The Peace Processors Return

By Elliott Abrams

Thursday, December 28, 2023

 

Middle East peace processing is a great career, or has been for a small but resolute group. Never successful but never daunted, immune to reality, unaffected by wars or elections, they never flag. That means they never stop going to nice conferences and writing articles about “the two-state solution.” Not even now.

 

The slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on October 7 has greatly affected Israeli opinion. Israelis on the left, including some of those living in the kibbutzim that were attacked, have understood the meaning of the event: A Palestinian state today is simply too dangerous. A couple of weeks ago, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, a former head of the Labor Party, called upon the United States to stop talking about this:

 

What I want to urge is against just saying ‘two-state solution’. Why? Because there is an emotional chapter here that must be dealt with. My nation is bereaving. My nation is in trauma. In order to get back to the idea of dividing the land, of negotiating peace or talking to the Palestinians, etc., one has to deal first and foremost with the emotional trauma that we are going through and the need and demand for a full sense of security for all people.

 

Dismissing Herzog’s appeal, two of the longest-serving peace processors, former State Department officials Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller, are at it again. In an article in Foreign Affairs dated December 22, Kurtzer and Miller want to “create an independent Palestinian state” as the only solution to conflict in the Middle East.

 

Here’s how: Their plan “would require the PA to run fair and free elections in the West Bank and Gaza and to convince voters that it really will aim to end Israel’s occupation and create an independent Palestinian state. Should it succeed, Israel would also need to demonstrate its commitment — in words and actions on the ground — to advancing a two-state outcome.”

 

They acknowledge there will be Israeli resistance: “Israel’s electorate had shifted to the right well before this war. Hamas’s terrorism may well encourage a further radicalization of the Israeli population.” Now think about that characterization. Some Israelis were not keen on an independent Palestinian state because they’ve been living with Palestinian terrorism and intifadas and rockets from Gaza for decades. Now that view is called “radical” and if more Israelis feel that way after the massacres of October 7, that isn’t common sense or self-defense; it’s “further radicalization.”

 

Our two peace processors do throw in a small bow to reality. They acknowledge that “addressing legitimate Israeli security concerns” must be part of the picture — but they give no sense of what they think those concerns might be and how they might be “addressed.” They acknowledge that “even if Netanyahu leaves office, no other current top politician in Israel appears eager to embark down a path of peace. And there are no Palestinian leaders with the gravitas and political weight to engage seriously with Israel in the aftermath of the conflict.” But they do not draw the obvious conclusion from those two sentences: Well, okay, so that’s dead.

 

But old peace processors never die, nor do they ever allow mere logic to upset them. Kurtzer and Miller conclude that it’s up to the United States to turn floss into gold: President Biden “can make it clearer to the Israelis that the continued strength of their relationship with Washington rests on Israel understanding that it cannot reoccupy Gaza, and that their ultimate security guarantee will be a peace agreement with a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” In other words, cram it down their throats.

 

The last few words in their formula are breathtaking: “a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” This is the greatest example in history of the Tinker Bell effect. Remember the scene in Peter Pan: “If you believe, wherever you are, clap your hands, and she’ll hear you. Clap! Clap! Don’t let Tink die! Clap!” Wikipedia describes the Tinker Bell effect as “the phenomenon of thinking something exists only because people believe in it.” What better description of the phenomenon can there be than thinking that Israel will be secure because there will be “a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” Kurtzer and Miller are clapping their hands, but no one in Israel believes in this Tinker Bell.

 

This is not a calumny against Palestinians. Opinion polls show that many do want peace, though many do not. In a December 13 poll by the most reliable Palestinian pollster, roughly three-quarters of respondents said Hamas was correct to launch its attack, and Hamas was the most popular political party or group. It gets worse: “When asked about the best way to end occupation and establish an independent state, the public was divided into three groups: a majority of 63% . . . said it was armed struggle; 20% said it was negotiations; and 13% said it was popular non-violent resistance.”

 

And what are the “most vital Palestinian goals” when pollsters asked?

 

43% believe that the first most vital Palestinian goal should be to end Israeli occupation in the areas occupied in 1967 and build a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. By contrast, 36% believe the first most vital goal should be to obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages, 11% believe that the first and most vital goal should be to build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings and 7% believes it should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians.

 

Seven percent think building a Palestinian democracy is vital. Building a Palestinian state gets the top result — but recall that most Palestinians think the way to do that is “armed struggle.” The “right of return” means ending Israel as a Jewish state by having millions of Palestinian “refugees” move there. The U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, says there are 5.9 million Palestinian refugees.

 

In some highly abstract sense, it is true that Israel’s “ultimate security guarantee will be a peace agreement with a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” That is true in the same sense that America’s “ultimate security guarantee” would be a similarly peace-minded China and Russia. But like this imaginary Palestinian nirvana, they don’t exist. Fantasies do not provide security guarantees.

 

From everything we can see about Palestinian politics and public opinion, basing Israeli security on dreams about Palestinian pacifism is nuts. Moreover, Iran has under way a vast effort to build proxy forces and strengthen every terrorist group — from the Houthis to Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Hamas — to attack Israel by stocking the groups with guns and money. That is the problem with the two-state solution: No one can explain how a sovereign and independent Palestinian state will not constitute a grave security threat to Israel (and Jordan as well, by the way). Kurtzer and Miller certainly don’t explain it; like all the peace processors, they wish it away, conjuring up a mythical Palestine that loves peace. If you believe, clap your hands!

 

This is going to be a hard sell in Israel. It ought to be an equally hard sell in Washington.