One of the Palestinian national movement’s greatest achievements under Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was its November 2012 recognition as a UN General Assembly observer state, a significant step in its quest for international legitimacy and struggle for statehood. That journey began with the 1964 founding of the PLO-led Palestinian Foreign Service as a central strategic goal, to both improve the terrorist organization’s image and mobilize global support for what the PLO regarded as the Palestinian people’s government in exile. One of the PLO’s first steps was to establish ties with the Arab world.

The PLO has declared the establishment of a Palestinian state twice, once by Yasser Arafat in Tunis in November 1988 and again by Palestinian Authority (PA) President and PLO Chair Abbas in November 2013. The Palestinians also developed a worldwide foreign service with representative offices in 95 states, as of 2017. Yet, the PA continues to conduct itself as a non-state body and its PLO-led diplomatic activity has failed to break through the freeze in the peace process with Israel, while its many offices around the world are often only of symbolic value.

After the PA’s establishment, and due to the centralized nature of the Palestinian regime, the PLO’s Foreign Service did not take part in negotiations with Israel, focusing instead on creating a favorable international climate for the Palestinian issue and seeking to advance the Palestinian cause vis-à-vis governments and civil society around the world.

In a strategic shift, Abbas sought to rectify Arafat’s mistakes, turning the Palestinian struggle from an armed campaign into a diplomatic one. Abbas realized that armed struggle was ineffective and that masked weapons-toting Palestinians do not generate sympathy in the West. He also realized that despite European recognition, most states did not conduct full diplomatic relations with the PA and that absent broad European support, the idea of establishing a Palestinian state was not feasible. The diplomatic measures he led raised hope among the PLO leadership of change in the Palestinians’ international standing, but the diplomatic path yielded limited results. Under Abbas’ stewardship, the PA joined Unaffiliated organizations and was recognized as a state by a number of additional European states, but its standing remained essentially unchanged.

Diplomatic ties between the PA and Israel have been frozen since Netanyahu assumed power in 2009. The last significant negotiations took place between Abbas and Olmert during the Annapolis process. The Palestinian issue has since been marginalized, mainly due to Netanyahu’s insistence on preserving the status quo and the regional tumult following the Arab Spring – political instability in Egypt, civil war in Syria and the war against ISIS. Trump’s rise to power, overturning the Obama Administration’s progressive foreign policy, did not augur well for the Palestinians.

Trump’s initial steps signaled support for an iron wall between the US and the Arab world, with a ban on entry visas for residents of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. Because of his positive declarations on Israeli construction in the West Bank, relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and closure of the PLO office in Washington, the PA no longer viewed the US as an honest broker. The PA sought an alternative axis with Moscow, asking Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry to assume a bigger role in mediation between the sides. In his most recent UNGA speech in September 2019, Abbas revealed that Russia had made three attempts to revive the peace process, but Israel had rejected them. The PLO-Russia rapprochement has significant historic precedent. In addition to ideological-historic affinity of the socialist and Marxist factions within the PLO, Abbas himself was close to the Russian regime for many years.

With the PA seeking closer ties to Russia, the US sought a new axis with the Gulf States. Lack of stability in the Arab republics along with Iran’s growing power and deepening involvement in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, prompted the Gulf States, chiefly Saudi Arabia, to tighten relations with the US in a bid to ensure their defense. The fact that Trump, like the Gulf States, opposed the Iran nuclear deal bolstered this trend. Many among the younger generation in the Gulf view the Palestinian issue as a historic obstacle and lip service they must pay for the sake of pan-Arabism. They express willingness to advance ties with Israel, over the heads of the Palestinians, in order to promote their defense interests. Nonetheless, the freeze in the peace process clearly limits their room for maneuver, as well as Israel’s.

In recent years, the Trump Administration has been trying to formulate a peace vision, which it has yet to unveil but is known to center around the concept that advancing economic peace would engender a diplomatic process. The Palestinians, Russia and China boycotted the economic workshop that the US held in Bahrain earlier this year; Israeli officials were absent, too, and the gathering does not seem to have achieved any progress.

The PA’s greatest fear is loss of the historic safety net that the Arab world has provided the Palestinians since 1948. Prior to the 1990s peace process, this safety net helped the Palestinians reject conciliation attempts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 1990s, the Palestinians used Arab support to boost the legitimacy of negotiations with Israel. However, the climate of normalization between Israel and the Arab world emerging in recent years – not only in clandestine meetings of leaders and brief handshakes at international fora, but also fostered by leading bloggers and media personalities on social media, confronts the Palestinians with a diplomatic nightmare.

Clerics from Bahrain and bloggers from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have already visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. If a pro-peace government is installed in Israel, the PA will no longer have to fear a rapprochement between Israel and certain Sunni states, viewing it instead as a confidence building measure toward renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as part of a multi-channel regional process.

