Throughout the years of the second intifada, the international
community tried repeatedly to secure a cease-fire and return
Israelis and Palestinians to the situation prior to the outbreak of
violence in September 2000. These attempts were carried out by a
variety of different actors using diverse methods, yet they all
shared one thing in common: None of them succeeded.
This article examines the international community's interventions
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 2000 to 2006 and offers
several factors that explain their failure. The most important of
these factors, it will be argued, is that before the bilateral
conflict can be resolved, internal Palestinian conflicts must first
be dealt with. The article recommends a multinational peace support
operation (PSO) as an effective means of doing so and draws on the
American experience in Iraq to support this assertion.
A Review of Missions
The story of American-led international interventions in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the second intifada begins with
the Mitchell Committee, which was charged with creating
recommendations for returning the two sides to the negotiating
table and determining what happened during the initial outbreak of
violence in September 2000. The committee was followed by former
CIA Director George Tenet, who drafted a cease-fire plan but could
not implement it, and then by U.S. General Anthony Zinni, who
attempted to implement Tenet's plan.
In September 2002, the Middle East Quartet (the United States,
European Union, United Nations and Russia) released the
"Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," or the "Roadmap," which offered a
three-phase plan for resolving the conflict. Eight months after its
introduction the Roadmap had stalled, and U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State John Wolf arrived in the area to assist the sides in
fulfilling their Roadmap obligations. Wolf's efforts were not
fruitful, and the sides have yet to implement the first phase of
the Roadmap.
The Roadmap was followed by a series of negotiations between the
Egyptian government and Palestinian terror factions, coupled with
Egyptian assistance in developing the Palestinian security service.
In 2005, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn was charged
with developing Gaza's economy and U.S. Generals William Ward and
Keith Dayton with reforming Palestinian security mechanisms
following the Disengagement.
None of these interventions, with the exception of that of the
Egyptians (but only within Palestine) succeeded in producing
meaningful change. Even Wolfensohn, who focused primarily on
economic matters and worked with incredible determination to
improve Palestinian economic conditions, did not produce
particularly impressive results.2
Research conducted on these missions reveals six major causes for
failure common to most missions. These themes were identified
through thorough examination of newspaper and journal articles
published around the time of and about each mission, monthly polls
conducted by Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace
Research3 and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research,4 as well as private interviews with select mission
participants. An expanded examination of the themes, including a
large body of evidence, can be found in the expanded version of
this paper.5
These six themes are: 1) the absence of Israeli political will, 2)
the absence of Israeli public support, 3) the absence of
Palestinian political will, 4) the absence of the international
community's determination and support, 5) the missions' lack of
authority and 6) the lack of implementation and enforcement
mechanisms.
The absence of Israeli political will resulted in poor cooperation
and coordination with the intervening bodies and is evidenced by
Israel's refusing the intervening bodies access to key locations,
long lists of reservations about their recommendations and stalling
tactics. An additional manifestation of the lack of Israeli
political will was the imposition of stringent criteria for the
implementation of agreements. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's infamous demand for a "week of total quiet" is a key
example.6
Sharon's strict policies towards the resumption of the political
process were strongly supported by the Jewish public in Israel,
which evinced exhaustion and frustration with the peace process.
During much of Sharon's term, the Israeli public showed a high
degree of support for unilateral steps and a rejection of
international involvement. These trends, which are well documented
in the monthly Israeli "Peace Index," give testament to the absence
of Israeli political will and support for international presences
and efforts.
Lack of Palestinian political will was evinced by Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat's double-speak and double-play: saying one
thing to the intervening bodies and another to the Palestinian
public. Palestinian political will was hampered by Arafat's tactic
of playing the besieged leader to the international community and a
strong supporter of Palestinian resistance and terror to his own
public.7
While the Palestinian public may have supported international
intervention, they also continued to support the use of suicide
bombers against Israeli civilians in the period between 2000 and
2004. Thus, Palestinian public opinion supported
Arafat's double policies. After Arafat's death in November 2004,
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) emerged to lead a weak and fragmented
Palestinian Authority. Yet the new president had little real
political influence, and Palestinian despair about the political
process and the international community was aptly demonstrated in
the January 2006 elections, when Hamas succeeded in winning a
majority in the Legislative Council and taking control of the
government.
Beyond the failure of the sides to act on their commitments to
international bodies, and beyond their lack of ripeness for
conflict mitigation, lie the faults of the international community.
Many of the interventions, especially those led by the U.S., were
more political fig leaves than attempts to end the violence.
Sending a small team of diplomats into a conflict zone to negotiate
a cease-fire dependent on the goodwill of the antagonists cannot be
considered a serious effort at ending violence. In the absence of
determined international will, the political vacuum still had to be
filled, hence the ill-fated diplomatic missions.
The deficiencies in authority, implementation and enforcement
mechanisms are endemic to the lack of international support and
determination to end the conflict. Given the unwillingness of
Israelis and Palestinians to de-escalate during the period of the
second intifada, a successful intervention would have had to force
the sides to accept international agreements and compliance
mechanisms. It may not have been apparent at the time, but anything
short of compulsion was destined to failure.
Beyond this, the international community's interventions can also
be criticized for focusing entirely on the interstate conflict and
ignoring the internal Palestinian conflict.8 Successful
international involvement means creating structural changes that
will facilitate a resumption of the political process. Therefore,
international intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
first has to consider what kind of changes need to be created at
both levels and how they can be achieved.
