Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: negotiations

Showing posts with label negotiations. Show all posts

Monday, September 04, 2023

Saudis, Palestinians, US all negotiating Saudi peace with Israel - but Israel isn't in the room

A delegation of top American officials is slated to travel to Riyadh this week to meet with Saudi counterparts in order to discuss a potential normalization agreement between the Gulf kingdom and Israel, a US official and a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

The visit by White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf will come just over a month after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia with the same objective, pointing to Washington’s continued determination to broker an elusive deal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Riyadh on the same mission in June.

McGurk and Leaf’s visit will overlap with that of a Palestinian delegation led by Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee secretary-general Hussein al-Sheikh, who will be in Riyadh to discuss what Ramallah is hoping to obtain from a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, the two officials said.

So the US is speaking to Saudi Arabia about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

The US is speaking to Palestinians about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

The Palestinians are speaking to the Saudis about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

Everyone is speaking to each other - about Israel, but not to Israel.

Are there backchannels from Israel to Saudi Arabia? Probably. Is the Israeli government in charge of these backchannels?

We have no idea.

But we do know that the Biden administration and the Palestinians are not keen to negotiate with Netanyahu, so my guess is that some Israeli peacenik organization is leading the backchannel negotiations with the intent to manipulate the Israeli government, not to appease it, about what strings would be attached to the deal.

Maybe I'm being a bit too sensitive after reading the Gidi Grinstein book I reviewed on Sunday and how a backchannel was used by the Israeli Left, the US and Palestinians to collude to bring down Netanyahu in his first term, but the impression I am getting is that a purpose of these negotiations may include finding a way to make the current coalition government fall, something that would being a sigh of relief to the Americans, the Palestinians and not a small number of Israelis.

Holding these meetings in Saudi Arabia is a convenient way to exclude Israeli officials who cannot officially travel to the kingdom. But all other negotiations between Israel and its erstwhile peace partners took place in neutral territory - Europe or the US.

Excluding Israel from these talks seems to be a way to marginalize the Jewish state and put it on its back foot when the offer is revealed - a deal that, it appears, will be all but imposed on Israel rather than one that Israel has a say in. If Israel refuses an offer backed by the US, Saudis and tacitly Palestinians it will look like an intransigent player who only pretends to want peace. If Israel accepts a bad deal, the government probably will fall.

It feels like deja vu.,

Most Israelis and Zionists would love to see Saudi normalization, myself included. Every new revelation makes me wonder if the price would be too high - especially when the major benefits of peace are already effectively there.

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Book review: "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" by Gidi Grinstein

Diplomacy and peacemaking is not a smooth process. It requires a huge amount of preparation, planning and flexibility.

It is always illuminating to look behind the scenes of the Oslo process. Gidi Grinstein, the youngest person at Camp David in 2000, is releasing his account of the events that he witnessed as well as his opinions of what to do moving forward to mark the 30th anniversary of Oslo.

His book, "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" is his attempt to set the record straight after so many others gave their own versions of what happened at Camp David.

Grinstein writes from the perspective of someone who truly wants to see peace. No one can doubt his love of Israel and Zionism - he was part of the team that founded Birthright Israel - but his perspective is decidedly on the Israeli Left.

I found his account fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

Obviously Grinstein tries to spin the events towards his own politics. Instead of giving a straight chronological account of what happened, he spends a great deal of time on the "sausage" behind each negotiating point and then an overview of what has happened since then, along with his own opinions as to where things failed and what Israel should have done instead, in retrospect.

While Grinstein was the junior member at Camp David, he is perhaps the one person with the most knowledge of the big picture. He served as the Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli Delegation for the Negotiations with the PLO from 1999-2001 under Ehud Barak.

Grinstein admires Barak a great deal, but his description of Barak is of someone who is cold and calculating, who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus for his own ends. He keeps his own cards close to his vest, so no one working for him has a clear idea of what their goals are. Grinstein extols Barak as "the smartest man in the room" who keeps his people working in a "matrix" of smaller tasks, while only Barak knows his real plan. This means that Barak creates his own backchannels to undermine the people officially working for him when he deems it necessary, he bypasses the chain of command, and he ensures plausible deniability.

Which, when you think about it, is a lot like Yasir Arafat.

Before he worked for the Prime Minister's office, Grinstein worked for the Economic Cooperation Foundation. The ECF, founded in 1990, was itself one of those backchannels for creating relationships with, and building a peace plan with, the PLO. It was a power that helped bring about the Oslo Accords.

