In yesterday’s leaked video Mitt Romney gave two reasons for his view that the Israeli-Palestinian situation should be left unresolved indefinitely. First, the Palestinians reject peace and are committed to the destruction of Israel. Second, the Palestinians will never agree to the Israeli military presence that will be required in their future state to prevent Iranian infiltration via, for example, the Palestine-Jordan or Palestine-Syria borders.
What will hurt Romney in electoral terms is his Palin-esque ignorance of the basics. The West Bank does not share a border with Syria, and the Palestine-Jordan border seems an unlikely site of Iranian infiltration given that Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, and has neither an alliance nor warm relations with Tehran. Expect Romney’s opponents to feed this into the wider case that he is “not ready for prime time”.
What should hurt Romney – but is unlikely to given the way discussion of this topic is framed in US politics – is his attempt to portray the Palestinians as the aggressors and Israel as a state desiring no more than its own security. The core of the issue, in reality, is the Israeli occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land in flagrant violation of international law, and Israel’s denial, for decades, of the Palestinians’ right to democratic independence in a fully autonomous state.
The illegality of Israel’s settlement of Palestinian land – already widely understood in any event – was confirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2004. In 2002, the Arab League offered Israel full recognition in exchange for its withdrawing from the occupied territories so that the Palestinians could establish their state there. The formula was agreed by the Palestinians, but rejected by Israel. Even Hamas, while formally opposed to such a settlement, has indicated (pdf) that it would accept it if ratified by the Palestinian people, who continue to favour the two-state solution. In any event, no one is stopping Israel from simply relinquishing the stolen land and withdrawing to its legal borders of its own accord.
Romney’s remarks have been portrayed as a departure from the established consensus that the US must work towards a two-state settlement. But it’s unlikely that the Palestinians would perceive much difference between a Romney presidency and the last several administrations. Since the Oslo accords of the early-nineties, Israeli colonisation has grown significantly, while US policy has oscillated between placing no and not very much pressure on Israel to make marginal “concessions” on land. Putting rhetoric aside, the reality of the US position has been that Israel can take most or all of the territory it wants, and the Palestinians can have strictly limited autonomy on the remaining isolated patches. The only exception was a brief moment at the Taba talks in January 2001, when a more viable solution appeared possible, before Israel walked away.
Romney says that “the idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world”. However, at issue is not the Palestinians failure “to act” but Washington’s failure to “push on the Israelis to give something up” – specifically, the land it is illegally colonising. The so-called “peace process” has been moribund for a decade because neither George Bush nor Barack Obama were willing to challenge Israeli intransigence. In that context, Romney’s advocacy of “kicking the ball down the field” is no more than an endorsement of the current approach. Israel of course will be delighted with this. The Palestinians, less so.
David Wearing is a postgraduate researcher on British foreign policy in the Middle East at the University of London. Find him on Twitter as @davidwearing.
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