How will President Obama take his leave from the business of seeking peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Or more precisely, is there any parting gesture or act he could take to restore some hope for an Israeli-Palestinian final status agreement?
He came into office promising a different and more energetic approach than his predecessor. And despite two major pushes, first by special envoy Sen. George Mitchell, and then by Secretary of State John Kerry, not much has changed for the better. There are no final status negotiations, Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to grow, and Palestinian efforts at state-building have yielded to feckless speechifying at the UN.
{mosads}Nominally, both parties are committed to achieving two states for two peoples. In reality, unyielding domestic politics, Hamas control of Gaza and the accretion of Israeli settlements are making a viable Palestinian state seem highly improbable. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has lapsed into a seemingly endless and useless presidency, centralizing power, punishing critics, and venting poisonously at Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, though seen as obdurate by the Obama Administration, is simultaneously lashing out at pro-peace organizations, while fighting off attacks from the Israeli far-right for not sufficiently supporting the Israeli settlement movement, and remaining, at least rhetorically, committed to dividing the biblical “Land of Israel.”
Amid these dismal prospects for peace, there are various proposals for the Obama administration to make a bold step in the wake of the U.S. general election. Some believe the President should endorse a French proposal for the UN Security Council to specify the terms of a two-state solution and set a time limit for it to be achieved. Others hope the President will lay out his own parameters for peace. Others are proposing that the President simply square his accounts with Netanyahu, and support a Security Council resolution to condemn Israeli settlements over the 1948 Green line as, not just an obstacle to peace, but a violation of international law.
The President, in his many interviews and public remarks, has made plain his strong belief that a two-state solution is the only option that will allow Israel to remain both a democratic and Jewish state, and allow the Palestinians to enjoy their rights to self-determination and control of their own national destiny. And yet, clearly, the prospects for such an outcome have deteriorated, despite the Obama Administration’s eight years of effort.
The challenge President Obama faces now is not reviving hope or bridging the gap in confidence. Rather, the needful work of the last months of his Administration should be to preserve the possibility of peace based on separation of the two peoples and the division of the land into two sovereign states. Netanyahu and Abbas, it should be acknowledged, are not going to be the ones to accomplish this great and necessary end. But their failings and limitations should not be confused with their nations’ continuing need to answer the question of how these two peoples can share one small, historically fraught territory.
Fortunately, the means to preserve the two-state solution are readily available and, in fact, require no new commitments whatsoever. Rather, what is required is a simple, forceful restatement of the essential premises for Middle East peace set out in UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which, nominally, have been accepted by both parties: the requirement for direct negotiations leading to a just and durable peace; the inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by force; Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in June 1967; an end to conflict, acknowledgement of each others sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence, and the right to live in peace, in secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force; and a just settlement to the refugee problem. Principles, not specifics are what’s required now.
The proposals for a one-sided condemnation, or to pre-determine the outcome of negotiations, lift the weight of responsibility off one, or both parties, and, worse, ignore the reality that a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians will only be seen as legitimate and thus, made durable, if it is the work of their own hands. By putting forward a short, direct resolution restating the international community’s affirmation, and firm insistence on the principles of Resolutions 242 and 338, President Obama can leave for his successor, and the two parties, an enduring and secure basis to return, as their own self-interest will ultimately demand, to face the difficult work of dividing the land and creating a just and lasting peace between two states, for two peoples.
Howard Diamond is a former Democratic staff director for the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.
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