25 Years After Oslo: Constructive destruction
Twenty five years after the Oslo Accords (September 13, 1993), the “two-statesfor-two-peoples” paradigm for Israeli-Palestinian peace is on life support. Some believe that a lethal combination of the Palestinians’ rejection of every possible proposal and Israel’s settlement policy has already led to its demise. Time is certainly limited.
Trump’s approach of “foreign policy by destruction” is woefully misguided in general and untenable in the long term, but desperate times can require desperate measures. This is especially true of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have long been mired in various seemingly immutable orthodoxies.
The Trump team has correctly identified Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees as the two preeminent issues on which orthodoxies must be broken. Instead, however, of a coherent strategy for promoting peace, the administration has just been breaking orthodoxies on the Palestinian side without any comparable demands of Israel or appropriate context.
It started with Trump’s long-overdue decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US Embassy there. This huge achievement for Israel should have been granted in exchange for major negotiating concessions, such as Israeli recognition of east Jerusalem, or parts thereof, as the Palestinian capital, or a settlement freeze beyond the “blocs.”
More recently, the administration made the long overdue decision to break the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – a corrupt, ossified organization whose very existence perpetuates the refugee problem it was designed to resolve 70 years ago – by ending US financial support. It also cut most direct American aid to the Palestinians. It is high time the Palestinians took control of their destiny and ended the state of dependency. But this cannot be done overnight, and no alternative assistance mechanisms were proposed. A humanitarian crisis and further violence are likely, as large numbers of Palestinians without employment, and now schools and healthcare, grow hungry and increasingly frustrated.
Furthermore, the administration has begun breaking the entrenched orthodoxies regarding the number of refugees and Palestinians’ self-proclaimed “right of return.” Contrary to the otherwise universally accepted definition, only the Palestinians define refugees both as those actually displaced and their descendants, ad infinitum, thereby inflating their numbers from a few tens of thousands alive today to over 10 million. Israel has agreed in previous negotiations to allow tens of thousands to return, but a complete “right of return” would constitute its national demise. The US-Israeli position, whereby refugees could “return” to the Palestinian state, remain in place or move elsewhere with compensation, is the only viable solution.
THE ADMINISTRATION has even begun challenging the orthodoxy whereby a negotiated resolution is inherently predicated on a fully independent Palestinian state. This is certainly the likely outcome. But there is nothing in the Oslo Accords that preordains it, and it must be the result of negotiations, including Palestinian concessions such as recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, or security arrangements. There actually are other possibilities, one of which was raised recently by the Trump team, such as a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, two essentially but not quite independent states.
Trump recently stated that it was now the Palestinians’ turn to “get something very good,” but has not hinted what this might be. If he wishes to break the decades-long impasse in Israeli politics, too, Israel must also be made to face some misguided orthodoxies. The following are three counterbalancing demands that could be made of Israel.
The first two are well known: recognition of a Palestinian capital in at least part of East Jerusalem and renunciation of claims to sovereignty over the approximately 90% of the West Bank that lies beyond the separation barrier. The third is more original: allowing refugees to begin an initially small, graduated and controlled return to those areas of the West Bank that Israel will not retain in any permanent agreement – the so-called areas A and B, constituting some 40% of the West Bank and 90% of the Palestinian population, and parts of C.
At first the returnees might be limited to refugees in Jordan, whose efficient security services could help vet their peaceful intentions. Any returnee found in other parts of the West Bank would be considered in violation of the agreement and could be deported. In Gaza, return of the refugees would be contingent upon an end to Hamas rule and restoration of the Palestinian Authority, but there would be no numerical or territorial limits.
These proposals are likely to be rejected outright by Israel today, much as the Palestinians rejected the above changes. Israel, however, is entering an electoral year. This is a particularly opportune time to shake things up and provide the moderate camp with a real platform to run on, as opposed to vague and illusory promises of future peace. An at least partially evenhanded attempt to break inappropriate orthodoxies would give the Palestinians a stake in a new renewed peace process, as well.
Sometimes you have to break things to put them back together again. The “Oslo process” and a two-states solution are living on borrowed time.
The writer is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, and author of Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change.