by J Street U Brown
On the heels of President Obama’s first trip to Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry embarked on a ten-day visit to Europe and Asia that included scheduled visits to both Israel and the West Bank. These trips were symbolic of the fact that the United States is now renewing its commitment to Israel, peace talks, and the two-state solution, after a lull in negotiations. It is not enough, however, to simply restate commitment; policy makers and concerned Americans need to grasp the specifics of the situation in Israel and fully comprehend the importance of their commitment so that they can discover the necessity for action rather than rhetoric, and take such actions to produce real solutions.
President Obama has made similar symbolic trips to Israel, affirming the commitment of this strategic partnership between Israel and the United States. Obama even met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a mere two days after Netanyahu’s new coalition was sworn into office. After over a month of negotiations, Netanyahu struck a coalition deal with Yair Lapid, popular former TV anchorman, and Naftali Bennett, pro-settlement hard-liner—the chairmen of Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi, respectively, which created Netanyahu’s winning coalition. Yesh Atid seeks to represent the secular middle class of Israel and Habayit Hayehudi is a “nationalist religious” party of uncompromising territorial maximalists. The coalition possesses only 68 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, is the first in a decade without ultra-orthodox parties, and has thus far committed to focus on domestic issues—excluding such key issues as Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, where basic disagreements could threaten to tear the coalition apart. Israel’s 33rd government opened with work on Israel’s 2013 budget, not with work on the peace process. It is possible, though, that pressure from forces such as the United States will help to refocus efforts on addressing the highly contested and critically important topic of settlements.
The pressure exists because the Netanyahu government has so far mostly waivered in rhetoric and achieved little. In Netanyahu’s previous term, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remained at a standstill. Many people hoped that a new government would help to change the status quo and bring about new negotiations. However, in a recent meeting with the Norwegian foreign minister, Bennett said Lapid and he were “not too crazy about the two-state solution.” Netanyahu recently reaffirmed a commitment he made in 2009 to engage in peace talks, but that stance is completely opposed to the official position of the Jewish Home Party and many of the members of Netanyahu’s own Likud Party. Israeli parliament member Zahava Gal-On said, “Unfortunately, I believe Bennett more than I do Netanyahu’s diplomacy, but I think there is an obligation to present the Israeli public with the options from which we must choose—either two states for two peoples or one state that is very far from what we want—which will be either Jewish or democratic or neither of them.” Though Netanyahu might mention talks and compromise, it seems that the rest of his coalition will continue to stubbornly oppose.
There is another alarming element, which suggests that refusing to talk about the situation may turn out to be a dangerous choice. There has been a surge of renewed violence in the West Bank. About a week ago, Maysara Abu Hamdiya, a 64-year-old Palestinian prisoner serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail for an attempted suicide bombing at a Jerusalem café, died of cancer. Palestinian officials, claiming that Israel delayed Hamdiya’s treatment, gave him full military honors at a funeral on Thursday, April 4. The funeral also honored two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli soldiers amidst youth protests in the West Bank. Palestinian youths hurled stones and firebombs at an Israeli checkpoint near Tulkarm in the Northern West Bank, and Israeli soldiers responded by opening fire, killing a seventeen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. Following this event, all 3,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails engaged in a three-day hunger strike. Israeli security experts have questioned if this is the beginning of the third intifada (uprising). Many believe that it is not, but rather that it is a result of the Palestinian Authority is trying to refocus Palestinian frustration from the worsening economic conditions in the West Bank to the Israeli government. The PA has named April 17 Palestinian Prisoner Day, and the many Palestinians in Israeli jails will continue to be a powder keg that could go off at any moment.
At first glance, this story appears rather bleak. Both parties that need to come to the negotiating table are not only hesitant, but also have major factions that are actively opposed to an agreement. So a logical question becomes, why now? This conflict is over half a century old—why not wait for a more amenable Israeli government or wait for unrest in the West Bank to calm down? The answer is simply that time is of the essence. As Israel continues to build more settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Palestinian frustration and impatience grows, both parties actively dismantle the framework of a two-state solution, which has long been internationally accepted as the only viable and acceptable solution to the conflict. The longer we wait, the worse the problem will get, so the first steps must be taken now.
Before we ask what we can do, we must look at what’s already been done. Recently, a group of influential American Jews wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu advocating for him to pursue real peace talks with the Palestinians. The letter pointed to the support of President Obama’s visit and call for peace, and urged the prime minister to work with Secretary of State Kerry to create initiatives that would indicate Israel’s readiness to engage with the Palestinians and encourage them to do the same. Israeli Policy Forum (a left-leaning group) sponsored the letter, but signatories spanned a very wide spectrum of the American Jewish community.
J Street is one organization that supported the letter. J Street is a national advocacy group that promotes American leadership to fight for a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict peacefully, and J Street U is its student-organizing arm that is engaged on college campuses around the country. Both J Street and J Street U try to garner support for pragmatic action and against radical and dangerous attempts to derail a two-state solution from the left and right. As the situation in Israel remains tenuous and potentially explosive, we look to John Kerry’s visit as a step in the right direction. We must continue to advocate for greater engagement and action, supporting those who would work for peace, every step of the way. The next step is convincing politicians on both sides to come back to the table and work towards compromise. It seems as if that might be a difficult step, but it is pressure from the United States that might be the necessary component to make it happen.
Brown Political Review does not approve or disapprove of the opinions expressed in the above article.