It's easy to be cynical, but Annapolis does matter.So Levy says before explaining in pretty convincing detail why Annapolis does not, in fact, matter. Although it could be a "rebirth of hope," which has all the practical usefulness of an insemination of glee or an evacuation of consternation or some other [bodily function] of [abstract noun].
-Daniel Levy (via Yglesias)
I'll not just make fun though. Levy sensibly notes that the requisites Israel demands of Palestine prior to ending occupation are precisely the things that occupation itself renders impracticable and impossible. Telling Palestinians that they must guarantee "security" to Israel (and we can pause to note that Israel commits far graver breaches of Palestinian "security" than any Palestinian group is even capable) while the occupation continues is really quite ridiculous, and Americans in general might better appreciate that point if they were actually paying attention to our own attempts to occupy Iraq.
Meanwhile, what you have are two parties whose preconditions to negotiating with each other preclude good-faith negotiations. Israel doesn't recognize the majority party in Palestine; the majority party in Palestine is so deeply committed to the rhetoric of Israeli illegitemacy that it would effectively abnegate its bargaining ability even if it were to decide that direct negotiation were the least costly path with the greatest likelihood of beneficial outcomes, and the actual Palestinian representation at this conference is a minority government with its own legitimacy issues. Add to this the insistence of either party that its counterpart effectuate the end result of an ideal negotiated settlement as a prerequisite for negotiating in the first place.
What you have, then, are two parties set to enter negotiations with a prior committment not to make a concessionary agreement. That's a bargain-speak term of art for: Fawk yooze and the horses yooze rode in on. It suggests a mind-set in which the parties to the negotiation see a final bargaining agreement as a set of competing gives and gains, each ranked and ordered and all weighed against each other, with the idea that from this Kabala one can determine with precise, mathematical accuracy whether one has won or lost. This, by the way, is the default view of most people and organizations, and if you ever sit through a labor negotiation, you will see it in action, both sides huddled paranoiacally around their set of imperatives, willing to concede this or that only if the other side makes an immediate and commensurate compensation for this "loss."
The few really successful negotations operate on a wholly different set of principles. True, they also seek to mediate the imperatives or necessities of interested parties, but instead of seeking to maximize party-specific gains while minimizing party-specific concessions, they seek an encompassing and holistic framework for the continuation and growth of a cooperative enterprise. In other words, their final settlements are not long, complex, attempted-encyclopedic codes of every possible interaction, itemized and subdivided, self-referencing, convoluted, and based on an underlying assumption that in order to prevent advantage-taking, every instance of conflict must be predicted, codified, and dealt with in advance. The endless flowering of contract language is a result of its emphasis on preemption and its assumption of ultimate bad faith even as suppsedly "good faith" negotiations led to it. Again, the ideal is not a set of ordinances laid out in advance to deal with every conceivable outcome, every underhanded attempt by management to screw the shop out of overtime and every slimy attempt by the business agent to pyramid the work calls. The ideal is constituional in design, a document that, though it does spell out specific responsibilities, is more concerned with establishing reasonable purviews among parties for its own implementation and rational mechanisms for mediating disputes when they arise. That is no more a perfect solution than any other--after all, look at what happened to our Constitution. Nevertheless, it sure beats a 100-page agreement with fifty five-page appendices, three side-letter agreements, and 500,000 words of minutes from the negotiations.
The Israeli-Palestinain situation is compounded in its awfulness by the extreme disproportion of wealth and power. Isreal is the guiltier party insofar as it possesses the wherewithal to make the first good-faith gestures whereas the Palestinians objectively do not. They lack the physical capacity to make absolute security guarantees. They are poor, ineffectual, and divided among themselves. Israel, as an occupying power, has actively sought that condition, by the way. That's what occupying powers do if they want to remain occupying powers. But we should not kid ourselves about the nobility of the long-suffering Palestinian people, either, even as we take their side. It's romantic and paternalistic, and it overlooks the fact that "peoples" aren't people and aren't endowed with aspects of personality and virtue. That means: Don't imagine that just because they have been abused and occupied, the Palestinians are now incapable of subterfage, bad faith, bad acting, and irrational self-interest. That's another lesson from labor-management land. The harder you beat down on the union, the nastier, sneakier, and more dishonest they will become in the next round of talks, and with good reason.
