Israelis don't buy the 'peace process' chatter

by Jennifer Rubin
February 3, 2015

Among the many things President Obama gets wrong about the 
Middle East is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an 
impediment to "peace" with the Palestinians. This obviously neglects 
to account for the serial refusal of the Palestinians to accept peace deals, 
their attempt to bypass negotiations by running to the United Nations 
Security Council and to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court, 
rampant anti-Semitism in the West Bank,  the alliance (on again, off again) 
between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and the PA's repeated 
refusal to give up the right of return. But it also misreads Israeli public opinion.

The Times of Israel reports on a campaign debate among a number of Israeli 
political parties. They are uniformly stumped when it comes to the Palestinian problem:

   These gaps in the debate reflect a broader national bewilderment. A majority 
of Israelis want to separate from the Palestinians. A majority - one that overlaps 
a great deal with the previous group - also believes an Israeli withdrawal is 
unlikely to deliver safety. And so, in a sense, everyone is right. . . .

   On left and right, and among the centrists, the debate showed Israeli leaders 
invariably had an easier time pointing out the weaknesses and foibles in others' 
proposals than incorporating those criticisms into their own.

   A handful of quick post-debate conversations with attendees suggested this 
was not lost on the audience - nor did it dramatically change their outlook 
on the conflict or the parties.

   At the end of the day, after a long string of failed peace talks, Israelis no longer 
believe in the policy narratives of the past. They do not believe peace is attainable 
in the near term, or that annexation might resolve the fundamental questions of 
the conflict.

   And neither, it seems, do their candidates in this election.

In a sense, Israelis have become - across their political spectrum - realists. 
This is true in two respects.

They have come to see the United States under Obama as entirely 
unreliable and therefore as an untrustworthy broker of a peace deal. 
(Former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams wrote months 
before the latest spat over Netanyahu's speech: "The terms used 
by Israeli officials in complaining about their American counterparts 
are sometimes harsh, even in public - though the same terms are 
heard from the Arabs in private. The point is that all of our allies 
in the Middle East believe we are way off course and are pursuing 
policies that cannot succeed and that will damage their security 
and ours.”) It is a truism that without a close U.S.-Israel relationship 
and the assurance of U.S. action against Israel's enemies, 
there is no sense in "taking risks for peace," as the peace process 
crowd likes to say.

But even more fatal to the "peace process" than a weak 
U.S. administration is the clear-eyed view of what is going on 
in Israel's neighborhood. Even if Obama cannot, Israelis see that 
Iran and its allies are on the march in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and 
Yemen and eating the West's lunch at the nuclear negotiations table. 
Israelis see after decades the utter failure of the basic Oslo Accords 
bargain - land for peace.  Each withdrawal (Lebanon, Gaza) brought 
more wars and more death to Israel. Although the security wall ended 
suicide bombers from earlier intifadas, a third intifada is underway 
in which virtually anything (a car, a knife) is a weapon and nowhere 
is safe (a bus stop, a synagogue). There is a reason the left-wing 
peace movement in Israel died (and moved on to Europe and the 
American left wing): Virtually no one in Israel can honestly believe 
there is a peace to be had these days.

Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies 
explains, "While a large majority of Israelis want peace with the 
Palestinians, an even larger majority understand that it won't happen 
as long as Mahmoud Abbas is in charge." He adds, 
"Unfortunately, they also know it won't happen as long as Obama 
is president. He has lost the trust of Palestinians and Israelis, alike."

A new U.S. president is not coming for another two years. In the 
meantime, Israel and our Sunni allies in the Middle East will have 
their hands full staving off Iran and its allies. But the next U.S. president 
needs to understand where the Palestinian problem lies (in the 
West Bank and Gaza and in the PA officials' Swiss bank accounts 
overflowing with money absconded from the Palestinian people) 
and where Israeli public opinion is (and how it got there). 
The next president must rethink our incessant parroting about peace 
through bilateral negotiations. As the George W. Bush administration did, 
the next president would be smart to refocus on the economic and 
political condition of the Palestinians - including the lack of leadership, 
gross corruption and indoctrination of youth in the cauldron of Jew hatred. 
When all those problems are addressed, a peace process may be 
meaningful.