Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

  Once upon a time, the term “Paris Peace Conference” was a serious one, and referred to the historic Versailles Conference that ended World War I. That conference began on January 18, 1919, and it is striking that the French would wish to make a mockery of their own history by convening a useless conference on almost exactly the same date—today, January 15. Today nearly 70 countries, and nearly 40 foreign ministers including the one from the United States, are gathering in Paris. Why? Well, why not—from the point of view of the foreign ministers. You do have to sit through an entire day of boring speeches, of course, but then you get the whole weekend in Paris. I’ll bet most arrived Friday for a good dinner, then you have Saturday free for shopping, then another dinner….who would say no merely because the event will be useless or harmful to the cause of peace? For John Kerry this is his swan song, and he is fresh from Vietnam where he walked down memory lane yet again, at God knows what cost to American taxpayers. But thinking of Kerry should lead us to recall who will be engaged in this event. There is Kerry, who will be unemployed in five days. There is French President Francois Hollande, who has announced he won’t even run for re-election in May. There is Palestinian President Abbas, elected in 2005 for a four year term and now entering his 12th year. And Abbas won’t actually be at the conference, just nearby in some gorgeous hotel suite. Israel is boycotting the conference. No one will represent the new American administration. What is the point of this endeavor? According to the French, it is to show support for the two-state solution and urge both parties, meaning Israel and the PLO, to negotiate. That is a demonstration of bias, because it is the PLO not Israel that has been refusing negotiations and rejecting peace plans again and again for years—indeed decades. To treat the government of Israel and the PLO as if their desire for peace were identical is wrong and unfair. If the participants at the conference truly wished to advance peace, they would be pressuring the Palestinians to stop rewarding and inciting terrorism by glorifying terrorists, and pressuring them to start negotiating seriously. This will not happen. There is every reason to believe Mr. Abbas will leave Paris satisfied with the circus and feeling zero real pressure to do anything at all. The other point, perhaps the real point, of the conference is to pressure Israel to stop all settlement growth. In this sense it is a follow-up to UN Security Council resolution 2334 of December, and shares its conclusion that the real barrier to peace is the increasingly rapid, uncontrollable, endless, limitless growth of Israeli settlements. But this is false, as the statistics show. Settlement populations are growing, at about four percent a year, but the notion that they are rapidly gobbling up the West Bank and making peace impossible is a fiction. There may be a third objective for the conference: pressing President-Elect Trump not to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We can expect language about leaving Jerusalem as a final status issue and doing nothing at all that changes the status quo. If you believe the President-Elect will be dissuaded by such a declaration from a conference such as this, well, I don’t agree. So the conference will soon be nearly forgotten, and go down as yet another feeble effort to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Of course if you ask the French, they will angrily deny that this was their purpose. I agree that it was not the purpose, but it is the effect, predictably. Like Resolution 2334, it is another diplomatic blow against the Jewish State, trying to isolate it and criticize it and undermine its ideological and diplomatic defenses. And meanwhile, this very month, we will see the PLO pay more money to prisoners convicted of terrorist acts and name more schools or parks or squares after murderers and would-be murderers. But there will be no Paris conference about all of that.  

