The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure Laying a foundation for peace in Palestine. by Elliott Abrams

An article by former Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams from the Weekly Standard. Not only does Abrams put the entire burden on the Palestinians shoulders for building institutions, he also asks zero positive moves from the Israelis (absolutely no mention of settlements or Jerusalem), and ends the article by arguing against a Palestinian state, suggesting instead control by Egypt and Jordan. He also takes a swipe at Annapolis and, implicitly, Condi Rice.

The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure
Laying a foundation for peace in Palestine.
by Elliott Abrams
03/02/2009, Volume 014, Issue 23

Repetition of failed experiments is not a sign of mental health or a
path to scientific progress, nor is it a formula for
Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet that is the road we may again take,
unless the lessons of the Bush years are learned.

As an official of the Bush administration I made three dozen visits to
the Middle East in the last eight years, and in February, as Israelis
voted, I made my first visit as a private citizen in nearly a decade.
After lengthy discussions with Israelis and Palestinians, it seems to
me obvious that it is time to face certain facts, facts that President
Bush actually saw clearly during his first term: We are not on the
verge of Israeli-Palestinian peace; a Palestinian state cannot come
into being in the near future; and the focus should be on building the
institutions that will allow for real Palestinian progress in the
medium or longer term.

In a historic speech on June 24, 2002, President Bush said, "My vision
is two states, living side by side, in peace and security." How were
we to get there? He was specific:

There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight
terror. Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so
that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people
to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon
them to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.

If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the
world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people
meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and
Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.
And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and
new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of
America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose
borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional
until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East. .  .
. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror. It will be
built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change or
a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require
entirely new political and economic institutions based on democracy,
market economics and action against terrorism.

This was the announcement that the United States was breaking totally
with Yasser Arafat--the single most frequent foreign visitor to the
Clinton White House--and would henceforth consider him a terrorist
rather than a negotiating partner. Six months later the "Roadmap," a
plan for progress toward these goals, was drafted. Even its formal
name, "A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," suggested its conformity to
President Bush's speech. Its preamble stated in part, "A two-state
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved
through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people
have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and
able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty."

The Roadmap did not call for leaping directly from the status quo--the
Palestinian Authority, or PA, established after Oslo--to statehood.
Instead it called for an interim phase "focused on the option of
creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and
attributes of sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way
station to a permanent status settlement." The text here reiterated
the need for Palestinian leaders "acting decisively against terror,
willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance
and liberty."

After Arafat's death in November 2004, his lieutenant Mahmoud Abbas
became president of the PA, and efforts to achieve some of these
required reforms began. But there began as well a distancing by the
United States and the international "Quartet" that had sponsored the
Roadmap (the United States, United Nations, European Union, and
Russia) from the tough and clear standards that had been set out. It
is as if those standards were meant to record disgust with Arafat, but
with his passing the familiar insistence on rapid progress--and more
Israeli concessions--returned.

More and more speeches, including American speeches, called for rapid
agreement on a Palestinian state, for a final status agreement, for
elimination altogether of that interim phase. Worse yet, at the
Annapolis Conference, announced in July 2007 and convened that
November, the president announced that the goal was a final status
agreement by the end of 2008. This left only 13 months, which was
itself astonishing for a problem as old and complex as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seemed to ignore the June 2007 Hamas
takeover of Gaza, and, as the end of 2008 coincided with the end of
the president's own term, it seemed to substitute the American
political calendar for a realistic assessment of facts on the ground,
just as the Clinton administration had done.

And it failed. Those of us within the Bush administration who had
protested the Annapolis plan and the announcement of the 2008 goal
were sadly proved right. Historians may puzzle over the causes of the
failure, and perhaps more so over what led the president to turn away
from the tough-minded realism toward this conflict that he showed
during his first term. But the lesson for 2009, for the new
administration, must be that there are actually only two alternatives:
realism and failure.

Judging by the standards set forth in President Bush's still
remarkable 2002 speech, the PA has made some genuine progress. Under
U.S. tutelage, training of Palestinian security forces has begun
largely under the radar, at a training center in Jordan. But it is
working: Sixteen hundred police from the West Bank have gone through
the course, and there are plans to double that number. The newly
trained forces are not exactly crack troops, but they are a far cry
from the divided and ineffective gangs created by Yasser Arafat. Their
success was visible during the recent Gaza war, when they acted in
parallel, and sometimes in concert, with Israeli forces to prevent
Hamas violence and terrorism in the West Bank. Order was maintained.

Much of the credit goes to PA prime minister Salam Fayyad, a
U.S.-trained economist whose integrity, candor, and effective
administration of the PA have made him a favorite of the United States
and all other donors. Fayyad, a former finance minister (who brought
order from chaos in the PA's finances and continues to fight PA
corruption), has presided over continuing economic growth in the West
Bank and maintains a working if unfriendly relationship with Israeli
officials. Fayyad is well aware of the history of his sometime
partner, sometime foe in Jerusalem, the government of Israel, and
indeed of the history of the entire Zionist enterprise: Institutions
were built over long decades to prepare for Israel's independence
despite the uncertainty of when it would arrive. The Zionists
struggled to be ready, hoping thereby also to bring the day closer.
That is Fayyad's task for the Palestinian people, as he appears to see
it.

