Last exit

The road map is dead. But there's one last chance for Mideast peace.

By Bernard Avishai, 9/21/2003

THIS WEEK, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace, embodied in the widely embraced "road map,'' are being "obliterated'' by Palestinian terrorism and Israeli retaliations. Powell's anxiety does him credit. But is it tactless to ask how feasible any plan is that depends on an immediate end to the violence it is meant, ultimately, to lessen?

The logic of the continuing bloodletting is cruel but not complicated. On the Palestinian side, we know that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their growing thousands of young supporters oppose any final peace and will commit atrocities to obstruct any agreement with Israel. But we also know that the Palestinian majority -- over 71 percent, according to polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research -- wants the violence to end, and will settle for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Palestinian Authority, or what's left of it, will not fight a civil war to crush Hamas -- perhaps not ever, but certainly not in the absence of a plan for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, leaving Arab Jerusalem and its holy mosques under Palestinian sovereignty.

On the Israeli side, we know that most of the 200,000 settlers in the occupied territories, and their influential supporters in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, want Palestinians to emigrate to Jordan or accept life without citizenship in "Judea and Samaria.'' But we also know that 69 percent of Israelis would give up "all or most'' of the settlements for an enforceable peace. The Sharon government will not deploy the army to dismantle settlements and evacuate settlers (about 10 percent of whom, army intelligence fears, would resist violently) -- perhaps not ever, but certainly not in an atmosphere poisoned by suicide bombings, which make the conflict seem a fight to the death.

And finally, we know that the leaders of both sides lack the daring, will, or power to break out of the current cycle. Even the more moderate Palestinian Authority spokesmen around President Yasser Arafat blame the impasse on Israeli settlements, assassinations, checkpoints, and so forth. They discount their own botched responses to the Oslo process, not to mention their financial corruption, and implicitly mock the fears of ordinary Israelis. (For the record, the most recent suicide attack was at a cafe a block from my house in Jerusalem.) Sharon, for his part, is seizing large swaths of land to build the new security fence, jailing and killing Hamas leaders and other members of the "terrorist infrastructure,'' and vilifying Arafat for refusing to do likewise. After more than 100 suicide bombings -- most of which are now proclaimed to be in retaliation for Israel's preemptive killings -- Sharon's strategy seems about as imaginative as Robert McNamara's carpet-bombings of the DMZ in Vietnam. Sharon claims he is ready for "painful concessions.'' His threshold for pain is notoriously low.

. . .

Clearly, Powell's challenge is to excite each side's majority with a vision of an internationally sponsored, two-state solution that they can trust without having to trust the other. The point is to marginalize fanatics on both sides. To that end, Powell might have come more often to the region, sharpened the road map's details, and invited the European Union to commit to specific investments in refugee resettlement. Instead, he has counted on, of all things, Arafat's political retreat and Sharon's military restraint. More vexing, he has ignored the nearly final deal that was negotiated almost three years ago by President Clinton.

Those "bridging proposals'' of December 2000 were accepted by Prime Minister Ehud Barak in his government's waning days, and formally endorsed by Arafat last spring. The main points, which have been made public by Israel's negotiator, former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, could muster electoral majorities on both sides if they could be considered in an atmosphere of hope. They include the formation of a Palestinian state on 95 percent of the territories. Palestinian refugees' right of return would be realized through settlement in Palestine or renounced in exchange for cash. Meanwhile, Israel would annex settlements and Jerusalem suburbs amounting to 5 percent of the territories and 50,000 scattered settlers would return to Israel. Palestinians would receive an equal amount of land in the Negev, including a corridor joining Gaza and the West Bank. Palestine would also annex the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including the Haram al Sharif (the Temple Mount), while Israel would annex the Jewish Quarter, the Wailing Wall, and the excavations adjacent to the Wall.

That's the deal, and everyone knows it. But how can it be realized? Many Americans will dislike the idea of sending more US troops into the Middle East. But NATO forces would undoubtedly have to be deployed, first to monitor each side's activities, then to work with the PA's police, eventually to occupy the areas Israel evacuates. A temporary UN mandate or trusteeship would be required for NATO in Palestine, which would culminate in a double referendum to be held in Israel and Palestine. The United States might offer Israel a defense pact, membership in NATO, perhaps a US naval base in Haifa.

Some worry that this might lead to another Iraq -- a shaky arrangement wracked by guerrilla warfare. Actually, it's our only realistic chance to avert another Bosnia. How will the majorities who presently support dividing the land endure if violence persists and if, just five years from now, there are half a million Jews living between Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan River, and more Palestinians than Jews living between the Jordan River and the sea? Palestinians, unlike Iraqis, overwhelmingly want foreign soldiers in their midst. And only the presence of international troops can draw Israeli and Palestinian security forces into a framework of cooperation, maintain mutual confidence that agreements and borders will be honored, and provide a context for rebuilding Palestinian institutions and communities.

. . .

As in Iraq, the US must learn that state building requires the military help and financial investments of its allies. And Israeli commanders, who oppose any international force in Palestine, must realize that not all blue helmets are the same. British forces in Ramallah are not Fijians in Lebanon, behind whom terrorists hide. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, still pursuing a military solution to the problem, wants a free hand to operate in the territories. But do curfews bring control?

Besides, Israel urgently needs international involvement on the economic front. When the choice is between the West Bank or Western banks, even the most hardline Israelis must think twice. Israel's private sector depends utterly on high-tech, biotech, and tourist businesses; it cannot unplug from the global economy. American banks, reassured by the US government's loan guarantees, keep the public sector (55 percent of the economy) from collapsing. But even slight discretionary reductions in US guarantees -- such as Powell's recent announcement that he will cut guarantees in proportion to Israeli spending on settlements -- have sent shocks through the media and the Knesset, prompting an emergency trip to Washington this week by Sharon's closest aides. Open defiance of US policy is impossible.

Ironically, it is only Powell's leverage over Israel's globalizing aspirations that can prevent Israel's complete global isolation. For more than 36 years, the settlers, with the backing of various governments, have claimed that if Israel has no right to Hebron, then it has no right to Tel Aviv. They have tried to wrap themselves in the prestige of historic Zionism, but instead they have disgraced it. Zionists wanted the land to liberate a people, not a people to liberate the land. How long before world leaders too young to remember the Holocaust and previous Zionist compromises, confronted with mounting horrors, will say, "All right, to hell with Tel Aviv''?

Bernard Avishai is professor of business and government at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and the author of "The Tragedy of Zionism: How Its Revolutionary Past Haunts Israeli Democracy.''