Abstract
The outlook for conflict settlement in the Middle East is gloomy, and the chances for a new round of peace talks being initiated by the parties in the region are next to zero. US President Barack Obama has announced that he wants to engage “aggressively” in favour of Middle East peace making and has taken first encouraging steps in that direction. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the US President can achieve conflict settlement largely on his own. Europeans should therefore rethink their policy approaches -- above all, how to deal with Hamas, the Gaza Strip and how to push the peace process forward -- and seek a more effective division of labour and coordination with the Obama administration.
After the failure of the latest US-driven initiative for conflict resolution in the Middle East, the so-called Annapolis process, the breakdown of a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in December 2008 and the December-January war in Gaza, the outlook for conflict settlement in the Middle East is gloomy. The chances for a new round of peace talks being initiated by the parties in the region are next to zero.
Repercussions of the Gaza war
As a direct consequence of the Gaza war, extremist forces have been further strengthened in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Israel, a rightwing government has been established for which pursuit of a two-state settlement is certainly no priority. In the war, no ‘decisive blow’ was dealt to Hamas as had been envisioned by the Israeli leadership. While Hamas’ military capacities were largely destroyed, Hamas has remained in firm control of the Gaza Strip. Also, as polls indicate, its popularity actually increased after the war, particularly in the West Bank. There can be no doubt: Hamas remains an actor to be reckoned with.
At the same time, while President Mahmoud Abbas and West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayyad enjoy solid backing from the international community, they have been faced with increasing opposition not only from Hamas but also from the Fatah rank and file. Arrangements for Fatah's long-overdue Sixth General Congress – the last one was held 20 years ago – were marred by serious disputes concerning the date and venue of the meeting (that is, whether it was to be held in the Palestinian territories or outside, allowing for representation of the Diaspora), who was to be picked to participate, as well as the political platform to be adopted. In the end, the Congress took place in early August in Bethlehem. By adopting a programme that emphasises negotiations and peaceful means to achieve independence, it strengthened President Abbas and his approach. The composition of the newly elected Central Committee also strengthened the Fatah's chief authority.
Also, the territorial and political split in the Palestinian body politic has been further entrenched. Not only have there been two competing governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – both with questionable legitimacy – since June 2007. But also, on 9 January 2009, the term of office of the Palestinian President expired according to the Palestinian Basic Law. Since then, Hamas no longer recognises the authority of President Abbas. The reconciliation talks between Palestinian factions mediated by Egypt have achieved some progress, above all, an agreement to hold elections in early 2010. But so far they have not yielded any tangible results on the most important points of contention: a unified security apparatus, a restructured Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) including Hamas, the electoral system to be adopted for parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as the program of an interim government comprising all factions (or backed by all factions).
Continued stalemate
One major reason for the lack of progress in these talks has been that the incentives offered by the international community have not worked in favour of national unity, but rather entrenched the split. The US and EU have stuck to the three ‘Quartet criteria’ – renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel's right to exist, commitment to all agreements signed by the PLO and Israel – as a precondition for dialogue and cooperation with any new Palestinian government or interim body. Thus, the international community has kept on insisting on some sort of official and explicit declaration in which a Palestinian governing body bows to the Quartet conditions – a completely unrealistic expectation that has contributed to preventing Palestinian national unity.
Europeans and Americans have also carried forward their ‘West Bank first’ approach aimed at backing Mahmoud Abbas and sidelining Hamas, and have thus, at least implicitly, supported the far-reaching Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip. Next to zero progress has been achieved with regard to a sustainable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the reopening of Gaza's border crossings. As a consequence, Gaza has remained almost entirely closed off. Reconstruction efforts have not begun and the humanitarian situation remains dismal. Europeans have, for months, not even been able to transfer salaries to Palestinian Authority (PA) employees in the Strip.
A new US approach?
US President Barack Obama has announced that he wants to engage “aggressively” in favour of Middle East peace making and has taken some first encouraging steps in that direction. As one of the administration's first appointments, he nominated former Senator George Mitchell as Special Envoy to the Middle East and sent him there. Meanwhile some elements of the Obama administration's approach have started to crystallise. The US administration has made it clear that it aims at a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of a two-state approach. Contrary to the Israeli demand that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track be conditioned on the United States preventing Iran from going nuclear, the US wants parallel efforts on both tracks. In concrete terms, the new administration has started to concentrate on pressuring Israeli to fulfil its Road Map commitments, above all, halt settlement activity (a complete settlement freeze as well as removing settlement outposts), attend to the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and strengthen the security apparatus of the PA. These are hardly creative approaches, but they have come with new clarity and insistence. Obama has also expressed his wish to build on the interest shared by the US’ Arab allies and Israel to blunt the perceived threat from Iran so as to promote confidence building in the region. The administration is thus encouraging Arab states to amend the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative by advancing the process of ‘normalisation’ with Israel before peace agreements are signed or even implemented, in view of making the initiative more palatable to Israel and with the aim of encouraging Tel Aviv to take practical steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
And where are the Europeans?
