Likud Changes Stance on 2-State Solution Ahead of Peace Talks

We have had many Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the past and they are a subject of derision much akin to the UN among more realpolitik thinkers.

We're about to have another one. SecState Kerry seems to have performed some very interesting black magic and it's worth mentioning.

When the last Israeli elections occurred, I was very excited about the possibility of Tzipi Livni winning and immediately pushing for a potentially viable two-state solution. Netanyahu managed to cobble together a coalition government, instead, by pulling in ultra-right-wing zionists, making peace talks seem more-or-less defunct as long as he was in power, particularly as his official policy was that a two-state solution wasn't happening.

Somehow not only the tone, but the official policy, has changed, going into the next talks. Israel released some dozens of Palestinian prisoners and it seems that Likud's (this being Netanyahu's party) new policy is that not only is a two-state solution the answer, but Israel will be willing to make "significant" and "painful" territorial concessions. This is a huge shift and may, again, be part of some John Kerry magic, but good sense is also going to be part of this.

There are obviously major hangups, even in the rhetoric. Likud is also making it clear that Palestine will need to also give significant and painful territorial concessions, which means that Israel will demand that many of the settlements in the West Bank remain--they're a bargaining chip in Israel's favor based on status quo, rather than on any legal or moral argument.

Likud is also saying that Jerusalem will need to keep status quo--meaning Israel gets most of it, but Palestine gets "old town" and some other parts. This on its own is already a concession but may have been necessary for talks to begin.

For a look at settlements, see this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/settlements_checkpoints.stm

The settlements are pretty much everywhere throughout the West Bank--it's been akin to a very slow invasion. The blocks near Jerusalem are likely the areas that are going to be the sticking points, as Israel will likely be clear about hanging on to them. Morally I am not fond of these at all but Israel's bargaining power here after the past 30 years or so is so high that at this point it's a geopolitical reality.

Overall the chances of this working are slim, but it may be an example of a "hurting stalemate" that can cause two groups to come to peace even when neither has achieved its political outcome.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10202854/Israel-willing-to-make-serious-territorial-concessions-to-secure-Middle-East-peace.html

Is he serious and if so, why now?

I think Netanyahu is a smart guy. He knows that the conflict has only one long-term possible ending, the two-state solution. Even the slow takeover of the West Bank via settlements would create a long-term painful apartheid, with settlements getting attacked... and he knows that apartheids don't last forever. If Israel totally absorbed the West Bank, it would eventually have to give the Palestinians there citizenship and then the Jews would be outnumbered, and this is obviously unacceptable.

I think the settlements--especially the farther-out ones--are bargaining chips. I think the ones close to Jerusalem are meant to stay and become part of Israel, and I assume that any Palestinians left are going to want to leave to the West Bank when the two-state solution happens (like when India/Pakistan broke up). If Palestine signs the peace deal, it will give Israel legitimacy to whatever territory it keeps.

So I think this has been the long-term plan: to have a two-state solution with added territory for Israel, particularly near Jerusalem. Perhaps now enough of these chips have been accumulated for him to go forward. He knows it will take a long time (maybe years), and probably wants to guarantee that if it does happen, it happens with the best possible terms for Israel, and Netanyahu's "tough guy" reputation means that the Palestinians won't try to over-stretch what they can get out of him for a state.

I think as far as timing, Netanyahu may be taking advantage of Kerry's visit to pretend it changed his mind. I do think that by dumping Shas and picking up both Yesh Atid and Hatnuah (in the 2013 legislative elections) he has to have a coalition that is looking for a two-state solution in earnest... these moderate parties (one led by Tzipi Livni herself) just wouldn't have joined otherwise. It makes him not only free to pursue a two-state solution but I think without it his coalition would fall apart and new elections might be required.


I think ultimately it's up to Netanyahu, rather than Obama/Kerry, as to whether the peace process is going to power forward. If Obama "fails" it will be because Netanyahu--who has all the power and Kerry none--wasn't willing to go forward with the terms that the Palestinians are laying out.

