Why the Cameron Plan for Middle East peace is a non-starter

Here we go again. In an attempt to promote peace in the Middle East the diplomatic grandees of the international community are dusting off…yes, you guessed it, the oft-floated “two-state” solution. Except that this time, there is one significant difference. The latest plan – spearheaded by no less prominent a figure than former British Prime Minister, now Foreign Secretary David Cameron – calls on the international community to force a breakthrough in negotiations by unilaterally recognizing an as yet non-existent Palestinian state. This, Cameron believes, will compel Israel to accept the inevitability of a Palestinian state on land captured in 1967.

As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”

Before continuing, let me record that although I am a strong supporter of Israel and am sympathetic to the desire held by some Israelis to simply annex the territories of Judea and Samaria, it is difficult for me to conceive of a permanent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict that does not ultimately include such a Palestinian state. The Cameron Plan (as I think we can now call it) does nothing to advance this objective though.

Lord Cameron (and others) seems to think that the key to peace in the Middle East is a Palestinian state. If that were so, there would have been peace long ago. Perhaps he does not know that after World War I his government created two Arab states, Iraq and Transjordan, the latter encompassing all land of the geographical region of Palestine east of the Jordan River (hence its name Transjordan). The British then installed Faisal and Abdullah, the sons of Hussein ibn Ali, as monarchs of these respective countries. Hussein ibn Ali was a Hashemite emir from the Arabian Peninsula who helped the British defeat the Ottoman allies of Germany in the war. Making his sons kings was a reward for his service to the Empire.

The fact that the Arabs had two new states, one of which was Palestinian, in fact if not in name, did not prevent Arabs living west of the Jordan River – largely migrants and children of migrants to that region themselves – from initiating a series of pogroms against their Jewish neighbours, including one that led to the complete destruction of Hebron’s ancient Jewish community.

In response to the unrest, the British proposed dividing the remaining 23 percent of the Palestine Mandate (Transjordan comprising 77 percent) between Jews and Arabs, thus creating a second Arab Palestinian state. The Peel Commission presented a number of territorial options to the leaders of both communities in 1938, but while the Jewish residents of Palestine were prepared to accepted partition, the Arabs rejected the idea outright. For them, the establishment of a second Palestinian Arab state was out of the question if it meant the concurrent establishment of a single Jewish Palestinian state.

Following the end of World War II an exasperated British government decided to turn the issue of what to do with the remainder of the Palestine Mandate to the League of Nations’ successor, the United Nations Organization. After studying the problem and meeting with community representatives, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) issued a report recommending that the territory be partitioned, and In 1947 the UN General Assembly voted to implement the recommendations. Once again, the Jewish Palestinian leadership accepted this compromise while the Arab Palestinian leadership did not. Following Israel’s War of Independence (1948-49) most of what had been intended to become a second Arab state in Palestine under the terms of the UN decision found itself under the control of the Kingdom of Jordan – as it was now known – which promptly annexed the territory, granting full citizenship to its inhabitants.

Here was the coveted two-state solution in practice, yet Arab leaders still refused to make peace, nor did they create a separate Arab state on the west bank of the Jordan river as directed by the UNGA Resolution despite the Jews – now Israel – having twice agreed to the creation of that state in 1938 and 1947, and despite being in complete control of the territory. Moreover, nobody in the international community called on the Arabs to create a separate state on the land it occupied on the west bank of the Jordan river. Even after Israel captured the territory in 1967, the creation of a second independent Arab state was never contemplated as a condition of peace. Neither UN Security Council Resolution 242 or 338 refers to – or even hints at – such a condition.

Resolution 242, adopted 22 November 1967, calls for the

…termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

It further emphasizes the importance of

… guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones.

Resolution 338, adopted 22 October 1973 in response to the invasion of Israel by the armies of Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur of that year

1. Calls upon all parties to the present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity immediately, no later than 12 hours after the moment of the adoption of this decision, in the positions they now occupy;
2. Calls upon the parties concerned to start immediately after the cease-fire the implementation of Security Council resolution 242 (1967) in all of its parts;
3. Decides that, immediately and concurrently with the cease-fire, negotiations shall start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

Neither of these two Resolutions refers to the original General Assembly Resolution 181 – accepted by Israel and rejected by Arab leaders – mandating the creation a new Arab state, and while a subsequent General Assembly Resolution in 1974 (Resolution 3236) acknowledges the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty,” arguably all of this could have been accomplished without the creation of such a state. That, at least, was the position, not of the Israeli government, but of the Jordanian government which continued to claim sovereignty over the territory after losing it to Israel in 1967. King Hussein considered himself to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs, and for good reason. Although he and his family were Hashemites, both the land and the people he ruled over were Palestinian.