After the US elections, Europeans hesitantly stood back rather than trying to fill the vacuum between administrations. Since then, European government officials have been in close contact with their American counterparts. They have tried to influence the American policy review and offered to back up a renewed US engagement in the Middle East with complementary activities. In this endeavour, however, they have not been able to forge a united EU stance on the issues on which they are deeply divided, above all, on how to deal with Hamas, the Gaza Strip and how to push the peace process forward with more effective European diplomacy. It would be wrong to assume, given the plethora of foreign policy challenges, that the US President would be able to concentrate sufficient energy on the Middle East to achieve conflict settlement largely on his own.
Europeans should therefore stop claiming a role as a ‘player’, and simply take on that role and engage in politics. With Barack Obama, they have a president in the White House willing to engage in cooperation with the EU and its member states in order to pursue a two-state solution and comprehensive peace in the Middle East. In this context, it is time for Europeans to rethink their policy approaches, and seek a more effective division of labour and coordination with the new US administration. All the more so because of the urgency imposed by the rapidly diminishing feasibility of a two-state settlement and the looming danger of a breakdown of the PA. Not only are intensified efforts needed to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Europeans should also stand ready to pursue Palestinian state-building efforts and help advance the other tracks of the peace process, above all, by addressing its Israeli-Syrian dimension.
Making Middle East peace a priority
With regards to the Israeli-Palestinian track, three revisions of how Europeans (and their Quartet partners) currently deal with the conflict are of overriding importance.
Credible support for Palestinian power sharing instead of isolation of Hamas
Efforts at conflict management will hardly be successful if Europeans (and their Quartet partners) keep on trying to work around Hamas and stick to the Quartet criteria as pre-conditions for dialogue and cooperation. Rather, Europeans should clearly support a renewed power-sharing arrangement between Hamas and Fatah in order to clear the way for the preparation of elections and to provide the Palestinian president with renewed backing for negotiations. Such an arrangement, even if only partial, would also be one of the necessary conditions for the reopening of the border crossings, for the eventual redeployment of European border monitors (EU BAM Rafah), and for reconstruction. Furthermore, neither institution building, nor stabilisation of the security situation, nor economic development can yield sustainable progress as long as the split within the Palestinian Authority continues. In this context, European support for Egyptian mediation efforts between the Palestinian factions should be made more explicit by signalling a clear preference for cooperation with an (interim) Palestinian body supported by all relevant factions and by no longer conditioning contacts with Hamas on its declaring certain stances. If the US administration could be convinced to go along with such an approach, the signal would, of course, be much stronger.
Revising the ‘West Bank first’ approach and ending the blockade on the Gaza Strip
It is an illusion to think that stabilisation can be achieved or peace made without the Gaza Strip – the people in West Bank and Gaza are too closely interlinked, the repercussions on the West Bank of actions and events in Gaza too strong and vice versa. Europeans and Americans therefore should strongly back Egypt's mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas for a mutual ceasefire and work with Israel towards the implementation of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access (which is meant to safeguard the movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip and maintain connections between Gaza and the West Bank) rather than pouring ever more funds into the Palestinian territories. As assessments of the World Bank and other international financial institutions point out, there will not be any sustained economic upturn in the Palestinian territories unless the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted and restrictions on movement in the West Bank are drastically reduced.
Over the last few years, Europeans and Americans have concentrated on building Palestinian capacities in the security sector or, rather, Palestinian security capacities in the West Bank. This has been an important and necessary endeavour to enable Palestinians to keep law and order, to fulfil their Road Map commitments and to prepare for statehood. And indeed, the progress made in ensuring order in the West Bank has been impressive. However, the legitimacy of these efforts has been strongly undermined as the process has largely been controlled externally and Palestinians have perceived it as primarily serving Israeli security interests and as bolstering one Palestinian faction against another rather than aiming at ending the occupation and building a Palestinian state.