How the EU is Handing the US a Victory in Iraq

Whether or not the US has "won" in Iraq yet is a bit unclear--it depends who you ask what the objectives are. And, frankly, I don't think that anyone quite knows the answer, even if they sit down and give you a list of said objectives. But if you imagine the most broad, liberal, and generous of objective lists, it looks like the US is a few key steps away from making Iraq a beacon of American power, determination, and values.

What are the primary obstacles? To be certain, there is corruption, major factionalism, poverty and displacement, security holes, Iranian influence, bureaucratic ineffectiveness. But, frankly, I think the linchpin here will be the Arab-Kurd negotiation process over the status (and size) of Iraqi Kurdistan. Continued ambiguity on the topic will be a major hangup for the resolution of all these other problems, and is the single most likely problem in all of Iraq to cause major destabilization of the regime.

The Arab-Kurd conflict in Iraq is a rather frustrating problem I have lamented a number of times in the past--it has been highly unclear to me exactly how Iraq was going to solve its Kurdistan problem. Kurdistan had both the power and the motive to keep pushing the central government for a greater advantage. As long as its future projections for relative power were good, a stable state could not be reached.

But the strangest of butterfly effects may be taking place. As you probably know, Turkey is hot for a bid into the EU, and has been struggling immensely to realize said bid. There are many obstacles in Turkey's way, the least of which is not racism and Islamophobia in many parts of Europe. More legitimate problems, like governmental stability and human rights questions, have kept it out, as well.

The Turks have taken their rebuffs in stride, carefully noting any concrete objections in order to try to annihilate them and (seemingly) legitimize their bid for EU ascendancy. At the top of this list of objections has been the Turkish treatment of their Kurdish minority. In a 25-year-long low-intensity war to keep the province from breaking away, the Turks have taken great measures to "Turkify" their Kurdish southeast. Banning of wearing Kurdish clothing, teaching Kurdish in school, Kurdish-language television, and Kurdish cultural/national symbols, as well as a bold official renaming of places in Kurdistan to Turkish names have been part of an overall effort that has been (somewhat fairly) called "Cultural Genocide." Frankly, it has also been a failed policy, and has more likely bolstered resistance to integration rather than eroded it.

In a rather stunning about-face, the ruling coalition in Turkey has offered a rather generous peace deal, which includes (among other things) a restoration of the Kurdish right to express a cultural identity (including television, school, clothing, etc). While certainly far from an easy fix, the overture has certainly caused the peace process to gain a great deal of momentum. In an equally stunning reply gesture, 8 PKK members from Iraq crossed the border and laid down their weapons to help cooperate with the peace process.

Obviously, there will be implications in Iraq. The decision clearly seems to be having some impact on Kurdish nationalist motivation--if the PKK (in Iraq, even!) is beginning to walk across the border and lay down arms, the organization as a whole clearly has a lot less steam to fight than it used to. Because Kurds in Iraq are probably approximately as concerned with Kurds in Turkey as other Kurds in Iraq, seeing Turkish Kurds accept a fruitful and just peace process will certainly dampen the "us versus them" mentality that has dominated ultranationalist Kurds since the early 20th century. Furthermore, if the peace process works, government control will be restored to Southeast Turkey, meaning that Iraqi Kurdish fighting groups will no longer have a porous border behind which they can rest, regroup, rearm, etc. They will have lost a key (and much larger) ally in the struggle with Iraqi Arabs, leading to decreased military power and decreased bargaining power.

With deflated motivation and ability (assuming the peace process is as rosy as everyone hopes), Iraqi Kurds are likely to realize that their future negotiating prospects are going to only be going down. This implies that today is the peak of Kurdish power in Iraq (assuming central government power will not also decrease). Any good negotiations theory says that you should (and do in fact tend to) negotiate for a settlement when at your peak of relative power. The Iraqi central government could try to drag out the negotiating process to bargain from a position of higher power later, but if they're smart, they'll want to get this done and over with without giving up too much, such that they can move on to other big problems.