What happens when UN Security Council resolutions are ignored? That depends, really—on whether you are any of 192 other members of the United Nations, or are Israel. Defenders of Israel often claim that it is treated differently by the United Nations from any other nation. That claim is accurate, and a brief look at Lebanon offers some proof. It continues to violate Security Council resolutions, year after year—but no one complains, and no one ever argues that Lebanon must be punished with boycotts or prosecutions for doing so. In fact they are often congratulated for their defiance. The United Nations Security Council has been saying for decades that the Government of Lebanon must exercise control of its territory. Resolution 1559 of 2004 “Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and “Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.” By “Lebanese militias” the UN was referring to Hezbollah, but dared not speak its name. In any event, the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1583 was adopted unanimously in 2005 and in it the Security Council   Reiterates its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries and under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon;   Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it….   As the French ambassador said about that resolution when it was adopted, “in keeping with the present demands of the United Nations, Lebanon must extend its authority throughout the south, in particular, by expanding and deploying its forces and by disarming the militias.” But the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1701 of 2006, adopted to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah,   Welcomes the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the Government of Lebanon…to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon….   Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory…for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.... Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel….   But the Government of Lebanon paid no attention, or more accurately was unwilling to comply because it was afraid. In the last week of December, 2016, Lebanon got a new government under Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and as is customary the new Cabinet issued a “Ministerial Statement” outlining its plans. Those plans openly defied the Security Council’s many resolutions on Lebanon and bowed to Hezbollah pressure. Here are the relevant lines:   In our conflict with the Israeli enemy, we will spare no effort or resistance in order to liberate the remaining occupied Lebanese territory, and to protect our homeland from an enemy who still covets our land, our water and our resources….The Government affirms the right of Lebanese citizens to resist the Israeli occupation, repel the Israeli aggressions and recapture the occupied territories.   Note that it does not say the government of Lebanon has the right to resistance, or the state, or the Army, which would at least have endorsed the authority of the state in principle. The actual language legitimizes Hezbollah as a state within a state and legitimizes its military operations outside the control of the state. It was approved because Hezbollah demanded this, and the opposing forces (who got no visible Western support) were too weak to prevent it. So Lebanon is in violation of Security Council resolutions, and deliberately so. There was plenty of discussion about this issue--what exactly would the Ministerial Statement say about Hezbollah and its "right" to arms--and some key figures resisted the language Hezbollah wanted. But Hezbollah got its way (on this and several other key issues). What was the U.S. reaction? Here it is, from the White House:   The United States congratulates Prime Minister Hariri on the Lebanese parliament’s approval of his cabinet on December 28….The United States stands steadfast in its support for a strong, stable, prosperous, and sovereign Lebanon as the new government works to strengthen state institutions, prepare for timely national elections, and uphold and implement Lebanon’s international commitments.   But of course the Lebanese government had just announced, very clearly, that it was NOT going to “uphold and implement Lebanon’s international commitments.” Now, some critics will say this is not comparable to the situation in Israel and the new Resolution 2334 on Israeli settlements, because the Netanyahu government has the power to act to freeze settlements. Why does it not do so? Ah, well, it’s a coalition government and some members of the coalition would oppose a freeze; indeed they would leave the coalition over this and the government might well collapse. But that’s pretty much the situation in Lebanon. “Hariri cabinet capitulates to Hezbollah demand” was the headline in Gulf News. Had Hariri not agreed, he’d never have become prime minister or his new government would have collapsed. Of course the two situations are not comparable-- not when you consider that Hezbollah is a murderous terrorist group that kills people every day, and was likely involved in killing Saad Hariri’s father Rafik in 2005. As the New York Times reported in 2015 about Rafik Hariri’s murder by car bomb and the UN tribunal investigating that event, “the tribunal is producing overwhelming, albeit circumstantial, evidence that Hezbollah murdered the most important politician Lebanon had ever produced, and indiscriminately slaughtered many others in the process.” So one can sympathize with Saad Hariri and other Lebanese politicians when they bow to Hezbollah. The people who might leave Netanyahu’s cabinet will go home, not pick up machine guns and plant car bombs. But the fact remains that Lebanon is defying the Security Council very clearly and very deliberately, and no one says a word about it (except to applaud). No one is threatening a boycott of Lebanese goods until it complies. No one is suggesting that Lebanese politicians are violating international law by their complicity with and now official defense of Hezbollah. And actually, some pressure from the West might be useful in empowering and emboldening Lebanese politicians who are trying to resist Hezbollah, and risking their lives by doing so. But that’s not the point here. The point is that plenty of countries defy the UN but in very, very few cases is this even noticed, and in fewer still is anyone punished. Israel remains a special case, whose maltreatment in the UN is a disgrace—and one that, until the Obama administration decided to allow Resolution 2334 to pass, the United States fought and prevented in the Security Council. It may be a vain hope that the UN will depart from past practices and stop persecuting Israel, but it seems very likely that under the Trump administration the United States will return to past practices and defend Israel again. That would be a good start for 2017.  

