Judging by accepted standards for Israeli election or party-primary candidates, Shaul Mofaz of Kadima did something fairly unique. He actually presented a detailed platform to back up his candidacy to lead Kadima in that party's leadership primary in late March. Mofaz, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and minister of defense under Ariel Sharon, defeated incumbent party leader Tzipi Livni by a landslide. That this happened more because of Livni's failings than due to the intricacies of Mofaz's platform should not detract from our interest in the platform, where it focuses on the Palestinian issue.
Mofaz could be awarded a senior ministerial portfolio in the next government. (Actually, he aspires to form the next government, but at this point in time that appears unrealistic.) So his plan for dealing with the Palestinian issue, which is strikingly different from what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advocates or what Livni supports, deserves our attention.
Several slightly different versions of Mofaz's plan have been circulated. Broadly speaking, he advocates that Israel recognize Palestinian statehood on condition that the PLO takes full responsibility for the Gaza Strip, and that Israel turn over another 10 or 20 percent of the West Bank to the PLO. The international community would recognize this Palestinian state within temporary borders and guarantee an Israeli pledge to negotiate additional withdrawal from a total area equaling the size of the West Bank (i.e., the 1967 lines with land swaps for settlement blocs) within a given period of time. The Knesset would legislate a mechanism for buying out or compensating settlers living beyond the blocs.
Mofaz's proposal borrows extensively from some of the better ideas floated in recent years. It takes as its point of departure phase II of the roadmap: a Palestinian state with temporary borders. It co-opts a proposal floated by the Quartet and toyed with by Netanyahu to withdraw unilaterally from parts of West Bank Area C where there are no settlements. It co-opts the demand of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) for international recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. It seeks to deal with Palestinians' understandable fears that failure in the ensuing negotiations would leave them with a truncated state made up of a hodge-podge of enclaves by offering international guarantees for the completion in real time of negotiations based on the 1967 lines. It adopts a longstanding proposal of the Israeli political left and center to preempt the issue of removing settlements after an agreement by providing incentives for settlers to leave even before a two-state agreement is reached.
In short, this is an interesting and largely constructive proposal that deserves more attention than it has received. But it remains flawed. The Mofaz plan either fails to recognize that the PLO won't regain control over Gaza, or inserts the Gaza issue to give Israel an excuse not to honor its commitments. And it assumes that, backed by an international guarantee to the Palestinians, they and Israel will succeed in settling all final status issues. Yet Abbas himself, through his withdrawal from negotiations and appeal to the United Nations, appears to recognize that the PLO has nothing constructive to offer Israel regarding the right of return and the Temple Mount--in short, the "Jewish state" issues.
The PLO, then, knows full well that it won't recover Gaza any time soon and that its positions prohibit an end-of-claims end-of-conflict agreement that, under Mofaz, would award it the 1967 lines with swaps. Hence it will reject the Mofaz plan for fear of remaining stuck with only around half of the West Bank.
But Mofaz is moving in the right direction: ending the disastrous occupation under terms Israel can live and even prosper with. He should drop the unrealistic Gaza condition and recognize that the "narrative" or "pre-1967" issues of refugees and holy places are deal-breakers that perpetuate the occupation. He should postulate an agreement on the 1967 borders based on Palestinian acceptance, with international guarantees, of Israel's security conditions and international recognition not only of a Palestinian state but of Israel as a Jewish state. In other words, he should acknowledge that Israel needs a viable and secure Palestinian state agreement even without resolving the pre-1967 issues.
Israel's most pressing need today is to end the occupation and, with international recognition, consolidate itself as a Jewish state with adequate guarantees for its security and for ethnic and religious minorities. Even if it then takes generations to resolve the refugee and holy places issues and Gaza remains hostile, a far-reaching measure of stability will have been achieved and Israel will have saved itself from a one-state catastrophe.
Will Mofaz rise to this challenge? -
Published 23/4/2012 © bitterlemons.org
