On the eve of what he perceived in some panic to be a knife-edge election this month, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Right-wing Prime Minister, pledged that there would be no Palestinian state so long as he is in charge. He won. The Palestinians say they will now go all-out for international recognition as a state. Should the world stand by?
Until now, the US — Israel’s diplomatic and military patron — and the European Union (EU), its biggest trading partner, have largely insulated the country from the consequences of subjugating another people, in defiance of decades-old United Nations Security Council resolutions. However bad US President Barack Obama’s or German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal relations are with Netanyahu, the US president and much of Europe have tolerated the slippery irredentism of the Israeli premier and his Greater Israel allies as they eat away at land they intend to occupy forever and place a viable Palestinian state beyond reach. If he gets away with it, generations of Israelis will have to live with a permanent threat, Palestinians will live a catastrophe, Arab resentment will deepen and opportunists in a fast-dissolving region will exploit this.
Despite Netanyahu’s predictable attempts to recant his election rhetoric, his begrudging acceptance of a Palestinian state was always cant. The final fevered days of the campaign showcased the real, unfiltered “Bibi”. He has apologised for his remarks about Arab citizens of Israel: Dog-whistle racism that painted a fifth of the state’s population as fifth columnists. But there is only one way to interpret his photo-op in Har Homa, a Jewish colony he started during his first term in 1996-99, where he said he had closed the Palestinians’ “southern gateway” to occupied Jerusalem and cut off the divided holy city from the now almost walled-in Palestinian city of Bethlehem. His honesty on that occasion was unimpeachable. There are no grounds left for affording this Israeli leader even a veneer of credibility. But will he get his way yet again?
EU member states could bring to the UN Security Council a two-states blueprint — Israel alongside an independent Palestine built on the territory Israel conquered in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — with the pre-war borders as the starting point for negotiations and a time-table for their completion. The US, which has used its veto in the council 41 times to shield Israel from condemnation, may abstain. The Palestinians will continue trying to get more countries to recognise their future state as 135 out of 193 UN members already do. If Israel were to negotiate on the basis of this new resolution, and halt the spurt of colony building that Netanyahu has just promised, the Palestinians should desist from trying to bring war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, which they are due to join next week.
There are signals that some such scenario is under discussion in Washington and European capitals. The Obama White House, however, seems averse to a timeline. Last year it blocked a draft Security Council resolution calling for a Palestinian state within three years. Yet, with no timetable, Netanyahu will gamble he can outwait Obama’s last two years as president. Israelis fear isolation but they will not feel the recklessness of a leader who risks placing their country outside international law unless he is challenged.
The EU has fed that fear. After US-sponsored talks to revive hopes of a Palestinian state petered out in April last year, torpedoed by Netanyahu, the momentum to recognise Palestine has built across Europe. EU influence is often underestimated, though perhaps no longer in Israel.
EU rules bar funding to Israeli entities in the Occupied Territories. While Israel was initially dismissive of this, it nearly withdrew from Horizon 2020, the union’s 80 billion euros (Dh324 billion) research and development programme. Why would Israel spurn a scheme that disproportionately benefits its innovative scientists, even though it is not an EU member? Because it feared it might have to clarify the difference between Israeli and Palestinian territory. An EU compromise forestalled that but still makes clear that Palestinian land is occupied and not, as Israel maintains, disputed.
A UN resolution should insist Israel ends that occupation. It may be that the density of colonies in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has ended hopes of a viable Palestinian state. What has definitely ended is the old peace process. Netanyahu spelt that out and, for once, we should believe him.
— Financial Times
