side did not fulfill its requirements.
Moreover, the actions from the Arab side that would guarantee Israel’s security and provide follow-up stages of implementation were vague and overly general. Israel would first need to make substantive and irreversible concessions of territory and polity, and then hope that the Arab side would fulfill its commitments to easily reversible philosophical changes of language, attitude and behavior.
It is instructive that two years later, Palestinian advisor to President Abbas, Ghaith al-Omari, acknowledged that Israel’s concerns were reasonable, and that the Arab side did not properly address these concerns. He specified the same problems (all-or-nothing deal, no negotiations, refugees flooding Israel, vague and general promises of an easily reversible nature) that prompted Israel to look askance at the plan. Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mesh’al, expressed no opposition to plan but continued his opposition to any normalization of relations with Israel, and remained adamant about not accepting Israel’s right to exist. Other Hamas factions were bitterly opposed to the Riyadh plan because it formalized an Arab diplomatic recognition of Israel.
Just a few months after the plan was presented, Hamas ousted the PA from the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup and took full control of the Strip and promptly renewed rocket and mortar attacks against Israel. With Hamas stronger than ever, and the PA reduced in power and influence, Israel’s reluctance to fulfill the requirements of the Riyadh ultimatum seemed wise. Today, in light of the recent “Arab Spring” and the changes taking place in Arab governments across the Middle East, Israel’s hesitation, in hindsight, was clearly justified.
On October 21, 2007, Israeli military intelligence exposed a Palestinian plot to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Mahmud Abbas arrested the perpetrators, but then immediately released them despite the fact that they had confessed to the plot. None the less, Olmert continued to support negotiations with the Palestinians and Israel’s participation in the Annapolis summit scheduled for November 27, 2007.
President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice hosted Abbas and Olmert together at Annapolis, even as Hamas was firing hundreds of rockets in to Israel and murdering Fatah representatives in Gaza. The purpose of the conference was to encourage progress along the lines of the “Road Map” toward a formal peace agreement between Israel and the PA. Olmert made the most generous concessions ever, even offering to re-divide Jerusalem so that the Palestinian state could have East Jerusalem as its capital.
Abbas gave a very up-beat speech of hope and vision and promise and an outstretched hand of friendship and cooperation to Israel, but concluded it by demanding as a pre-condition and sine qua non before the PA would consider peace:
“…ending the occupation of all Palestinian occupied territories in 1967, including East Jerusalem (as though Olmert had not just made that very offer), as well as the Syrian Golan and what remains of occupied from Lebanese territories, and to resolve all other issues relating to the conflict, especially the Palestinian refugees question in all its political, humanitarian, individual and common aspects, consistent with Resolution 194…”
So in the midst of all his optimism and hope and vision and brotherly love, and even as Olmert made even more far-reaching concessions, Abbas did exactly what every other Arab leader had done over the past 70 years: he laid out the up-front demands, the pre-conditions, making it clear that without these concessions guaranteed before negotiations could start, there could be no peace. In essence he both ignored and rejected Olmert’s offer.
And then, a few days later, during a live news interview in Saudi Arabia, he again re-iterated his refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state[i]; thus effectively negating all the lovely words of brotherhood and intentions of peaceful co-existence that he had eloquently orated in Annapolis.
This was a conference to which 49 nations were invited. Even the UN and the EU backed the conference with its noble objectives of getting both sides stating their commitment to a two-state solution. But because of Abbas’ rejection of Olmert’s offer, and the absence of any counter-proposal from the PA, the Annapolis meeting led to no progress toward peace. Hamas continued its qassam attacks and sporadic terrorism continued in the West Bank. The PA refused to budge from its adamant statement of an all-or-nothing agreement in which the PA gets all that it demands and Israel gets vague promises.
Two years later, on June 14, 2009, President Obama demanded that Israel stop all settlement construction and make every effort to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as though Israel had not offered to do so 30 times previously. Netanyahu responded with partial agreement regarding settlement construction, and called upon the Palestinian leaders to stop the terrorism and incitement and join Israel at the negotiating table so that agreement upon the territory and structure of a Palestinian state could be established.
The Palestinian response was not heartwarming. Hamas promised more terrorism, while PA responses were words of rejection and ad hominem attacks on Netanyahu. “Netanyahu’s speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. Yasser Abed Rabo, a senior PA negotiator, called Netanyahu a conman and a liar, mere moments after Netanyahu had stated, for the umpteenth time, his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace and cooperation with Israel.
