Are there partners for peace in the leadership of Israel and Palestine? Looking at the current leadership of the Palestinians and Israelis, one might be tempted to answer no. Up until now, it has been the unholy alliance of Netanyahu and Hamas that has driven the narrative, and they are still very much in control of what happens on the ground. It would be completely reasonable to say that Netanyahu and Hamas have been successful in their goals of making a two-state solution and peace seem like an impossibility.
However, things are changing as a result of the twin horrors of October 7th and the Gaza War. The US can play a critical part in determining whether this change will result in a better future or a complete disaster. I am writing this from the perspective of US interests in the region. I believe those interests are best served by a just peace that guarantees security and control of their own destinies for both Israelis and Palestinians. Anything less would be a grave threat to stability and our regional relations. It would also provide an opening for China and Russia in the Middle East and the entire Global South. Biden is dealing with a crisis, the outcome of which will have a huge impact on our foreign policy in ways all of which we can’t yet even predict.
Israeli partners for peace
I won’t waste any words on how horrible Netanyahu and his band of racist thugs are, as it appears they may soon be history. Suffice it to say his governing coalition included this guy as Minister of National Security:
Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me.
Israeli polls are predicting a wipeout for the far-right. However, the election is not happening today. Netanyahu still has time to create the kind of security and economic chaos that might allow him to survive again.
Election poll shows Gantz at 43 seats, Netanyahu’s Likud at 18, Smotrich out
Wartime survey finds coalition parties would crash to 41 seats, opposition parties would skyrocket to 79; respondents prefer Gantz to Netanyahu as PM, 52%-27%
Right now, it appears Benny Gantz will be Israel’s next PM.
Gantz’s central demand for entering the government was the creation of a narrow “war cabinet” that would direct the conflict, a stipulation designed to give him significant influence on the decision-making process and to reduce that of the coalition’s far-right Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties. The former defense minister and IDF chief of staff appears to have been successful in both respects.
The good news is it seems a Gantz government would not include the violent settler extremists, and Gantz has said he would institute a settlement freeze. Gantz is no liberal; he has supported strengthening existing settlement blocs and has been vague about his position on a two-state solution, but he is still light years better than Netanyahu. His willingness to freeze settlements will get the Palestinians back to the negotiating table and get a peace process restarted.
Palestinian partners for peace
88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas presides over a Palestinian Authority and PLO he has hollowed out. He has eliminated opponents, surrounded himself with his corrupt cronies, and isolated the governing authority from the Palestinian people. The Palestinian Legislative Council has been shut down since 2007. After years of zero progress toward a Palestinian state or improving life in the West Bank, he is now despised by the Palestinians as an impotent cog in the hated Israeli Occupation System. Abbas has failed to deliver anything to the West Bank. Each year, more Palestinian families are dispossessed, more settlements go up, and life gets more impossible.
Part of this is due to Abbas's corruption and incompetence. But it is also the result of a three-pronged Israeli strategy to make a two-state solution impossible by weakening the PA, strengthening Hamas, and supporting violent settlers expelling Palestinians. That strategy has been a smashing success. While the PA is on the verge of collapse, there are now 700k settlers, and Hamas has grown so strong and sophisticated that it was able to send 1,000s of fighters over the border to massacre Israelis and take hostages. Hamas is also poised to exploit the power vacuum and seething frustrations in the West Bank. Peace and a Palestinian state have never seemed further away. Can Netanyahu now declare mission accomplished?
Look at what Palestinians in the West Bank are now seeing
- Hamas has managed to bring the deal between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US, which would have left Palestinians out in the cold, to a screeching halt because of the war in Gaza. Likely, future negotiations must now include discussions of a state for Palestinians.
- Saudi leader MBS was on the phone with the President of Iran, discussing how they could deal with Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. The Saudis talking to the Iranians? It would have been impossible before the Gaza war.
- Residents of the West Bank are now celebrating the release of prisoners from Israeli prisons, including scenes of many children who were imprisoned being reunited with families. Was Abbas instrumental in their release? He had nothing to do with it. Hamas forced Israel to release the prisoners in exchange for hostages they took.
Two years ago, when violence and protests erupted in the West Bank
Unlike the PA, which released sternly-worded statements against Israel’s policing of Al-Aqsa and attempts by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of families from a nearby neighborhood, Deif issued an ultimatum. When time ran out, Hamas fired long-range rockets that disrupted an Israeli parade celebrating its claims to the city.
...it also allowed Hamas to portray itself as a wily defender of Jerusalem, to which both sides in the Middle East conflict have deeply emotional ties, and to say it had struck a blow against the far more powerful Israel.
Meanwhile, what has the PA accomplished? Zero.
Seems like the message that is going out to Palestinians is that talking to Israelis gets you more abuse and misery, but shooting at Israelis gets results. Wouldn’t rewarding the behavior you claim to want instead of the reverse make more sense?
