May 12, 2013
It
might be coincidental timing or just a really bad case of mean spirited
in-your-face aggressive Israeli diplomacy: In the same week as China announced
a peace plan for the Arab-Israeli conflict and Russia and the United States
announced agreement to hold an international conference to try and resolve the
Syrian conflict peacefully, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said
he would return to the region later this month to try and re-start
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Israeli government announced plans to
build 300 new settler homes in the Beit-El colony near Ramallah.
The
Israeli settlement news is nothing new, but the actions of the three big powers
are new and noteworthy. The American, Russian and Chinese initiatives to
resolve the Arab-Israeli and Syrian conflicts are as laudatory as they are
difficult to achieve, though efforts like this open up new possibilities for
collaborative diplomacy through the UN Security Council, which is usually
critical for success.
In
response, the Israeli government—not a rogue group, but the government of the
state that sees itself as the state of all the Jewish people—responds by moving
ahead on the settlements-colonies front. This captures the two worst aspects of
the current situation: Israeli land annexations and settlements expansion are
perhaps the single greatest reason the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has
failed for 45 years, and they also reflect the core of the continuing
Palestinian condition of occupation, displacement, exile and refugeehood.
The
United States predictably responded by telling Israel on Thursday that its West
Bank settlement plans were “counterproductive,” which is the next sharpest form
of diplomatic rebuke after “naughty, naughty, that is not a nice thing to do to
your neighbors.”
So
in the current circumstances of aggressive Zionist colonization coupled with a
fractured Palestinian leadership, we probably should not expect anything
serious to emerge from the American-led effort to re-start Israeli-Palestinian
talks, much as all of us would like those efforts to succeed. This raises the
question of why the Chinese suddenly jumped into the Arab-Israeli peace-making
arena by announcing their “peace plan” during a week when the Palestinian and
Israeli leaders visited China.
I
personally welcome this move, regardless of how we measure its chances of
success at the moment. Chinese diplomacy is the exact opposite of Israeli state
behavior—it is discreet, unaggressive, and, well, that’s about all we know
about Chinese diplomacy in the Middle East for now. Yet I would rather have the
Chinese and Russians involved in seeking some kind of breakthrough in
peace-making than merely sitting on the side and leaving the arena to the
hapless Americans who have proven over the past 45 years that they enjoy
neither the political impartiality nor the law-based constructive rigor needed
to be a successful mediator in this conflict. When these three major powers all
nibble at the issue from their respective angles, the chances increase that
either a common ground will emerge that will lead to something constructive, or
that they will find common cause to push for Arab-Israeli agreements as part of
a larger package of diplomatic action that could include issues related to
Syria and Iran.
The
four-point Chinese proposal revealed last Monday by Chinese President Xi
Jinping calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and
peaceful coexistence with Israel, noting that, “To establish an independent
state enjoying full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with east
Jerusalem as its capital is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and
the key to the settlement of the Palestinian question. At the same time,
Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should be fully
respected.”
It
also calls for negotiations as the only way to achieve a lasting peace, but
importantly saying that, “The immediate priority is to take credible steps to
stop settlement activities, end violence against innocent civilians, lift the
blockade of the Gaza Strip and properly handle the issue of Palestinian
prisoners, in order to create the necessary conditions for the resumption of
peace talks. Comprehensive internal reconciliation on the part of the
Palestinians will help restart and advance the Palestinian- Israeli peace
talks.”
The
third point stresses the centrality of the principles of “land for peace,”
relevant UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, and the fourth point
calls on the international community to be engaged by offering guarantees for
progress in the negotiations towards a permanent, comprehensive agreement.
It
is noteworthy that the Chinese president told Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas that the Palestinian issue is the core of the Middle East conflict—a
fascinating variation on the American-Israeli focus on Arabs recognizing
Israel’s Jewish and sovereign nature as the key to success.
Only
the Chinese government knows why it is moving ahead with this initiative, but
we should welcome it and engage with it constructively.
Rami
G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by
Agence Global