Date: 1.4.2009

Menachem Klein is a veteran analyst, adviser to the Oslo negotiations, participant in the Geneva Initiative, and author of A Possible Peace Between Israel and Palestine and other books. Klein spoke about whether there is any way to break the current impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, especially with the advent of a new right-wing Israeli government and continued Palestinian disunity. Is the traditional U.S. and international approach to peacemaking still relevant? Or do fundamental changes in the conflict since 2000 require a new approach?

The following is a transcript of the lecture:

A NEW APPROACH TO THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

By Dr. Menachem Klein

I would like to propose a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I support a two-state solution, but we are far from there. The Annapolis negotiations are dead, as I predicted, and a de facto one state is the current reality on the ground. Israel rules all mandatory Palestine from Jordan to the Mediterranean. There is one regime. This is not a viable option for the future. But it is today's reality.

Of course, a two-state solution is necessary for Palestinian self-determination. The fact that Abbas is weak and that Hamas runs Gaza are problems. But the main obstacle to a two-state peace is the de facto, Israeli, one-state. The current arrangement is not democratic, and in ten years, the Jews will be the minority, according to reliable projections. Still, the way to two states will be long and difficult. How do we get there?

Since 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shifted dramatically. We cannot just resume from where the sides left off negotiations, after the Camp David talks in 2000 and the Taba talks in January 2001, and continue toward a two-state solution. The main challenge today is not Abbas and the corruption of Fatah, or Hamas. It is the problem of undoing the de facto one-state that Israel has established since 2000 and the 2002 "Defensive Shield" Operation that brought about Israel's re-occupation of the West Bank.

Since 2000 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become an ethnic conflict. Indeed, it has always been so for 120 years. But, for many years, Israel tried to solve its ethnic conflict with the Palestinians by establishing a border. After 1948, the eastern border was with Jordan on the 1949 Armistice line. After Israel drove Jordan out of the West Bank in 1967, the border was along the Jordan River and to the south.

This changed when King Hussein dropped Jordan's claim to the West Bank and the first Palestinian intifada erupted in 1987. It became clear then that Israel had to talk to the PLO since the Palestinians who supported the PLO were its neighbors in the West Bank.

During the Oslo years, the conflict was in transition. Israel assumed it was a border conflict with a Palestinian entity or a Palestinian state to-be.

But after 2000, when the Oslo process collapsed and the second intifada broke out, the situation reverted to ethnic conflict. Today, Israel believes it has no Palestinians with whom it can agree on a new border and a resolution of the conflict.

Israel itself brought this about in 2002 by reoccupying the West Bank and demolishing the Palestinian Authority, thereby establishing Israel as the ruler over the Palestinian territories. Today, the Abbas regime is an Israeli protectorate that is funded by foreign donors. Abbas' authority is limited to what Israel allows, and effective power is in Israeli hands. The improvements that Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has achieved are within the Israeli system of control and have Israel's approval, since they do not threaten the system. The strengthened Palestinian security forces in Jenin and in Hebron serve Israel's security needs and are part of Israel's strategy of control.

This de facto Israeli protectorate is accompanied by growing Israeli annexation of the West Bank through settlement expansion to the east of the security barrier as well as to the west, although the Annapolis talks were supposed to bring about a Palestinian state.

The separation barrier or the "wall" is not a border in the making. It is a tool of control. It does not define Israel's concept of the future border because Israeli troops and settlers are also the east side of the barrier in great numbers and settlements there are expanding. To become a border, Israel would have to evacuate all settlers on the east side. The barrier is a tool of security, but more important, it is a means of control over the Palestinians.

The Israeli regime is based on two pillars. First is ensuring the ethnic Jewish character of the state and Jewish state superiority over the Arabs inside Israel and in the occupied territories. The second pillar is security, a basic Israeli requirement that will have to be addressed if there is a renewed effort to return to a two-state solution.