The candidates to succeed Abbas, Hussein Al-Sheikh, Mohammed Dahlan, Tawfik al Tirawi, and Jibril Rajoub, are no more popular with the Palestinian people than Abbas, for the same reasons Abbas is so unpopular. Worse, they would all lose to Hamas in an election.
But the PA’s biggest weakness is that it has had to operate on a false assumption. When the PA itself was created in 1994, Palestinian leaders promoted it as a transitional body in a diplomatic process after the Oslo accords that would lead to statehood. Yet the collapse of any worthwhile peace diplomacy and the dwindling prospects of a two-state solution have deprived the PA of its raison d’etre.
Corrupt, discredited: could a reformed Palestinian Authority run Gaza?
That leaves a power vacuum that violent extremist groups like Hamas, and Islamic Jihad will be happy to fill. President Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that any plan for a future government in the Gaza Strip "must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority (PA)," on the path to a "Palestinian state." The US, which cut off funds to the PA long ago, has suddenly rediscovered its key role in any possible peace deal. For that to be possible, a Palestinian leader who can stand up to Hamas, who supports the Oslo Accords, and, most importantly, has the support of the Palestinian street is needed. Thankfully, there is such a person, but he has been in an Israeli jail since 2002.
Is Marwan Barghouti the key to peace?
According to polling, Marwan Barghouti would trounce Hamas and Abbas in an election. For Palestinians, he is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. A Fatah leader untainted by the corruption of Abbas and Arafat and sanctified in the eyes of Palestinians for his unwavering principled resistance to the occupation even while imprisoned and for his leadership in the first and second Intifadas.
Barghouti emerged as a leader in 1987 in the first Intifada and was deported to Jordan by Israeli authorities for his role. He returned in 1994 following the Oslo peace accords, which he enthusiastically supported. In 1996, Barghouti was elected to the new Palestinian Legislative Council and launched a campaign against human rights abuses by Arafat's security services and the rampant corruption among PA officials. At the same time, Barghouti established close contacts with Israeli politicians and members of Israel's peace movement, hoping to bring the Oslo Accords into reality.
The collapse of the Camp David negotiations confirmed Bargouti’s skepticism of Israel’s willingness to any land-for-peace deal. Disillusioned with the peace process, he once again turned his focus to armed resistance. Barghouti was now a Fatah leader and the chief of its armed wing, the Tanzim, founded to counter the influence on young Palestinians of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Barghouti led marches to Israeli checkpoints, where riots broke out against Israeli soldiers and spurred on Palestinians in speeches at funerals and demonstrations, condoning the use of force to expel Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” The second Intifada erupted with Barghouti in its center.
Barghouti was arrested by the Israel Defense Forces in 2002 in Ramallah. He was sentenced to 5 life sentences plus 40 years on what Palestinians believe were trumped-up charges. He spent 12 of those 20 years in solitary confinement.
“While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbor, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom,"
"I still seek peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967," — Marwan Barghouti
An editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz stated:
If Israel had wanted an agreement with the Palestinians it would have released him from prison by now. Barghouti is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced and he can lead his people to an agreement.
A collapse of the Palestinian Authority caused by infighting over succession among Abbas’ cronies would be a disaster for the peace process and a bonanza for Hamas and Netanyahu. The current PA is in no shape to take on governing Gaza; it is barely hanging on in the West Bank. It appears that Barghouti is the only Palestinian leader with the standing to return the PA to relevance and provide a popular alternative to Hamas.
Jailed Palestinian Leader Barghouti's Wife Lobbies International Leaders to Support His Bid to Lead Palestinian Authority After Abbas
Fadwa Barghouti met with Arab and international figures seeking support for her husband, Marwan Barghouti's release from Israeli prison, and his bid to replace longtime Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Barghouti has consistently been the clear favorite in polls, with particular support among younger Palestinians
The US needs partners for peace and does not want to find itself in the position of having to deal with Hamas as the only Palestinian leader left standing. The same amount of energy and money that was put into building up Hamas and destroying the PA by the Israeli government needs to be put into empowering a Palestinian leadership that has the support of Palestinians and believes in a two-state solution.
A ‘Palestinian Nelson Mandela’ could be exactly what the US is looking for to make the impossible possible.
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A few notes before the inevitable comments:
- The Palestinians did not turn down a deal for a Palestinian state. They rejected an Israeli-controlled South African-style Bantustan
- But Barghouti is a terrorist, and we don’t negotiate with terrorists!!!! - even if that were true, Israel has been funding and supporting terrorist Hamas for decades, which is certainly worse than negotiating with terrorists, so spare me the moral outrage.
- Barghouti is no Mandela. There are quite a lot of similarities between the two. Here is Mandela in his own words:
On the day he was released from prison, Nelson Mandela said: “The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement will be created soon so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle.”
“The carrying on of negotiations and rhetoric on peace while at the same time the government is conducting a war against us is a position we cannot accept,” Madiba declared at the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in September 1990.
Mandela was no Ghandi; like Barghouti, he embraced armed struggle when non-violence failed to produce results and was jailed for terrorism. Like Mandela, he may be the only figure with the authority to make a peaceful solution possible.