Walter Russell Mead: The Middle East Peace Industry
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
George Mitchell (below) has arrived in Jerusalem and the ‘proximity talks’ have started, but it is not at all clear what will come of them.
The Middle East peace process is the longest running piece of diplomatic theater on the world stage. Dating from World War One, the effort to reconcile the aspirations of the Jews and the Arabs for statehood in the lands seized from the Ottoman Empire by the Allies in World War One and assigned to the British has inspired wave after wave of commission reports, diplomatic ventures, formal and informal negotiations direct and indirect between the parties, debates and resolutions in the League of Nations and the UN, passionate political debates within the region and beyond, one war after another, and waves of ethnic violence and terrorism by both Arabs and Jews.
The debate has always been between two general visions of the future of the land: a one-state solution in which the region’s Arab majority would establish a state with varying levels of possible protection and autonomy for the Jews (ranging from expulsion to some kind of confederal status) or a multi-state solution in which a Jewish state and one or more Arab states would divide the territory with varying levels of protection and guarantees for minorities caught on the ‘wrong’ side of the borders.
Classically, the Arabs have rejected partition plans, taking the view that the natural and historical majority of the people should be able to exercise the right of self determination and form a single state in Palestine. During the Oslo era, many (though never all) Palestinian leaders accepted the idea that the best realistic option would be a further partition of British Palestine into two states west of the Jordan River. (Jordan was carved out of Palestine earlier in the century; technically, what people now call the ‘two state solution’ should be called the ‘three state solution’: there would be one Jewish and two Arab states in the territory Britain took from the Ottomans in World War One.) Now there are signs that the two-state era in Arab politics is coming to an end, and that the next stage will see Arabs returning to the idea that there should be just one state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. On present demographic trends, this state would have a Palestinian majority sometime in the next generation or so; at that time the Jewish state of Israel would convert into the non-confessional state of Palestine and the future of the Jews would be the concern of the state.
This, I think it is safe to say, will never happen. The Jews resisted the Palestinian demand for a one state solution when the Jewish community in Palestine was weak, small, isolated and poor. They will resist it again when their state is rich, strong, technologically advanced and enjoying strong trade and political relations with several great powers...
Read entire article at American Interest (blog)
George Mitchell (below) has arrived in Jerusalem and the ‘proximity talks’ have started, but it is not at all clear what will come of them.
The Middle East peace process is the longest running piece of diplomatic theater on the world stage. Dating from World War One, the effort to reconcile the aspirations of the Jews and the Arabs for statehood in the lands seized from the Ottoman Empire by the Allies in World War One and assigned to the British has inspired wave after wave of commission reports, diplomatic ventures, formal and informal negotiations direct and indirect between the parties, debates and resolutions in the League of Nations and the UN, passionate political debates within the region and beyond, one war after another, and waves of ethnic violence and terrorism by both Arabs and Jews.
The debate has always been between two general visions of the future of the land: a one-state solution in which the region’s Arab majority would establish a state with varying levels of possible protection and autonomy for the Jews (ranging from expulsion to some kind of confederal status) or a multi-state solution in which a Jewish state and one or more Arab states would divide the territory with varying levels of protection and guarantees for minorities caught on the ‘wrong’ side of the borders.
Classically, the Arabs have rejected partition plans, taking the view that the natural and historical majority of the people should be able to exercise the right of self determination and form a single state in Palestine. During the Oslo era, many (though never all) Palestinian leaders accepted the idea that the best realistic option would be a further partition of British Palestine into two states west of the Jordan River. (Jordan was carved out of Palestine earlier in the century; technically, what people now call the ‘two state solution’ should be called the ‘three state solution’: there would be one Jewish and two Arab states in the territory Britain took from the Ottomans in World War One.) Now there are signs that the two-state era in Arab politics is coming to an end, and that the next stage will see Arabs returning to the idea that there should be just one state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. On present demographic trends, this state would have a Palestinian majority sometime in the next generation or so; at that time the Jewish state of Israel would convert into the non-confessional state of Palestine and the future of the Jews would be the concern of the state.
This, I think it is safe to say, will never happen. The Jews resisted the Palestinian demand for a one state solution when the Jewish community in Palestine was weak, small, isolated and poor. They will resist it again when their state is rich, strong, technologically advanced and enjoying strong trade and political relations with several great powers...