The Bi-Level Nature of the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict
Almost all literature on ethno-national conflict accepts a
distinction between interstate and intrastate conflict, yet the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not neatly fit into either of
those two categories. Unique characteristics from each of the
categories are evinced as the conflict is conducted between two
ethno-national communities living in close geographical proximity
without the clear and defined separation of a recognized
international border. Part of the Palestinian population is
directly governed by Israel, and the rest is at least highly
susceptible to the influence of Israeli actions and military
presence in the Palestinian territories.
More than a decade after its establishment, the PA is not
succeeding in enforcing a monopoly on the use of violent force.9
Politics are managed under the barrel of a gun, balanced between an
internal power struggle and the use of violent resistance or
organized terror against Israel. The violent conflict's course is a
product of the dynamic power of the different political agendas of
the Palestinian factions and the characteristics of Israel's
responses. The absence of law and order cripples the PA's
governance abilities and leaves the fate of any potential bilateral
agreement at the mercy of spoilers.
An additional problem is posed by Hamas's electoral victory. Under
current conditions, Israel, with American and European backing,
will not enter into dialogue or negotiations with Hamas unless the
organization disarms and changes its covenant, or at least accepts
the Oslo agreements and recognizes Israel as a political partner.
Without dialogue, it will not be possible to reach the series of
critical understandings that enable advancing in the direction of
an agreement.
The Utility of a Peace Support Operation
With chaos reigning in streets of Palestine and a government
rejected by most of the international community, the most promising
means of advancing towards agreement are encapsulated in a
multinational peace support operation. The deployment of a PSO in
Palestine would provide the PA with highly skilled security
personnel who could help enforce a monopoly on the use of violent
force and assist the Palestinian security establishment in
maintaining law and order, creating the foundation of security
necessary for effective governance. The introduction of foreign
governance experts and the budgets that accompany them would
further facilitate a rehabilitation of the PA's social services. A
PSO in Palestine could initiate structural change at the
political-institutional, economic and social levels in the
direction of the establishment of a state entity with a responsible
behavioral codex, acceptable to other states in the international
arena.
The strengthening of the PA and its transformation into a state
entity will enable a transformation of the asymmetric nature of the
conflict, bringing it closer to a conflict between two state
entities. A PA that is recognized and aided by the international
community and powerful enough to enforce order would be able to
enter into bilateral negotiations with Israel and nullify Israeli
claims about the absence of a responsible and reliable
partner.
This is not to say that all internal Palestinian conflicts must be
resolved before addressing the bilateral conflict - if that were
the case, the process might take decades. Yet Palestine must be
stabilized before it can negotiate successfully with Israel. Law
and order must prevail in the PA if it is to effectively govern,
and one of the most effective ways of creating that kind of order
is with a PSO. The necessity of law and order is underscored by the
American experience in Iraq, which shows that little else is
possible in the absence of security.
Lessons from the American Experience in Iraq
In its fourth year of engagement in Iraq, the U.S.' hopes of quick
stabilization have long since passed. Despite vast quantities and
resources invested in Iraq, the U.S. military has not succeeded in
bringing public order and rehabilitating the country's governance
systems. In the absence of security stability, the American forces
find it difficult to advance the course of rehabilitation in Iraq.
As Hendrickson and Tucker have pointed out: "The fatal role that
insecurity has played in making progress in every other sector
highly problematic… projects for building civil society could
barely get off the ground when participants feared for their
lives."10 Without control of the security situation, and without
neutralizing armed militias, it has become impossible to foster
economic rehabilitation and a re-empowerment of government
institutions: "If you don't master security, everything else gets
washed away like sand castles on the beach."11
The American experience in Iraq proves that without disbanding
armed militias, it is not possible to stabilize the security
reality. Without security it is not possible to maintain public
order and ensure calm, which are necessary conditions for the
rehabilitation of government institutions. A similar conclusion can
be drawn for the Palestinian arena. It is clear that without
disbanding armed militias and ensuring a state monopoly on the use
of violent force, it will not be possible to stabilize,
rehabilitate and develop the Palestinian governmental system and
bring it in the direction of a state entity.
Summary and Conclusion
International experience in the Israeli-Palestinian arena as well
as in Iraq demonstrates the need for new and more modest conceptual
approaches that focus on stabilization and reconstruction instead
of peace and reconciliation. Despite the large number of
international intervention attempts in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and despite the differences between them, all attempts
suffered from the international community's lack of determination.
In these conditions, and in the absence of real political readiness
of both sides to cooperate, it was not possible to expect more
meaningful results, if any results at all.
It seems that there are no shortcuts to the longed-for bilateral
change. There is no way to hasten the process without generating
the necessary changes at the intrastate level. If the international
community wishes to improve its chances of success in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will have to recognize its
complexity and bi-level nature. This effort requires state-building
components that will lead to structural changes at the political,
social and economic levels, as well as the meeting of basic needs
of the involved groups.12
Only after structural changes that lead to the establishment of a
Palestinian state entity have begun will it be possible to focus
efforts on returning the sides to a political process that
addresses the interstate level of the conflict. The international
community's intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone
by means of intensive diplomacy has failed, but this does not put
an end to the responsibility and capability of the international
community to intervene again. This time, however, it should invest
the required effort in planning and effectively implementing the
intervention in a determined way, with critical and more creative
thinking, based upon the meaningful experience that was gained in
other conflicts in the international arena.