Since the adoption last week the Security Council resolution on Israel, I’ve had my say in The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post condemning the Obama administration’s decision to allow the resolution to pass. The resolution rewards the PLO for refusing to negotiate and adopts its tactic of replacing serious, face-to-face negotiations with useless dramas in New York. It is a danger to Israel. And by refusing to veto, the Obama administration abandoned the usual American practice of defending Israel from what Jeane Kirkpatrick called "the jackals" at the United Nations. Over this past weekend, administration spokesmen have tried to defend this abandonment of Israel in truly Orwellian terms, inverting the meaning of their action. This was done to help Israel, you see, and to defend it; we know better where its interests lie than does its elected government (and main opposition parties); we abandoned Israel because we are its friend. These were main themes of the President’s aide Ben Rhodes when he spoke to reporters Friday, and among other things said the following, describing:   a resolution that expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity....this is consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy as it relates to settlements....one of our grave concerns is that the continued pace of settlement activity -- which has accelerated in recent years, which has accelerated significantly since 2011....   let’s be clear here: We exhausted every effort to pursue a two-state solution through negotiations, through direct discussions, through proximity discussions, through confidence-building measures, through a lengthy and exhaustive effort undertaken by Secretary Kerry earlier in the President’s second term. We gave every effort that we could to supporting the parties coming to the table. So within the absence of any meaningful peace process, as well as in the face of accelerated settlement activity that put at risk the viability of a two-state solution, that we took the decision that we did today to abstain on this resolution.... where is the evidence that not doing this is slowing the settlement construction?   If you enjoyed the children’s exercise where the child is asked to find all the things wrong in a picture--signs upside down, dogs with horns, etc--you will enjoy pondering Mr. Rhodes’s misleading narrative. Yes, the resolution "expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity," which calls them illegal, and that is the point: until the Obama administration, the United States’s position was that they were unhelpful but not illegal. Therefore the resolution is not "consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy." As to the pace of settlement activity, Mr. Rhodes is simply wrong. I’ve reviewed the statistics here, in Foreign Policy. There, Uri Sadot and I concluded that   A careful look into the numbers shows that neither the population balance between Jews and Palestinians, nor the options for partition in the West Bank have materially changed....Israeli population in the settlements is growing, but at a rate that reflects mostly births in families already there, and not in-migration of new settlers.   In fact settlement growth has not "accelerated significantly" since 2011, whatever Mr. Rhodes says. His most disingenuous remark is about the failure of negotiations. Indeed the Obama/Kerry efforts failed, because the Palestinians refused to come to the table even when Israel undertook a ten-month construction freeze. One of Mr. Obama’s officials, Martin Indyk, said this in 2014 about those negotiations:   "Netanyahu moved to the zone of possible agreement. I saw him sweating bullets to find a way to reach an agreement," said Indyk. Abbas, for his part, did not show flexibility, Indyk added. "We tried to get Abu Mazen to the zone of possible agreement but we were surprised to learn he had shut down."   So what is to be done when the Palestinians refuse to negotiate? Punish Israel. Join the jackals in Turtle Bay. Adopt the PLO view that action in the United Nations will replace face-to-face talks. That was Mr. Obama’s decision. Mr. Rhodes’s twisted formulation "where is the evidence that not doing this is slowing the settlement construction?" is a kind of epitaph for Obama policy. He explained: "we have a body of evidence to assess how this Israeli government has responded to us not taking this kind of action, and that suggests that they will continue to accelerate the type of settlement construction that puts a two-state solution at risk." Settlements expand if we veto resolutions, he is saying, so we have decided not to veto resolutions. This is precisely wrong, a true inversion of the truth. The Obama account of settlement expansion is invented and avoids the facts to build a case against Israel. Netanyahu is not popular among settlers exactly because he has restrained settlement growth and as noted adopted a ten-month freeze. In 2009 Hillary Clinton said "What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements ... is unprecedented." What has been the Obama reaction to his restraint, to his freeze, to the PLO refusal to negotiate? The reaction has been to blame Israel and assault Netanyahu year after year, including with childish epithets. And this attitude culminated finally in the abandonment of Israel at the United Nations. Supporters of strong Israel-American relations can only be glad that the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms in the White House.