He gets remarkably little help, from either Arab states or the West.
The willingness of oil-rich Arab leaders to supply Palestinians with
endless amounts of rhetoric and precious little cash is not new,
though the high oil prices of recent years made it all the more
obscene. But Fayyad has also had less help from the West than one
might expect. The shift away from realistic efforts to build
Palestinian institutions and toward international conferences like
Annapolis put President Abbas in the limelight, not the pragmatic work
of Fayyad and his ministers. So Abbas traveled from capital to
capital, as he continues to do, safely removed from the difficult work
of building the basis for an independent Palestine. If the West Bank
had a factory with a thousand jobs for every such trip, for every
photo op with a smiling foreign leader, and for every international
conference, the Palestinians there would be thriving.

What are the chances that such meetings will produce a final status
agreement in 2009? None. Despite the pressures for progress after
Annapolis, little progress was made in 2008, and if anything
conditions are worse now. In 2008, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
were frequent at two levels: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with
President Abbas, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with Palestinian
chief negotiators Ahmed Qurei ("Abu Ala") and Saeb Erekat. I am
unaware of the achievement of any actual agreement on any important
issue on either track.

On the toughest issues, such as Jerusalem and refugees, there was,
unsurprisingly, no meeting of the minds. It is unlikely negotiators
will do better this year. It has been true for decades that the most
Israel can offer the Palestinians is quite evidently less than any
Palestinian politician is prepared to accept. Those who say "the
outlines of an agreement are well known" and thereby suggest that an
agreement is close are precisely wrong: Is it not evident that to the
extent that such outlines are "well known," they are unacceptable to
both sides or they would have led to a deal long ago? In addition, any
possible deal would take years to implement: Israel would need that
time to remove settlers from lands that would become part of
Palestine, while the Palestinians would need to win the fight against
terrorism. So any deal would be a so-called shelf agreement, where
Palestinian leaders would be compromising on Jerusalem, borders, and
refugee claims in exchange not for a state, but for an Israeli promise
of a state at some indeterminate future date. No Palestinian leader
jumped at that in 2007 or 2008, and none will in 2009.

Meanwhile, whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the PA as an
institution, Fatah as a party is moribund. Its reputation for
incompetence and corruption remains what it was when Arafat was alive,
for there has been no party reform despite endless promises. At one
point in 2008, when Ahmed Qurei--one of Arafat's closest cronies,
famed for permitting corruption, renowned for opposing the rise of any
newer and younger leaders in Fatah--was formally charged with
organizing and implementing party reform, tragedy gave way to farce.
But if democracy is impossible without democratic parties, the
collapse of Fatah is no joke; it suggests that a future independent
Palestine would either be run by Hamas and other extremists and
terrorists or become a one-party "republic" on the model of Tunisia or
Egypt.

There is more. Prime Minister Olmert, who was intent on trying for an
agreement by the end of President Bush's term, will be gone, and his
successor will not be as enthusiastic to make the concessions Olmert
reportedly offered the Palestinians. President Obama has not committed
himself to achieve an agreement in 2009 in the way that President Bush
did in 2007 and 2008. The Palestinian political leadership under
President Abbas and his Fatah party is weak, even increasingly
illegitimate as the presidential election date prescribed in the
Palestinian law was ignored and Abbas's term in office extended. And,
of course, it is impossible to see how a comprehensive final status
agreement between Israel and the PA can be reached when the PA itself
has now lost control of 40 percent of the Palestinian population, the
1.4 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

First, there is the question of who can actually negotiate with Israel
on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) is still recognized by the Arab League and the
United Nations as the "sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian
people" though it never won a free election to attain that status.
Israel's past negotiations, in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and ever
since, have all been with the PLO--not formally with the PA, which was
created at Oslo to exercise certain governmental functions in the
Palestinian territories. When Israel negotiates with Abbas, it is in
his capacity as chairman of the PLO, not in his role as president of
the PA. But now the PA governs only one part of Palestinian territory.
Hamas governs the other part--and Hamas is not a member of the PLO. In
the 2006 elections 44 percent of Palestinians voted for Hamas,
moreover, and it maintains a majority in the Palestinian parliament (a
possible problem should that body ever meet). So, for which
Palestinians do Abbas, the PA, and the PLO actually speak? While
Israel rightly refuses to negotiate with a terrorist group like Hamas,
or with the PA or PLO should it include Hamas in its ranks, it remains
true that the PA and PLO no longer have a strong claim to represent
all Palestinians and may now lack the ability to enforce any deal with
Israel they sign.

