"Gaza first" on the horizon?
Posted by Helena Cobban
March 21, 2009 12:18 PM EST | Link
Filed in Egypt , Gaza08-09 , Palestine 2009
With respect to the Egyptian-Palestinian-Israeli triangle as it manifests regarding Gaza, I'd add the following general notes:
1. Egypt and Hamas share a strong interest in preventing Gaza's 1.5 million people from spilling out in any lasting way into Egypt. Gaza is very constrained for so many people, certainly-- especially since, under current circumstances, they also need to be growing a lot of their own food there. But the 75% of Gaza's people who are refugees from inside Israel still have live claims on homes, farms, and arable land inside Israel. Hamas works to keep those claims alive. For its part, the Egyptian regime simply doesn't want to have additional Palestinians inside Egypt; while a large segment of the Egyptian population actively supports Hamas's campaign to keep the Palestinian refugees' claims alive.
2. The Egyptian and Israeli governments share an interest in reducing Hamas's political power and influence as much as possible. (Hence their collaboration in maintaining the siege.) However, the Egyptian government faces significant constraints from its own citizens that prevent it from going too far to oppress/crush/exterminate Hamas. No foreseeable Israeli government-- either the present one, the incoming one, or a Livny government that might replace Netanyahu after a period-- will face any such constraints from its own citizens. The dynamic in Israeli society has been shifting rapidly toward support for more and more hardline policies toward the Palestinians in general, and particularly toward those pesky Gazans who refused to bow to the IDF's will during the recent assault on their communities. Would there be effective international constraints on an attempt by Netanyahu to send the military in to "finish the job" in Gaza? At this point, I do not know.
3. However, just to further complicate matters a bit, I'd note there is also a potential for shared Hamas and Israeli interests with respect to Gaza, including-- or perhaps especially-- under Likud. Netanyahu has talked about trying to offer the Palestinians an "economic peace", rather than a real peace. This proposal is far from new; and every time the Israeli occupiers of the West Bank and Gaza have attempted it in the past it has been either a complete sham or a miserable failure, or both. And I still think that, regarding the West Bank, it is a completely useless, actively fraudulent, and dangerously diversionary proposal that should be completely spurned. How on earth can the highly atomized Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank ever be expected to mount anything like a viable economy so long as the Palestinian heartland continues to be quadrillaged by the literally hundreds of IDF-controlled internal checkpoints that choke off every hope of economic opportunity or normal human life? However, in the present circumstances in Gaza, Gaza might provide a focus for something similar to the kind of "economic peace" that Netanyahu talks about. It could do this most easily if Israel simply and sincerely abandoned all its remaining claims to control all the access points into and out of the Strip, and the complete control it currently operates over the Strip's population register, and allowed Gaza to reconnect to the world economy through Egypt and through Gaza's own air and sea access points. This, incidentally, is what Mahmoud Zahhar and other strong currents in the Hamas leadership have talked about for several years now. (See e.g. by March 2006 interview with Zahhar.) Egypt is not so enthusiastic about this, seeing a risk that the Palestine Question might bleed more deeply into Egyptian politics under this scenario than Mubarak feels happy about. However, if Netanyahu should prove motivated and able to persuade Washington of the virtues of what would be (effectively) a "Gaza-first option" for the Palestinians-- would Mubarak's agreement to it be far behind? I think not.
... I've been thinking aloud, really, in this post so far. "Gaza first" proposals have, of course, been offered to the Palestinians many times over the years, and the main response of the PLO Palestinian leaders has always been to worry that "Gaza first" might all too easily become "Gaza only"... That is, that the "Palestinian state" they sought would be established not in the 22% of historic (Mandate) Palestine that they claimed in the 1988 "Declaration of Independence", but just in the 1.27% of historic Palestine that lies within the Gaza Strip.
However, there is no way whatsoever that Hamas or any other Gaza-based leadership would sign off on any "final peace" with Israel that would involve giving up on the longstanding Palestinian claims to Jerusalem and to satisfaction on the refugee issue. No way. So if a Palestinian administration did emerge in Gaza that would have control over its internal affairs and over economic affairs including economic and other forms of (non-military) links to the outside world, and would undertake to abide by a reciprocal armistice/ceasefire with Israel for some presumably pre-agreed duration that would not be a final resolution and ending of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But it could provide some important relief to the people of Gaza (and to the residents of southern Israel, though can say based on my recent visit to Sderot that their lives seem outstandingly good right now, in comparison with those of their fellow-humans right across the border with Gaza)
Meantime, the campaign would obviously continue for a speedy and durable resolution of the whole broader conflict including its important dimensions regarding Jerusalem and the refugees.
