Steps to peace in the Middle East

Volume 5.22

Steven L. Spiegel is director of the Center for Middle East Development and professor of political science at the University of California Los Angeles and national scholar of Israel Policy Forum.  This article was originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on June 29, 2007.

Five years ago this week, President Bush laid out a vision of two states - Israel and Palestine - living in peace and security. That dramatic announcement was followed by a policy of benign neglect toward Israelis and Palestinians, punctured occasionally by a visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Jerusalem and Ramallah or of an Israeli prime minister to Washington, as occurred last week with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with President Bush. As events have demonstrated many times since that announcement, without decisive American leadership the situation in that region only gets worse.

Two weeks ago, it got worse still. Hamas' sudden takeover of Gaza places an unfettered militant Islamic fundamentalist group supported by Iran at Israel's gate and the West's edge.

At the White House last week, Bush and Olmert sought to strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who established a new Palestinian government based in the West Bank following Hamas' takeover of Gaza. The appointment this week of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as senior peace envoy for the Middle East is a significant step in this direction. However, it is critical that Blair become involved in negotiations for a provisional Palestinian state in the West Bank, so that he can deal with all relevant issues and current disputes. The decision to limit his mandate just to the Palestinian economy is a grievous error.

The assumption that a tranquil and successful West Bank would serve as a magnet that would bring Gaza back sounds fine in theory, but dramatic steps need to be taken as well. The United States should advise Israel to start by releasing Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Young Guard leader who is in jail in Israel for indirect engagement in the killing of Israeli citizens. It would shake up the Palestinian polity while strengthening Abbas.

For the same reason, we should continue to strongly support Israel's return of tax revenue to Palestine and advise Olmert to gradually release other prisoners and make concessions on the ground that Israel feels security concerns will permit. Abbas must respond by taking steps to ensure that the West Bank does not become a staging ground for terrorist attacks on Israel.

At the same time, the United States must work to put some flesh on the bones of the Arab League Peace Plan, which, for the first time, offers hope for normalization of Israel's relations with all Arab states. But all parties have trouble figuring out how to implement it.

Hamas' taking control of Gaza, which Israel left nearly two years ago, offers an opportunity for Arab states to demonstrate to Israel that its unilateral withdrawals do not result in greater threats to the Jewish state. If Egypt and Jordan take the lead in Arab League discussions with Israel as to how to control the potential Hamas threat, as they are starting to do this week, implementing the Arab League plan could begin.

A sine qua non is for Egypt to take charge of its border with Gaza once and for all, and to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. If Cairo does not accept this responsibility, an international force - or more likely Israel - would have to move in.

It is also time to take a second look at Hamas. Since its election in January 2006, Hamas has used its uneasy relationship with Fatah to maintain its ideological purity, failing to maintain a cease-fire with Israel or to control other Palestinian groups when it did, and refusing to accept international conditions on recognizing Israel, accepting past agreements and renouncing violence. Hamas left all that to Fatah.

Now that Hamas completely controls Gaza, it will be held accountable if Gaza's borders with Egypt and Israel continue to spin out of control. Developments in Gaza will be compared with what happens in the West Bank.

The United States should make it clear that all options toward Gaza - from military action to cease-fire to accommodation - will be weighed according to how Hamas behaves and will be on the table. Competition between two competing Palestines might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Another way to handle the Palestinian conundrum is for Israel to talk to Syria. Many Israelis favor talks with an apparently willing Bashar Assad to balance off the mess in Palestine and to encourage an end to Syrian support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbullah.

The Bush administration has taken the unprecedented step of trying to prevent such talks. The president seemed to back off this position during his meeting with Prime Minister Olmert by saying Israel didn't need American mediation with Syria. But that was far from even encouraging Israel to talk to Assad.

Olmert appears to be trying to explore the possibility through back channels with limited or no success. The debacle in Gaza intensifies the importance of at least trying to see whether Assad might be serious, particularly as a means of further isolating Hamas.

When Bush made his speech advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in June 2002, the United States had not yet invaded Iraq. It is testimony to the failure of that policy that during the five ensuing years, Palestine and its environs have become a microcosm of the larger region's instability and violence. It is time for a new strategy that might work; the old one has certainly failed.