Where Negotiations Begin

I have never wondered why negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians are so difficult. There are many obvious reasons. You can probably name a half-dozen without much thought. Yet, there is one reason that they have gotten more difficult in recent years and it is being ignored entirely by those who blame Israel or its Prime Minister specifically for the impasse.

The Palestinians insist on pre-conditions for negotiations to resume. Since those conditions are not acceptable to Israel, it won’t accede to them. Right now, this is the primary reason why there are no talks. However, if there were talks, they would go nowhere because of something else. The Palestinians insist that new negotiations begin where prior negotiations stopped. This is what is being ignored.

I have written about the fact that there is no “status quo” in the peace process. There is in fact constant change. Some of that change has been massive. How can negotiations proceed as if no changes have occurred? This is an absurdity, yet you need not look far to find people arguing this point of view, that negotiations should begin where they left off, among them Meretz USA.

So, let’s say for a moment that you were applying for a job. You got to the point of negotiating salary and benefits when you decided that they weren’t good enough for you and you storm out cursing. You then protest the business even going so far as to spray paint hateful slogans on its walls, something for which you were suspected but not caught. A couple of years later, you decide you wish to apply for that job again and now there is a new manager in place who is less fond of you than the first. In the interim, you have been arrested several times for financial related crimes and the manager went ahead and filled the position to which you are applying. Should negotiations begin where they once left off? Of course not.

How about this one? You agreed to sell me 100 oz. of gold at $300 an ounce a few years back. I thought I could do better. Gold is now over $1800 per oz. I now want you to start off by offering it to me at $300 per oz. like you did before. Make sense? Of course not.

Negotiations should never begin where they left off. They should always begin with the reality of the moment. How is it that anyone expects Israel to happily accept what was a risk in 2000, when events since have proven that the hopeful assumptions at the time were woefully incorrect? The Palestinian Authority could not prevent Hamas from taking over in Gaza, could not prevent thousands of rockets from being launched from there, could not prevent Hamas from winning the only free election to take place in the past decade and refuses to acknowledge that Israel is a state for the Jews. The United Nations refuses to defend Israel from attacks from Lebanon, allowing Hizballah to arm itself to the teeth, attack Israel in 2006, and rearm. The United Nations also condemned Israel acts of self defense in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and to an extent in the Mavi Marmara incident as well. How can Israel rely on it to stand up to breaches of any peace agreement? Israel is to pretend that nothing has changed and negotiate from the point of past refusals when what was refused is beyond what could be offered today?

That the Palestinian negotiating position has worsened since 2000 is not to simply be disregarded. That it should not be able to expect what it was once offered because of its actions over the past decade should be obvious. Yet, it is not. That problem is not only the cause of previous failures in the peace process but will be the cause of future ones until it is remedied.