April 10, 2014
Those who have followed the last eight months
of American-mediated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have anticipated the
unveiling of the United States’ own “framework” for continued negotiations to
achieve a permanent, comprehensive peace agreement. Whether or not this
happens, for now the negotiations have hit a major snag and may well break down
completely.
The consequences of a breakdown would probably
be grim for both sides: Israelis will be increasingly besieged by their global
political isolation, while the Palestinians will be further squeezed by
Israel’s choke-hold on their economy, movement, borders, and energy, food and
water sources.
I am disappointed that the Palestinians,
Israelis and Americans have been unable to get beyond the old, failed Dennis
Ross-style approach to diplomacy that saw the U.S. mediators tilt heavily
towards Israeli demands rather than prod both sides to seek mutually acceptable
formulas based on equal rights. Israelis and Palestinians one day will have to
make the tough, historic decisions that were made by other leaders in other
equally difficult conflicts, notably in Northern Ireland and South Africa—where
both sides achieved their core demands because they also acceded to the core
demands of the other.
Perhaps we will soon see both sides agree to
keep negotiating on the basis of a U.S.-crafted "framework." If so,
they would do well to study the recommendations recently made by a man who knows
all sides of the conflict, and in fact has proposed just such a draft
framework. He is former U.S. diplomat Daniel Kurtzer, who served as ambassador
to both Israel and Egypt, and in recent years has been a Professor in Middle
Eastern Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs at Princeton University (where I am spending a few months as a visiting
scholar and lecturer).
I went to see him in his office earlier this
week to explore his ideas and understand his approach in more depth. I came
away impressed by a quality in both his text and his character that is missing
from the public pronouncements of U.S. officials. This is the quality of trying
sincerely to acknowledge and respond to the most important needs of both sides,
while also remaining within the bounds of what is politically feasible. It
shows in his model framework text* which he says pushes both sides beyond their
previously announced positions, while “trying to accommodate their deepest
interests and concerns.”
Kurtzer outlines 12 key “parameters” for
negotiation: goal, territory and borders, security, state-to-state relations,
relations with neighbors, Israeli settlements, refugees, West Bank and Gaza
"safe passage," places of historical and religious significance,
Jerusalem, water, and implementation.
He explained to me that, “a framework is like
the top of a funnel that is wider than the final accord that you reach in the
detailed talks.” Some of his language is necessarily broad because the details
can only come from the two negotiating teams. Yet the framework should also
give both sides the feeling that their key concerns and principles are
addressed, so that they would have an incentive to negotiate seriously—which
does not seem to be the case these days.
I feel this text is worth studying and
developing further because it shows how serious negotiators could go about
eliciting support and concessions from both sides who would both feel equally
respected. For in its key words, phrases and diplomatic references, this text
gives meaningful and simultaneous gains to Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Some of his text’s language in its current form will be rejected by both sides,
such as the relatively soft language on Palestinian refugees’ rights and the meaning
of the trauma of exile and refugeehood in 1947-48, and also the demand that
Israel negotiate withdrawals from occupied territory based on the June 4, 1967
lines. Areas like these and a few others that are phrased in language that now
seems unacceptable to one side or the other would have to be negotiated—which
is precisely how a broad “framework” of contested words eventually becomes a
permanent peace agreement comprising mutually agreed terms and language.
His suggestion for the undefined new Israeli
demand of being recognized as a “Jewish state” is to have “Israel recognize
Palestine as the national home of the Palestinian people and all its citizens,
and Palestine will recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people
and all its citizens.”
Jerusalem would become the capital of two
states, and would remain undivided and free of permanent barriers, with agreed
boundaries based on predominantly Jewish neighborhoods being part of Israel and
predominantly Arab neighborhoods being part of the new State of Palestine. They
would agree on a special regime to administer the Old City under an
international administrator they appoint.
This is a very useful starting point for serious
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with a fair mediator, which, in my view, we
have never had to date.
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. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global
Editor’s Note: Daniel Kurtzer detailed
a framework for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in an essay
for the Cairo
Review’s Winter 2013 issue.