Obama Vs. Israel

Netanyahu’s premiership has been difficult from day one, and it will probably become even more so as he prepares to deliver a speech on Sunday articulating Israel’s response to President Obama’s sudden demand that Israel formally endorse a two-state solution and freeze the settlements’ natural growth. Netanyahu’s task will be extremely difficult. Aside from the fact that neither “yes” or “no” is a perfect answer from his point of view, Obama’s tone has been so contemptuous that anything remotely resembling a “yes” will sound disturbingly humiliating. Then, that is probably what some in the administration are looking for.

Maybe Israel can turn this dilemma to its advantage. In itself, the so-called two-state solution President Obama wants Netanyahu to endorse is not necessarily such a bad idea. From an Israeli point of view, the important thing is that one state, Israel, be kept in place with non-hostile neighbors. That is not in itself incompatible with a Palestinian state. The reason Netanyahu won’t endorse that idea now is because he, correctly, does not want to promise anything without a counterpart from the Palestinians. But Palestinians won’t or can’t reciprocate concessions, especially the ones that matter, that is, the guarantee that their state will behave peacefully and normally, and that the conflict will be over both formally and concretely.

One reason they won’t is because they expect Israel to be pressured into making the next step, and then the next one and so on, either by Obama or by another US President sometime in the future. Everything indicates that the Palestinians are not in a hurry. In the long run, they may calculate that they are winning.

But who said anything about the Palestinians? They are not the ones who just decided to ask for Israeli concessions. They always have, but they haven’t raised any particular issue recently, and neither have they proposed or made any important step that would have made the rest of the world expect an Israeli gesture in return.

The one party asking for Israeli concessions now is the United States. The settlement freeze has only become an issue because it is now an explicit American demand, and that just shifted the game from an Israeli-Palestinian negotiation to an Israeli-American, or Israeli-Western, negotiation.

So at least, there is now someone to talk to.

That does not mean the negotiations will go anywhere, at least anytime soon. The American negotiating terms look too unrealistic for that. Obama might get a positive Israeli response on the settlement freeze (which is not a vital issue, as Barry Rubin argues) and on the formal endorsement of a two-state solution, but that does not bring anyone closer to a final deal. To make such an outcome attainable, Israeli concessions and Palestinian passivity are not enough. The United States and the other Western democracies may have to put a few things on the table too.

So what could Netanyahu ask for in return?

Up until now, President Obama has backed up his demand for a settlement natural growth freeze with vague and implicit threats and even more vague promises of greater firmness towards Iran. To start with,Netanyahu can ask him to be more specific.

Then, Netanyahu can use Obama’s demand to expand the subject, step by step. What about the settlements located in “future” Israeli recognized territory? If there is no such thing, where then is the future border to be set? If America gets to tell what houses can or cannot be built, surely it must have some sort of position on what the final settlement should look like. But then, what is America prepared to do to make a final settlement last? In short, what is Obama prepared to deliver?

Ultimately, anyone who publicly wishes for a two-state solution has to articulate, at least partially, what he is prepared to put on the table. If not, he will lose much of his credibility. If, on the other hand, the discussion goes in that direction, then Israel, too, may have some requests to put forward.

Whether Palestinian territories become an independent state or a new undefined area like the Gaza Strip or South Lebanon, Israel will have to plan for a classical border defense, and its strategic vulnerabilities – the lack of strategic depth – will have to be taken into account. If Western democracies want to be consistent, they will have to make such a defense practically feasible.

Josef Joffe convincingly argues in a recent piece that Israel will probably not join NATO nor the EU in the near future, mainly because Israeli and Western democracies have a better interest in keeping their alliance informal, thus optimizing their freedom of action. That seems reasonable now, but if a two-state solution starts being seriously negotiated between serious partners, that is, Israel on one side, the Western powers on the other, then the rules of the game are quite radically altered. Indeed, the existence of one or more unpredictable neighbors and a territory which will become harder to defend will probably make a formal alliance with the West more interesting than before.