The hope expressed by the Europeans that the Palestinian police will evolve into an efficient, legitimate, and democratically controlled body can hardly be realised in a political context of a defunct parliament, contesting governments in West Bank and Gaza Strip and continued Israeli military operations in Palestinian cities. Thus, while support for Palestinian security forces is crucial, it will only be perceived as legitimate if it takes place in view of preparing for independence, that is, if accomplishments fulfilling Road Map commitments can be translated into political gains in negotiations with Israel.
Moving from conflict management to conflict settlement
Europeans should strongly back the US President in his endeavour to re-open a political perspective, that is, the negotiation and implementation of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in the foreseeable future. Without this prospect, it is likely that another round of violence will erupt soon, that those Palestinians who stand for a negotiated solution will be unable to survive politically much longer and that a negotiated settlement will no longer be achievable.
A certain paradox has indeed been evolving with regard to the prospect of a viable two-state solution. While the proponents of a solution that would allow for “two states, living peacefully side by side” have won the day in international discourse, to the point that a US administration has forced an Israeli prime minister who clearly does not believe in the concept to adopt it – rhetorically at least –, the expectation that it will actually be realised has been waning. A number of influential pro-peace Palestinian and Israeli politicians and pundits were recently asked where they thought Israel and Palestine would be in ten years’ time.1 It was striking that only a small minority of Israeli and none of the Palestinian interlocutors (including some ministers in the government of Mahmoud Abbas) actually thought that a Palestinian state would exist then. More realistic, according to their assessments, would be either a more pronounced ‘apartheid situation’, with Palestinians having shifted by then from a demand for independence to a struggle for equal rights in one state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean; or a Palestinian state by name only that would have no contiguity, no control over its borders and no sovereignty – rather a form of local civil administration or administrations under overall Israeli military control. Both scenarios would perpetuate conflict and instability.
If the international community still sees a two-state solution as the only sustainable way to achieve lasting peace, security and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians it will have to come up with more effective approaches than it has to date. Parties in the region have demonstrated that, if left to their own devices, they are unable to extract themselves from the vicious cycle of violence and mutual mistrust and to reach a final status settlement. Therefore, the international community should step in more forcefully and inject hope. In more concrete terms, there is a need for much stronger external mediation and chaperonage of the process, one that actively and consistently helps the parties overcome their differences and move towards a settlement.
This would include three main elements:
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putting forward a bridging proposal or blueprint for a final-status document, that is, a draft agreement that sketches out the main elements of a settlement, the contours of which are well known, based on the relevant UN resolutions. Earlier negotiations (the 2000 Camp David II talks, the 2001 Taba negotiations, as well as the unofficial 2003 Geneva Accords) can serve as a foundation, leaving the parties to negotiate the details rather than the principles of a settlement;
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monitoring the parties’ compliance with interim commitments leading to a final settlement and sanctioning non-compliance; and
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providing concrete offers of security guarantees, a presence on the ground to oversee and, if need be, help enforce the implementation of a final-status agreement, and support for addressing other final-status issues, such as the refugee question.
Comprehensive peace
Efforts on the Israeli-Palestinian track should be complemented by engaging on the Israeli–Syrian track. Here, several rounds of indirect negotiations facilitated by Turkey took place in 2008, however, no substantial progress is to be expected in peace talks as long as they remain indirect and the United States is not involved. As with the Israeli-Palestinian track, Europeans could take on a supportive role to move the talks forward and influence the approaches taken, but they will not be in a position to replace the United States as the main power broker and in providing security guarantees.
It is definitively worth exploring the options for a peaceful settlement in direct negotiations between Israel and Syria. Indeed, not only do both sides have an interest in such a process, but a peace agreement would also reflect back positively on the region as a whole. In this context, Israel, the United States and Europe should avoid the mistake of making Israeli-Syrian negotiations conditional on an end to the close Iranian-Syrian relationship. The logic of Middle East dynamics rather works the other way round: if Syria makes peace with Israel, this will contribute to an overall calming of the region, have a restraining effect on the militant Palestinian groups based in Damascus and make a permanent pacification of the Israeli-Lebanese front possible. Also, the interests of Iran and Syria would automatically converge less strongly than they do today. Europeans should therefore help Syria to prepare for peace. For a mediator, Damascus and Tel Aviv are looking towards Washington. An eventual peace between Syria and Israel, however, increases the importance of economic, in contrast to military, assets and skills. Syria will find it difficult to compete in a more open regional environment. Europe's role may again be here: with its Neighbourhood Policy instruments and by implementing the yet-to-be ratified Association Agreement, the EU can help Syria prepare for competition. This remains an important task because Damascus (like any other player) will only embrace peace if it is sure that this will not threaten its regional position.