National Post (National Edition)
John Robson,
Before Donald Trump even recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the New York Times characteristically shrieked at 4 a.m. “Igniting fears of violence in the region, President Trump’s decision could derail any peace initiative, Arab and European leaders warn.” In response to that I would ask how you derail something already in the ditch, if the more pertinent question were not how you derail something that does not exist.
Trump continues to confound as the first post-modern president, entirely unbound by logic or convention. About a quarter of his major public acts fall below the minimum standard of decency for his office, and about one in 10 rises dramatically above what other presidents ever dared.
I put this decision in the latter category on moral and historical grounds. But as this point has been ably argued by various Post colleagues, let us narrow our focus to the question of the negotiations for peace that, politicians and pundits rushing in where angels fear to tread assure us, are going on in the region and might be threatened by this move. On what ground, exactly, would doing something that pleases our democratic Israeli ally and offends its bloodthirsty enemies be counterproductive?
Rational negotiation, here as anywhere, involves rewarding behaviour we wish to encourage and punishing the opposite. So what, over the past century, have Arab leaders done that we wish to encourage? Since the 1920s, before the re-establishment of Israel in 1948, they have instantly and indignantly rejected every compromise solution put forward, even though at least through 1949 those offers, if accepted, would have rendered Israel unviable. Moreover, the plain fact that each offer was less attractive to them than its predecessor never gave them any sense that their position was not unassailably mighty.
To a peculiar extent, Arab leaders have succeeded in moving the terms of the debate by this delusional inflexibility. If some perfectly reasonable action will cause them to stomp out hurling vainglorious threats, it cannot be taken because the “process” is sacred.
So where, I ask you, is evidence this approach has worked or is working? Israel has repeatedly ceded occupied territory and sought mutual recognition. Virtually all its neighbours have responded with frontal attacks when they dared and subversion and terror otherwise, coupled with genocidal hate propaganda.
If that’s a peace process, I’m an olive tree. But since noticing the obvious would mean giving up on a negotiated solution pending a change of heart, regime or both in nearly all Israel’s neighbours, it’s regarded as sophisticated to pretend it’s not happening. Thus, paradoxically, the Middle East peace process has been all process and no peace because of a persistent effort to satisfy the insatiable demands of Israel’s enemies, rewarding and thus encouraging precisely the conduct that makes peace impossible.
Israel, of course, has not rewarded this conduct. It has increasingly acted unilaterally to protect its own interests, sometimes establishing settlements in land from which Jews were ethnically cleansed long ago or recently, other times withdrawing as from Gaza, and ignoring screeching abuse about specific actions from people who openly want them dead no matter what they do. And it laid such a beating on Egypt in 1973 as to force Sadat to make peace, for which he was assassinated. But Western “statesmen” almost always urge restraint on Israel while ignoring even the most blatant provocations from its sworn enemies.
Remember Kissinger’s dictum that negotiations can only succeed if the minimum terms of the parties can be made to coincide. As long as Israel’s neighbours’ minimum condition is a Palestine Judenrein from the river to the sea, there’s nothing to negotiate, and no sane reason to reward a bloodcurdling stance whose tiresome familiarity should not numb us to its atrocity.
It’s not obvious that any conduct on our or Israel’s part can bring most Arab leaders to see reason. A 2001 Mackenzie Institute newsletter memorably noted Arafat’s “impulsive urge for trying to take the pot with a pair of fours,” and the widespread tendency of Israel’s enemies to irrational belligerence makes devising a rational structure of sticks and carrots difficult. But if we really think there’s anything to negotiate, we have to try, right?
Over a decade ago, a pundit lectured us that, “Up to a point, you can fight the terrorist side while encouraging the political side. In fact, the name of the game is precisely to shift their calculus of selfinterest toward peaceful politics by increasing both the costs of violence and the benefits of participation.”
Let’s increase the costs of violence by doing things they don’t want, like recognizing the obvious fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, until they start negotiating sincerely. And people ranting about death to Jews are not part of any hypothetical “peace process.”