Israel's Three State Solution

(I write this post with great trepidation, knowing the consequences that speaking aloud about this subject can bring. Hopefully all the blessings that my family got at my brother's weddings this weekend will protect this blog.)

Isaac posted along the subject very near and dear to my heart, Israel. He highlighted the New York Times article about non-violent resistance (which isn't the only example -- here's Palestinians dressed as the Na'vi), and asks the sage question:

I believe that violence against civilians is inexcusable and violence against the IDF is counterproductive if peace is what you're aiming for... but when the Palestinians lay down their weapons, what happens then? Is Israel really going to go "ah yes, here's the West Bank in its pre-1967 state, including all that water we use for our farms"? I hope so, but I doubt it.

The question is, is non-violence going to work for Palestinians? What's the end-game here?

This all is close to my heart because I am an Israeli-American. My family left Israel when I was a little baby, partially because my father was serving in the Israeli military at the time that the First Lebanon War was going on. With that in mind, my parents did not want my brother or myself serving in the Israeli military when we grew up; they also thought there might be better opportunities in the US, Australia, or Canada. The US was the place where my dad was first able to get a job and a visa, so that's where we went.

Isaac is right that Palestinians are increasingly seeking non-violent paths to protest. The Times and, of course, the Israeli government are downplaying the extent to which the violence has declined in the West Bank. Back at the height of the Second Intifada, when right-wing leaders Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat were facing off, car and bus bombings in Jerusalem would happen multiple times a year. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the number in the peak year (2002) was 55. This year it was 1. (The validity of the numbers isn't necessarily important; even Israel, whose bias would be to inflate the numbers, only count 1 this year).

The main thrust of this has to do with the little-commented on battle between Fatah and Hamas that, by the end of 2007, left Hamas with unilateral control over Gaza, and Fatah with almost unilateral control of the West Bank. Fatah, who may be corrupt up to their neck, have taken a fairly good-faith approach to negotiations; Hamas continues to call for the eradication of Israel.

However, you'll notice that the title of the New York Times article is "Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance." Not "West Bank Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance." Currently, Israeli and Western policy ties the future of the West Bank and Gaza together. In practice, what that means is that Israel can't reward the non-violence in the West Bank if rockets are still falling on Israel from Gaza (in December 2009, it had been over 500 rockets and 200 mortar shells since the Gaza operation, according to Israel's internal security)

Here's the thing, though: in Gaza, the problem is the Qassam rockets. Qassam are not much more sophisticated than fire-works: they're basically a tube full of gunpowder. Note that for all the rockets launched, the death toll (according to Wikipedia) has not been what you might call at war-levels. At the end of the day, Qassam rockets are just high-stress versions of knifings (or ax attacks). It takes one or two individuals sneaking to the Gaza border, shooting off a rocket, and scattering. Looking at the numbers, there is a clear difference between Hamas encouraging violence and Hamas deciding to lay low. But it's not a situation in which even Hamas could fully end the rocket attacks if they were trying.

But suppose that Hamas is fully responsible for the Qassam. The Palestinians in the West Bank certainly are not. At this point, the blockade has largely separated the populations of the two; they are administered separately, have different leadership structures that don't talk to each other -- by any measure you could think to choose, they are two separate regions. Except, of course, race and religion.

The right-wing fringe, which have undue influence on Israel (they control the Interior Ministry, who control the expansion of settlements, and the Foreign Ministry) and control Gaza, can create a cycle of violence that is mutually beneficial to both fringes; measurably, both Israel and Gaza continue their steady march to the right politically. Currently, Israel's major right wing, center left wing, and the largest third party all are led by people who used to be part of the right wing party (Likud). That would be as though the Republican, Democratic, and Green parties where all led by former Republican party members and operatives.

Because of this cycle, any time that the non-violent protesters in the West Bank might make any progress, Gaza increases the rockets a little, and then Israeli tanks move in, and we're back at square one. Never mind that the West Bank has created a stable and peaceful infrastructure that polices itself (after all, they drove out Hamas) and has created meaningful (if weak) economic growth. So long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, there will be no peace.

So here's my solution. It's a three state solution. If Gaza and the West Bank are administered separately, then Israel should propose a good-faith peace negotiation with the Palestinian Authority that treats Gaza as a separate entity. That means a settlement freeze, withdrawal to 1967-borders-or-similar (in the West bank), tearing down the West Bank Barrier, and Jerusalem as a joint capital on the table. Unlike Isaac, I don't know if Israel needs to give up the right-of-return (although it can't keep the question completely closed before negotiations begin), but at the very least it needs to create some sort of compensation system.

