Conflict Blotter

I finally found time to read the latest paper by Nathan J. Brown from the Carnegie Endowment called “The peace process has no clothes.” Brown understands the inner workings of Mideast governments better than anybody and he’s always worth reading. His latest paper is an indictment of every party involved in this mess over here and paints a grim picture for the future of a two-state solution.

There is no escape from the fact that all parties to the conflict have shown a stunningly bad sense of timing. At the time when the Oslo process offered the possibility of moving toward a two-state solution, American officials refused to breathe a word in public on the possibility of a Palestinian state. Israeli officials supportive of such a solution generally kept mum in public during the period while tolerating and even encouraging massive settlement in the West Bank.

It was not until the process collapsed and the parties entered into mortal combat that American and then some Israel leaders spoke boldly of the vision of Israel and Palestine living side by side. And the tin ear for timing continued. U.S. officials gave precious little support to Mahmoud Abbas when he was prime minister under a reform-minded Palestinian government. They simply watched as spectators as Israel announced its plan to withdraw from Gaza only after Abbas had resigned. Then, when Abbas won the presidency after Arafat’s death, U.S. support was largely verbal. All along, whenever Palestinians spoke of elections, the United States held them off (with the exception of the presidential election of 2005) until Hamas had grown sufficiently strong that it won. And only at that point did the United States rush in with its talk of a “political horizon” and “strengthening Abbas”—at a timeresults.

On Israel

The present Israeli approach thus shows clear dismay at the situation but no sense of a long-term way to respond. Hamas, which has struck such deep roots in Palestinian society, and Fatah, which was so deeply implicated in the second intifada and so disorganized and weak, seem to offer Israel no alternatives. As a result, Israel has no clear military or political path to follow to either defeat the Palestinians definitively or negotiate with them.

On Hamas

The movement has attempted to combine a cease-fire with episodic attacks; it has held tight to the reins of governmental power without showing any ability (or even interest) in using them.

Hamas has clearly failed at governing. In some ways, its decision to seize control in Gaza is a product of its inability to govern through the PA. In pointing to their achievements a year after forming the government, Hamas leaders had nothing concrete to show; they boasted only that they had held on to their “fixed principles”—something they presumably could have done without running a single candidate. Hamas in power has produced only strikes, civil war in the civil service, deteriorating public services, and a legislative record that is virtually empty and a parliament that hardly ever meets.

On the United States

While officials spoke of peace and order, American policy in effect—and sometimes by design—supported the political disintegration of Palestinian society and the slide toward civil war.

The United States treats Hamas solely as a terrorist threat to be suppressed by any means—legal, illegal, and even violent. But U.S. tools resemble those that could only have been designed by committees: it gives “non-lethal” assistance to security forces under presidential command; suggests that the Jordanian and Egyptian regimes—not subject to the same limits—supply arms; meets with some Palestinian ministers but not others; blocks the transfer of funds for some public purposes but encourages it for others; withholds funds for any municipality headed by a Hamas mayor but speaks of avoiding making the Palestinian people suffer; and works to undermine any of the fairly successful measures it had earlier supported to ensure fiscal accountability by PA entities.

It is difficult to argue with the conclusion that the United States effectively aided the slide toward civil war without giving the side it favored any tools to win it.

On the EU

Indeed, the E.U. has actually increased the amount of assistance it gives to Palestinians. But such generous funding no longer goes to improve Palestinian lives but merely to replace a portion of the tax revenue now impounded by Israel. Privately, European officials worry that their policies enable a dysfunctional political situation to continue or be ignored.

On the peace process

It does no good to continue pretending that the international community is assisting the construction of a Palestinian Authority and sponsoring a viable diplomatic process. Even before the Gaza crisis, the PA was being slowly undermined and there was no viable diplomatic process. It is time to admit that the peace process has no clothes.

On a two-state solution

It has often been said—and it is said increasingly often—that the two-state solution has been robbed of viability by changes on the ground. The network of Israeli settlements; the encirclement of some Palestinian cities; the construction of new road systems, and the construction of a wall inside the West Bank less permeable than many international borders all militate against the construction of a Palestinian state that would live side-by-side with Israel.

But the deeper obstacle to the two-state solution lies less in geography than in politics. For a decade there was a Palestinian leadership that was publicly committed to a two-state solution. That is no longer the case. But even more troubling is the deterioration in the ability for any Palestinian leaders or institutions to speak with legitimacy and authority for Palestinian society. There can be no negotiated solution of any kind without such institutions and leadership.