The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to vote today (Thursday, December 22) on an Egyptian-sponsored resolution on Israeli settlement activity. Egypt, the Arab representative on the Security Council right now, pulled the resolution this morning, so there will be no vote. There are several mysteries here, including why Egypt did that, and how President Obama planned to vote: yes, abstain, or veto. First, it’s important to realize just how bad the resolution was. Here’s part: The Security Council--   ■ "Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution."   ■ "Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." ■ "Calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967."   Why is this so bad? The first paragraph above calls all settlement activity illegal under international law. That could have an impact in Europe and elsewhere in how Israeli settlers and officials are treated. Are they all criminals? Can they be brought before the International Criminal Court? Prosecuted in local courts? The second paragraph refers to East Jerusalem, and suggests that all Israeli housing construction must stop--even including construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. That’s madness. The third paragraph above, treating everything beyond the old "Green Line" or 1949 armistice line as illegal and demanding that all states do so, begs for boycotts. It logically means that any product from East Jerusalem, the Golan, or the West Bank be boycotted and prevented from being sold. So it would be a terrible, unfair, unbalanced resolution and one with the potential to damage Israel. That’s one reason an American veto should have been automatic--but it wasn’t. The Obama administration refused to say whether it would veto, and I’ve been told by some well-informed journalists that it would not have vetoed. This would have been Mr. Obama’s parting shot after eight years of tension with Israel. Refusal to veto would also have violated decades of American policy that calls for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the only way forward to peace. The President-Elect recognized this, and Mr. Trump said   The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed. As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.   I had actually thought Mr. Obama would veto, because a refusal to do so would certainly do damage to his party--a party that has suffered electoral defeats at the congressional and state level throughout his presidency. But if the information I received was right, he was more interested in departing with another smack at Israel. The remaining question is why President Sisi withdrew the resolution. Press reports all say it was Israeli pressure, which is a negative way of saying he did so because he values Egyptian-Israeli bilateral relations and was asked to pull the resolution by Prime Minister Netanyahu. That’s a good thing; the United States should itself value cooperative Israeli-Egyptian relations. Others have suggested that Sisi wanted to avoid a confrontation with the incoming Trump administration, which was clearly against this text. That’s also a good thing. But note this: none of the news stories suggest the Egyptians acted because of the Obama administration. Just as with the Russian-Turkish-Iranian meeting to discuss Syria (The New York Times’s story began "Russia, Iran, and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday to work toward a political accord to end Syria’s nearly six-year war, leaving the United States on the sidelines...."), the Obama administration apparently played no role in Egypt’s decisions. In large part this is because the Obama administration has left friends confused as its objectives and foes without fear of consequences for opposing the United States. Defenders of the administration will say it’s just lame duck status that explains the lack of concern for the wishes of the White House, but I can’t agree. At the very end of the George W. Bush administration, there was a vigorous negotiation in the Security Council over a resolution on the fighting in Gaza, and the United States was at the center of it--right up into January, 2009. Now it’s December, 2016 and we are being ignored. That’s the result of eight years of policy choices, not lame duck status.    

This past week the United Nations General Assembly commemorated once again the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" and took the occasion to pass six anti-Israel resolutions. Ranging from the despicable to the absurd, these resolutions of course have nothing to do with reality in the Middle East, nor do they bring peace one minute closer. Let’s take a look at one--the resolution entitled "The Syrian Golan." This resolution (formally known as Agenda item 34 or document A/71/L.8) had many cosponsors. They included, and I quote, such world leaders as "Bolivia (Plurinational State of)" and "Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)," plus Zimbabwe, Comoros, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and of course a bunch of Arab states. The heart of the resolution is this: The General Assembly   Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and its de facto annexation constitute a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region...   Demands once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967 in implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions;   What precisely would happen were Israel tomorrow morning to withdraw from what the UN calls "the Syrian Golan?" Would Islamic State try to overrun it and slaughter Druze living there? Would Iranian-backed militias take part of it? More likely, would the butcher Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian-backed army try to seize it? Or, most likely of all, would Hezbollah forces seize it? How would that affect the people living there? Or the people living in northern Israel? Or the people living across the border from the Golan in Jordan? It seems that neither "Bolivia (Plurinational State of)" nor "Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)" cares much. But who voted against this mindless resolution? According to the UN, there was "a recorded vote of 103 in favour to 6 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United States), with 56 abstentions." Amazing, isn’t it? The United States and Canada joined Israel--and got the support of three tiny Pacific island nations. That means the nations of the EU abstained; not one single European country could bring itself to acknowledge the truth about this resolution. The UN press release notes this, though:   The representative of Syria thanked Member States that had voted in favour of the resolutions....the favourable vote sent a clear message to Israel that its killing, settlement expansion and forcible annexation of land ran counter to international principles.   It’s hard to think of a better example of why the United Nations has become the theater of the absurd. The representative of a regime that rules perhaps ten percent of Syria and has murdered half a million of its own people, including with poison gas, condemns Israel for its "killing." The General Assembly spends a day passing six resolutions denouncing Israel. And representatives of democracies all around the world hide and abstain.

