Writing in The New Yorker, David Remnick writes of President Obama, Israel, and Palestine:
Obama’s views are not mysterious. His political home is Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, where he came to know liberal Zionists and Palestinian academics, and to understand both the necessity of a Jewish state after the Second World War and the tragedy and the depths of Palestinian suffering.
The President has made mistakes on this issue: it was a mistake not to follow his historic speech in Cairo, in 2009, with a trip to Jerusalem. When it comes to domestic politics in Israel, he is in a complicated spot. For some Israelis on the right, his race and, more, his middle name make him a source of everlasting suspicion. Yet he is also a communicator of enormous gifts, capable both of assuring Israeli progressives and of reaching out to the anxious center. A visit to Israel, coupled with the presentation of a peace plan, would also help structure international support and clarify American interests. The Palestinian question is not an internal matter for Israel; it is an international matter.
But it's not enough just to go to Jerusalem and address the Knesset, Israel's parliament. The current Israeli government, for reasons that Remnick, in part, describes, is unlikely to embrace an American peace proposal. First, the ground must be prepared.
For my take on what this means, please follow me below the fold.
Bernie Avishai is our guide:
The point is, an Obama plan should be presented first to (and coordinated in advance with) the EU, the Quartet, the leaders of the OECD, and congressional leaders for that matter. It should be declared consistent with Olmert's offer and designed (as Olmert's offer was) to be "in the spirit" of the Arab League Initiative of 2002.
Its great victory would not be in (immediately) getting Israelis and Palestinians to yes, but in creating an international consensus which all sides, especially Netanyahu and Israeli leaders and journalists more generally, would have to contend with for the foreseeable future. Obama could make the plan concrete by, for example, offering to provide funding for the RAND Corporation's ARC project, tying a Palestinian state together with a transportation corridor, and offering Israeli infrastructure companies the chance to participate.
The purpose of presenting a plan now, in other words, would be to signal the Arab street, and the Israeli street, too, that America is committed to a new, coherent Middle East and that it has the world behind it. The plan's gravitas, which may take a year or two to sink in, would derive from its inherent fairness (based, as it is, on Olmert's and Abbas's 36 meetings), not on the predictable resistance of extremists to it. It would start a new political conversation, like the UN Partition resolution of 1947. It would signal all parties that the fate of Palestine is by no means Israel's internal affair, nor is the security of Israel merely a matter for the Israeli military.
The basis and essential elements of such a plan are not mysterious. The basis is the so-called two state solution, which long has been the international consensus. The essential elements have been spelled out on various occasions. For example: the December 2000
Clinton Peace Parameters; the January 2001
Taba negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators; the summer 2003 "
People's Voice" agreement between
Ami Ayalonand
Sari Nusseibeh; and the 2003
Geneva Accord, negotiated by senior, unofficial Israeli and Palestinian representatives.
The key points, taken from the summary of the Geneva Accord, are:
End of conflict. End of all claims.
Mutual recognition of Israeli and Palestinian right to two separate states.
A final, agreed upon border.
A comprehensive solution to the refugee problem.
Large settlement blocks and most of the settlers are annexed to Israel, as part of a 1:1 land swap.
Recognition of the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and recognition of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
A demilitarized Palestinian state.
A comprehensive and complete Palestinian commitment to fighting terrorism and incitement.
An international verification group to oversee implementation.
Because the refugee issue is particularly, contentious, in a reply to the Tip Jar, I'll post the complete Geneva Accord article regarding refugees.
Obviously, the United States cannot, and should not, dictate an end to the conflict. But the United States can, and should, play a leading role in bringing about its peaceful resolution.
Moreover, with the Afghanistan and Iraq unlikely to be examples of peace and reconciliation at the time President Obama runs for reelection, with the future of North Africa uncertain and Iran still en route to having nuclear weapons, Mr. Obama stands to benefit from being able to point to one, important conflict where he can be seen to be leading an internal consensus in favor of an intrinsically fair peace settlement, one that might begin to bear fruit during the campaign.