Would a new form of "Palestinian Authority" based in Gaza be any less able to negotiate a final peace agreement with Israel's leaders than the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallastan has been over the past 15 years? We might note that during the 15-year life of the Ramallastan PA it completely failed to hold its Israeli interlocutor to the important, Oslo-based commitment that the terms of a final peace would be completely agreed within five years. It completely failed to halt Israel's settlement-building project. (Indeed, Arafat gave the whole settling project a completely new lease on life when he agreed that Israel could carve a whole new settlers-only road system deep into the West Bank under the guise of so-called "bypass roads".) And the Ramallastan PA completely failed to provide any meaningful protection at all to the chronically embattled Palestinian population of occupied Jerusalem...
Actually the list of the failures of the Ramallastan PA's failures, from a Palestinian-nationalist perspective, goes on and on and on.
Anyway, I'm not trying to second-guess or predict Hamas's decisionmaking on this point. Just to note that one version of a "Gaza first" option may be on the table under Netanyahu, and that Hamas's response to it may be surprisingly positive. But who knows? Netanyahu might instead just succumb to the still-high popular pressure to go back in to Gaza to "finish the job."
Why do not the Palestinians simply declare the State of Palestine? Independent though occupied? They would need to declare its borders, but not to give up their right of return.
They could then insist that Israel concede the Right of Palestine to Exist before negotiations go forward. They could muster abundant UN documents in support of boundaries for a Palestinian state larger than the areas occupied by Israel after 1967, and then magnanimously claim just those boundaries, and not a square millimeter less, provided that an adequate tunnel be constructed beneath Israel to connect the two sections of Palestine.
At the same time they could offer Israel peace dependent on Israel's evacuation of Palestinian territory.
Surely some states would immediately recognize the Palestinian state, and the drive for recognition of the Palestinian State would become the focal point of support for the long suffering Palestinian people in nations around the world.
Just do it! What have they got to lose?
They- the PLO, did in 1988, essentially declaring the borders as the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The State of Palestine was then recognized by about 100 states, more than recognized Israel at the time.
Yes, but the 1988 declaration didn't actually get the PLO anywhere where it counts, in terms of control over their own land (also known as national sovereignty.)
Also, the State of Palestine didn't get recognition from the states and intergovernmental organizations that really counted... in this case, from Israel, the US, and the UN. In the "exchange of recognitions" that accompanied the 1993 Oslo Agreement the PLO recognized the State of Israel and the Israeli prime minister recognized-- "the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people." (PDF texts here.)
So the whole concept of the "Declaration of Independence", that had been advocated very strongly by various well-meaning outsiders, emerged looking quite meaningless to most Palestinians. Excerpts from its text have, however, been carved into a large stone stele placed in "Shabab Square" in Ramallastan. Irony no doubt unintended by whoever commissioned the carving.
Was just pointing out to JFL that they'd "been there, done that."
Yes, but, it wasn't such a bad strategy, IMHO. The last fact I noted did scare Israel a bit. Events just always broke in a way that was bad for the Palestinians. If Arafat hadn't "supported" Iraq. If he hadn't dismantled the First Intifada organizations (If Abu Jihad had not been assassinated). If he hadn't gone around the Madrid round negotiations with Oslo, accepting worse terms than he had earlier rejected. If Rabin had not been assassinated. If the diplomacy had been better coordinated with the Intifada on the ground. If, if, if. Wishful thinking, but is the present reality so far from the worst case likely to occur?
Perhaps JFL's idea helps show the ludicrous chutzpah of the Israeli / US demands though. Recognize Israel's ("right to exist"), renounce terrorism and abide by past agreements? Palestine should say - Sure - you, Israel, do those three things too; the conflict would be over in a minute.
Well, I looked at your three letters, Helena, and I didn't see the State of Palestine, Palestine, or the Palestinian State anywhere. Let me look again... nope, not there. Arafat says PLO about a million times and talks about all the stuff the PLO is going to do for Israel... nothing about a Palestinian State.
And, Flash!, Israel is probably not going to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.
But Iran might. Indonesia might. Malaysia might. Pakistan might. Afghanistan might. And they might send aid to the people of a country they recognize. And in America and in England and in Germany and France people might start to demonstrate for their governments to recognize Palestine. And not stop pushing until they did so. And demand that Israel recognize the Right of Palestine to exist.
I think that the PLO and Arafat felt unable to declare a Palestinian State because to do so, claiming boundaries that did not include all of Israel, would be to "betray" their cause.
But they have to think longer term. They need a state. Right now everybody is waiting for Israel or the US to give them a state. It will never happen. They have no more right to give the Palestinians a state than they have the right to deny them.
Frederick Douglas, like most Palestinians, was born a slave and took his freedom. The Palestinians must keep their demand for their right of return, but they ought to demand that the rest of the world support their demand for the ground beneath their feet, or explain just why it is that they will not support that claim.