According to the Arabic daily al-Hayat al Jedidah, quoted in Haaretz, President Abbas urged President Obama to forcibly impose upon Israel a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict, one that would give the Palestinians an independent state. President Obama’s response came on April 29, 2010, when he stated publicly that he was committed to seeing the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state within two years. In essence, Obama agreed to Abbas’ demand.
Prior Presidents and Mr. Obama had always stated their support for Israel’s right of self defense and need for defensible borders. But on May 19, 2011, one year after his promise to the PA that he was committed to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian State, he made a now famous speech in which he demanded that Israel begin negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the basis of the “1967 lines” with mutually agreed upon land swaps:
“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
Given the current deployment of Arab forces around Israel, the upheaval presently under way in many Arab states, and the rise in strength and popularity of Hamas and Hezbollah, the demand to a return to the “1967 lines,” which are the 1949 Armistice lines, is tantamount to a suicide note for Israel. The President’s speech was critiqued in other quarters as well.
So, again the President of the USA, the single most powerful person in the world, offers the Palestinian leadership its state. Yet Abbas seems to have chosen to ignore Obama’s statement, just as Arafat ignored President Bush’s offer in 2002. Instead, Abbas now seeks the creation of Palestinian sovereignty by the UN, before the end of July of this year. President Obama has expressed opposition to such a move and is working with European countries to find ways to politically neutralize Abbas’ UN ploy.
The single most powerful person in the world, the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful army, the leader of the free world, says that he will help you get our state…and you ignore him? How can this make any sense? How can it make any sense that Palestinian leadership has rejected or ignored all 31 offers of peace and statehood since 1937, and rejected every attempt at resolution?
There is only one possible answer. Palestinian leadership does not want, and has never wanted, peace and a state alongside of Israel. If it did, it could have achieved that aim dozens of times in the past 74 years. Rather, Palestinian leadership wants all of Palestine, from the River to the Sea. They want a Palestinian state not alongside of Israel, but instead of Israel.
Yet this obvious reality never seems to make it to our media’s radar screen, or to our countries top political leaders; despite the fact that Arab leadership from Hajj Amin el Husseini to Arafat and his minions to Abbas and Hamas and Hezbollah, have all been forthright and above board about their intentions. They have told the world time and again just exactly what they intend to do. The so-called “Palestinian national movement” is the only one of its kind in the world, and across all of world history, whose sole defining paradigm is terrorism and whose unabashed and unrelenting goal is the destruction of a sovereign state and the genocide of its Jews.
Over and over, they choose the pursuit of genocide against Israel over statehood for their people.
And that is what Abbas is doing now with his UN ploy. Unwilling to restart the negotiations that he suspended in October of 2010, and facing new conflicts with Hamas despite their recent reunion, Abbas has found a new political maneuver. He knows that success in his quest for statehood via a UN fiat means an end to the fiction of negotiations, an end to the Oslo commitments, an end to any need for compromises, and the opportunity for a Palestinian state to arise, fait acompli, with no need for concessions, and all of its demands met in advance, just as Arab leaders from the Hajj onward have always sought — and, of course, a strengthening of Abass’ own political position in the tumultuous politics of his terrorist cronies.
With amazing candor, Abbas tells the world that the entry of “Palestine” into the UN will enable PA leadership to pursue claims against Israel at the UN and the International Court of Justice. So the UN’s creation of this state will not mean the end of the conflict. It will not mean peace. Rather it will mean the elevation of the conflict to a new level, catapulting it to a new arena. It will merely be a new and perhaps more effective means to facilitate the pursuit of the Arab war against Israel via political means.
Anyone suggesting today that Israel needs to hurry up and make a peace offer before the PA presents its case to the UN in September is either ignorant of the history of Israel’s 31 peace offers, or simply hopes that his audience is.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was right: If the Arabs put down their weapons, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.
Notes:
References below and in hyperlinks have been drawn from pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, neutral, and official government sources, with the intent to offer a comprehensive and broad-spectrum approach to the issues discussed above.
[i] This rejectionist posture was repeated in http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html; and in http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=187402 . Palestinian negotiators have long refused to recognize Israel’s Jewish character, saying that it would negate the Palestinian refugees’ demand for the right to return to their former homes and would be detrimental to the status of Israel’s Arab citizens. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/06/netanyahu-abbas-palestinian-legitimacy-deficit for a critique of Netanyahu’s demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. For a comprehensive list of Palestinian leaders from various factions denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, see: http://palwatch.org/STORAGE/special%20reports/Canada_and_Palestinian_Authority-After_Annapolis.pdf.
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