It is about one week before the Seventh General Congress of the Fatah party in Ramallah. 1,400 members will participate, but very few people outside Fatah care. As Avi Issacharoff writes in an excellent article in The Times of Israel,   How does the Palestinian public regard this congress? With a great deal of indifference, and in some cases outright hostility. Fatah has not managed to improve its status or image in the public’s eyes over the past several years....   The gathered apparatchiks will elect members of the movement’s two most powerful bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council--but just reflect for a moment over those names, "Central Committee" and "Revolutionary Council." The terms are relics of the movement’s pro-Soviet past and of its birth during the Cold War. And Fatah has completely failed to make the change to becoming a modern political party. The old Arafat machine remains a corrupt system dominated by a few aging figures, with Mahmoud Abbas, now 82--Palestinian Authority president, PLO chairman, and Fatah chairman--at the top. Moreover, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are completely at odds with the Arab world’s most important governments, in part over Abbas’s banning of his rival Mohammed Dahlan. As Issacharoff wrote,   A severe, unprecedented crisis has broken out between the Palestinian Authority and the moderate Arab world. Abbas is close to cutting off relations with the Sunni Arab states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia first among them. Cairo stands behind Dahlan and encourages his various activities. Saudi Arabia has suspended its financial aid to the PA. The United Arab Emirates is giving Dahlan official protection, and Jordan could not care less about what happens in Ramallah.   My own conversations during a recent trip to the Gulf suggested that the Issacharoff analysis is on the mark. Abbas, despite his age, has no plans to lay down the reins--ever. The party congress next week will lead to more bitterness as those pushed aside revolt against their new and diminished status. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the PA-PLO-Fatah system is increasingly repressive, destroying freedom of the press and using the PA security forces against perceived enemies. Popular support, which has been low for years, continues to decline. As ABC News reported,   With the long-ruling Palestinian Fatah faction torn by rivalries, fierce shootouts between Palestinian security forces and Fatah-aligned gunmen have erupted in recent months, plunging the Balata [refugee] camp into unrest and lawlessness. The violence, much of it directed at a Fatah leadership seen as corrupt and out of touch, comes as the movement prepares to hold an overdue leadership conference at the end of the month and reflects a combustible power struggle....   During a recent conference in the Gulf, I listened to Americans, Europeans, and Arabs discuss the major problems of the Arab world: Iran’s growing power, the Russian role, the diminution of American strength and involvement under the Obama administration, the crisis in Syria...and not a word about the Palestinians. Correction: one word, from a BBC journalist who called the Palestinian issue a "core" issue for the region. Like Fatah’s leaders, she is living in the past.

Everyone knows that because Arab population growth rates in Israel and the West Bank far exceed Jewish ones, the percentage of the population that is not Jewish will rise steadily.  The only problem with that statement is that it is not true. As The Times of Israel has just reported,   The fertility rates of Jewish and Arab women were identical for the first time in Israeli history in 2015, according to figures released by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday....Jewish and Arab women had given birth to an average of 3.13 children as of last year....   The explanation is a sharp drop in Arab Israeli birth rates while Jewish birth rates have been rising: "In 2000, the fertility among the country’s Arab population stood at 4.3 children per woman, while the fertility rate of Jewish women was 2.6. Since then the gap has narrowed as the Arab rate dropped off and the Jewish fertility rates steadily increased." This high fertility rate is not simply an artifact of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox or Haredi population; the non-Haredi fertility rate is 2.6.  (This is, by the way, a far higher fertility rate than that of American Jews, which is 1.9; the replacement rate is 2.3.) The overall Israeli Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 also suggests that the population balance between Israel and the West Bank will not change: "Palestinian fertility on the West Bank has already fallen to the Israeli fertility rate of three children per woman, if we believe the Palestine Ministry of Health numbers rather than the highly suspect Central Bureau of Statistics data. In 1963, Israeli Arab women had eight or nine children; today they have three, about the same as Israeli Jews." What are the political implications? Whatever they are, the debate must begin with facts rather than assumptions--including facts about population growth.    