Dr. Ido Zelkovitz is a Policy Fellow at the Mitvim Institute and Head of Middle East Studies at the Yezreel Valley College. He is an expert of Palestinian society and politics.

(originally published in the Jerusalem Post)

הפוסט The Palestinian Foreign Service at a Time of Diplomatic Freeze הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.

At least two Arab groups can be found that had an interest in the establishment of a Jewish state: Abdullah I, the king of Jordan, who reached a secret agreement with representatives of the Zionist movement about the division of the land of Mandatory Palestine between Jordan and the Jews; and the Maronite Christians in Lebanon who, as a Christian minority in Muslim surroundings, saw a shared fate with the Jews, which led to the signing of a secret agreement between the Maronite Patriarch and representatives of the Zionist movement in 1946.

Among the Palestinians who did not object to the partition were members of the Nashashibi family and its supporters, who were the rivals of the al-Husseini family that headed the most important Palestinian institutions. But at the moment of truth, all of these secret supporters on the Palestinian-Arab side disappeared, or more accurately, went silent. It seems they preferred to be swept along with the raging “street,” so as not to lose the legitimacy of their rule. The murders of and threats against those who cooperated with the Zionists also had an effect.

The Partition Plan decision was a historic opportunity to solve the conflict, for a number of reasons: The British decision to end the UN mandate promised that the local actors, the Palestinians and Jews, could fill the political vacuum it would create. Similar to the period after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, an opportunity to establish new facts on the ground was once again created; and the fact that the United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry to deal with the problem promised that the solution agreed upon would receive legitimacy from the international community.

For the Zionist movement the plan was especially attractive because it offered it most of the territory, even though the Palestinian population was twice as large and they owned most of the land. As far as the Palestinians were concerned, the plan may have been less attractive but it was the first time that an international institution proposed an independent state for them that was not tied to Jordan.

The Palestinian-Arab refusal to accept the Partition Plan was a mistake and also a missed opportunity because it was possible to implement the plan. Despite the internal Palestinian split and the declining influence of the former Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini because of his collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, he remained the recognized and legitimate leader of the Palestinians and could have brought about acceptance of the plan.

If only Husseini had understood the changes that had occurred in the international arena and had learned the lessons of past Palestinian rejectionism (particularly in the case of the Peel Commission partition plan of 1937), the 1947 Partition Plan would have been adopted by the international community – and could possibly have prevented the war. It was the Palestinians’ biggest missed opportunity in history.

Palestinian historians rarely repent their sin of missing opportunities. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi wrote in an article in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Partition Plan: “No, the UN 1947 partition was not the legal, moral, fair, balanced, pragmatic, practicable ‘compromise’ formula that it is made out to be.” Khalidi wondered how fair a plan could be if over half the territory was given to the Jews, who numbered less than a third of the population and owned only 7 percent of the land; while the Arab majority owned most of the land and received only 45 percent of the territory.

In comparison, Philip Mattar, a Palestinian-American who wrote a biography of Husseini, claimed the Mufti’s policy was a failure and he unintentionally contributed to the dispossession of the Palestinians. While Israeli-Palestinian historian Mustafa Kabha wrote in an article marking the 60th anniversary of the Partition Plan that Husseini did not succeed in understanding the important change that occurred in the global and regional political situation.

Historian Ilan Pappe, who is usually known for his support of the Palestinian side, also wrote about Husseini’s lack of pragmatism and inability to seize a historical opportunity. Pappe said too that Husseini did not understand that instead of rejecting the plan out of hand, it would have been better for the Palestinians to be a party to the arrangement, even if only a minimal one.

In backrooms and off the record, Palestinians are willing to admit the mistake they made in rejecting the 1947 Partition Plan. In the talks between Israel and the Palestinians held at Camp David in 2000, the Palestinians feared they might once again be missing out on an opportunity in the same way they missed out in 1947. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, took a major step when he admitted in an interview in 2011 that the Palestinians made a mistake when they rejected the Partition Plan. He added that nevertheless they should not be punished for this mistake.

The Palestinian recognition of the historic mistake of rejecting the UN Partition Plan is the first step on the road to accepting a reduced size partition plan, based on the May 1967 borders. Not all the Palestinians are willing to do so.

The problem is that the opposite process is underway on the Israeli side: More and more Jews have abandoned the partition plan, whether for ideological reasons or out of despair. The 70th anniversary of the UN Partition Plan is an opportunity to remember that even if the borders of the partition have changed, the concept of partition is still valid.

(originally published in Haaretz)

הפוסט The 1947 Partition Plan: The Palestinians’ Biggest Missed Opportunity הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.