“But What if Nobody Takes Notice?â€
“But what if nobody takes notice?†is the question posed by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha in an article in the recent New York Review of Books concerning the putative ‘shelf agreement’ being discussed between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert. A ‘shelf agreement’ is an exercise in outlining some principles for the settlement of the Palestinian issue, rather than to attempt a full solution. It is a document, the culmination of the Annapolis process, intended not for implementation; but rather immediately to be set aside — on the ‘shelf’ — whilst all parties, Bush, Abbas and Olmert declare the document to represent a huge triumph — whilst shamelessly waving this Chamberlinesque ‘peace in out time’ paper before their electorates in order to ‘help’ in their respective elections, or to cement legacies.
Israel is expected to go to parliamentary elections shortly — whether or not Olmert survives the threat of a criminal indictment hanging over him. Olmert’s strategy has been to persuade Israelis that the ‘agreement’ is somehow an achievement. And in one limited sense, it may be seen by Israel to be an ‘achievement’. But not in bringing any change on the ground: the Occupation and the grinding life of Palestinians will continue as before. Indeed almost all Israelis and Palestinians understand that the much fêted ‘shelf agreement’ will be inoperable — neither Olmert nor Abbas can implement it, even if they wished so to do.
Change will be shelved. Olmert’s ‘achievement’, if it comes, will be in terms of pocketing further Palestinian concessions: Concessions on the Right of Return for refugees; on settlements; and in ambiguity on borders and Jerusalem. This is the ‘gift’ that President Bush hopes to present to Israel on its 60th birthday this year. Mahmoud Abbas may believe that Palestinians, desperate for any hope, will endorse it — and throw a lifeline to Fateh, Abbas’ fractured movement — in elections due in 2009. And Bush will have a ‘legacy’.
But it is the wrong question: Malley and Agha raised it essentially to highlight the likelihood of such a ‘shelf-agreement’ being ignored; and therefore to focus attention on what, in their view, must be done to rescue the ‘two-state solution’ from this shelf-process, which they suggest, by feeding Palestinian and Israeli scepticism and cynicism about yet another meaningless, unimplementable deal, will end up “dooming†for good the two-state solution, rather than strengthening it.
But reality is different: In the region — beyond the Ramallah hothouse — there is no “what if?†The failure of the two-state solution is expected, and discounted, as thinking has evolved in a different direction: The cheer-leaders among Europeans desperate to ‘rescue’ it are stuck in denial from this perspective.
They are in denial about the failure of the incremental process initiated in Oslo in 1993; in denial about the changed psychology of much of the region; and, as Henry Siegman, the former head of the Middle East programme at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York has noted, are “delusional†in believing that accommodating this ‘shelf’ agreement would be an act of friendship for Israel; or atone for what befell the Jews in Europe.
Even if the Israeli Prime Minister belatedly were to recognise that its policy ultimately has not served Israeli interests, the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands, without let-up over forty years — as even a child understands — makes any meaningful independent Palestinian state now virtually an impossibility. Palestinians have understood this for a long time. It is hardly surprising however that Israeli premiers find it difficult to resist the acquisition of Palestinian land — as we observe to be the case even in the midst of the Annapolis process — in the absence of any international blow-back to settlement expansion.
What is astounding is the international community’s denial in pretending to believe Israel’s claim that it is somehow ‘the victim’; and that, by allowing this devastating Palestinian dispossession to continue, as Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy’s virtually uncritical support for Israel clearly conveys, can lead to Israeli ‘moderation’. Plainly it achieves the opposite.
Will an un-implementable statement of principles ‘doom’ a two-state solution as Malley and Agha fear? Of course. Have European leaders still not woken up to this? It is a conclusion that has been shaping thinking beyond Europe’s circle of pro-western ‘moderate’ Arab friends for some time now. As polls show, despite western ‘peace politics’, Muslims overwhelmingly view Israel as a threat, and not as a partner for peace: 95% of Muslims in the six mainly Sunni moderate Arab states polled by Zogby and the University of Maryland see Israel as the main threat to security in the region — and 88% also see the US in the same light, rather than as a peace broker — whereas, by comparison, a mere 6% view Iran as a threat.