History has forgotten King Hussein's 1972 speech proposing the establishment of an autonomous Jordanian province in the territory captured by Israel five years earlier. While the proposal came to nothing - largely due to Israel's reluctance to divide its recently reunited capital city - it remains irrefutable evidence of Jordanian views regarding the need for yet another "Palestinian" state as a condition of peace.

Jordan’s position that the territory now commonly referred to as the West Bank was Jordanian did not change until 1988 when King Hussein decided to relinquish the claim, largely in response to a campaign of violence launched in December of 1987 by supporters of the PLO under Yassir Arafat’s leadership. The king had already fought a vicious war with Arafat and the PLO in 1970 following the latter’s attempt to overthrow his Hashemite monarchy. Thousands of PLO members and civilian supporters were killed in the ensuing clashes – at least 25,000 according to Arafat – and the remainder were expelled from the country, settling in neighbouring Lebanon and precipitating a period of misery that tiny country has never fully recovered from.

King Hussein could scarcely be blamed for not wanting to create a situation where he would have to deal with a resurgent PLO. By relinquishing his claim to the West Bank, he was able to wash his hands of the emerging chaos. Unfortunately, it also meant severing residual ties with its residents who, until then, were recognized around the world as full Jordanian citizens. The government of Jordan had continued to exercise extensive control over civil and economic affairs even after 1967, notwithstanding Israel’s occupation and often in collaboration with the Jewish State. All that ended in one fell swoop in 1988, leaving a massive administrative void that neither Israel, nor the now stateless Arab residents of the West Bank, were prepared to fill.

Of course, none of this means that there is no place today for an independent Palestinian Arab state in territory captured by Israel in 1967, but it is instructive to know how unimportant the creation of such a state was, not just to Arab leaders, but to the residents of the territory themselves who considered themselves Jordanian, traveled back and forth freely across the Jordan river, and who carried Jordanian passports that were accepted as around the world. Ironically, among all the parties to the conflict, only Israel had agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

With Jordan out of the picture, the way was now clear for the PLO under Arafat’s leadership to consolidate its position as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People” and pursue the creation of a new State of Palestine under PLO leadership. The terror campaign that it began in December of 1987 proved to be very effective, not just in eliminating opposition, but in wearing down Israel to the point where, in 1993, desperate to put an end to the violence and under pressure from an equally weary international community, it signed the Oslo Accords.

Negotiations leading to signing of the Oslo Accords were more about ending the violence of the PLO than they were about securing the interests of the people it claimed to represent. The fact that Arafat and his henchmen were simply gifted control over the newly formed Palestinian Authority (PA) says it all. None possessed either the temperament or qualifications to govern a modern political entity. This is not to say that there were no serious people in the PA working for the betterment of their community, but such positive activity was subsumed – and continues to be subsumed – by the corruption and ineptitude of the PA under the leadership of Yassir Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas.

Which brings us to the issue of trust.

The framework outlined in the Oslo Accords is actually quite sensible. It called for a staged Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the turning over of control of vacated territory to the PA. While Israel implemented its initial obligations, however, the PA either refused, or was unable, to fulfill its own in the areas of security, and particularly in education, where school curricula regularly demonize Jews and glorify violence against the Jewish State. Particularly irksome for Israelis – and revealing to those paying attention – is the PA practice of rewarding the families of terrorists, including suicide bombers, with a special pension in recognition of their sacrifice. Imagine the families of Alexandre Bissonette, who murdered six worshippers at a Muslim Cultural Centre in Quebec City in 2017, or Stephen Paddock who massacred 60 concert goers in Las Vegas that same year, being granted a special cash payments for life as a reward for having raised such upstanding human beings. The prospect is so repugnant that it defies the imagination, but under the rule of the Palestinian Authority – not Hamas, but the “moderate” Palestinian Authority – the practice is not just condoned, it is official policy.

A second issue with the Oslo process has been the refusal of the PA to engage in meaningful negotiations regarding the border and the status of Jerusalem.

The combined number of Arabs and Jews living in Jerusalem in 1967 immediately following the Six Day War was approximately 266,000. Today, that number is close to 1 million. Like every other urban area in the world, this growth in population was natural, not government induced. As anyone familiar with the geography of the region knows, accommodating such an increase in population is an exceptionally complicated exercise, due as much to the difficult terrain as any other consideration. After Israel annexed the eastern part of the city in 1980 it allowed construction of much-needed suburban communities that, in some cases, encroached on land captured in 1967. Although the location of these suburban communities was often dictated by the geographic realities of the municipal region, it would be naive to dismiss the desire to create “facts on the ground” as a motivating factor in some planning decisions. Be that as it may, more than half a century has passed since the Six Day War during which time Jerusalem has evolved into a thriving metropolis that cannot simply be re-divided along the 1949 armistice lines.