To me, one of the most jarring parts of the book was where Grinstein describes how the ECF helped end Bibi Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. The ECF, which worked hand in glove with Yitzchak Rabin, opposed Netanyahu - and this Israeli think-tank colluded with the PLO to bring him down. Netanyahu demanded more concessions from the PLO in order to keep the Oslo process going, and the ECF convinced their friends in the PLO to pretend to agree to Netanyahu's demands, prompting him to sign the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum based on lies. This caused the right wing of his coalition to revolt and new elections were called that brought Barak into office, just as the ECF intended.

Grinstein seemingly has no compunction about Israelis collaborating with the US and PLO to bring down an Israeli prime minister. The cause of peace justifies all.

Even Grinstein admits that the peace negotiators never really seriously thought about the possibility that Arafat had no intention to really sign a permanent agreement that would end the conflict and what would follow. They became friends with the PLO negotiators, and he lovingly describes how well his team would be treated when they visited Bethlehem or Ramallah and the personal friendships they struck up with the Palestinian team. He mentions and is fully aware of the wave of terror attacks during the 1990s, Arafat's incendiary speeches in Arabic, his actions being fully consistent with his "phased plan" to destroy Israel, but all of that is brushed aside in the pursuit of peace, just as using underhanded methods to bring down an Israeli prime minister is framed as a positive thing.

The only person who predicted the failure of the Oslo process, and that it would lead into war, was US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, who hosted the negotiators for a Shabbat dinner. He had better insight than the entire Israeli peace delegation, who didn't even consider this.

Barak bet everything on the idea that Arafat could be pressured into signing an agreement. He was wrong. But there is very little hand-wringing on that mistake that brought about the second intifada. In fact, Grinstein emphasizes that Arafat was not the direct instigator of the intifada - even as he admits that Arafat had planned for such an event months ahead of time, and that his own security forces, trained and armed by the US, turned their weapons against Israeli forces in the first days of the fighting. He emphasizes that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that supposedly triggered the war was fully coordinated with the PA but still doesn't blame the PA for its role - instead noting that the Jerusalem police response to the violence helped escalate it.

Again, Grinstein isn't blind. But he seems to purposely keep one eye closed.

Similarly, he emphasizes that, in retrospect, Barak should not have pushed for an all or nothing deal, and worked towards a provisional Palestinian state that could be further refined with later negotiations. This, of course, would have been a huge concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state up front. But while he praises the Quartet for employing that idea in their Road Map for Peace, he glosses over that the Palestinian leaders rejected the Road Map out of hand, and have consistently said that they do not want a provisional state.

Also jarring is that, as far as I can tell, the Israeli peace negotiating teams -- both Track I and Track II - apparently were exclusively made up of non-religious males, overwhelmingly if not exclusively Ashkenazic. He notes that the only Israeli woman at Camp David was a secretary. He never mentions that any of the participants in the many meals hosted in the West Bank or Europe had to make accommodations for kosher food. Most of Israeli society is not represented by these peacemakers, who all seem to believe that they are smarter than anyone else in how to look at the big picture, and not really self-critical when it comes to their miscalculations and false assumptions that led to the failure of the peace process. Diversity was not a priority for these liberals.

There is a lot of good information in this book, and it is illuminating - sometimes in ways that it is not meant to be. It is not edited well, unfortunately - for example, it talks extensively about the ECF without explaining what it is, and there are still numerous typos and misspellings (French Premier "Shirak"), it repeats the same anecdotes a couple of times. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time it goes to press.

The book is planned to be released in Israel in two weeks and in the US in December.

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Report of Saudi demands for negotiations on normalization with Israel appears to be Palestinian psy-ops, not real

Arabic media are publishing a supposed list of four Saudi demands in order for the kingdom to start negotiations to recognize Israel.

Private sources reported that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia desires strong political, economic, security and social relations with Israel that include all kinds of cooperation with friendly countries and the establishment of an unprecedented partnership in all fields.

For this, the Kingdom needs security and political guarantees before starting serious negotiations on the form of the relationship. Therefore, the Saudi National Security Council set four conditions for starting real negotiations under the auspices of the United States of America, which are:

1- The United States agrees to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 50 F-35 aircraft, without banning any of the types of advanced capabilities it has, like Israel.