Assuming that these dominoes do fall and the Kurds find a framework in which to get along with the Arab central government, a whole host of problems are going to be solved. First, Kurd-controlled and Baghdad-controlled troops will no longer be squaring off with each other--they can spend their time hunting down the remnants of al-Qaeda that (intuitively) are most dominant in the fuzzy border between the Kurdistan Autonomous Region and the rest of Iraq. Furthermore, a settlement will include election agreements, which should put a dent in factionalism and volatility in Iraqi politics, which should allow more stable ruling coalitions to actually spend political capital to tackle big problems (like corruption, power supply, IDPs, security, etc). Finally, and perhaps most tantalizingly, an agreement will likely include an oil deal, allowing Iraq's vast oil riches to finally be fully exploited--and for both governments to get significant cuts that should fund a strong Army, a strong reconstruction process, and a healthy health/education department (why this is not the case in many other oil-rich states is a very long story, but for a number of reasons I think Iraq is unlikely to fall as far into the dark pits of inefficiency, corruption, and central planning that plague many other oil states).

I don't quite mean to imply that the Turkish-Kurdish peace will will be a cure-all in Iraq. But if the dominoes fall as I think they will, it will remove what is perhaps the biggest obstacle to the Iraqi central government effectively dealing with its top domestic issues. If those can get chugging along, then the Americans can begin to feel pretty secure about having achieved even the most ambitious and extensive goal list in Iraq.

The Great Middle East Limbo

The US Election is zooming in quickly, but even after Senator Obama wins (let's face it), he won't have the authority to do his own peace-brokering quiet yet. Arabs abroad love him, and would probably give him an opportunity to try his hand at mediation.

But right now, there's a more limiting factor that will keep him sidelined for even the first month or two of his presidency. Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima party and their candidate for Prime Minister, has failed to create a coalition government in Israel's Knesset (parliament). She's citing "political blackmail" by potential coalition partners; unable to reign in their allegedly unreasonable demands (especially because some of them stand to gain in an early election), she moved to an election.

Her decision to have an election likely means there just wasn't another option. Kadima does not want to delay the peace process with Palestine, nor does it want to open the door for Netanyahu's Likud party to gain power again. Likud is polling well, and if they won, would probably expand (not contract) Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and probably even in the Golan heights. Peace talks with Syria and the Palestinian Authority would break down. This is not an illegitimate or summarily bad position for Israel to have, but it will unquestionably frustrate the EU and US, who have been beating their heads against brick walls to make this happen--and who saw, just before the fall of Olmert, a glimmer of hope in the open-mindedness of Palestine's Abbas and Syria's Assad to shift West. Before Olmert's fall, a fair number of international political analysts were predicting a surprisingly happy Middle East by 2011. That optimism has all but vanished.

If Kadima manages to win the election, it will have been after serious delays--delays in which a coup may take down Assad, or an assassination might take down Abbas. The Israeli election will probably occur in February, putting at least 4 more months of delay on talks. It's something that has lots of people nervous.

That said, Likud brings up some serious points to the discussion table. Israel is in a position where, after 60 short years, it has learned many times over that land-for-peace often does not work in the Arab world. If the Palestinian Authority cannot control its own people (hint: it can't), then summarily pulling out from PA territory would greatly increase the operations capabilities of the more Hamas-leaning Palestinians. Would extremism go away quickly in the PA? Certainly not. And concessions in the light of terror attacks in Israel might send the message that continued terror attacks will eventually lead to more concessions--or more thoroughly disrupt the Israeli government. Until all but a few Palestinians can either be A) convinced that Israel is there to stay, or B) suppressed by a strong Palestinian government, Israel puts its citizens at serious risk by giving up the PA territories.

The Golan Heights are less critically disastrous, but similar. In theory, if Israel gave the Golan Heights back to Syria, Syria would stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah operations in Israel, greatly increasing Israel's security. Some have mentioned that the Golan Heights are militarily advantageous, and they are--but not by much. The Israeli army is far superior to Syria's, and Syria will never again get the help of Iraq, Jordan, or Egypt if it tried to pick a fight with the Israelis. Syria would be crushed in any head-to-head battle with the Israelis. Besides--Blue Helmets would probably line the heights for a fair while after the handover, to keep it demilitarized.

