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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-01-25
© 2011 Peter Belmont
Mahmoud Abbas—leader of the Palestinian team negotiating peace with the Israelis in recent years—is blamed for “giving in” to Israel on almost all the issues that the Palestinians had traditionally held out on.
Whether he was right or wrong to do so, and whether or not the Palestinian people would have ratified an agreement containing those “give aways”, one thing is clear: on the negotiating front, it was not the Palestinians that were the rejectionists.
(And, assuming that he never imagined that the increasingly rejectionist Israelis would ever agree to his overly-generous terms, that his bluff—”I raise you $1,000” when he knew the Israelis believed they held 5 aces—was made ONLY to show PLO willingness to make peace, on almost any terms; assuming this, we must acknowledge that his negotiating technique over several years was a stroke of genius!)
Now that that point has been made, it is time for the USA to realize that there will be no peace until either the USA (acting alone) or the USA (acting as leader of the UNSC) puts major pressure on Israel.
What pressure? And pressure to do what?
As I’ve argued as early as 2008, the amount of pressure has to be “enough” and the object of the pressure—to start with, anyhow—has to be Israel’s compliance with the international law of belligerent occupation at least to the extent of removal of all settlers from all occupied territories (pursuant to Fourth Geneva Convention), removal of the wall (pursuant to the ICJ’s 9/2004 advisory opinion), and removal (dismantling) of all the buildings which compose the settlements (following UNSC 465 (1980)).
Now, any demand by the USA (or UNSC) that Israel remove the settlers, wall, and settlements would include a time-table and a schedule of mile-stones (e.g., “remove this many settlers each month”, “remove this settlement in this month”, or the like), and the process of removals would avoid the imposition of sanctions if it held to the stated schedule.
Assuming that Israel concluded that meeting the demand (and the schedule) was more sensible than fighting it and enduring the sanctions, Israel would have a period of time, perhaps 6 months or a year, in which to get serious about negotiating peace. And the Palestinians would have the same period of time in which to decide how much to give away (e.g., the settlements in some of the so-called neighborhoods of Jerusalem) in order to make peace.
They would get a much better deal this way than the deal apparently acquiesced in by Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiating team. And Israel would get a correspondingly worse deal.
How did this happen? Well, it has not happened yet! But if it does happen, one may say that it is a consequence of Israeli over-reaching.
Do the words “it would have been enough” sound familiar?
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