2- The United States of America agrees to complete the sale and construction of 5 nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes.

3- Israel's agreement to subject its nuclear reactors to be under the supervision of the Atomic Energy Commission, and agreement of a Middle East region free of nuclear weapons.

4- Israel should stop weakening the Palestinian National Authority and return to the negotiating table in order to achieve peace and stability in the region.

The only places these were published were Palestinian media, so the list is a little suspect.

Beyond that, these are pre-conditions before any negotiations, and from that perspective they seem absurd - the US giving advanced weapons in exchange for talks that could go nowhere? Israel being forced to make major concessions before any negotiations even start?

And one more thing: The Saudi National Security Council was dissolved in 2015.

This looks like a Palestinian psy-ops attempt to pressure the Saudis to demand more concessions from Israel on the Palestinian issue, as there is a real (and founded) fear among Palestinians that they will be only an incidental part of any normalization plan.

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A new, stupid anti-Israel argument: The Oslo Accords are retroactively illegal

Ralph Wilde, an associate professor at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, writes in OpinioJuris that Israel's presence anywhere beyond the 1949 armistice lines is illegal - not the settlements, but the "occupation" of every square centimeter.

It is a classic case where the opinion precedes the evidence, and the evidence is then shoe-horned into the argument.

There is a great deal of garbage there, but here's an argument that I had never seen before, that is profoundly stupid.

Neither United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, nor the so-called Oslo Accords, provide an alternative legal basis for the existence/continuation of the occupation. Indeed, the Oslo Accords are themselves violative of international law, because ‘consent’ to them by the PLO was coerced through the illegal use of force, and, relatedly, they conflicted with norms of international law that have a special non-derogable/jus cogens status (the prohibition on the use of force other than in self-defence, and the right of self-determination).

According to Wilde, the Oslo Accords were illegal because the PLO was coerced to sign them by Israel.

No one to my knowledge has made that claim, ever. Not during the Oslo process from 1993-2000, not during the second intifada, not afterwards.

The PLO itself certainly never made this claim; to this day, Mahmoud Abbas charges Israel with violating the Oslo Accords but he has not once said that they don't apply because the PLO was coerced

What next? Do we retroactively invalidate the Treaty of Versailles because the Germans lost World War I and therefore were subject to coercion if they didn't sign?

Wilde's illogic is remarkable. But he really tries to make it seem reasonable. In his more expansive article on the topic, he writes:

Given that much of international law operates on the basis of a fiction of sovereign equality despite de facto inequality, treaties between unequal parties are not necessarily invalid for that reason. But one red line is when the powerful party, as here, is subjugating the other party in a particular manner—through an illegal use of force—in a way that has so compromised the freedom of action of that other party when it comes to their consent to the agreement, that the agreement can be understood to have been “procured” through that particular form of subjugation. The Oslo Accords meet this test and are legally-void on this basis. Indeed, their procurement in the context of the occupation constitutes a manifest and egregious form of coercion prescribed by the equivalent rule of customary international law to the provision in the [Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties] when it comes to invalidity.

This means that every case of occupation can never be ended through negotiations because the occupied party is by definition coerced into its agreement.

Wilde's bizarre argument brings up another question. Who determines, under his fantasy version of international law, that one party is being coerced? Normal people would say that it would be the coerced parties themselves. But if the PLO doesn't claim they were coerced to sign the agreements, and indeed make constant arguments that Oslo is valid and Israel is violating it, then how can anyone else possibly make that assertion as fact?

Apparently, Wilde thinks that his own opinion on what constitutes coercion outweighs that of the party he says was coerced! This is no longer the pretense of interpreting international law - this is an attempt to create international law based on what a single uninvolved anti-Israel academic thinks.

Beyond that, we have another problem. If Oslo was signed under coercion, then why didn't the PLO sign the proposed peace agreements from Camp David and Taba, when they were being pressured not only by Israel but by the world's only superpower at the time, the United States? How did Arafat resist that pressure but succumb to the much milder coercion of 1993? What changed - under an international law framework - from his being unable to have free will in 1993 and his freedom in 2000?

It gets better. If Oslo is retroactively illegal, then the Palestinian Authority created by them must retroactively disappear, and any agreements that it signed over the past 25 years are also meaningless, since it never existed. And since the UNGA-recognized "State of Palestine" is simply a renaming of the PA, then it must also disappear - and its signature erased from all the treaties it signed.

