Seize the Moment (27 page)

Both American and Israeli interests would be best served by a settlement based on land for peace. If Israel retains the occupied territories, it will corrupt its moral cause. One of Israel's founders and a leader whom John Foster Dulles once described as an “Old Testament prophet,” David Ben-Gurion, rightly observed that the “extremists” who advocated the absorption of Arab lands would deprive Israel of its mission: “If they succeed, Israel will be neither Jewish nor democratic. The Arabs will outnumber us, and undemocratic,
repressive measures will be needed to keep them under control.” While the more than 4 million Israelis and the more than 1 million estimated Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union will exceed the 2 million Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories, it is destabilizing and dangerous to keep the Arabs captive. If Israel annexes these lands, its security problem will become a national problem, as intractable as those in multinational states such as Iraq and Yugoslavia. Israel would inevitably become a binational garrison state, thereby not only corrupting the spirit of the Jewish nation but also undermining the moral purpose that undergirds the U.S. commitment to its survival.

Ironically, Israel's current leaders appear reluctant to pursue peace at a time when the circumstances for striking the best deal are the best they have been in the forty-four years of Israel's existence as a nation.

—Iraq, crushed in war, isolated in the Arab world, and burdened by debt and reparations, can no longer pose a conventional offensive military threat to Israel.

—The PLO, discredited by its alliance with Saddam Hussein and cut off from former creditors such as Saudi Arabia, has lost its appeal for many Palestinians, as well as its supporters abroad.

—Syria, economically feeble and financially broke, can entertain no illusions after the Persian Gulf War that its Soviet-made weaponry could prevail against Israel.

—Jordan, squeezed between the twin threats of political radicalism and economic collapse, cannot pose a real threat to Israel and wants a deal that would restore its ties with the West after its support for Iraq in the Gulf War.

—Egypt, the only Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel and the principal moderate Arab power, has regained its position as the leader of the Arab world.

—Given the massive influx of Soviet émigrés into Israel—now arriving at a rate of 30,000 per month—Arab leaders know that this will be their last chance to prevent Israel's annexation of the territories through new settlements.

—Moscow, too preoccupied at home to play its traditional role as spoiler of the peace process, will have no choice but to follow whatever course the United States chooses.

Israel's strong hand will inevitably weaken over time. Exploiting Israeli obstinance, the PLO may rehabilitate its image. Syria will tap new sources of support among the Gulf states. Some leaders in the former Soviet Union could resuscitate the Kremlin's historical policy of seeking a foothold in the Middle East. As the death toll in the suppression of the Palestinian uprising surges past eight hundred, the erosion of Israel's political standing abroad will accelerate. The Israeli people—40 percent of whom now support talks with the PLO and would accept a Palestinian ministate in the occupied territories—appear to recognize that the status quo has become intolerable. Israel should negotiate now when it is stronger than any of its potential enemies rather than waiting until the increased strength of its enemies forces it to do so. The essence of successful statecraft is to strike a deal at the most favorable moment. For Israel, that time is now.

U.S. mediation is the sine qua non of success in the peace process. The idea that the issue should be turned over to the United Nations is a nonstarter. Israel will not—and should not—submit its fate to a stacked jury. Though U.N. forces have played a useful buffer role in other hot spots, their track record in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been abysmal. Four times U.N. troops have come to bat in the Middle East. In all four trips to the plate, they have struck out.

Many Israeli moderates, as well as the hard-liners, hesitate about accepting a land-for-peace deal. They suspect that the
return of land will be permanent but the peace will be temporary. They view skeptically the idea of international guarantees, especially since those offered after the 1948 and 1956 wars evaporated when the chips were down. They strongly believe that a prospective settlement must not depend on trust between the two sides. They are only partly right. No such trust exists or can be generated through a treaty. But a peace between adversaries is possible. This peace must be grounded in concrete security arrangements reinforced with a balance of power. A peace based on power is a sturdy one. If peace depends on trust, the peace disappears when the trust evaporates. If peace depends on power, the peace endures even in the absence of trust.

Any U.S.-mediated peace settlement must have four objectives: (1) full diplomatic recognition of Israel by its neighbors, (2) secure borders for Israel, (3) return to Arab states of territories captured in 1967, and (4) self-government for the Palestinians.

In the past, interim agreements—some of which have lasted more than fifteen years—have avoided the issue of Arab acceptance of Israel's existence. That is no longer acceptable. If Arab leaders will not accept the reality of Israel after forty-four years, they are interested not in a peace settlement, but in a temporary armistice.

Israel faces two potential threats that security arrangements must address—full-scale invasion by conventional forces and small-scale strikes by guerrilla and terrorist units. To cope with the conventional threat, the United States should work at two levels. First, if Israel agrees to return the occupied territories, we should enter a mutual security treaty with Israel stipulating that a conventional attack on Israel will be treated like an attack on the United States. After the Persian Gulf War, there can be no lingering doubts about our
willingness to fulfill such a pledge. We had no alliance with, no commitment to, and no deep sympathy for Kuwait. Yet we moved manpower equivalent to the population of two cities the size of Madison, Wisconsin, halfway around the world to free the country. Although President Bush had to lobby for votes on the Persian Gulf War resolutions in Congress, senators and congressmen would line up to support Israel.

Second, the United States needs to craft additional measures to ensure that the loss of land would not mean a loss of security for Israel. In all the returned territories, for example, conventional forces with offensive capabilities should be prohibited. The Golan Heights and the West Bank would in effect become buffer zones. While Syria might administer the Golan Heights and Jordan the West Bank, neither state could station military forces on these territories, thereby neutralizing their utility as a launching pad for invasion or harassing artillery strikes. We should also insist on a thinning out of Arab forces stationed along current cease-fire lines and on international or joint U.S.–Israeli–Arab League reconnaissance and early-warning stations in the territories to frustrate any plans to seize the buffer zone through a surprise attack. An international force—equipped not to observe, but to enforce the agreement by arms if necessary—could be deployed as well. With the right security measures, a land-for-peace deal can enhance rather than diminish Israel's physical security.