What are Israelis and Palestinians thinking about their own situations, about each other, and about peace? Two new October polls give us additional insight. Tel Aviv University has just put out its “Peace Index.” There we learn that Israeli Jews favor renewing peace negotiations with the Palestinians (66% to 31%) but don’t believe anything will come of them. Twenty-five percent believe the negotiations will lead to peace “in the coming years,” and 71% do not. An-Najah University in Nablus, in the West Bank, has just published “Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 53,” focusing mostly on Palestinian politics. Like Israelis, Palestinians are pessimists about a peace agreement: 33% of respondents believed that there is a possibility for the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders while 61.5% said that there is no such possibility. If there is no such possibility, what do they then want? People can of course choose inconsistent or multiple answers, but there are some interesting results. Thirty-eight percent favor an armed intifada, which is a very big number even if 56% reject that option. Thirty-one percent said “the current political, security and economic circumstances compel them to desire to emigrate.” Forty-six percent favor “the creation of a confederation with Jordan on the basis of two independent states with strong institutional relations.” The very notion of a confederation with Jordan is vigorously rejected by very many Palestinian and Jordanian officials, but the idea just does not seem to die. Given the BDS movement, it is also worth noting the results when it comes to Palestinian boycotts of Israeli goods. Seventy-five percent of Palestinians “supported boycotting Israeli goods and products,” but they do not practice what they preach. Thirteen percent of the respondents said that they buy Israeli products in all cases, 37% said they buy Palestinian products in all cases, and nearly half, 46.5%, said they “buy according to the quality of the item regardless of its origin.” On Palestinian politics, a majority oppose the recent postponement of elections and believes their rights as citizens (to vote) are being abridged. Asked to predict the outcome had elections been held, roughly half say Fatah would have won in the West Bank and Hamas would have won in Gaza. A final and bizarre note: Palestinians blame the Brits for everything! Asked “Do you consider Britain responsible for the catastrophes that befell the Palestinian people?” 79% say yes and only 14% don’t agree. Logically, then, 75% say yes when asked “Do you support or reject a call from President Mahmoud Abbas on Britain to accept the historical, legal, political, material, and moral responsibilities relating to the consequences of Balfour Declaration including offering an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophes and injustice committed against them?” May I summarize? "The Brits are to blame for the mess we are in, and no peace deal is possible, so let’s have an intifada, or anyway get me out of here, or let’s at least have a confederation with Jordan." John Kerry, call your office.      

Last week President Obama spoke at Shimon Peres’ funeral and watched him buried--in some sort of No Man’s Land. Not in Israel, it seems. The Obama White House actually issued a correction of its press release of Obama’s remarks, to strike the world "Israel." You can see a screen shot of the corrected release here at the McClatchy news site. The absurdity of this move is striking. The ceremony was at Mount Herzl, the Jerusalem cemetery where many of Israel’s greatest figures are buried: Herzl himself, Jabotinsky, Begin, Golda Meir, Rabin, and innumerable military heroes. It lies in Western Jerusalem, near Yad Vashem and Jerusalem Forest--a place Palestinians do not even claim when they claim a share of Jerusalem; only those who seek to destroy Israel think this place will ever be anything but a part of the Jewish State. U.S. policy is that Jerusalem is a final status issue, so we have our embassy in Tel Aviv. But there is no dispute about west Jerusalem, where the Knesset, Prime Minister’s office, and Supreme Court, and the National Library, and Yad Vashem--and Mount Herzl--all lie. One wonders if President Obama, speaking about the meaning of Peres’s life for Israel, actually thought as he spoke those words at the grave site that he was not standing in Israel, and that Shimon Peres was not being buried in Israel. I doubt it. Which suggests, again, how foolish the current and longstanding American policy really is.    

