More the 70 countries participated in the Middle east peace conference in Paris, France. Picture by Ania Freindorf Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved. If the international community, led by the U.S., is serious about
preserving the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, the upcoming French-hosted international peace conference
is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reframe the way forward.
Recognizing the State of Palestine would politically contribute to
ending Israel’s nearly 50-year military occupation of the West
Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. This single act
may be the silver bullet to save the two-state solution.
Such an act would acknowledge the asymmetric balance of power on
the ground and finally acknowledge in law—prior to a peace
agreement—that the international community envisions the end-game
ultimately being two states. This could serve as a platform for
future actions to engage both parties to act in their
internationally-aligned strategic interests. Anything less, or
muddying the waters by including this move in a basket of other
issues, would likely further delay a real Middle East Peace Process.
In Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent remarks on Middle East
Peace he took pride that “the United States recognized Israel seven
minutes after its creation” in 1948. This recognition of Israel
happened without Israel having a defined eastern border, a supposed
prerequisite for statehood. Is it too much to ask the U.S. to support
the recognition of the State of Palestine in the same fashion,
without a defined western border? This is exactly what the
Palestinian’s request for full UN membership to the UN Security
Council in 2011 stated, recognition with Palestine’s western border
being “on the basis of the pre-1967 borders,” which is “in
accordance with the relevant [UN] resolutions,” along with the need
to “resume and accelerate” negotiations of our shared border with
Israel.
When the U.S. threatened to veto the 2011 application for full UN
membership, the Palestinians, in a strategic move, requested that it
be sent to a UN Security Council committee for further deliberations
pending a more opportune timing. The following year, on 29 November
2012, a General Assembly resolution was passed that "decide[d]
to accord to Palestine non-member observer State status" and
"express[ed] the hope that the Security Council will consider
favourably the application submitted on 23 September 2011 by the
State of Palestine for admission to full membership in the United
Nations." The majority of the world’s countries have
unilaterally recognized the State of Palestine and 138 countries
upgraded Palestine’s UN status when they voted in favor of
Resolution
67/19.
Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s total
rejection of the international community’s efforts to attempt to
save the two-state solution, France is preparing to receive some 70
countries on January 15 to convene an international Middle East Peace
Conference which aims to preserve the two-state paradigm. Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed France’s effort, but for the
average Palestinian the news of yet another conference on Middle East
peace is like making a groundbreaking announcement that Starbucks
sells coffee.
Those living under the daily brunt of Israeli military occupation
are right to be skeptical. There is a long list of failed peace
efforts all the way from UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II)
Future Government of Palestine (November 29, 1947), Count Folke
Bernadotte proposals (1947-1948), UN Security Council Resolution 242
(November 22, 1967), the Rogers Plan (1969), UN Security Council
Resolution 338 (October 22, 1973), the Reagan Plan (Sept. 1, 1982),
the Oslo Accords (1993), Wye River Memorandum (October 23, 1998),
Camp David 2000 Summit (2000), The Clinton Parameters (December 23,
2000), the Taba summit (January 2001), the Tenet Plan (June 13,
2001), the Arab Peace Initiative (March 28, 2002), the Road Map for
Peace (April 30, 2003), the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit of 2005 (February
8, 2005), the Kerry Principles for Middle East Peace (December 29,
2016) to name just the main efforts and, sadly, the list seems likely
to grow.
To avoid being added to the above list, the upcoming international
conference should collectively take the single act of backing a UN
Security Council resolution recognizing Palestine. Once Palestine and
Israel are both recognized, the countries of the world could start to
apply international conventions, treaties and understandings—just
as they apply to all bordering states around the world—to the daily
hurdles (from movement and trade to the use of airspace and
electromagnetic spectrum) facing Palestinian existence under Israeli
military occupation—as well as differentiating their own dealings
with pre-1967 Israel and its illegal settlement enterprise.
The President of the Arab American Institute, James J. Zogby,
recently wrote of
Kerry’s end of year speech, “To some, especially Palestinians,
this may seem like ‘too little, too late.’ But as someone who has
been a part of the effort to create an American debate on Israeli
policies, Kerry’s intervention is welcome, validating, and
empowering. He laid down markers that should help liberals and
progressives define a policy agenda on the Israel-Palestine
conflict—exactly what we need as we enter the challenges of the
Trump era.”
Given the upcoming “Trump era,” the recognition by the
international community of the State of Palestine before it is too
late could do much more than “laying down markers.” Such a move
could be used to finally hold Israel accountable and levy serious
costs—political, economic and otherwise—on Israel to bring it in
line with international law and UN resolutions, not to mention common
sense.
If the two-state paradigm fails, Palestinians and Israelis will
not vanish into thin air. While Secretary Kerry’s 2014 nine-month
thrust to restart negotiations was collapsing, the Bruno Kreisky
Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna undertook a serious
intellectual exercise with Palestinian, Israeli Jewish and European
intellectuals, politicians and activists, to contribute to
re-examining the current strategies and paradigms, proposing and
exploring new perspectives, visionary discourses and alternatives to
partition. A volume was produced along with the Group of the
Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European
Parliament, titled, Rethinking
the Politics of Israel/Palestine – Partition and its Alternatives,
which proposes out-of-the-box thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. In politics no vacuums exist and this effort reflected just
that fact.
If the upcoming January gathering of states fails, the French
could just sing C'est la vie as Netanyahu laughs all the way to the
next settlement in the West Bank, but yet another generation of
Palestinians and Israelis on the ground will pay the ultimate price
for their failure.
This article was first published by the The Huffington Post on January 14, 2017.