Wilde, for all his erudition and expertise, proves himself to be a fraud in this argument. He is clearly twisting international law to fit his own pre-determined conclusion.

And that should disqualify him from teaching anyone.

(h/t Irene)

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Kushner vs. Erekat shows that Kushner is right

There has been an interesting clash in the media between Jared Kushner and Saeb Erekat that, when analyzed, shows that Kushner is right.

Kushner went on Arab MBCTV to defend the plan. As usual, no one can argue with what he says so they are upset over his tone which they claim is condescending. This interview does not sound condescending to me:

During the interview Kushner also slammed Erekat for being part of the problem:

"He says a lot of things that have turned out not to be true," Kushner told Egyptian journalist Amr Adib on MBC Masr's Al Hikaya political program. "The guy has a perfect track record at failing at making peace deals."

Kushner riled up Erekat and anti-Israel activists last week when he said, accurately, that Palestinians like Erekat have screwed up every previous opportunity for peace:

Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the President, says the White House's Middle East plan is "a great deal" and if Palestinians reject it, “they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.” pic.twitter.com/ABAI3gKjig
— CNN (@CNN) January 28, 2020

Erakat tweeted after the MBC interview:

It is because of people like you who want to dictate rather than negotiate and who they thought could impose an apartheid Netanyahu plan on the Palestinian people forever. Ending the occupation, two states on the 1967 borders, otherwise is failure.

Yet as I noted, the 2008 Olmert plan gave Abbas everything he demanded - and more. Erekat admitted this himself:

“I heard Olmert say that he offered 100% of the West Bank territory. This is true. I’ll testify to this. He [Olmert] presented a map [to Abbas], and said: ‘I want [Israel] to take 6.5% of the West Bank and I’ll give [the PA] 6.5% of the 1948 territory (i.e., land in Israel) in return.’ [Olmert] said to Abbas: ‘The area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on the eve of June 4, 1967, was 6,235 sq. km. [I said to Abbas]: ‘There are 50 sq. km. of no man’s land in Jerusalem and Latrun.’ We’ll split them between us, so the territory will be 6,260 sq. km.” [I said to Abbas:] Olmert wants to give you 20 sq. km. more, so that you could say [to Palestinians]: ‘I got more than the 1967 territories.’ Regarding Jerusalem, [Olmert said]: ‘What’s Arab is Arab, and what’s Jewish is Jewish, and we’ll keep it an open city.’ Regarding the refugees, [Olmert] offered him [Abbas] 150,000 refugees … [Olmert] said: “The refugees’ right to return to the State of Palestine is your law. But regarding Israel, we will accept 150,000 refugees over 10 years. 15,000 [per year] over 10 years.”

So by denouncing all previous plans - which is in fact what many "pro-Palestinian" activists are doing in response to Kushner's CNN interview - Erekat is saying that his opposition isn't to Trump's plan but to every single previous plan as well for not going far enough.

The only possible interpretation is that Abbas' demands in 2008 were a lie, and he wanted to paint Olmert into a corner, not thinking he would (stupidly) agree to every demand for land and Israel taking responsibility for 1948 refugees and splitting Jerusalem. Abbas didn't want to end his claims on all of Israel down the line; he didn't want to stop at 150,000 Arabs "returning" - he didn't want to agree to anything that would leave Israel strong and viable.

Kushner is accurately pointing out that if Palestinians want a state, they can have one. In this plan, he notes, all the checkpoints will be gone - a Palestinian can travel through the entire state without seeing a single Israeli. Any Arab that wants to pray at Al Aqsa can do so. Details that were never dreamed of in previous plans are considered with the welfare of average Palestinians in the forefront of its philosophy.

Erekat's fuming response is, essentially, that nothing less than full Israeli surrender to the demands of those who claim they have nothing is acceptable - and that includes "return" to destroy the Jewish state. He is showing that his problem is not with Trump but with all previous plans, which fulfilled every ostensible Palestinian demand.

Erekat's words show that Palestinian leaders were never serious about peace or an independent state.And the Palestinian people are the ones who lose out because of the egos of Erekat and Abbas and all the rest.

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Know How to Answer, part 10: "Israel must return to the internationally recognized borders of 1967"

Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

Here is part 10.

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Hillary Bids for Jewish Support (Mike Lumish)

Hillary Clinton has a recent piece in The Forward entitled, How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu. Despite her role in the most anti-Israel administration in American history, Clinton wants us to believe that she cares about Israel, has an "enduring emotional connection" to the land and its people, and has done all sorts of good work in supporting the Jewish state.

