Ben Buckman.net

Thomas Friedman gives up on the Israel-Palestinian peace process (for now):

The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. ...

It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home. ...

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.

If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.

I basically agree with him. The Netanyahu government is pushing ahead with unilateral "facts on the ground" that make any future negotiations that much harder, while essentially daring the PA to declare a state. The PA has given up, Abbas is quitting; it can't or won't make a deal on any terms the Israelis would accept.

The big question in my mind is, what does happen if/when the PA declares a state? In 1948 Israel had a legal basis - the UN Partition Plan - for the borders it declared to be its own. (The subsequent defensive war expanded those borders considerably, of course, which remains the #1 challenge today: as Friedman puts it, do the Palestinians want 1967 or 1948?) 

What kind of state and on what territory can the Palestinians declare? They can call their current land a state, but their land is split, politically and physically; their sovereign territory is a fraction of what they want; and even in that territory their sovereignty is weak. Does declaring a Palestinian state that includes Israeli territory have any legal bearing? The most effective way for the Palestinians to destroy Israel as a Jewish state is not to declare a state, but to demand the vote - in Israel - and declaring their own state would make such a demand preposterous. (The United States didn't declare independence from Britain in 1776 so it could vote in the British parliament, in other words.) Or flip that around: if the Palestinians declare a state that includes Jewish settlements, can't the settlers demand their own vote (assuming the declared state has any facade of democracy, which given the international players, seems likely)?

The only certainty of the PA declaring a state unilaterally is that all the old rules are thrown away and everything's up in the air. It could lead to massive political pressure on Israel to accept the state, or more likely, the US and EU wouldn't see the point of defending a state that has no effective sovereignty, and it would be DOA. So Netanyahu is betting that a Palestinian state is a bad hand, and he's daring the PA to play it. From his point of view, that's probably a prudent (but short-sighted) approach.

In that situation, the peace process is truly a waste of America's diplomatic capital. I wonder why it's taking so long for Palestinians to demand the vote in Israel, though, because that is a game Israel can't legitimately win.