Amid the pomp and commentary about Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu’s dueling statements this week, and with the Palestinian plan to declare statehood later this year looming in the background, something very fundamental has been missed. When Obama says that a peace deal must be based on the 1967 borders, he’s saying that a great number of Israeli settlements, and the access roads between them that carve up the West Bank, are going to have to be removed. Even if Netanyahu had ever given any indication that he wanted to talk to the Palestinians – and he hasn’t – it’s politically impossible for him to do so. The etiquette of our time, and the death and suffering it conceals, demand that politicians and pundits pretend otherwise, but it ain’t necessarily so.
Netanyahu, the Likud party he leads, and its even more cartoonishly radical coalition partners, have never evinced any genuinely consensual willingness to negotiate with the Palestinians. When Bibi was Prime Minister in the late 1990s, he did everything short of physically digging in his heels to prevent serious talks. In his second stint as the man in charge, just over two years running at this point, he’s done nothing differently nor signaled any intention otherwise.
But even if one stipulates to the completely unsupported idea that Netanyahu is willing to negotiate in good faith, his Knesset coalition, which depends on far right parties to govern, would fall the moment he contemplated it. To be fair, he does a very good job of playing the role of strong, confident Prime Minister, and he is admirably bombastic when he talks about “Judea” and “Samaria” and says things about Jerusalem being a capital and not a settlement. But Netanyahu can’t fully conceal the people watching over his shoulder, waiting to pull his chair at the first sign of weakness. The ultra right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, headed by settler fanatic Avigdor Lieberman, has the numbers to crash the government any time they want. Shas, the religious righties, could probably do the same thing. Even if Netanyahu wanted to agree to the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiation, and there’s no evidence he does, his government wouldn’t survive the opening of negotiations.
What’s caused all the hubbub is Obama’s explicit mention of the 1967 borders; but the crucial word wasn’t “1967”, it was “contiguous”, which he dropped both in his speech and again on Friday when he met with Netanyahu. At present, the restricted access roads leading to and from the settlements mean that the West Bank can be described, without exaggeration, as an archipelago. By definition, a “contiguous” state wouldn’t have those things, and that means that settler removal, an abhorrent notion to the Israeli right, is assumed in any potential deal. Hence, negotiation with an Israeli government as right wing as the current one is doomed to failure.
When asked for an alternative to settler removal, Likud and its allies change the subject by screaming the word “security”. But while such obstinacy can fly in a press conference or a perfunctory negotiation, in the real world it doesn’t mean squat. It’s not a position, it’s a denial. And while they’ve shown an impressive stubbornness, time isn’t on their side.
The rock bottom reality, ugly and impolitic, is that there is no chance for useful talks until Israel has a non-lunatic government. It’s not something Barack Obama can say, it’s not something Mahmoud Abbas can say, and it’s certainly not something Benjamin Netanyahu is going to say, but it’s the truth. Whether that rational coalition comes to power this year or in an isolated apartheid state a decade or more from now, planning for peace without it is a waste of time.
