Enough Symbolism. Time to get real

By Lorna Fitzsimons, Chief Executive, BICOM

Some inconvenient truths. One, peace can only come through direct negotiations. Two, when those negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians broke down in September 2010 it was over complex and painful issues that divide the two parties, not personalities. Three, what really matters now is our ability as an international community to support the parties to move back towards talking and, ultimately, excruciating mutual compromise.

The drama in New York – big speeches, up and down votes, and the endless speculation about whether the Palestinians will go for ‘full-state’ status or ‘non-member observer state’ status – gets us no nearer that goal. (It might even push us further away.)

Some awkward questions. One, is the international community aiding and abetting a gigantic avoidance strategy by joining in the pretence that there is another route to peace – international enforcement? Two, are some actors assuaging colonial guilt – peacemaking as an expressive rather than an instrumental form of behaviour? Three, are we misleading the Palestinians by allowing them to believe we can grant them that which is not in our power to give? Three, after our catharsis is achieved, will we have pushed their dreams further away?

The international community needs more humility, and common sense. Yes, we are frustrated (but not half as much as the Palestinians and Israelis). Yes, we all think opportunities are being missed. And yes, we are sure that peace between Israelis and Palestinians would lead to a host of good things. But while a wish can be father to a thought, it does rather less well when it comes to conflict-ending agreements.

It is time to get real. Aaron David Miller, the long serving US diplomat argues that while the gaps were big before the Arab spring, on any sober analysis that convulsion has not simply narrowed them. So I bristle when I hear a politician browbeating a country about what it ‘has to’ do (usually a course of action the politician in question thinks rational). First, would we take existential risk with our country? Would we place our bet at a time of unparalleled regional uncertainty and danger? Just because we want two states – a viable Palestinian State and a secure Israel – that doesn’t mean we have the right to ignore these realities. Second, Palestinian security is reliant on Israel’s security, so it really isn’t good enough to pay lip service to Israel’s security needs, hoping it will all, so to speak, ‘come out in the wash’. Third, can someone please tell me when we all agreed not to mention Hamas? As Miller points out, we are pretending that there are not two entities with different missions, and one is still procuring and carrying our acts of terror? That may be inconvenient – for no one more than Fatah – but it does not give us the right to pretend it isn’t part of the picture.

If our policy is one part personal dislike of Bibi, and one part desire to ‘give the Palestinians something,’ then it will fail, for nether will get negotiations back on track. And only negotiations will move us from the symbolic to the real, from expressive behaviour that satisfies us, to instrumental behaviour that brings a durable peace between two traumatised peoples.