In an embarrassing display of his total inability to mediate in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked the Director-General of the Geneva office Tatiana Volovaya, a Russian former diplomat and economic expert, to read out to the world on his behalf his short message on the Gaza crisis.
The United Nations, Dr. Volovaya read in Guterres’ appeal, calls for an “irreversible way towards a two-state solution”. The speech also reiterated that Jerusalem should serve as capital of both states, Palestinian and Israeli, “living in peace”.
This worthy goal, that is shared by US president Biden, by the European Union, and in principle presumably also by the signatories of the bilateral Abraham Accords, clashes however, with a multitude of obstacles. The first one is the attitude of Israel. Only under enormous pressure from the White House – in addition to the global outrage caused by the Palestinian deaths estimated to be between 12,000-14,000, the war cabinet of Israel has agreed on a series of brief ceasefires.
The objective of these pauses, emergency premier Netanyahu asserts, is only to facilitate prisoner exchanges, allow military regroupings, and distribute some limited humanitarian aid. After that pause, the war operations in the overpopulated and heavily bombed enclave will be resumed, until the objective to “totally eradicate” Hamas from Gaza is completed. The Israeli army, a note of the military command informs, will maintain “overall security responsibility” over Gaza for the indefinite future. It is expected that the occupation will require raids against suspected Hamas installations, population controls, and total isolation of the strip from the outside world.
In short, the project for Gaza outlined by Netanyahu in an interview with the American network ABC, would be tantamount to killing off the two-state plan altogether. This is what the Israeli prime minister has sought to do since 2009, by expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank. The result was in effect a subtle Middle Eastern variant of the infamous Bantustans in old times segregationist South Africa. White colonial settlements were strategically placed inside the supposedly autonomous African regions, with a view to restrict and undermine their independence.
“We don’t want to govern Gaza,” foreign affairs minister Eli Cohen told the Wall Street Journal. “We just want to protect our people”. Marc Weller, an international constitutional jurist at Cambridge University, comments, “is a kind of novel concept of ‘occupation lite’. It externalizes the costs, risks and burdens of occupation beyond the steps needed to preserve Israel’s security”.
In support of security objectives, the legal scholar explains, Israel would likely retain the power to deny humanitarian access for deliveries of food and medicines, or to turn off the water and other utilities. “In short, Israel would protect its security interests with an iron fist. Yet, it would disown the responsibilities that would normally flow with this exercise – making it armed occupation by another name”.
From an American perspective, president Biden, who is now embarking on a far- from-assured campaign for re-election in 2024, effectively “owns” the Israeli-Hamas crisis that he studiously avoided during his first three years – and for good reasons. With US diplomacy kicking in high gear, the President is banking on the risky scenario that he and the White House would like to see taking place.
First a consolidation of the Gaza truce. Then humanitarian relief for the Gazans in the crossfire. Then a revitalized Palestinian Authority temporarily in charge of both the West Bank and Gaza, with support of an (European?) international peacekeeping force. Then finally, after another massive international reconstruction plan for Gaza, the dual Israeli-Palestinian confederation will be born.
The problem is that there is simply no time for this elaborate plan of action aimed at resurrecting the Middle East; or for that matter, the political will to put it in practice. The United States, with Gaza, Ukraine, and Taiwan, is dangerously overextended already. What’s more, the Israelis–even if Netanyahu is more than likely to lose re-election and disappear from the scene–after the October 7 massacre, totally reject tying their future to Palestine.
It would be ironic if Biden, the most pro-Israel American president since times immemorial, ended up losing his 2024 re-election for having misunderstood the mood both of the Israeli and the American voters.