In any case, if Israel will not begin the process by dismantling settlements and easing travel restrictions--in effect, easing the occupation dramatically enough to allow the emergence of a Palestinian entity that isn't crippled and ineffectual before it comes to the table, then hope, such as it is, will be more like stillborn.
8 comments:
well that's kinduva downer.
It's not about Israel's wherewithal to make "good-faith gestures." It's about the Israelis' actual good faith. Are they they or aren't they willing to accept a negotiating partner who is not hamstrung and impotent--which is to say, one capable of negotiating?
Maintaining real "security" in the Palestinian territories would imply not just a potential military threat, but more importantly would create vibrant and functioning political institutions that could advocate for the rights of their constituents. While Israel remains secure beneath the American imperial umbrella, there appears to be no real appetite among its citizens (of whatever political bent) for that kind of good-faith (i.e. risky) negotiation. Whatever policies they undertake, they're "insured" against loss, so short term risk is averted and long term risk is increased. Present-day Israel is a case study in moral hazard.
Anyway, even modest gestures like settlement dismantling and lifting of travel bans are impossible while the "thirty-percenters" hold the balance of power in the Knesset. This Annapolis thing is window dressing pure and simple. It's no more depressing than any other bullshit.
I think we agree, Aaron, although I don't think that settlement dismantling or opening travel are only "gestures." I think that they'd represent real concessions, in the unfortunate terminology, and would provide a material basis for a negotiated settlement. But as you point out, that's not in the offing. I know I phrased that last paragraph as a conditional, but I don't mean that as some sort of concession to a foolish optimism.
IOZ, in your opinion why is this conference being held at all?
The two-state solution is dead, dead, dead. The Israeli elites have never had a true interest in it anyway and the Palestinian political elites, bad faith or good faith notwithstanding, simply do not have the ability to write away the realities of the Palestinian refugee camps and the "demographic time bomb" that so worries the Israeli elites. The only solutions range between the "final solution" advocated by Avigdor Lieberman and others and a democratic state of current Israel and the Occupied Territories. I suspect, unfortunately, that in a decade or so, what we will see emerge is something along the lines of South Africa, where the most naked rules of ethnic separation and oppression are relaxed in the name of pluralism, almost all of the crimes of the oppressors are forgiven, and the society is reorganized along neoliberal lines such that populations retain their relative statuses, albeit no longer along the explicit lines of Jew vs. Palestinian but on solidified, and still ethnically determined, class lines.
I meant to mention that, in my projected South African scenario for Israel/Palestine, certain members of the Palestinian elite will do quite well, which will inevitably be used to show how all past injustices are completely irrelevant.
What's left out of consideration all around is the rôle of the U.S. in sustaining the occupation of Palestine and in lending legitimacy to the Israeli state where legitmacy is a matter between the two principal parties. These are artificial constructs that intrude upon the natural relationship largely between indigenous Arab Muslims on the one hand and European Jews on the other.
An occupation requires force and normally such force cannot be sustained for very long without a steady stream of war funding from without. Fort Israel is sustained by the U.S. as a secure outpost in the Levant. People of European extraction somehow are more trustworthy than the natives to maintain the bridgehead to oil and other spoils and gains of empire in that region. They cleave to western idea of state capitalism that crush the individual.
As long as this U.S. objective is being met, there will be no let-up in her support of the Israeli occupation. The high walls separating Israelis from the Palestinians represent the U.S.'s version of Hadrian's Wall, poignant symbols of their key rôle in the conflict. How fitting.
This is probably relevant.
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