Security is more important for Israel than Jerusalem or other final status issues. Israel's security concerns today preclude consideration of a two-state solution. Something dramatic must change in Israel's security calculus and the Americans' concept of protecting Israel's security.

The Israeli regime over mandatory Palestine is an ethno-security regime. Israelis divide the Palestinians to five communities, as a means of control. There are the Israeli Palestinians, who are full Israeli citizens, enjoy the right to vote and have delegates in the Knesset. There are the East Jerusalemites who are not citizens, but have only resident permits and who are separated from the West Bank by the wall. There are the West Bank Palestinians who live in the five percent of the West Bank on the west side of the wall that Israel has, de facto, annexed to Israel, but who are also cut off from Jerusalem and forbidden to visit Israel. There are the West Bank Palestinians to the east of the wall. And there are the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel divides these five groups of Palestinians in order to control them.

Israel controls the occupied territories through settlements, Army bases and roads for exclusive use of the Army and the settlers. Israeli forces also maintain control in the West Bank, assisted by Palestinian security forces of the proxy Abbas regime.

Israel uses various means to control Israeli-Palestinians inside Israel. For example, every Palestinian schoolmaster and every leader of a mosque must be approved by Israeli General Security Services. Israel also imposes zoning and planning regulations on its Arab citizens. Different forms of state supervision and control govern Palestinians in the West Bank.

The system that assigns different and unequal rights between Israelis and Palestinians and heavier controls on Palestinians is not apartheid, since it is not based on race or skin color. But in some ways it is worse.

Israel imposes different kinds of bureaucratic rules over the different classes of Palestinians, their civil rights, voting rights, legal status and the land where they live. Israeli Palestinians enjoy rights to vote and have a delegation in the Knesset. Palestinian Jerusalemites are not citizens and cannot vote in Israeli Knesset elections, but only in Jerusalem municipal elections, which they boycott because they refuse to legitimize their occupation through participation in its annexing institutions. The land that the '48 refugees left behind in Israel was confiscated and reallocated to Jewish-Israeli use. Israel has also confiscated large areas of land in the occupied territories for settlement use, and declared over 40% of the West Bank as "state land" from which Palestinians are excluded.

Palestinian control over their own governing institutions is limited. For example, Israel has arrested and jailed the Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council elected in 2006. As a result, the Legislative Council cannot convene.

Israel frequently changes regulations governing the daily lives of Palestinians in the West Bank as a means of asserting control. "Now, you must listen to what I have to say. Now, you are allowed to move here and not there, tomorrow vice versa. This road is closed today, but that road is closed tomorrow. I am here to manage your life."

So, what we have now is a de facto one-state based on ethnicity and security and Israeli control. Israel justifies this system on the grounds of security. Unless there is a dramatic change in the leadership's concept of security, there will be no progress towards a two-state solution.

Security and settlement policies are fully integrated under the security establishment and the bureaucracy. Many security personnel are settlers, and various Army brigades are based in settlements.

The security and settlement system ignores promises to improve the daily life of the Palestinians that all Israeli Prime Ministers have made to the United States. The system is entrenched, and its managers have no interest in changing it. That is why all Israeli promises to Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice to freeze settlements dismantle "illegal" settlements and remove road blocks are forgotten and left unimplemented. Between 500 and 600 road blocks at any moment are still there.

The concept is that without the road blocks, Israel will not be secure. The security leadership believes that security requires controlling the Palestinians from within their own territory and mainly by Israeli forces. The Israeli Security Services, the Palestinian collaborators that Israel recruits, and the Israeli Army raids and the road blocks are all parts of the system that was developed after 2002 and created one de facto state. This state is neither Jewish nor democratic.

So, Israel needs to ask itself, do we like this one-state or not? I oppose it because it violates my concept of Jewish, Israeli and Zionist values. Indeed, I am ready to give up some level of security in exchange for preservation of the very existence of a Jewish and democratic state.

