Last week, Brandon Davis wrote of the Middle East peace process, “It’s time to speed things along, and U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state could do just that.” As officers of Tigers for Israel, we feel compelled to offer an alternative perspective.
We too would love to declare this conflict over. But declarations are cheap substitutes for diplomacy. There are major disputes left unresolved between Israelis and Palestinians over territory, immigration and Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish democracy. Until both sides reach mutual agreement, the conflict will continue. Rather than addressing these issues, the effort currently underway at the United Nations promises to complicate the peace process, leaving the Palestinians without autonomy and Israel without security. In short, it will solidify the unacceptable status quo on the ground.
The argument in favor of a declaration of statehood by the U.N. follows from a series of false premises: that Israel is intransigent, that it negotiates in bad faith and that it will only make necessary concessions when faced with international pressure. Once Israel finally bends, some suppose, the Palestinians are sure to meet them halfway.
This is a canard peddled by Israel’s enemies. It should be rejected, not embraced, by Israel’s friends.
It’s refuted by an 18-year record of Israeli concessions: In 1993 at Oslo, when Israel recognized the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat’s PLO as a formal negotiating partner; in 2000 at Camp David, when Israel offered the Palestinians Gaza, most of the West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem; in 2004, when Israel disengaged unilaterally from Gaza. And at these points, Israeli leaps of faith were met by Palestinian broken promises, foot-dragging and, sadly, renewed violence.
The Palestinians were no more cooperative two years ago when, despite major political risk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered another extraordinary concession to draw them to the negotiating table: a 10-month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. Netanyahu demanded no reciprocation for his gesture of goodwill — all he asked was that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet with him to talk peace.
But Abbas played a cynical game. He avoided negotiations for nine months, returned during the 10th, and demanded an extension of the freeze he had ignored for the better part of a year in exchange for his remaining at the table. Netanyahu rejected the extortion, and Abbas walked away. The only thing currently standing in the way of negotiations is Abbas’ present unwillingness to participate.
Peace will be difficult for both sides. Land will be forfeited, mutual security will need to be guaranteed and dreams of a one-state future will be shed by those who hold them. Israeli leaders have demonstrated an openness to such compromise. Palestinian leaders have not. Worse, they have failed to prepare their people for any reasonable resolution to the conflict. According to a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza from July of this year, 61 percent still reject the basic two-state concept of “Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people and Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.”
These domestic political attitudes are serious constraints on Abbas’ ability to make peace. But instead of bravely leading his people in the right direction, Abbas has chosen to pander to them with his grandstanding in New York.
And assuming there are no major last-minute developments, the results are not hard to predict. Despite a U.S. veto in the Security Council, the General Assembly will likely grant “Palestine” — ruled presumably by Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and defined by the demographically obsolete and militarily insecure “1967 lines” — the status of nonvoting observer state.
But the borders of this “state” will bear no relation to reality. Forget the disputes with Israel over territory — Abbas doesn’t even have control over Hamas-run Gaza. This “Palestine” will be a fantasy, a state in name only. On the ground, the arrangement will be meaningless.
Meaningless, that is, except in the eyes of the Palestinian people. And the psychological impact on them could be devastating to the peace process. By suggesting to the Palestinians that they can have their state along the unrealistic 1967 lines, the vote will tell Palestinians not to settle for the land swaps that any agreement would entail. By granting a seal of approval to the Palestinian strategy of end-runs around negotiations, it will encourage the Palestinians to double down on their stalling. And by affirming the false notion that Israel is an obstacle, not a partner, to peace, the vote may motivate some Palestinians to take up a third intifada. We should all shudder at the thought.
This vote will have consequences. It will further shatter the spirit of Oslo’s peace-by-negotiations framework. It will harden the positions of all the actors in this international drama at a time when flexibility is most needed. And it will give Israel’s enemies one more rhetorical cudgel.
But let’s not harbor any illusions. Outside of the halls of the United Nations, this vote won’t create the state Palestinians yearn for. And it certainly won’t get us any closer to peace in the Middle East.
Jacob Reses is a Wilson School major from Linwood, N.J. He is the co-vice president of Tigers for Israel. Samson Schatz is a Wilson School major from Los Angeles, Calif. He is the president of Tigers for Israel. They can be reached at jreses@princeton.edu and sschatz@princeton.edu, respectively.
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