Hopes for Peace

"How many divisions has the pope?" That was Joseph Stalin's curt dismissal of the perceived power of the papacy in World War II—a podium but no troops. The question might today be asked of Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader presuming to speak for the Palestinians at the Annapolis conference. He no longer controls the Gaza Strip, and his grip of the West Bank is so weak that even in his capital of Ramallah, Fatah lost to Hamas in the most recent mayoral election. Most intelligence assessments agree that Fatah has virtually ceased to exist in the West Bank; that instead of gaining strength after its debacle in Gaza, Fatah is weaker, having failed to curb terrorism or corruption. Fatah is simply unable to provide security to its people. Remove Israeli forces in the West Bank, and the Palestinian Authority dies, with Hamas taking over. Hamas knows this. One senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, could not have captured Israeli anxieties any better when he recently said, "Fatah can't stop us from seizing control of those [West Bank] territories. It is only a matter of time."

The abject failure of Fatah to fight for Gaza when it cut and ran earlier this year has dramatically increased the Israeli fear that the same thing could happen in the West Bank. And where would that leave the Israelis, given the vulnerability of major cities like Tel Aviv to rocket fire?

Security breach. What the Israelis cannot forget, the Palestinians cannot remember. Nor, apparently, can the press. "Security" barely makes the list of requirements mentioned in the commentaries, but the harsh reality is that every time Israel has transferred security to the PA and its police, terrorism has followed. Look what happened after the Oslo "peace" agreement. In the decade before, 41 Israelis were murdered. In the decade after, 945 were murdered. When the Palestinians gained control of the West Bank cities, suicide bombers infiltrating Israel killed over a thousand people, ultimately forcing the Israelis to go back into the West Bank at great cost. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, Israeli greenhouses providing 4,500 jobs were turned over to the Palestinians. The PA security forces stood by as they were vandalized and looted. The United States forced the Israelis to accept that Fatah could be trusted to monitor the border crossing from Egypt and interdict weapons and terrorists. Within three days there was massive smuggling of men and weapons, so that every single day since Israel left Gaza, rockets have been aimed at nearby Israeli cities.

Fatah itself, for all the handshakes at Annapolis, does not even accept Israel as a valid country. Just a few weeks ago, its leaders surprised the Israelis and made clear that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state and, in effect, still do not support the United Nations Resolution of 1947 that provided for two states for two peoples—a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state." The State of Israel was not mentioned, for it would not be established until six months after the vote. But the state that was approved was the "Jewish state."

Stunningly, even in his speech at Annapolis, Abbas made two specific references to the Arab word for catastrophe, nakba, which is the way the Palestinians describe the creation of Israel in 1948. It is their code language for the destruction of the Israeli state, for it refers to Israel's existence and not to its boundaries.

Anybody who has visited the West Bank knows how much Fatah is dedicated to peace with Israel. The Fatah-controlled press and TV and the mosques reverberate with a continuous incitement to violence and hate. Suicide bombers are depicted as heroes. In recent polls, almost half of the Palestinian population would not accept Israel, even if there was a settlement. And Fatah still maintains its own terrorist wing, namely the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that has killed so many Israelis.

These are the hard facts that underlie the hoopla and photo ops in Washington. Given this reality, the only tinge of optimism derives from the fact that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders seem to have established a decent working relationship and that Abbas himself realizes that the prospect of a viable state for the Palestinians under his leadership is receding, unless he seizes the moment and reclaims the political initiative from the Islamists of Hamas.

But can he? His political and military weakness compels him and the Palestinians to maximize their demands and forces the Israelis to be wary of concessions. The result is that the most each side is prepared to give may well fall short of what the other side is willing to accept. This is the fundamental conundrum.

