I’m not a big fan of Jackson Diehl. Earlier in his career he was the Israel correspondent for the Washington Post. More recently, he’s been a foreign affairs columnist for the paper. As columnist he has consistently favored Arab “reformers,” even when said reformers are virulently anti-Israel. (He’s advocated talking with the Muslim brotherhood because they’re reformers.) But now he’s listening to someone else in “Peace from the Bottom Up.”
Natan Sharansky and Bassam Eid have been suggesting something different.
The timeline for success would be measured in years, not months. The goal would not be a document that Livni and Abbas could sign but the construction of a healthy and vibrant Palestinian civil society — that is, independent media, courts, political parties and nongovernmental organizations that could stand behind a settlement with Israel.
The former Soviet refusenik and Israeli political gadfly Natan Sharansky has been proposing this course for years — mostly to the irritation of peace-process supporters in both Jerusalem and Washington.
Why are “peace processors” skeptical?
Some suspect Sharansky of touting his strategy because it would indefinitely delay the necessity of Israeli territorial concessions. Others blame him for talking President Bush into a fleeting policy of supporting Palestinian democracy that led to the victory of Hamas in legislative elections.
Well, that’s been the problem. Sharansky was never invested in empowering the likes of Arafat or Abbas, so he was against “peace.”
Diehl even plays up a point that I usually only read about at Elder of Ziyon:
By the count of Eid’s Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, 2,000 Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians in the past eight years, but not one suspected killer has been charged or brought to trial. In August, it says, one Palestinian was killed by Israel and 36 by other Palestinians.
Of course the bottom line is that this means that the peace processors – in governments, in academia and in the media – will have to abandon their very premise. They’ll have to acknowledge that the bet on Arafat and the PLO was a poor one.
But for every peace processor who insists that an agreement must be reached now, Sharansky has an answer:
“People say we don’t have three years,” Sharansky said. “But that same idea caused them to favor Arafat over reform” — and that was 15 years ago. “The same idea continues all the time: ‘We must back the Palestinian leader over building civil society.’ And the result is always the same.” On that broken record, at least, Sharansky is right.
I don’t know if this could work. Recently I blogged about a New York Times report on some efforts near Jenin to form some governing authority on the ground. Of course that was also related to Abbas, so it suffers from the same problem as peace processing has until now.
I’d also argue that this is similar to the approach advocated by Menachem Begin while he was Prime Minister. Begin was against allowing the PLO a foothold into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. After he read an article by a Professor Menachem Milson in Commentary, he asked Milson to be the civilian administrator of the territories. Milson’s plan was to create “village leagues” with whom Israel would deal instead of the elected politicians who were affiliated with the PLO.
The Labor Party during the 70’s had changed its policies allowing the PLO linked politicians to push out Jordanian linked politicians among the Palestinians. Begin sought to empower those who remained free from the PLO. The effort was met with condemnation – after all Begin sought to ignore the “sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.” Those who joined the village leagues were often killed. And in the end Milson quit his position after the 1982 war in Lebanon started.
It’s important to note that the end point for Begin was not a Palestinian state but “autonomy,” presumably meaning that the Palestinians would have control over government services within their own cities, but would not be trusted with any security responsibilities. The idea of a Palestinian state at that time was reserved only for the left wing fringe in Israel. It’s a mark of how far Israel has come (for better or worse) that most of Israel now accepts a Palestinian state. It’s also a strong contrast to the Palestinian “moderates” for whom compromise remains a dirty word.
I’m aware that there are those who claim that Hamas evolved from the village leagues. I’m not sure that this is accurate. It makes a great story to say that Israel is responsible for Hamas, but the people designated for the village leagues were not as far as I know, Islamists.
Still the Sharanasky-Eid approach has the advantage of not following the same failed formula. The big problem is the number of people and institutions whose professional status and success is invested in failure and will, therefore, be unwilling to try something new.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
