We’re a month away from a potential shock to what is more or less peace involving Israel, Palestinians, and other Arabs.
July 1 is the date in the agreement between Likud and Blue and White for the onset of movement to impose Israeli sovereignty on parts of the West Bank.
Will it happen?
That depends, in part, if the government lasts that long.
A recent interview by Minister Miri Regev has aroused anger. She questioned the capacity of Benny Gantz to serve as Prime Minister, and raised, once again, issues concerned with the breaking of security on his telephone.
That produced Gantz’s cancellation of a meeting with Netanyahu. It also produced a number of comments from Blue and White Knesset Members– on both Regev’s comments and the speech that Bibi gave right before entering the courtroom for the onset of his trial.
Extensions of Israeli sovereignty also depend on how one reads, and reacts, to comments out of the United States government.
The Trump peace plan provides not only for the extension of Israeli sovereignty, but also for movement toward the recognition of a Palestinian State.
Palestinians have not missed another opportunity to miss an opportunity. They’ve rejected, in a forthright fashion, the American plan.
Israelis are dithering. Some would accept that portion of the plan that allows an extension of sovereignty, but remain firm against any recognition of a Palestinian State.
Members of Blue and White, along with some parties in the center-left opposition, oppose extension of sovereignty. Israeli security personnel also oppose it. They see it as upsetting a tense status quo. And leaders of Israel’s settler movement oppose it, on the grounds of its complexity, and creating serious problems of transportation for them. Borders here and there, roads only for Israelis or Palestinians. It would be a complex mess.
An interesting article by Aaron David Miller, who served as a State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, describes current relations between Israel, other Arab governments, and the Palestinians that could come apart if Israel does move toward the extension of sovereignty. He sees the status quo as based upon the mutual animosity toward Iran that unites the Arab governments of the Gulf and Israel, as reinforced by the Trump Administration’s opposition toward Iran and support of Israel. Miller hints that a minor extension of sovereignty could occur without undue upsetting things. However, his article is largely silent with respect to the capacity of Palestinians to upset other Arabs, and the role of Jordan, so far dead set against any Israeli expansion. He also confines his analysis to relations between Israel and the governments of Arab states.
Remember Arab Spring?
There still isn’t much by way of democracy throughout the Arab world, but there is the capacity for mass movement to upset things.
What would Israel gain by extending sovereignty?
Not as much as it loses.
Palestinian rejection is already apparent.
Can that spread?
First to Jordan, already two-thirds Palestinian in terms of its population, and a Bedouin Hashemite monarchy holding on to power who knows how?
And then perhaps to Egypt and the Gulf?
And especially to Palestine, with its possibility of violence against Israeli security forces and settlers?
What would be gained?
Not much more than enthusiasm for nationalistic goals.
Pretty much like the extension of the Israel Nationality Law, without reference to the rights of Druze, Circassians, and Israeli Arabs, which passed the Knesset about a year ago.
We’ll see what happens.
A month from now.
It’s hard to read the Palestinians.
Before Coronavirus, more than 100,000 West Bankers and about 5,000 Gazans worked on a daily basis in Israel.
That population has lessened under various closures, but still represents a potential for quiet co-existence with a minimum of violence.
The Palestinian government seems to be holding on by its fingernails, with considerable Israeli aid. The term of President Mahmoud Abbas ended years ago. He’s 84 years old, periodically declares opposition to Israel, and scores low in support as revealed by Palestinian public opinion polls.
While he declares animosity, he realizes that his Palestine cannot exist without Israel.
Israel collects import taxes for Palestine at its ports. There remains an issue of Palestinian payments to the families of terrorists.
There are Palestinian professionals working in Israeli hospitals, and Israel provides medical aid to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli security forces enter Palestinian West Bank areas, virtually on a nightly basis, to seize individuals involved in violence. Or likely to be involved in violence.
How much cooperation with Palestinian security forces? Hard to calculate.
Many of those seized are supporters of Hamas or some other group, which also opposes the West Bank Palestinian establishment.
But how many Palestinian police are involved in violence against Israelis?
Hard to calculate.
Israeli settlers also provide their difficulties.
Most live in large towns or blocks (Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Beit El, Ariel, Beitar Illit, Modiin Illit, Givat Ze’ev). Altogether some 400,000 Israelis live throughout the West Bank, not including another 400,000 Israelis in East Jerusalem.
Like Palestinians, most are peaceful, but not all. Groups of religious and nationalist fanatics, many of them living in unrecognized, but undisturbed settlements, have caused their problems. They specialize in property damage and occasional violence against Arabs.
Recently the Israeli police shot and killed a young Palestinian man–autistic–who refused to stop for them at a sensitive part of the Old City of Jerusalem. They had been alerted to a fleeing Palestinian, likely carrying a gun. It turned out to be a telephone.
Palestinians are aroused, with some comparing it to the problems that spread from Minneapolis to other cities in the US. Hamas has called for an intifada.
In all it’s an undefined mess. So far, tolerable. We’ll see what happens in the next few days, and then in a month from now.
Compared to what’s happening in the US, all our issues may seem like small stuff. The US is seeing a combination of racism, violence, with an overlay of Coronavirs, and is a matter for another column.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World