Thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to swallow a painful and embarrassing concession to please the Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry had his moment of triumph today. In announcing the start of a new round of Middle East peace talks, Kerry has seemingly justified the way he has concentrated his efforts on an issue that was not in crisis mode and with little chance of resolution while treating other more urgent problems such as Egypt, Syria, and the Iranian nuclear threat as lower priorities. But now that he has had his victory, the focus turns to the talks where few, if any, observers think there is a ghost of a chance of that the negotiations can succeed despite Kerry’s call for “reasonable compromises.”
The reason for that is that despite the traditional American belief that the two sides can split the difference on their disagreements, as Kerry seems to want, the problem is much deeper than drawing a new line on a map.
Ironically, proof of this comes from a new poll that some are touting as evidence that both Israelis and Palestinians support a two-state solution. The poll (h/t Shmuel Rosner) was a joint project of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. It shows, among other often contradictory results, that:
A majority of Israelis (62%) supports a two-state solution while 33% oppose it. Among the Palestinians, 53% support and 46% oppose the two-state solution.
But the question to ask about this poll and the conflict is what the two sides mean by a two-state solution. The answer comes in a subsequent query:
We asked Israelis and Palestinians about their readiness for a mutual recognition as part of a permanent status agreement and after all issues in the conflict are resolved and a Palestinian State is established. Our current poll shows that 57% of the Israeli public supports such a mutual recognition and 37% opposes it. Among Palestinians, 42% support and 56% oppose this step.
In other words, Israelis see a two-state solution as a way to permanently end the conflict and achieve peace. But since a majority of Palestinians cannot envision mutual recognition even after all issues are resolve and they get a state, they obviously see it as merely a pause before the conflict would begin anew on terms decidedly less advantageous to Israel.
There are lots of reasons why the peace negotiations are likely to fail. The Palestinians are deeply split with Gaza being ruled by the Islamists of Hamas who still won’t even contemplate talks with Israel, let alone peace. Kerry praised Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas today, but he is weak and hasn’t the ability to make a peace deal stick even in the unlikely event that he signs one. Though Netanyahu went out on a political limb to enable the talks to begin by releasing over 100 Palestinian terrorists, Abbas has shown in the past that he will say no, even when offered virtually everything that he has asked for. Netanyahu will rightly drive a harder bargain and refuse to contemplate a deal that involves a complete retreat to the 1967 lines or a Palestinian state that isn’t demilitarized. But it’s hard to imagine Abbas ever recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.
But the real problem isn’t about where negotiators would draw those lines. As the poll indicates, even after Israel withdraws from almost all of the West Bank (reports indicate Netanyahu is ready to give up 86 percent of it), a substantial majority of Palestinians still can’t fathom the possibility of mutual recognition and normal relations.
How can that be?
The reason is very simple and is not something that Kerry or his lead negotiator Martin Indyk (a veteran of numerous diplomatic failures who hasn’t seemed to learn a thing from any of them) can fix. Palestinian nationalism was born in the 20th century as a reaction to Zionism and not by focusing on fostering a separate identity and culture from that of other Arab populations. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t now a separate people with their own identity, but it does explain why they see that identity as indistinguishable from the effort to make Israel disappear.
While a “reasonable compromise” can be forged in theory between two nations determined to live in peace with each other once a border is devised, it is not possible in the absence of such recognition. Given the constant incitement and fomenting of hate against Israel and Jews in the official PA media (let alone that run by Hamas), it’s difficult to see how Abbas could ever agree to anything that would require a true end to the conflict rather than a mere truce. Until a sea change in Palestinian culture that would change that takes place, this won’t happen.