Time For A New Script In The Middle East

Shlomo Avineri: Why Different Thinking's Needed For The U.S. And Israel

(CBS)  This column was written by Shlomo Avineri, former Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Yitzhak Rabin. He is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University, and author of "The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx," "Israel and the Palestinians," and "The Making of Modern Zionism."

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When President Obama will meet Israel’s Prime Minister this week, they will need to ask themselves why the Middle East peace process, going on since the 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo Accords, has failed to achieve its aim: reconciliation between the Jewish state and the Palestinians.

Conventional wisdom maintains that it would be helpful if Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, would publicly accept a two-state solution. Yet Israel’s previous center-left government, headed by Ehud Olmert, was committed to this formula, negotiated with Palestinian Authority - yet no agreement was reached, despite efforts like the US-inspired “road map” or the Annapolis meeting. Obviously formulaic and declaratory statements are not enough; thinking outside the box is required.

Both sides can be easily blamed for the deadlock. On some seminal issues - borders, settlements, security, refugees, Jerusalem - the gap between even the most moderate positions on both sides is very deep. Moreover, since Hamas violently ousted Abu Mazen’s Fatah from the Gaza Strip, the ongoing Palestinian civil war means that the Palestinians lack today a legitimate authority. With the Palestinians unable to agree among themselves on a minimal consensus, and their contending militias shooting at each other, how can peace be achieved between them and Israel?

Yet a more fundamental issue is at stake. The Oslo process envisaged building a Palestinian state from the top down: establish a Palestinian Authority, hand over territory to it, provide it with funding and arms, hold elections - and a Palestinian nation-state would emerge.

But this is not what happened. With a weak civil society, and no institutional traditions of either self-government or political pluralism, the Palestinian Authority emerged as an authoritarian and corrupt structure, boasting seven competing security services yet unable to provide security or deliver necessary services to ordinary Palestinians. The election victory of Hamas in 2006, and the ensuing civil war, was an outcome of this failure at nation-building.

A change of paradigm is now needed: instead of a futile attempt to build a Palestinian state from the top down, efforts should concentrate on building it from the bottom up. The good news is that there are encouraging signs this is already happening, but because it is incremental and non-dramatic, it is far war from the glare of publicity.

The credit for this goes to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and to US General Keith Dayton - respectively, the plenipotentiary of the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and UN) and the security advisor to the Palestinian Authority. Over the last two years they have focused on institution-building in three West Bank districts - Jenin, Bethlehem and Hebron. Here local authorities were supplied with direct funding and advice; chambers of commerce became the backbone of local trade and industry; an independent bourgeoisie emerged; police were trained (in Jordan) and now function effectively, not as thuggish militias; business relations with adjacent Israeli regions have been re-established. Consequently, Israeli military presence has been greatly diminished, with law and order handled professionally by Palestinian forces.

This is still a far cry from what one would like to see at the end of the road - an independent, and functioning, Palestinian state. But this empowering of an effective local leadership, now created, for the first time, the building blocks necessary for Palestinian nation-building. There are no short-cuts.

This development should be encouraged - accompanied by an insistence that Israel stop its settlements activities. Instead of vacuous declarations, such a measured process will continue the effective transfer of power to the Palestinians, while also showing the Israelis that an emerging Palestinian polity does not necessarily threaten them.

Such an approach will also give all sides the ability to confront the issue of Iranian nuclear development, which because of its enormous strategic regional significance, cannot be linked to the minutiae of Israeli-Palestinian developments. All this calls for new paradigms of thought, committed not to repeat the failures of the past.

[U-R-So-Wrong]

noloyalisti needs to parachute into the war zone as an angel of peace.

[sjc_1]

Obama is pretty good at this, he puts ideas out there just to make it clear. They will either see something in it they like or come back with an alternative. He is as patient as a chess player and I think he will win more matches than he loses.

[jimbob133]

Muslims as a hole do not and will never have peace. We should treat them like they act.

[hagar39]

I can tell you one thing. The USA will never conquer the Middle East. We failed to conquer SE Asia, and we will fail in the Middle East. Want to stop terrorism? Leave the Middle East. These people don't want to be ruled by the USA.
Lets just buy the damn oil. Over the long run it will save lives and money.

[ramos1129]

When President Obama will meet Israel?s Prime Minister this week, they will need to ask themselves why the Middle East peace process, going on since the 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo Accords, has failed to achieve its aim: reconciliation between the Jewish state and the Palestinians
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Hamas is a primary player in this drama but has never been invited to participate as a full patner. Basically, it has been ignored by the US, Israel and the PLO. Until Hamas does participate as a full partner, all peace negotiations are useless.

[noloyalisti]

For years and years we have allowed Israel to literally get away with murder. All in the name of security and to atone somehow for the Holocaust, we have financed apartheid and genocide in Palestine. Israel has become a bad player in the world just like the United States. Israel and the US needs to go out of their way now to make reparations to many, many, many Arab people (and in the case of the US, South and Central American and Mexican people as well).

[mav547166]

Let Egypt take back Gaza, and Jordan the west bank. This way it will be an Arab problem versus an Israeli one. The Egyptians and the Jordanians will not be as nice as the Israelis have been, but hey thats what you get for being a dead end terrorist supporting blight on the world.

[creeper00]

I can't believe we're even having this discussion. Palestinians do NOT want peace. They could have had peace and their own state back in 2000. Israel was willing to give them almost every thing they asked for. Arafat rejected it.

That process made it clear that there is no compromise with Palestinians. It is their way or else.

[didserve]

Article has good points...

[gold_standard]

I hear the Sri Lanka has a pretty successful script to share. Maybe Israel could pick up a few pointers on dealing with intractable enemies from the recent Sri Lankan victory.