In any case, in order to change the status quo and reach a two-state peace, Israel's extraordinary concern for security must be addressed. Unless there is external pressure, Israel will sustain the one-state status quo. It will continue to claim it is democratic since it has Arab parties in the Knesset and that its rule over the Palestinian territories is based entirely on security. In fact, although Israeli-Palestinians have more rights than Palestinians in the occupied territories, they are still unequal. Also, the fact that Israel continues to annex, de facto, land in the West Bank indicates they are not prepared to accept a two-state solution.

Israeli leaders claim that they would accept two-states if they had a Palestinian "partner", but that Abbas is too weak and Hamas wants to destroy Israel. They point to Hamas' rocket fire after Israel unilaterally evacuated the Gaza Strip, claiming that Hamas wants, not just the '67 territories but all of Israel.

Nevertheless, Israel is frightened by the diminishing Israeli Jewish majority. This fear led to the recent electoral success of Avigdor Lieberman's party within the Israeli mainstream. The demographic discourse in Israel now lumps Israeli-Palestinians and West Bank and Gaza Palestinians together as a "time bomb". Israelis understand, though they do not admit that they live in a current one state reality and that it presents a dangerous demographic threat.

The only way to solve this ethnic conflict is through a border more or less along the 1967 Green Line that divides the land between the majority of one ethnic people and the other ethnic group. Even if we draw this border, we will still have to face the Israeli Palestinian demand to be full citizens. We cannot ignore this challenge.

As Israel faces these challenges, it cannot decide simply to make peace by resuming the process that ended at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001, or even by implementing the Track II Geneva Accord plan of 2003, which I helped negotiate. Today, Israel cannot change the existing one state reality and create two states without a new doctrine of security. Otherwise, the security establishment that is integrated with the settlements and the administration of the West Bank will continue to oppose change. Thus, the Obama administration must deal, not only with territory and settlements, but with security.

A word about Hamas. Since '87, Hamas has changed its policy and its political documents, which today are different than the Islamic Charter. They did not cancel the Charter, but it is no longer operative. Hamas has changed its policy because reality changed on the ground. The establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the public support for Palestinian Authority, and public support for dividing mandatory Palestinian to two states based on '67 borders, demonstrated that the public does not support the vision of the Islamic Charter, so Hamas changed.

The Quartet preconditions are that Hamas must stop terror, accept and recognize the State of Israel and accept the Oslo agreements and all other agreements signed between PLO and the State of Israel. Hamas refuses to do so until the current one-state reality changes. So, the best thing to do in order to change Hamas is to offer promise that this reality will change.

The Palestinians supported Hamas in the 2006 elections because their situation had become worse than ever. They said, "If expansion of settlement and the one state reality is our reward for supporting Oslo, and voting for Abbas and Fatah. I will vote for Hamas to get rid of the Israelis."

To insist on the Quartet preconditions as a tool to change Hamas is wrong. Hamas will change when reality on the ground changes. If that changes for the better, Palestinian public opinion will force Hamas to adapt, for example, by joining a national unity government.

To date, trying to impose the Quartet preconditions has failed. If the Obama Administration continues to insist on the Quartet preconditions, this will further weaken Abbas and Fatah, the Israeli and Palestinians moderates and the influence of the United States.

Excerpts from Questions and Answers

Q. How would you handle security in devising a new approach to peace?

A. The Obama Administration must tell Israel that there cannot be security for Israel until it accepts the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state in which Israel is not responsible for security. Second, Obama must say "You must leave the territories. We know you have security concerns, so, let's work on that, but staying in the Palestinian territories and building settlements there does not provide security."

Q: You left out the largest group of Palestinians, who are the Palestinians who are in exile from their homeland. Also, you seemed to say that security must come first. Aren't you buying into the Israeli game, if it is all about security? You need to redefine security completely. Maybe that is what you were arguing. You also said that "Israel needs to withdraw from the whole of the territories," like that is a minor point. That is not a minor point. That is the central point.