She tells us:

I have stood with Israel my entire career. As a senator, I fought to get Magen David Adom accepted to the International Red Cross when other nations tried to exclude the organization. I wrote and co-sponsored bills that isolated terror groups, and pushed to crack down on incitement in Palestinian textbooks and schools. As secretary of state, I requested more assistance for Israel every year, and supported the lifesaving Iron Dome rocket defense system. I defended Israel from isolation and attacks at the United Nations and other international settings, including opposing the biased Goldstone report.

Although I do not distrust Hillary's intentions toward Israel, you know what they say about good intentions and the direction of its paving. It is her foreign policy ideology that I do not trust. It is her unwavering belief in the ongoing failed Oslo nonsense.

It is the likelihood that after eight years of Obama's antics we will get more of the same from Hillary.

She reminds us that "in 2012 I led negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza to stop Hamas rockets from raining down on Israeli homes and communities."

The is sort-of true. Clinton did lead the cease-fire effort at the time, but its primary effect, whatever its intention, was to save Hamas from Israeli retaliation. If Clinton was interested in preventing Hamas rocketeers from ruining the lives of Israeli children then she might not have waited until the moment that Israel started shooting back before interfering. Hamas sent thousands of rockets into southern Israel in the years preceding that engagement and if Hillary was so opposed she might have used her influence to see about de-funding the Jihadi organization.

She didn't.

Aside from outlining the various ways that she has been allegedly friendly to Israel in the past, she also assures us that she will be friendly to Israel in the future.

And while no solution can be imposed from outside, I believe the United States has a responsibility to help bring Israelis and Palestinians to the table and to encourage the difficult but necessary decisions that will lead to peace. As president I will never stop working to advance the goal of two states for two peoples living in peace, security and dignity.

This is the big problem.

And it is why no one who cares about the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel, or the well-being of Jewish people, in general, should support Hillary's campaign for president. Hillary, like Barack Obama, is a devotee of the Oslo Delusion. We already know how this movie is going to end because we have seen it many times before.

It looks something like this:

1) The US and the EU demand negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

2) The parties agree to talk and then the PA, the US, and the EU demand various concessions from Israel for the great privilege of sitting down with the PA's foremost undertaker.

3) Israel fails to meet all the concessions, thus causing the PA to flee negotiations, which they never had any intention of concluding to begin with.

4) The PA and the EU and the left-leaning American administration place the blame for failure at Jewish feet.

5) The EU and various European countries announce additional sanctions, thereby essentially joining the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist BDS movement.

6) Jihadis seek to murder Jews.
We are in phase number six of the current round at this particular moment... as anyone who cocks their head out the car door window in Jerusalem, and listens to the screams, will attest. Young Arab-Muslim men are running around Israel stabbing old Jewish ladies and young Jewish children and many in the West believe Israeli Jews richly deserve it. Part of the reason that many in the West, particularly on the Left, think that Arabs have every right to kill Jews is because people like Barack Obama and his administration constantly blame Arab violence on their Jewish victims.

For years, Barack Obama - and people who think like him - have essentially told the world that the real problem is that Jews are so arrogant that they think that they should have the right to build housing for ourselves in Judea... not to mention Samaria. Thus, suddenly, the word "settler" begins to gain evil connotations and the Jewish people are encouraged to split between those of us who oppose these evil settlers and those of us, being evil ourselves, support the evil settlers.

I support the evil settlers.

That land and those hills represent the very heartland of the Jewish people and no one is going to tell me that Judea belongs to the Arab conquerors of Jewish land. Since at least the Peel Commission of 1937, the Jewish people in the Land of Israel have, over and over again, demonstrated their willingness to share what little bit of Jewish land there is with their hostile neighbors.

Time and again they were rebuked.

What Hillary Clinton needs to understand, and what Barack Obama never learned, is that this is not a war over land. It is a centuries-long Arab-Muslim imposition of imperial supremacy upon all non-Muslims, most particularly those that they call the children of orangutans and swine, i.e., the Jewish people.

What Hillary Clinton needs to understand is that while Israeli-Jews are not victims, because they refuse to be victims, this does not mean that they are oppressors, either. It is the Arabs, not the Jews, who have turned that particular human tendency into an art-form.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.