10 July 2010
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Two-State Solution?
Hanan Nasser
International Peace Studies Centre (IPSC)
Last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinian public’s faith in a two-state solution was “eroding”, in the absence of tangible progress in the peace process, continued siege on the Gaza Strip and settlement expansion. There is growing skepticism that a two-state solution is still possible at a time when Israel controls 60% of the West Bank, has not agreed to completely halt settlement construction there, turning the land into Palestinian enclaves and is pushing with its policy to “Judaize” East Jerusalem making the establishment of an independent Palestinian state impossible.
In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, also known as the Oslo accords, at the end of peace negotiations brokered by the Clinton administration. The Oslo Accords were the culmination of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians following the 1991 Madrid conference, sponsored by the American administration and the Soviet Union. The accords were meant to lead to a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions.
Since then the Palestinians and Israel went through several rounds of peace negotiations including the 2000 failed Camp David talks. In 2008 the Palestinians suspended direct talks in reaction to an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. Since 1993, the Palestinians are not only no closer to having their state but are losing land to a systematic Israeli land grab, as shown by several reports by the Israeli press and by an Israeli human rights organization.
At this juncture what are the prospects of a two state solution as the Palestinians grow more distrustful of Israel’s will for peace? And what are the hurdles obstructing the move to direct peace talks in the near future while the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly expressed pessimism over the lack of progress in indirect negotiations?
The thorniest issue at this point and the most pressing is the settlement construction and expansion in Occupied Palestinian Territories, a policy seen by the international community, including the United States, the European Union and the Quartet for Mideast peace as an obstacle to progress in the peace process.
A report by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem last week highlighted the instrumental land grab of Palestinian land, some privately owned, and showed that Jewish outposts and settlements now occupy 42% of the land in the occupied West Bank. Such settlement expansion and construction, illegal under international law, create a major obstacle for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The report said that Israel has seized control of “approximately half of the West Bank” for the purpose of building settlements. The report found that 21% of the settlement built-up area is in land recognized by Israel as privately owned by Palestinians.
(http://www.btselem.org/Download/201007_By_Hook_and_by_Crook_Eng.pdf)
The Israeli systematic settlement expansion violates the Oslo Accords which states: “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Creating Palestinian enclaves not only makes it impossible to establish a viable state but also changes the demographic reality on the ground.
The moratorium however did not cover construction in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state. The international community has never recognized Israel’s annexation of the Arab section of the city and considers it to be occupied. Furthermore, the fate of Jerusalem is among final status subjects to be covered in peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
A confidential EU report, publish last year by the British Guardian daily, accused Israel of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem through a collection of measures including new settlements, the construction of the West Bank wall, house demolitions. It said Israel was trying to “weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank”.
Haaretz reported last month that the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee was set to “approve an unprecedented master plan that calls for the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, a move largely based on construction on privately owned Arab property”. It said the plan “vastly underestimates the construction needs of the Arab population in the city”.
Last month, the committee also approved a plan to build 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo settlement in Arab East Jerusalem. The plan had been shelved after it strained relations between Israel and the United States when it was announced on the day US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel to try to restart proximity talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
At the time the settlement issue gained momentum as the Obama administration pushed Israel on the matter. However, the US tone has changed since then.
In talks with the Israeli prime minister in Washington yesterday, US President Barack Obama reiterated that the United States continues to be committed to Israel’s security, commending Israel for recent steps to ease the blockade on the Gaza. He expressed hope that direct talks would start before the moratorium on settlement construction has expired in September, without asking Israel to extend the freeze or urging it to halt construction completely.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had “done enough” in this regard and the focus now should be on peace talks. He called on the Palestinians to move to direct peace negotiations as soon as possible. The Palestinian Authority rejected the call linking the resumption of direct talks to the halt of settlement construction.
Calls for an imminent resumption of direct peace talks places the Palestinian Authority in a tricky position as it cannot abandon its demands for a conditional return to negotiations and at the same time it will be made to appear as the obstacle to progress in the peace process.
However, a review of Israel’s reaction to Arab and Palestinian peace overtures underlines Israel’s unwillingness to reach a settlement. In 2002, the Arab League approved a Saudi inittiave known as the Arab Peace Imitative in which Arab leaders pledge to recognize the state of Israel and normalize ties in return for its withdrawal from land it occupied in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution for the Palestinian refugee problem. The Israeli state rejected the peace initiative in its current form and has so far failed to build on the rare opportunity described by President Shimon Peres as “a serious opening for real progress” in the decades-long conflict. The Arab League has not retracted the initiative leaving the door open for the start of talks on that basis.
Does Israel want a two-state solution? Is it really willing to give control of 60% of the West Bank for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state? Is it willing to allow the establishment of a state the people of which it sees as a threat to its existence and who refuse to recognize it as a state?
In light of the above mentioned facts, the longer direct negotiations are delayed and Israel’s policies unchanged the more the remaining Palestinian support for peace and for a two-state solution will fade and eventually they will seek an alternative solution to the conflict. The question is what is that alternative?
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