...it’s cracking a bit, no? That’s the catch with unilateral "agreements": no one has to keep them. So the IDF continued strolling into the Gaza Strip, shooting here and there. Because hey, we declared it, so what’s the big deal? And Hamas et al., who said they will wait only a week for borders to open (ignored as usual), gladly showed that the "IDF restored deterrence bonus" to the Gaza carnage is more fiction than fact.
Don’t get me wrong: it was good that the IDF stopped last week, even in this unilateral and dumb-assed way. They waited nine days after a binding UNSC resolution demanded just that (immediately), and what was gained by dragging on? A couple more hundred dead, a couple foreign countries cutting off relations, Israel’s south shut down for another week. But consider: in this election-campaign-by-war, dead Gazans actually help Barak/Livni; nobody in Israel counts the south anyway; and coming out "a man" rather than "a sucker", stopping at your own pace rather than when told – is top priority. Still, it’s good they stopped for a while.
Giving us time to discuss unilateralism
The uninitiated might think that Israel came across unilateralism only recently, inspired by "the Bush Doctrine". There is a grain of truth in this, in the sense that the Bush years have been Paradise for Israel's super-genius strategists. But the doctrine is essentially coded right into Israel's political DNA.
Our founding premier Ben-Gurion said it most famously:
"What matters is not what the Goyim [Gentiles] will say, but what the Jews will do."
Our national ethos and mythos, from before 1948, is this: facts on the ground first – new settlements, military adventures, ethnic cleansing (yes, that too had happened); deal with the consequences later. We take pride in that. And in the perfect little world we are raised in, it makes perfect sense. After all, for a tiny nation surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, are we going to wait around and make sure everyone in the (anti-Semitic) world agrees before taking care of ourselves? What a sweet, hermetic argument. It is so sweet you can repeat it for years and decades, in face of mounting evidence to the contrary - and still sound convincing. Actually, you can base a whole TV series on this, and perhaps call it "24".
What a bunch of claptrap. After all, Israel is way too small and (yes) too externally-dependent to be truly unilateral.
A closer inspection reminds us that our tiny nation was set up yes, by the sweat and blood of many (and the suffering of others - Jewish and Arab) - but also by a 1917 letter from a certain British Foreign Secretary, and by a 1947 UN General Assembly (not even Security Council) resolution. Economically, we have never really been independent. In the 1950’s and 1960’s we were bailed out by German Holocaust reparations. Since then, it was Americans who have funded our war-and-Occupation machinery, and US-based corporations who jump-started our hi-tech industry by setting up local branches. And all along, generous Diaspora Jews have funded much of our social services and infrastructure, allowing our government to neglect many of its duties. So yes, we are strong and brave and smart and funny and sexy and sassy; but without continued life-support from the West we wouldn’t be able to pursue our current path. I am not saying we couldn’t survive; but we would have to very drastically change things.
So it’s time to re-examine the "Doesn't matter what the Goyim say..." and "unilateralists in our DNA..." truisms mentioned just a few paragraphs ago.
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In truth, for every major move we did, we have gotten Western approval and support – either in advance or in retrospect, either openly or tacitly. Let us begin at the Original Sin: the Nakba, through which a majority of Palestinians became refugees. While everyone argues about "who left, who was kicked out, etc. etc." (I’ll leave that aside for now), very few remember that young victorious Israel actually sat in 1949 at the multilateral table, ready (not willing, but ready) to accept the verdict of seeing anywhere from one-third to possibly a majority of the 750,000 or so displaced Palestinians return into its territory. This is according to Benny Morris, based on internal Israeli government minutes. The occasion was the Lausanne Conference of 1949.
At the conference Israel initially floated the number 100,000 - considered laughably small by everyone else - expecting to be forced to eventually allow more back. But for some reason, the conference adjourned without any decision, and the refugees never returned. World powers, so forthright in their Partition decision only two years earlier – obtained over the protests of all Arab and Muslim countries - have suddenly lost their wills to impose anything upon tiny, broke, one-year-old Israel. Unilateralism? I think not.
Incidentally, that is how we got that mega-slum of misery, this extremist hotbed known as the Gaza Strip: over 70% there are refugees. And Israel's government, emboldened by the Western carte blanche, proceeded in 1950-51 to clear whatever remained of southwest Israel’s Palestinians – Majdal, the Fallouja pocket, etc., all this region where rockets land nowadays (and where I, by the way, own a home) – right into that very same Strip. No, it wasn’t unilateral. It was "multilateral minus one", with the wink and the nod of powers-that-be, and at the exclusion of one side for whom the decisions were made.
So this is the pattern that emerges. Multilateral minus one. In 1956, same story, only more clear-cut: Israel conspires with Britain and France to attack Egypt. We would never have done it alone. Unfortunately, there were others (including the US) who felt they were at the "minus" end of things that time – and so Eisenhower forced us to retreat from the Sinai after a few months of hanging around there. Our lesson from that episode was to coordinate things better with Washington. On to the 1967 war: I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t some sort of touch-base going on with the White House: something along the lines of "go ahead, we got your back".