Municipal elections are scheduled for October 8th in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas has reversed its previous position and is now participating, and may win--not as Hamas, per se, but by putting forth "fellow traveler" candidates known to be close to Hamas. The elections will likely be close. The unpopularity of the Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah Party due to corruption, incompetence, and growing repression helps explain why West Bank voters might choose Hamas. In other cases voters may prefer Hamas’s Islamism to Fatah’s brand of secularism--or may prefer Hamas’s manifest desire to kill Israelis over Fatah’s and the PA’s tamer stance. And there is another factor: in many areas Hamas is presenting a single candidate while the non-Hamas vote is split among rival contenders. As The Times of Israel reported about Hebron,   These are the first elections in more than a decade in which voting is taking place at the same time in both Gaza and the West Bank, and Hamas and Fatah are going head-to-head....As in the other cities in the West Bank, the trouble in Hebron is that because there are so many secular slates of candidates, there is a reasonable chance that the more moderate camp of Fatah and groups of its ilk will split the secular vote, paving the way for victory by Hamas candidates.   Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra is said to have said. In the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, most of these same conditions existed and the result was a narrow Hamas victory in the popular vote (44 to 41 percent) that produced a much larger Hamas majority in parliament (74 to 45). There is one difference from 2006 that is very much worth mentioning. The myth exists that the United States forced the Palestinians to hold those elections over the objections of the PA leadership. That’s false (as I explained at length in my book about Bush administration policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tested by Zion). In fact the Palestinians had held a successful presidential election in January 2005 whose purpose was to establish the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas as Yasser Arafat’s successor. They wanted parliamentary elections, again to strengthen Fatah’s legitimacy, and were confident they would win. We did not force them to hold the 2006 elections. Today, at least that argument is over: no one is claiming that these elections of 2016 are being demanded by the United States and imposed by the Obama administration on a reluctant PA leadership. But the similarities to 2006 are very striking, including the most fundamental one: allowing a terrorist group, Hamas, to contest the election without the slightest nod to stopping its terror or giving up its rule of Gaza. This is wrong for many reasons, but here are the top two. First, Hamas may win power in a number of West Bank cities but Fatah will not be able to contest elections as freely in Gaza. In this sense the dice are loaded, or to mix metaphors Hamas can say heads I win in the West Bank and tails you lose in Gaza. Second, those who wish to contest elections should be forced to choose between bullets and ballots. This is what happened in the Northern Ireland agreements, where the IRA had to end its guerrilla and terrorist war and could then run for office. It is a mistake with global implications to allow terrorist groups to have it all: to run for office like peaceful parties, but continue their violent activities. That was the mistake we made in 2006, and it is being repeated. There is an argument for holding these elections, of course, and a powerful one. There have been no parliamentary or presidential elections in the West Bank and Gaza since 2006 and these elections provide at least a taste of democracy. They will tell us a good deal about Palestinian public opinion. And perhaps in some cases they will produce better, meaning more responsive and competent, municipal governments. But perhaps their clearest achievement will be to show that nothing has changed since 2006 and indeed for decades more: Fatah and Hamas are implacably at odds, Palestinians are split, the Palestinian "national" government and national movement are hopelessly divided, Hamas’s brand of rejectionism and terror remains widely popular, and a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is nowhere in sight. Well, one thing has changed since 2006: Abbas is ten years older and his time in office is closer to its end. Until succession issues are dealt with the notion of serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is completely unrealistic--whatever happens at the United Nations, whatever the French suggest or the Russians try, and whatever the Obama administration or its successor believe.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, is a church in decline--but whose enthusiasm for attacks on Israel never wanes. The decline is very clear in the numbers. The ELCA when formed in 1988 had over 5 million members, but is now down to about 3.8 million-- down over a fourth. The number of member churches is similarly in decline. At its triennial convention this past week, the ELCA built on previous anti-Israel resolutions to demand an end to aid to Israel from the United States. What passed is a resolution to:   --call on the U.S. President, in coordination with the United Nations Security Council, to offer a new, comprehensive and time-bound agreement to the governments of Israel and Palestine, resulting in a negotiated final status agreement between Israel and Palestine leading to two viable and secure states with a shared Jerusalem;   --To urge this church’s members, congregations, synods, agencies and presiding bishop to call on their U.S. Representatives, Senators and the Administration to take action requiring that, to continue receiving U.S. financial and military aid, Israel must comply with internationally recognized human rights standards as specified in existing U.S. law, stop settlement building and the expansion of existing settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, end its occupation of Palestinian territory, and enable an independent Palestinian state; and --To encourage this church’s members, congregations, synods, and agencies to call on the U.S. President to recognize the State of Palestine and not prevent the application of the State of Palestine for full membership in the United Nations.   A time bound agreement-- so facts on the ground, for example the strength of Hamas or even ISIS in the Palestinian territories would be irrelevant. Stop all construction in East Jerusalem--well, not really; just construction by Jews. "Enable" an independent Palestinian state, as if the only worry about such a state, and its only problems, come from Israel--not poverty, terrorism, corruption, and repression, for example. End military aid to Israel, regardless of the threats it faces from Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Iran, and other enemies of Israel’s and ours. And of course, these standards and these requirements apply to one single country: Israel. In a world awash in repression and human rights violations, only Israel. This resolution was passed by 82% of those voting. One wonders if the last few ELCA congregations, when there has been another 25 years of shrinkage, will pass an anti-Israel resolution just before turning out the lights.