Why I think the Obama administration logically gives up on Middle East peace through solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict--for now
Monday, August 31, 2009 at 2:52AM EDITORIAL: "Netanyahu's peace is a cynical evasion: To have a flourishing economy Palestinians need a land," Financial Times, 26 August 2009.
OPINION: "Israel Still Strangles the Palestinian Economy: To thrive we need unfettered access to global markets," by Sam Bahour, Wall Street Journal, 21 August 2009.
Netanyahu promises an "economic peace" because he refuses the old "land for peace" scheme. But the FT points out:
In 1992-96, at the height of the peace process, Israel alone reaped a peace dividend, without having to conclude a peace. Diplomatic recognition of Israel doubled, from 85 to 161 countries [out of 192 UN members, I note], leading to doubled exports and a sixfold increase in foreign investment. During the same period, per capita income in the occupied territories fell by 37 percent while the number of settlers increased by 50 percent. Economic development deals in facts; Mr. Netanyahu deals in cosmetics.
With an economic peace, he argues, barriers to growth would be removed and the Palestinian economy would be refloated. But Israel can and should remove most of those barriers anyway. According to the UN, last month there were 614 checkpoints inside the West Bank--an area the size of Lincolnshire or Delaware--compared with 613 in June. The recent removal of, say, the choke-points into Nablus, has led to a pick-up in business. But what that shows is how Israel's carve-up of the West Bank is stifling all activity.
Mr. Netanyahu's emotive insistence on "natural" settlement growth is equally bogus. With vast subsidies, these colonies are growing at more than three times the rate of population in Israel proper. The municipal boundaries of the settlements extend far beyond the built-up areas. Combine with the security wall built on West Bank land, the settler-only roads and the military zones, the Palestinians are penned into shrinking and discontiguous Bantustans.
Any economy needs, among other things, territory and freedom of movement. The prostrate Palestinian economy is no different. Mr. Netanyahu knows it, and the Obama administration has made it clear to him it knows he knows it.
The Bahour piece makes Israel's disconnection strategy all the more apparent: the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem are all allowed only to connect to the Israeli economy and nowhere else--effective economic colonialization. Worse, the Palestinian territories are denied basic resources: water is four times more plentiful in Israel on a per capita basis, while cell phones are stifled by Israeli control over the electromagnetic spectrum.
Bahour's grim conclusion: "Absent a political framework to secure Palestinian freedom and independence, "economic peace" initiatives only facilitate the crime of occupation."
I remain convinced that the Obama team sees no prospect of any Palestinian peace with Netanyahu, nor any real hope of stopping Iran from getting the bomb.
And so it logically waits for those two situations to meet in such a way that external forces will be called into play--meaning local powers and extra-regional great powers. When Israel's longstanding regional monopoly on WMD ends, a new regional security reality will be born, forcing a host of "inconceivables" that will both test Israel and grant it the security it has long sought.
No easy journey, but stalemates such as this only end with such perilous treks.
If you want a perfect example of why "containment" of the Gap cannot work and why it's immoral, then Israel's disconnection strategy on the Palestinian territories is your prime learning ground.
We should refer to it whenever that intellectual itch needs scratching.
Reader Comments (5)
The suicide bombings drove them to it. If your particular contiguous part of the Gap wants to murder you, then disconnection -- or at least heavily policed connection is the only thing you can do.
If connectivity costs more than the perceived benefits, it will diminish or flicker out entirely.
But the reality remains: it is no solution set. Indeed, it only works to increase the anger and the pool of potential bombers.
In reality..its War by other means.
This is largely an internal affair, with Israel as a reactive bystander and foil for internal political games. Will the Palestinians be modern and connected and affluent or miserable, zenophobic and destitute? It is entirely up to them. Israel will react accordingly.
Both Syria and Jordan stand to gain, but do not have the resources or market for Palestinian goods if they were to produce any . . The Palestinians have no internal economy and their only source of income ceased when Israel closed the borders out of self defense . .