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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher- August 2, 2010

Alpher comments on the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, the likelihood of direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and the relation of demographic issues to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Q. In recent days, rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from Gaza. On Monday, rockets were fired at Eilat from Egyptian Sinai. Why this escalation?

A. The most obvious explanation is the Arab League's decision last week to support a possible PLO decision to enter into direct two-state negotiations with the Netanyahu government. PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has not yet formally made that decision and may be angling to postpone direct talks until after Ramadan (mid-September, when ensuing Jewish holidays could cause a further delay). But Hamas, which rules Gaza, is clearly not happy with the prospect of renewed direct talks. Hence it appears to have agreed to close its eyes to the firing of rockets from Gaza at Ashkelon and the northern Negev by more extreme Islamist splinter groups. Whether or not Israel's retaliatory bombings inside Gaza will generate a new and prolonged cycle of violence is not clear.

The rocket fire on Eilat, on the other hand, could be the handiwork of Islamists from Gaza, local Sinai Islamists, local Bedouin dissidents or some combination thereof. The timing, however, links this incident to those emanating directly from Gaza.

The incidents point to a number of dynamics of strategic importance. First, Hamas is plainly not interested in a PLO negotiations success, and is signaling that it holds a certain degree of veto power from its base in Gaza regarding a seriously renewed peace process.

Second, while the timing points to a peace process-related motive on the part of Hamas, any renewed violence in and around Gaza reminds the world that Israel has only partially removed its economic blockade of the Strip. In particular, and for no obviously defensible reason, the Netanyahu government has not permitted renewal of exports from Gaza--a vital step if the economy there is to even begin to recover.

Third, the rocket fire from Sinai toward Eilat (the only damage done was by rockets landing in adjacent Jordanian Aqaba) reflects ongoing Egyptian difficulty in maintaining security in Sinai, particularly among the Bedouin population in the north. In the eyes of some Arab and Israeli observers, this is linked with the perception of weakening central rule in Egypt exacerbated by President Mubarak's health problems. In this particular case, with rockets from Sinai falling on its only port, Jordan has as much reason as Israel to be concerned.


Q.  Following on the Arab League's decision, is it realistic to expect serious direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in the near future?

A. It's realistic to expect negotiations, given Israeli, American and Arab League interest in the renewal of the peace process. Mahmoud Abbas can hardly ignore the green light he got from the League after he himself brought the issue to it for decision. But how serious those talks will be is another question. The answer depends on a number of factors.

On the Palestinian side, Abbas has to fend off pressures from his own Fateh hardliners and from Hamas (see above) regarding concessions, whether procedural or substantive. In other words, his political position is weak. On the other hand, his opening negotiating positions, particularly regarding territorial issues, are closer to those of the American mediator than are those of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. 

One additional area of potential domestic political pressure on Abbas that could indirectly affect negotiations concerns Palestinian Authority PM Salam Fayyad, a reformer and state-builder who enjoys the trust of Israel and the US alike. If Fateh hardliners get their way and Fayyad is forced to deliver to them key PA government portfolios, particularly the key Finance Ministry, the resultant blow to Israel-PA-US trust and cooperation could undermine peace talks as well.

Turning to the Israeli side, if Netanyahu can find a way to maintain the settlement freeze after September 27, or to thaw it only partially and compensate the Palestinians in a mutually acceptable way, he will have overcome one hurdle to serious negotiations. If he fails, or doesn't even try, the talks could collapse practically before they begin. But the biggest obstacles on Netanyahu's side are his own hawkish views on territorial issues, especially Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, and those of his coalition partners. It is practically a foregone conclusion that serious negotiations with the Palestinians will precipitate an Israeli coalition crisis.

Finally, there are President Barack Obama's constraints. Until November's mid-term elections in the US, it is not likely we'll see serious pressure from Washington on Israel regarding the talks. After November, the election outcome could further influence administration flexibility in confronting Israel over deadlocked territorial and other issues. The anticipation of possible American pressure is one of the reasons for Netanyahu's reported preference that, for the most part, the direct negotiations be bilateral, without Senator George Mitchell and his team in the room. The PLO, on the other hand, favors a constant American presence as a way of at least partially compensating for its lack of negotiating assets.