Second, the lesson of Gaza to Israelis is identical to the lesson of
south Lebanon, and a cautionary tale regarding withdrawal from the
West Bank: "Land for peace" concessions have failed and become "land
for terrorism." Until there is far better security in the West Bank,
few Israelis would risk withdrawing the Israel Defense Forces and Shin
Bet from operating there.

And third, the terrorist groups Israel is dealing with, such as Hamas
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used to be local; now those groups have
the full backing of Iran, both directly and through Syria and
Hezbollah. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader
struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli
withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian
terrorists but to Iranian proxies. How could Israelis, or Palestinians
for that matter, take such a risk--especially when the new American
administration has not defined its policy toward Iran, except for some
vague and (to Arabs and Israelis alike) worrying phrases about
outreached hands and sitting across negotiating tables, and the U.S.
military option is invisible?

Taken together, these factors suggest that a final status agreement is
not now a real-world goal. What is? A return to the realistic
assessments and policies that marked Bush's first term. In practice,
this suggests an intense concentration on building Palestinian
institutions in the West Bank.

There is much to build on, with security force improvements well under
way, the economy in decent shape, and a reliable and trustworthy
leader in Prime Minister Fayyad. Neither the United States nor Israel
has done nearly as much as it can to promote progress on the ground,
allowing Palestinians in the West Bank freer movement and helping
create more jobs and a better standard of living. After the Gaza war,
Israel appears prepared to do more, and should be asked to do so;
Israel has a strategic interest in the success of the Palestinian
Authority in the West Bank and of moderate forces in Palestinian
society more generally. Arab states should be pressured intensely to
provide the funds needed to meet the PA payroll and undertake sensible
investment projects, for example in housing and agriculture. The
United States and the Quartet should take some time away from endless
meetings and speeches and resolutions calling for immediate
negotiations over final status issues, and turn instead to making real
life in the West Bank better and more secure. If there is ever to be a
Palestinian state, it will be the product of such activities, not of
formulaic pronouncements about the need for Palestinian statehood now.

It is also time to rethink the recent commitment to leaping all at
once to full independence for the Palestinians, and even to break the
taboo and rethink that ultimate goal itself. Immediate and total
independence was not the plan when the Roadmap was written in 2002 and
released in 2003. Then, it was understood that "an independent
Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of
sovereignty" was a necessary way-station. Given Hamas control over
Gaza, which makes a united independent Palestine impossible for now
anyway, a West Bank-only state with provisional borders and only some
of the attributes of sovereignty makes far more sense as a medium-term
goal. It might also allow postponing compromises on Jerusalem and
refugee claims that no Palestinian politician could now make, for
those issues could be left aside for another day, while the delays are
blamed on Hamas and its rebellion in Gaza.

How that episode will end is entirely unclear, given Israel's
reluctance to reoccupy and rule Gaza, and Egypt's reluctance to
enforce strict controls on the smuggling of weapons. One Israeli
official told me that Egypt had agreed to stop the smuggling through
the tunnels. But will they really do it? I asked him. Oh, he replied,
"now you are asking if we can get an agreement to implement the
agreement. That's different." While Iran is able to sustain the Hamas
terrorist regime in Gaza, negotiations over a full final status
agreement are little more than staking territorial claims to a mirage.

But one is free to wonder as well whether Palestinian "statehood" is
the best and most sensible goal for Palestinians. When I served under
Secretary of State George Shultz in the Reagan administration, we were
expressly opposed to that outcome and favored some links to Egypt and
Jordan. On security and economic grounds, such links are no less
reasonable now; indeed, given Hamas control of Gaza and the Iranian
threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, they may be even
more compelling. As we've seen, President Bush in 2002 stated that the
Palestinians should "reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan
on security and other arrangements for independence."

Now, even the mention of Egyptian and Jordanian involvement will evoke
loud protests, not least in Amman and Ramallah, and perhaps U.S.
policymakers should think but not speak about such an outcome. There
are many and varied possible relationships between a Palestinian
entity in the West Bank and the Hashemite monarchy, and if none can be
embraced today, none should be discarded either. One Arab statesman
told me when I asked him about a Jordanian role that there "must
absolutely be an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank--if
only for 15 minutes," and then they could decide on some form of
federation or at least a Jordanian security role for the area. If the
greatest Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian fears are of terrorism,
disorder, and Iranian inroads in a Palestinian West Bank state, a
Jordanian role is a practical means of addressing those fears.

Israel's next government, which Israel's president has asked Benjamin
Netanyahu to form, must soon take up these matters with the
Palestinians, Arab neighbors, the EU, and above all with the United
States. The new Obama administration has not yet worked out a policy
toward Iran or toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but that may be
a hopeful sign. Thinking is better than assuming or reacting or
misjudging. As the new team reviews the playing field, it would be
well advised to look not only at what its predecessors did in the
second Bush term, but also at what they did in the first term--when a
gritty realism prevailed over visions, dreams, and endless
conferences. For, again, it seems to me there are at present only two
paths forward--the path of realism and the path of failure.

Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for the Middle East at the Council on
Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the Bush
administration.