It does not help that our administration keeps changing position. In a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon several years ago, President Bush indicated that a final-status agreement would not ask for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders; that the large Jewish settlement blocks would remain in Israeli hands; that there would not be a return of refugees and their descendants to Israel but to the new Palestinian state; and that Israel would be able to obtain "defensible borders." The last is critical because the previous borders were clearly not defensible. "Defensible borders" have long been recognized, first in the language of the definitive U.N. Council Resolution Section 242, then by former President Reagan and by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher on behalf of the Clinton administration in a January 1997 letter of assurances to the Israeli government. The Bush road map also insisted that "all official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel" and unequivocally pledge to recognize Israel's "right to exist in peace and security," a position supported by congressional resolution. These provisions were ignored in Bush's speech.

Now, the administration has shifted its primary focus from that original commitment. Instead, it is focusing on establishing a "political horizon" that would outline the terms of a final settlement. This settlement would be in the form of what is called a "shelf agreement," which would not be taken down and implemented until the Palestinians have lived up to their commitments on security and ended the incitements to violence. This is a very problematic approach. Experience suggests that a shelf agreement may well be then taken as the starting point for the next round of negotiations, leaving Israel in a very difficult position.

The Israelis legitimately must ask: Who is going to monitor and enforce the commitments to ensure security and end incitement? Who will be able to ensure that the Palestinians shun terrorism over the longer term?

Spoiled. One conventional view is that the Palestinians will be persuaded to keep the peace by the influx of foreign aid that will give them a stake in their society. This is an illusion. They have already been given the largest amount of per capita aid ever. Much of the money was siphoned off by corrupt Fatah elites, paradoxically undermining the political support they now need. Being overgenerous to people who fail to meet their responsibilities is like giving sweets to a spoiled child in the hopes that he will improve his behavior. The results are often the opposite.

Nobody wants Annapolis to fail. But it was prematurely arranged, hereby enhancing the danger of longer-term failure. The sequence is wrong. The Palestinians should have had to build up a civil administration and an effective and reliable security force first.

If you doubt this, just think that the Israelis and the Palestinians have met for the past three months trying to compose just a simple agreement on the basic principles of their relationship, but they were unable to do that. Who can realistically expect them to negotiate a final settlement over the next year when all the pressures of the public spotlight will exaggerate every minor disagreement?

In fact, the United States organized this meeting without an agenda and without knowing who was going to come. American officials then announced it in a manner that gave all the Arab countries the sense that by attending they were doing the United States a favor and exacting a price. What we needed to do was find out whether the Arabs would support an honest peace process and not just treat every meeting as a chance to force more Israeli concessions.

Where is the contribution from the Arab world? The Arabs are drowning in extraordinary oil wealth. They could make a vast difference to the quality of life of the Palestinians. Instead, they have been reticent participants in the region of the world where the consequences of this seemingly never-ending struggle can only radicalize their own populations. That they haven't changed much is revealed by the facts that the Saudis rejected only the Israeli press at their Washington press conference and that none of the Arab countries would meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The peace process seems to exist more in the minds of western diplomats than it does among the Arabs in the Middle East.

It has led the administration to pressure Israel to accept the process in large and small ways that are different from the relationship of previous administrations to Israel, undermining Israel's confidence because it knows that ultimately, a process becomes substance. As for the gains, there is a benefit in uniting the pro-western Sunni camp and bringing a number of Arab countries to the meeting at Annapolis, if only to demonstrate some kind of unity in the continuing struggle against radical Islam and Shiite Tehran.

It is not enough to say it is always good to talk. That is not so if the talks do not succeed, for failure can make things worse. What happens on the ground is what counts. At Annapolis, each leader spoke to his own audience. Stagecraft is not statecraft.

The president was right when he stated that if it were easy, it would have happened a long time ago. But given the fact that these negotiations involve existential issues for the State of Israel and deal with the deepest issues of identity for the Arab world, they have to be planned much more carefully.

Words like leadership and vision and progress are illusions without planning. When the issues involved go to the very existence of these two peoples, progress will come only from the most competent and careful analysis of what is possible and how to accomplish it. Hope is not enough. Hope, as Francis Bacon remarked, is a good breakfast but a poor supper.