See, taking down Nasser was a valuable service Israel did to the West. In Israel we are raised on Nasser the evil extremist idiot, who talked big and couldn’t deliver. But historically Nasser was among the founders of the Non-Aligned movement, coiners of the term "the Third World". The big names in this movement were Tito, Nehru and Nasser – with Nasser perhaps the most popular and charismatic across much of Africa and Asia. In spite of being formally non-aligned, they were quite openly anti-American and anti-West. And they were a pain in the butt with serious potential for changing the global power balance. Along comes tiny Israel, a speck of a Jewish country, and takes Nasser down single-handedly.
Look at what President Johnson said after the 1967 war: (watch out! Wingnut link - sometimes they are useful)
If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision [by Nasser] that the Strait of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent maritime passage must be preserved for all nations [referring to Israel's right in this case].
[note the historical irony: I wonder what Johnson would say nowadays about years, not days, of complete Israeli blockade on Gaza. Actually there’s no need to wonder. Johnson would surely have found the verbal acrobatics to excuse and dismiss Arab grievances while trumpeting Israeli ones. It’s par for the course.]
Johnson’s tone is eerily similar to what Bush and Condi and co. said and did on Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2009, and what Reagan said and did on Lebanon 1982.
So in summary: Israel’s approach to its surrounding is not unilateral. Rather, Israel’s leaders build partnerships with the West around specific "projects" they are interested in, "projects" designed to reshape Israel’s geopolitical environment (or to preempt change in an unwanted direction). The Arab side – nowadays, this usually means the Palestinians – is slated as a third-part target to be maneuvered around, to be outsmarted, to be painted into a corner, to be played out of the game, to be crushed. Never to be dealt with as neighbors; difficult neighbors perhaps, but ones who belong in the region, who have legitimate interests and needs and grievances.
The 20-year Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" fits into this pattern perfectly. In spite of some multilateral potential during the super-short Rabin years, for most of the time Israel has been engaging in a "peace process" with the West: convincing the West that the ball lies on the Palestinian side, and hence whatever we choose to do in the meantime is justified (or at least, doesn’t matter either way). Specifically, it is now widely agreed that the 2000 "Barak generous proposals" (man, how good lies refuse to die) were not really palatable to the Palestinian side. Arguably, the case can be made that they were even designed to be unacceptable to them. Rather, the main goal was to convince America that we have "walked the extra mile", as President Clinton indeed duly noted - and obtain full backing for the unraveling of the Oslo framework, in order to introduce a framework more favorable to Israel (per the judgment of our political-military leaders, that is). Which is what happened.
Israel has scored many short- and medium-term victories with this "multilateral minus one" strategy. But as time went on, the victories have become few and far between. They are increasingly crowded out by a lethal combination of inevitable blowbacks (classic examples: the Intifadas in the West Bank and Gaza, and the rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon), and the Arab side coming up with their own versions for our "minus one" tricks (e.g., the 1973 war).
More frighteningly, in decades of hard work we have cemented our regional image as a foreign implant, a domineering and dishonest Western outpost in the Middle East. And we have helped create a wall of hatred and distrust between The West – especially America – and the Arab public, who is beyond sick and tired of being sweet-talked time and again by Western leaders, only to be betrayed and tricked and humiliated the next moment when Israel’s new "multilateral minus one" trick is unveiled.
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With all this, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is one major, shining exception to this pattern. A case when genuine multilateralism actually happened to Israel, way back in the late 1970’s. It involved a very brave and talented Arab leader; a fresh (right-wing!) Israeli premier, who – having sat in the power-excluded opposition for 30 years – was probably not well-versed in our foreign policy conventional wisdom; and, last but not least, an American President really committed to bringing peace rather than f&*&%ing around in pretend games. The end result was a lasting peace treaty with the country then considered Israel’s most bitter and dangerous enemy, at a price considered fair and realistic by pretty much everyone.
That President, Jimmy Carter, has just come out with a book explaining how to make peace in the Middle East.
[aside: one can only guess what would happen if Carter would have won a second term. Would he have caught on to Israel's "minus-one" interpretation of the West Bank and Gaza parts of the peace treaty, which turned them into dead letter? And if so, what would he have done? We'll never know, we got Reagan instead and the rest is history.]
So where are we now? A new US administration (good). An interesting combination of multilateralists on both ends – Obama and Mitchell; and status-quo "minus-one" hands in the middle – Clinton and Emmanuel. A bunch of contradictory public commitments to all sides. And a very clear and marked party - Hamas, and by extension the Palestinian public (as we've just seen in a very bloody manner) - sitting in the excluded "minus-one" spot.
Note to the Obama foreign-policy team:
Read and memorize Carter’s new book, and - perhaps more important - do the same with his other books describing how peace between Israel and Egypt was achieved.
In fact, put the books under your pillows every night.
And don’t even THINK about continuing this travesty of "multilateral-minus-one diplomacy".