With
Biden in the White House and Trump’s “deal of the century” in limbo, the PA leadership
might well be tempted to pursue its overtures to the Quartet ‒ especially if
current attempts to glue the PA and Hamas together fail to gell. In addition, pressure to seize the initiative
is mounting as Arab-Israel normalization proceeds apace, and the Palestinian
issue is being pushed to one side.
The Quartet was
established in Madrid in 2002 and consists of the UN, the US, the European
Union and Russia. Its objective is to
take "tangible steps on the ground to advance the Palestinian economy and
preserve the possibility of a two state solution.”
In recent years it has become moribund, but in June 2020 PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh submitted to the Quartet a counter-proposal to the Trump plan. It envisaged, in his words, the creation of a "sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized" with "minor modifications of borders where necessary."
Having gone so far,
perhaps the PA might be prepared to sit down at the negotiating table under the
auspices of the Quartet, without pre-conditions or pre-conceptions, but
shielded by support from the Arab League, and especially perhaps from the
nations that have signed agreements with Israel – Egypt, Jordan, the UAE,
Bahrain and Sudan.
On September 2, 2018, a delegation from Israel’s Peace Now organization travelled to Ramallah in the West Bank to discuss with Abbas prospects for settling the conflict. The statements that follow such meetings rarely contain anything of substance. This was an exception. The next morning, the Palestinian Information Center, known as Palinfo, published a deadpan account of Abbas’s conversation with the Israelis. without comment.
“During a meeting with an Israeli delegation
that visited Ramallah on Sunday,” ran the report, “Abbas said that senior US
officials, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, asked him recently about his
opinion of a ‘confederation with Jordan’. Abbas said: “I said yes to the offer, but I
want a three-way confederation with Jordan and Israel.”
At the time Kushner and
Greenblatt were, of course, heavily engaged in constructing the Trump peace
plan. By the time Abbas made his comment, the word “confederation” had been
featuring in the speculation buzzing about the “deal of the century”. This is why the Jordanians had recently issued
a statement rejecting the idea of uniting with, or taking over, the West Bank. But Abbas’s endorsement of a triangular
confederation comprising Jordan, Israel and a sovereign state of Palestine could
have been a game changer –
and still might be.
A confederation differs
fundamentally from a federation. In a
federation, states hand over some of their sovereignty to a central government;
in a confederation, sovereign states retain their sovereignty but agree to
collaborate on certain political, economic or administrative matters,
appointing a joint central authority to coordinate the arrangement.
In supporting a three-way Jordan-Israel-Palestine confederation Abbas has a good deal of reason on his side. Prowling around the PA stockade is Hamas, ruling over nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza, hungry for power in the West Bank, and harrying Abbas for a decade. No Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is likely to be effective. The PA is set on achieving a Palestinian state by way of an accommodation with Israel. No matter that the PA leadership sees this as only a step towards eventual control of the whole of Mandate Palestine, Hamas will have no truck with the long game. Hamas rejects the idea of a peace deal with Israel because it rejects the right of Israel to exist at all, and is dedicated to destroying it.
Abbas fears that if a
sovereign Palestine were indeed to be established, it would not take long for
Hamas to seize the reins of power just as it did in Gaza. The PA leadership has
long feared losing power to Hamas, either by way of a military coup or via
democratic elections. Like it or not, Abbas realizes that a new Palestine would
need stronger defenses against “the enemy within” than his own resources could
provide – one powerful reason
for supporting the confederation concept.
As for Jordan, the last
thing it wants is a weak Palestinian state 15 minutes from Amman that could be
overrun at any time by Hamas, and possibly become a base for Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guards and other elements keen on overthrowing not only Israel,
but Jordan as well.
The political reality is that any viable solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute would have to be based on an Arab-wide consensus, within which Palestinian extremist objections could be absorbed. Facilitated by the Quartet, the Arab League could prove a broker for peace acceptable to all parties. Under its shield the PA could participate with Jordan and Israel in hammering out a three-state confederation – a new political entity, to come into legal existence simultaneously with a new sovereign Palestine that ideally would include Gaza.
The negotiations to bring about this kind of
political solution would be lengthy, intensive and complex, but if successful
the end-result would be eminently worthwhile. A Jordan-Israel-Palestine
confederation could be dedicated above all to defending itself and its
constituent sovereign states, but also to cooperating in the fields of
commerce, infrastructure and economic development. From the moment it came into
legal existence, the confederation could make it abundantly clear that any
subsequent armed opposition, from whatever source, including Hamas, would be
disciplined and crushed from within.
Acting in concert with
the defense forces of the other states, the Israel Defense Forces would
guarantee both Israel’s security and that of the confederation as a whole.
A confederation of three sovereign states, dedicated to providing high-tech security but also future economic growth and prosperity for all its citizens − if this is indeed Mahmoud Abbas’s vision, it is a possible route to a peaceful and thriving Middle East.
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