A great deal will depend on the administration's will and capacity to move these talks forward.


Q. Two weeks ago, you discussed right-wing politicians and ideologues who contemplate annexing the West Bank and who are ostensibly not frightened by the demographic demon. Can you expand the discussion of the interaction between demographic issues and Israeli-Palestinian peace?

A. The juncture of demography, geography and politics is used and abused extensively in arguing different points of view regarding peace. The Gaza Strip, with its 1.5 million or so Palestinians, is a good point of departure. Since Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005, most Israelis, including many on the left and center, discount Gaza's million and a half Arabs from the Jewish-Arab demographic balance between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They argue that Israel is no longer the occupier of the Strip and is no longer politically responsible for its inhabitants, even if it retains economic and other obligations. This is also the point of departure for those on the right who contemplate annexing the West Bank (and who also conveniently reduce the population estimate for the West Bank). 

In the eyes of most of the world, however, Gaza's population is still very much part of the overall demographic-political calculation. On the other hand, even if Israelis accept the international take on Gaza's population and its relation to conflict-related demographic calculations, there is the current reality of two separate Palestinian entities with separate populations.

Nevertheless, assuming progress toward a two-state solution, a critical question arises concerning the capacity of a Palestinian state (meaning, for all practical demographic/geographic purposes, the West Bank) to absorb large numbers of returning refugees. The Jordan Valley is generally pointed to as the new state's potential land reserve for settling refugees. Here, Netanyahu's current insistence that Israel maintain a large military presence in the Jordan Valley is obviously one potential obstacle and a clear instance of the clash between security and demographic-political considerations. But even if the Palestinian state is free to exploit the Jordan Valley land mass--some 30 percent of the territory of the West Bank--for extensive refugee resettlement, a major question of feasibility arises.

In some 43 years of occupation and extensive investment, Israel has managed to settle no more than 8,000 Jews in the harsh climate and soil of the Jordan Valley. The "double column" scheme that goes back to the mid-1970s, to create an eastern buffer by settling some two million people in the Golan, Jordan Valley and Arava regions by the year 2000, has produced a combined population of less than 40,000 in 2010. This failure reminds us that David Ben-Gurion's dream of settling the Negev remains largely unfulfilled as well. 

Will returning Palestinian refugees want and be able to live in large numbers in the Jordan Valley when Jews have refused to do so? Yet who are we to cast doubts on the Palestinian capacity to absorb refugees? It behooves us always to recall the dire prediction of British officials on the eve of Israeli independence in 1948 to the effect that the nascent Jewish state with its 600,000 Jews would collapse if it tried to absorb more than 100,000 Jewish refugees.

Incidentally, Israel's failure to settle the Negev is the main reason why Israeli demographers and politicians who want to make a point about how crowded the country is tend to talk about its population density "north of the Negev" in terms comparable to Holland. But the Negev constitutes more than 50 percent of Israel's land mass. When the Negev is included in demographic calculations, Israel turns out to be far less crowded than Holland, Singapore, etc.

Finally, there is the issue of future immigration of Jews to Israel as a factor in the demographic and even strategic balance. Twenty years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union were arriving every year, the al-Ahram Strategic Center in Cairo, the most prestigious think tank in the Arab world, declared that the newly-arriving Russian Jews gave Israel "critical mass" that rendered the Jewish state a permanent actor in the region. Yet today, in 2010, in some parts of the world Israel is once again being delegitimized and its ultimate demise being predicted.

Would the aliyah to Israel in the next five years of, say, 400,000 French and British Jews who are concerned about growing Islamist influence in France and the UK--they are currently a trickle, but who knows?--restore the "critical mass" image? More critically for Israel, would this affect the real demographic/political question that Israel and its supporters must ponder: what constitutes a reasonable national minority in any country, and what ratio of ethnic groups constitutes a bi-national state? Moshe Arens argues that a 30 percent Arab segment of the Israeli population is a workable minority. Yossi Beilin used to warn that when more than 50 percent of the population between the river and the sea were Arabs we would have crossed a demographic-political Rubicon. Yet surely the answer is not just in the numbers. There are regional, political and ideological issues to factor in. And most important of all: what do we mean demographically when we say "Jewish state"?