The same can be said regarding the Palestinian demand that refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants must be granted the right to return to their anti-bellum residences. This is an impossible concession for Israel to make, if for no reason other than the obvious fact that the descendants of refugees were not yet born and therefore have no anti-bellum residences to return to.

Despite these poison pill demands, Israel remained committed to the updated version of the two-state proposals of 1938 and 1947 implied in the Oslo Accords. All that was needed for a final deal was flexibility on the part of the Palestinians on the contentious subjects of Jerusalem and the “right of return”, as well as their acceptance – for a period of time – of some degree of Israeli control over security. Arafat refused to budge though.

Over the course of 14 days at Camp David in 2000, Arafat refused to make any concessions, or even offer any alternatives to what Israel offered or President Clinton – who sponsored the talks in an effort to broker a final settlement – proposed. Instead, he walked away from the negotiations and promptly launched what is known to history as The Second Intifada, a resumption of the campaign of terrorism that had always proved so effective to extracting concessions from Israel and the international community.

This time, however, and to their credit, the violence did not change Israel’s basic position. It continued to accept the two-state solution, but it was not prepared to acquiesce to the demand that it absorb millions of descendants of refugees or agree that Jerusalem be re-divided along the 1949 ceasefire lines. As late as 2008, in an attempt to break the impasse, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert even offered Mahmoud Abbas – Arafat’s successor as leader of the PA – a deal that would involve Israel relinquishing control of Jerusalem’s Old City, something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years earlier. Abbas demurred.

Meanwhile, in 2005, in a unilateral and breath-taking act of good faith, the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel from the Gaza strip after forcibly removing its Jewish inhabitants. Here once more was a tangible and unreciprocated demonstration of Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution. The result was an unmitigated disaster. The residents of Gaza soon elected a Hamas government which proceeded to eliminate its political opponents and impose a brutal dictatorship before launching its own campaign of violence against Israel – provoking no fewer than three major engagements with the Jewish State – and culminating in the devastating attacks of October 7, 2023.

As ugly as the above is, none of it is intended to be an indictment of the behaviour of Arab leaders, Palestinian or otherwise, nor is it meant to exonerate Israel for any of its mistakes or wrongdoings it may have committed over the course of the last 75 years. What it does do – and this is my point – is demonstrate the utter vapidity of the charge that Israel is or has been opposed to a two-state solution to the conflict with its Palestinian Arab neighbours.

Which leaves us with David Cameron and his belief that Israel must be forced to accept a two-state solution through unilateral international recognition of an as yet non-existent Palestinian state.

Aside from being inexplicably detached from reality, the manner in which the initiative was unveiled – during impromptu remarks to the press – was clumsy and boorish. Given the raw state of Israeli emotions in the aftermath of October 7 it did not take an advanced degree in psychology to predict that Lord Cameron’s public musing about his plan would be ill-received. Its immediate and harsh rejection by the Israeli government was entirely understandable. Publicly characterizing the British foreign secretary’s remarks as a “diktat” is a pretty severe criticism in the world of international diplomacy, normally reserved for one’s adversaries.

The Cameron plan is not just bizarre though – it is downright dangerous. It reinforces the popular, but false narrative of Israeli obstinacy being the chief obstacle to a settlement when, in fact, it is Palestinian intransigence that has brought us to where we are today. Worse, it forces Arab governments into a corner where they must adopt an unwanted belligerent posture vis a vis Israel at precisely the same time that they are collaborating with the Jewish State on matters of security in response to the growing threat to the region posed by Iran.

These Arab states desperately want the Palestinian problem – that they themselves created – to go away, and the best way to accomplish this is to take the opposite approach to that being floated by Lord Cameron. Instead of using the threat of recognition of a Palestinian State as a means of pressuring Israel, he should be threatening the leaders of the Palestinians with a withdrawal of the recognition they have already achieved. The chief impediment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian State is not Israel – it is the Palestinian leaders themselves.

Sadly, even with this change in attitude and strategy, the two-state solution is probably a non-starter for the time being. Israelis are simply no longer willing to indulge the fantasies of a peace process that has failed to bring peace and blames them for the failure despite their parade of concessions and sacrifice. They are certainly not inclined to trust the word of the current leaders of the Palestinians, regardless of any document they might sign, nor are they even willing to trust the international community to follow through on its own commitments in support of future agreements, given its abysmal failure to follow through on past agreements. “Somehow you have to find a way to establish trust,” President Clinton said of the 2000 summit. “Agreement is not nearly as important as trust.”

For Israelis, that trust, already weakened by experience, no longer exists.

That will change over time as current wounds heal and new leaders emerge on all sides of the conflict. For now, however, the pontifications of David Cameron or other any other prophet of peace are likely to fall on deaf ears in Israel. Not a very encouraging analysis, I concede, but one that is based on hard cold reality.

Which is exactly what the Middle East peace process ought to have been built on all along.