A: Regarding the Palestinians outside, Israel does not control them. We need two ethnic communities. If all refugees return we will have one state. We need to find a compromise that will leave the Palestinian refugees in the '67 territories and those abroad satisfied. But two states means two ethnic communities with majority of one ethnicity here and the other ethnicity there. Regarding the redefinition of security, the U.S. must persuade Israel to leave the occupied territories, and that the international community will help establish a new security order that Israel will not control, but will address Israeli security needs.

Q: You said 2001-2002 was the time Israel decided on a de facto one state. But didn't Ben-Gurion and others have this in mind from the beginning? If this has always been in the minds of Israel's leaders, why has it taken the rest of the world so long to come to terms with this? How can we proceed now in a constructive way to act on the basis of the realistic knowledge you are urging us to come to terms with?

A: It is very difficult for my fellow Israelis to acknowledge that we already live in a de fact one-state. So, what came to you so easily is very difficult for us to accept in Israel. Israelis prefer to think that we can achieve two states with one small push here and another small push there. And it is very difficult to convince them about the reality today on the ground. I think the turning point was 2000-2002. Although there was steady settlement growth after 1997, the conflict was moving towards a border conflict during the Oslo process. But Israel used settlements as a tool to impose a border on the Palestinians. This was a self-defeating strategy. This was done in part to appease the settlers and the extremists, but also because Rabin and others wanted a more favorable border.

My advice to U.S. policy makers is to say to Israel "If you prefer to continue this way, we cannot support you. Sorry, but our values are different. In the 21st Century, we cannot accept such an ethno-security regime. It is against our liberal values. Either you change or our relations will change and our support for you will decline. You are a sovereign state." Our politicians will not move without pressure. We saw that during the war in Gaza.

Q: How do you create trust, which is totally lacking between the two peoples?

A: First, we need separation and two states. All efforts to create trust over the last fifteen years have failed, and mistrust has grown as Israel's project has advanced. We can't wait for trust or total security, if our goal is a Jewish and democratic state of Israel. That is the hard choice. We have to take some risks. The U.S. and the international community must insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories while offering international peacekeeping and support for policies that would minimize a Palestinian security threat in the future.

The U.S. should combine this demand with a clear vision of the end game, not an improved road map. The endgame in the third stage of the current road map as it is very, very vague. A clear vision of the end game must include withdrawal of the Army and settlements, which have become integrated as the two instruments of total Israeli control over a de facto one state.

Q: What is the relevance of the Arab Leagues' 2002 peace plan?

A: This is a sad story. According to a Poll in December, 2008, 75 percent of the Israelis had not read or did not know about the Arab Peace proposal. The Israeli public does not want to think about or know the Arabs. We do not take them seriously. At a minimum, Israel must accept the Arab League plan and then negotiate on its implementation, not its terms.

Q: How do you get Israelis, who have now been traumatized by a wave of suicide terrorism by incoming Qassam rockets from an area that Israel left unilaterally, to leave the West Bank unilaterally putting themselves in harm's way of rockets coming into Ben-Gurion Airport - you know the shtick - even if the international pressure you seek is forthcoming?

A: This is exactly the tactic the Likud and the Israeli right use to divert attention from the occupation as the cause of the violence. The Likud and the Israeli right has moved the discourse from self-determination of the Palestinian people, to security, frightening the Israelis and playing on their nightmares.

We have to take this risk of continued insecurity in order to prevent a greater catastrophe. Indeed a great catastrophe is already here. One state is not a lasting option, yet we already have it. And in 10 years -- perhaps it will take 10 years, perhaps less, the Jews will become the minority. So, we have to take a decision. We cannot enjoy 100% comprehensive security. In the back of their minds Israelis know that the greatest problem is not security, but demography. So, absolute security cannot be guaranteed if we want a Jewish, democratic state and peace with the Palestinians. Unfortunately the liberals in Israel are in decline. I speak as one of them, and we are a minority. To save Israel, we need the help of liberals abroad.