But those Blue Helmets might be Israel's bane in such a handover deal. If the Syrians don't hold to their promises--and keep funding anti-Israeli terrorist organizations--then the Israelis can't do much about it. Referring to a recent post of mine, Israel has a lot of power with de facto control over the Heights, and if it agreed to a new status quo, it would face a heavy burden to overturn it--especially if UN troops would be hurt in the process. Syria might be able to do whatever it wants when Israel's bargaining chips are gone--especially if Israel couldn't afford the political cost of taking them back.

The situation's sticky. But it's about to get even stickier--hopelessly so--if Israeli elections get messy. Lame-duck and incoming presidents alike are going to be frustrated and disheartened. But it's just another day in the life of the Middle East peace process.

Syria is Preparing for a Major Shift

Syria accepted a visit by French President Sarkozy this weekend, and started making noise about major policy shifts that are likely to set the balance of the Middle East well in favor of the West.

First, they accepted a visit by Sarkozy at all. Sarkozy, of course, has been on a foreign policy blitz since he took over for Chirac. Counter to all his economic impotence, he has deeply improved ties with the US, UK, and Germany, re-entered NATO as a full member, taken his own tough stance against Russia and Iran in a way that Europeans have been highly averse to for a very long time. He has proposed a Mediterranean Union, one in which France would likely lead states like Morocco, Algeria, Italy, Turkey, Greece, and other middle-sized states. Syria is a small-but-critical piece of making a great deal of French geopolitical re-positioning possible. For the Syrians to accept them shows an opening-up to their former colonial overlords, despite years of almost-jihadist rhetoric coming from the government.

Second, they are upgrading to full diplomatic relations with Lebanon, for the first time since they declared independence. Such a move, even if it does include Hezbollah as a political party, likely shows an intent to work together with the anti-Syrian majority that ousted the Syrians in multiple bloody steps, ending in 2005. Such cooperation would make it difficult for Hezbollah to make gains from its minority position, and also much harder to acquire weapons. The Syrians are investing in the success and stability of the Lebanese government, and are thus helping to assure it. A willingness to deal with the ruling party in Syria means that Hezbollah will no longer be their only option, and so they are likely to put their limited eggs in multiple baskets.

Finally, the Syrians are seriously looking to continue peace talks with Israel--as soon as the US election is done. This not only shows us how important the US is in such things, but also that it is weighing the timing of the decision seriously, even if it is not clear exactly how. Would McCain scare them into siding with the West? Or would Obama convince them that a friendlier, more regionally hands-off US presidency makes the next 8 years a better time to experiment with pro-Western stances? Or is it as simple as they state--they want either candidate that is not George Bush to work with? I simply don't know. But the sign that they are waiting for the US election shows serious policy consideration on the issue--it is not a matter of whim, but of real conditions. The Syrians want this peace deal. They just need the conditions to be right.

And so they are planning something big. Peace with Israel would mean an Israel secure from any land invasion except by Hezbollah insurgents from Lebanon--and combined with good relations with Lebanon, peace with Israel would lead to a Syria much less excited about supporting unpredictable Shiite insurgent groups that are likely to both destabilize Lebanon and anger Israel. This would also necessitate a moving-away from an Iran that would feel abandoned by its ally. No doubt, the Iranians are likely screaming at Syrian policymakers to reconsider, which may be why they are waiting until the US election. The move would leave Iran relatively isolated by--if not an enemy of--the Middle East, much in the same way that Japan is the black sheep of East Asia. The Syrian abandonment is likely going to give the next US president bargaining power with Iran to come to a deal in Iraq favorable to the US. Iran knows that Iraq will be a Shiite-dominated country, the only question is how much. They may be willing ot hedge their bets on Iraq and ensure a friendly neighbor rather than use brinksmanship to create an idealistic ally, at risk of alienating their last chance in the region.