As peace progresses, Hamas should regularly be given the option of laying down arms and conducting a referendum on whether or not to rejoin the West Bank as a unified state. If Gaza chooses to join the peace process as a separate entity from the West Bank, let them; so long as they are peaceful, there is no need to broker a unity government between them and Fatah. This removes the fear from Hamas that if they join the peace process, they will be forced to concede power to Fatah.

From the people of Gaza's perspective, they can watch the West Bank. If the West Bank achieves meaningful concessions from Israel, gets some level of autonomy, economic growth, territorial integrity, and even some of the big dreams like shared control of Jerusalem, than Hamas' argument that Israel is operating in bad faith will be seriously eroded, and Gazans may start to realize that they can join the process, and Hamas' support will be eroded as well. Gaza will turn the tide of extremism, and start to follow the path of non-violence.

This is all a pipe-dream, however. The problem right now is that Hamas' argument that Israel is operating in bad faith is true. And I fear that Israel's intentions will only worsen in the near future. They are not thinking strategically about how to approach security; they are only responding to threats in increasingly blunt and harmful ways. Humiliating diplomats, stealing passports to assassinate people in other countries, repeatedly timing announcements of settlement increases to humiliate our VP and our President -- it is clear that the Netenyahu government is not after peace. And the only major alternative is the group of people who brought you Operation Cast Lead.

Ah well. Dourness aside, there may come a time when the pendulum swings and Israel is up for the challenger. Or there may come a time when the international community has enough pressure and inclination to pressure Israel that it can bring even the hard-line right to the negotiating table. If so, the Three State Solution is, in my humble opinion, the only way to avoid a situation in which the same kind of thinking that brings us Terrorball and the 1% Doctrine reboots the peace process every ten days.

Waltz With Bashir

Saw the movie Waltz With Bashir with my dad. My dad was drafted into the Israeli military in 1978, and opted to become a radio mechanic in return for serving an extra year in the military. My mother spent nine months in the military as a psychometrist (the person who performs psychological testing for new tank crews, to make sure that they don't hate each other) before she married him, and was thus given an out from the army.

In other words, my father was still in the military when the war with Lebanon broke out. He didn't have to serve there because he was from the "central" division of the Military (the army was divided into three sections: north, central, and south). Had he been in infantry or tank divisions, he would have been deployed for certain; as it was, he served no more than guard duty once on the border after he was discharged--because after his discharge he was repeatedly called to serve in the reservists. Of course, most of those were one-day summons, and he ignored them with little retribution. Because he ignored the one-day summons', he was never assigned a reservist unit. He finally was assigned a reservist unit when he went to get permission to leave Israel finally, in 1988--so technically he finally served in a reservist unit, although in actuality he came to the United States and finally left the army permanently behind him.

I mention this because after having seen the movie Waltz With Bashir, we talked about his service. His service, of course, is incomparable to the men in the movie--the main character was present in Beirut, and saw the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre--indirectly aiding, by keeping flares lit through the night of the massacre. But at the same time, it put my parents' decision to leave Israel in context.

For me previously, I had a sort of naive wall put up between Israel's history and the personal lives of my family. Even my grandfather, who fought in one of the freedom fighter groups against the British, risking his life to blow the shofar on Passover, helping to blow up key targets, spending time in a British prison. Somehow there's no reconciling him in my head to the retired accountant with the great sense of humor that I know today. Partly this is because of his own life: he lives shut off from that past. It is incredibly difficult to get him to talk about it, and when he does talk about it, it's as though he's reciting history--not telling his own personal story.

So to think of someone as peacible as my mother--pacifist, with a strong dislike of war in all its forms--being one of the top sharp-shooters in her division in basic training, or to think of my father being lucky enough not to serve in Lebanon--but having his friends serving there. Even when I was there--I was once in Israel at the same time as a double-bus bombing that killed around fifty people, during the height of the Second Intifada, and it seems as remote to me as the violence in Sri Lanka. Just words, concepts, and not flesh and blood in reality. That's the luxury of having lived a life entirely and solely in a peaceful country.

I also remark this because of my father's bitter comment as we were driving home. "Things haven't changed." Considering the scope of the horror, the needless violence, the madness decending into genocidal massacres at Sabra and Shatila, I cannot imagine a more depressing sentiment to take away from it. After all, Ariel Sharon who was i charge during Sabra and Shatila, became the Prime Minister--what's more, he was one of the people who brought us closer to peace with the Palestinians.

My dad shook his head. "I mean that's how it started then! Rockets from Lebanon. And neither side learned anything. Anything at all."