There is perhaps a fine irony here: As Israel has contributed to the self-destruction of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fateh movement, by undermining its credibility and by continuing with the settlement project; so too, perhaps, has Fateh slipped a suicide pill to Israel. Israel’s and America’s blindness to the sea-changes taking place in the region — or the contempt with which they are viewed — may stem in part from their overly close association with the ‘moderates’ in Fateh.
Israel has become so accustomed to Palestinian negotiators running to talks with Israel — irrespective of the deaths of Palestinians or new announcements of further illegal settlement construction — that Israel and the US Administration take the “Palestinians desperate for any hope†narrative so seriously that they believe that an Israeli ‘signal of peace’, however cynical its motive, is enough to placate the region — and to allow Israel and the US the quiet with which to continue with their plans.
But if this is what they think, then it is little wonder that the West so regularly misreads the ground in the region: Not all Palestinians are ‘desperate’ for hope from Israel. Far from it, many are making ready against the possibility of conflict.
The feeling among Islamists, many secularists, Christians, and a number of states is of being at the cusp of fundamental change. Change is coming; and the region will not again be what it is today: This major current does not foresee the coming era to be the one that Europe or the US envisages; but something very different. Islamic movements and states such as Syria and Iran increasingly are concerned to judge the evolving strategic shifts accurately. This is more important to them than to make some tactical and short term political accommodation with western powers — no one wants to be caught on the wrong side of events.
Underlying this psychological mood-shift is the realisation that neither Israel nor the US seems able to come to terms with the key outcome from the two Gulf conflicts: the inevitable emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent regional power. Similarly, the consensus is that the US is incapable also of coming to terms with the prospect of Islamist empowerment; and therefore of adjusting its secular, free-market vision for the region. And there is no sense that Europe or Israel or the US understands the nature or the energies being released by the growing forces of ‘resistance’. Unlike those in the region, Europe seems unaware that its policies of espousing ‘moderates’ against ‘extremists’ is mobilising more and more Muslims into the resistance against the ‘western project’.
In short, there is no real sense that Israel or its US and European friends possess the political resources to make a strategic change of direction; or even to come to terms with Iranian or Islamist empowerment.
Belatedly, the West is now showing some understanding that the impact of globalisation on the region has been one of falling real wages and social fragmentation: Stock markets may have boomed for the tiny Arab élite; but for the majority it has brought the erosion of community support structures, and a poverty widening into what remains of the middle class, that is threatening to unloose a wave of political frustration and anger. It is a tide that will re-shape the region.
Many will turn to Islam — an Islam that increasingly does articulate an alternative social vision for the future. The experience of Iraq has soured Muslims toward the Western vision of nation-state building. They look to a new vision — and almost certainly this will be an Islamist one.
But they see also the darkening political shadows from the West’s inability to internalise what a real settlement in Palestine would entail; or to internalise the consequences of its wars that facilitated Iran’s rise to pre-eminence. They understand that a pre-eminent Iran critically challenges the West’s own standing. They understand, too, that the West feels troubled and vulnerable from the rising tide of Islamism and anti-western sentiment in the region — and of Iran’s leadership of it. They see too that the West does not know how to manage these phenomena — and thus, feeling events slipping away from it, dwells heavily on its fears.
The dynamic of waning western power to shape events as the West would like, is that sooner or later, the risk of a clash between the polarised forces of the West with some part of the ‘axis-of-resistance’ becomes much greater. When Annapolis, Iraq and the current Israeli overtures to take Syria out from the ‘axis’ fail; when western options narrow; and when its ‘peace initiatives’ come-up empty, logic argues that a frustrated West is likely to resort to military means to weaken or break the ‘resistance’.
Syria and the Lebanese understand that they are in the frontline in this event — as much as Iran; and all are mentally stiffening themselves against this prospect. The region is not ‘desperate’ for peace: It would welcome it, of course; but much of it is also preparing and judiciously expecting the worst. It is the West’s lack of recognition of the strength and rigour of this new psychology of resilience towards prospective conflict, and of lack of understanding why western policies are seen as so dangerously inadequate and misconceived, that pushes many in the region to believe that a West, sunk in deep denial, carries with it the probability of conflict — whether inadvertent or deliberate. Unless it is understood that it is this strategic focus that preoccupies Iran, Syria, Hesballah and Hamas, their thinking cannot begin to be judged accurately — and grave mistakes may occur.