Indeed, security guarantees from the US and European countries will have to be worth more than a speech about the Holocaust. In this respect, aside from their constant backseat-driving diplomacy, these countries’ record so far has been less than impressive: from the failure to keep theTiran Straits open in May 1967 (the reason why settlements exist in the first place) to the two or three weeks generously granted by the Security Council for Israel to solve decades-long problems in Lebanon or the Gaza strip. Now that an American president vocally asks Israel to “deliver”, here are three things Israel could ask the West to “deliver” too:

(1) A Security Council resolution: A formal Security Council resolution should validate the new borders. That seems quite obvious if Israel and the Palestinians sign a formal treaty, but such a treaty should not be considered as a precondition for a final territorial settlement. What Israel has to aim for is international legitimacy, and that can be achieved through what can be dubbed a “multilateral withdrawal”, that is, an Israeli unilateral withdrawal followed by a formal recognition of its new borders by the Security Council. What happens on the other side will then no longer be Israel’s problem. Obviously, a UN resolution, even passed by the Security Council, does not necessarily mean much, but that is the best Israel can get in terms of formal legitimacy. That will force Western Security Council members to seek Russian and Chinese approval, which could prove difficult, but if it can’t be done, then there will be no deal at all and the current status quo will simply be kept as is, which is tolerable for Israel. After all, Netanyahu didn’t ask for Obama to push a new peace process.

As for the territorial scope of the withdrawal, this is where Israel will have to make choices. To start with, killing the issue of the refugees’ return will probably prove easier with non-Arab negotiating partners, which will turn the whole matter into a fully territorial and much more manageable one. The advantage of a negotiation with the great powers (the “international community” in one of its incarnations) instead of the Palestinians is that the game will be made more consistent. The international community can either be responsive, which will in turn allow the Israelis to better ponder the different options and make choices, or not, which will just keep things where they are now. Among other things, Israel has to make sure that if it withdraws from a territory, this territory will no longer be considered as “occupied” (which the Gaza strip, in spite of elementary common sense, still is).

As for the Palestinians and other Arab actors, they will be faced with the choice between accepting whatever progress will be made, or being left aside and losing most of their influence. Once the process is started, Israel will only have to see what happens. If the Arabs are in, so much the better but they will have to negotiate seriously. If they are not, Israel can continue dealing with its Western partners.

(2) NATO membership: In exchange for a complete withdrawal from most of the Palestinian territories and the formal acceptance of a new independent state there (if one is created), Israel could ask not only to become a NATO member, but also for a NATO military presence on its territory, to serve as a deterrent. US, British or French troops should be stationed within the Israeli territory, not necessarily in large numbers but in places where they will be directly exposed in case of an attack like the one conducted by Hezbollah in July 2006. Bases could be located near Lebanon, the Gaza strip and Kalkilya. Their goal will not be to protect Israel (though they can help) but to involve their own countries in such a case.

With such an arrangement, Israel will find itself in a position relatively similar to Western Germany during the Cold War, or South Korea today, albeit with a lesser dependence on US and Western forces since the IDF will keep its strategic autonomy (which the Bundeswehr did not have). From NATO’s point of view, that will be a partial return to its Cold War posture, which most NATO members probably find unappealing, but a two-state solution does not come for free.

(3) The EU: Israel has little interest in a formal membership, which would anyway be submitted to each EU member’s ratification and thus difficult to guarantee in advance. On the other hand, Israel can ask for an improvement of its trade relations with the EU, and more particularly for formal guarantees against possible economic sanctions, just in case. That could at least partially protect Israel from European political uncertainties.

All of these demands may seem quite unrealistic and unreasonable, but that is mainly because the Western demands for a final settlement in the Middle East are no less unrealistic. Therefore, their logical consequences can only seem just as strange. Western leaders have been asking for an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty for so long that it is high time they show what exactly they are ready to put on the table. If peace in the Middle East is as crucial to the world as they constantly say, surely they will accept a certain level of commitment.

Important decisions can only be made once the different options are clearly separated from one another. European countries and the US cannot simply back most Arab demands and expect Israel to take risks they would not accept for themselves. Such a diplomatic posture can make them more popular among the Arab states and the Palestinians, and that is probably what they hope for, but it is inconsistent with the search for a peace deal in the region. 

More importantly, it is absolutely possible that none of that will happen, but a good negotiation is not necessarily one that ends up with a deal. It can also be a negotiation which fails but gives a better idea of who wants what, and what the different partners are prepared to offer. Up until now, it has been difficult to escape the impression that neither Arabs nor Western democracies really value a Middle East peace deal as much as they pretend, the former because the formal state of war is not a necessarily a bad thing for their political regimes, the latter because a peace process makes for good PR. But when the US president asks for seriousness, taking him at his own words might not be a bad idea.