Confronting the guerrilla and terrorist threat will be more difficult. Israeli hard-liners argue that the return of the West Bank would allow irregular Palestinian forces to fire mortars—some of which are small enough to fit in a knapsack—on Israeli cities from positions a couple of miles across the border. That concern is genuine, but could be addressed with
security measures. Today, Israeli checkpoints along the cease-fire line with Jordan prevent the smuggling of small arms and munitions into the West Bank. There is no reason that a similar control regime—staffed partly by Israelis—could not remain in place on the ground, as well as at airports. Moreover, a peace settlement should explicitly recognize an Israeli right of retaliation in the event of unconventional attacks coming from the current occupied territories, thereby creating an incentive for Jordanian and Palestinian leaders to keep their own people in check.

To achieve Palestinian self-government, the United States should seek to resuscitate the Camp David formula—local Palestinian autonomy in association with Jordan phased in over a multiyear transition period. Although this means convincing King Hussein to retract his 1988 renunciation of the Jordanian claim to the West Bank, such flexibility is not unknown in Middle East diplomacy. In the meantime, elections should be held in the occupied territories to select Palestinian representatives for the peace talks. Israeli leaders have insisted on advance approval of those who might serve in that role and on blackballing anyone with any association—no matter how distant—with the PLO. That is unreasonable. We did not like negotiating with Stalin or his successors, but since they held power, we had to deal with them. Unless Israel comes to terms with its enemies, no peace agreement will enhance its security.

Both the Israeli and Palestinian hard-liners must abandon their ultimate aspirations. Although some adjustments in the pre-1967 control lines should be negotiated to provide secure borders for Israel, the Israelis must give up their settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In turn, Palestinians must accept the fact that refugees from the 1948 war—who together with their descendants now number 3 million—will not return to their homes in Israel proper. To an extent, the
PLO has already accepted that reality in public statements. At the same time, the Israeli settlers withdrawn from occupied territory and the Palestinians who lost their homes in Israel proper should be compensated for their property. We should persuade the Saudis and the Gulf states, as well as Japan, to provide the financial salve that will ease the sting of these concessions. The control of East Jerusalem—a neuralgic issue for both sides—cannot easily be settled. At a minimum, the Israelis should Vaticanize the Muslim and Christian holy places, but dividing the city along pre-1967 lines has become nonnegotiable.

A settlement with those general provisions would serve the core interests of both sides. Nothing is sacrosanct, however, about those particular security arrangements. They are only one possible approach. But we must recognize that it is possible for measures to be negotiated that will cope with the difficult security problems inherent in an Arab-Israeli land-for-peace deal.

Our tactics are another matter. We should not start the process by trotting out a comprehensive U.S. peace plan. Both sides will instantly shoot it down. Instead, we should engage in broad discussions with each side to explore their ideas for an adequate security framework. We should then determine what kind of settlement would be fair and feasible. Only after we identify the general outlines of such an agreement should we embark on the contentious task of crafting provisions and language for a formal treaty. At that point, we should lean on both sides for the needed concessions. Our leverage, though limited, is significant. Israel needs billions of dollars to facilitate the settlement of Soviet émigrés. The moderate Arab states—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Jordan—need U.S. arms sales and security cooperation. Saudi Arabia and Moscow can put pressure on Syria.

We should not impose a settlement but rather convince the
parties of the merits of its terms. In the power politics of Middle East diplomacy, that requires more than eloquent talking points. It also means pointedly reminding obstinate leaders of what the United States can do for and do to their countries. Progress in the peace process has come only when the parties believed the status quo was more painful than a potential compromise. While heavy-handed bullying would be counterproductive, we should remember that we have the leverage to
make
the status quo more painful than a proposed settlement.

As they approach the prospective Arab-Israeli peace talks, U.S. policymakers should observe five basic rules:

Emphasize substance, not process
. With the difficulty in convincing Arabs and Israelis to sit down at the conference table, the talks threaten to become bogged down in the minutiae of the process rather than grappling with the critical substantive issues. All leaders in the Middle East are masters at avoiding concessions by erecting procedural obstacles. The idea that a peace settlement can be reached if only both sides negotiate face-to-face is well intended, but totally unrealistic. The problem is not a lack of understanding between Israel and its neighbors. On the contrary, both understand each other too well. They want totally different things. The Arabs want land without peace. The Israelis want peace without giving up land. Israel and Syria do not have to meet face-to-face to understand that both want the Golan Heights.

Pursue a phased, not a comprehensive, agreement
. Progress in the peace process comes not in great strides, but in small steps. Each side will attempt to forge links between issues. Syria, for example, will not grant full recognition to Israel until movement takes place on the Palestinian issue. No single agreement will overcome every issue that has arisen during the years of tension that have divided the two
sides. It is therefore better to narrow the agenda early in the process to the key items that represent achievable and significant objectives.

Maintain strict secrecy in negotiations
. The American people instinctively agree with President Wilson's famous call for “open covenants, openly arrived at.” But secrecy is indispensable to success in the peace process. Unless covenants are arrived at secretly, there will be none to agree to openly. Without secrecy, none of the parties will feel free to float potential compromise formulas. If negotiating positions leak to the news media—thereby exposing leaders to attacks by domestic critics—both sides will instantly set their maximum demands in concrete.