Beyond diplomatic fetishism

In a recent meeting in London George Mitchell, former US senator, said he is "still hopeful" about the prospects of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. "I have detected a sense on both sides that all is not lost," Mitchell told a group of friends at an informal dinner. Modest enough not to dwell too much on his own mission, the former senator insisted that both sides undertake "a series of confidence-building measures."<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Mitchell is an experienced intermediary. He helped shape the Good Friday agreement that led to the first real hope for peace that Northern Ireland has experienced in two decades. But after a while talking to him one gets the impression that he may have underestimated the complexities of the Palestinian issue. The phrase "confidence-building measures" has become a cliche used by diplomats on both sides when discussing the current crisis in the occupied territories.

Confidence-building measures, however, are nothing but an instrument of policy. There must be something in which one builds confidence. For the time being, however, there is no such thing. The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, insists that it would not come out with any concrete proposals for talks until there had been several weeks of "absolute peace." Ensuring that there is such a period of celestial calm, of course, is within no one's gifts. Any militant group or individual on either side could prevent such a dream from coming true with a single dramatic act of violence. Right now no one quite knows what the Israelis are prepared to give and what the Palestinians are ready to take. In other words, there is no process, nothing to build confidence in.

Strange though it may sound, one might say that both Sharon and the Palestinian leader may be happy with the new status quo. And any status quo, as historians have often noted, always develops its own logic and exerts its own rancid charm.

People get used to things, anything, and end up by almost liking even the worst situation if only because it is familiar. What people fear most is uncertainty that involves the taking of risks.

This was why Arafat walked away from the Camp David deal offered by Barak. That deal, although not as rosy as Barak claims, was something new and thus projected a degree of uncertainty that needed time to absorb. Barak was not prepared to give Arafat the time needed. It was: sign it or leave it.

A majority of the Israelis also disliked Barak's plan for the same reason. They, too, were afraid of uncertainty. Almost six years of the Madrid-Oslo exercise had created a status quo with which most Israelis felt comfortable. Under that status quo, peace talks continued without Israel making any dramatic concessions. In time, many Israelis began to feel that it was possible to obtain peace and security without paying the price.

The Israelis may be comfortable with the new status quo because they now recognize its dimensions. Initially, Sharon had based his strategy on the transformation of the current low-intensity conflict into full-scale war. The assumption was that Israel could not win a prolonged campaign of episodic urban guerrilla against a population frustrated by decades of occupation. Now, however, Sharon is no longer sure that pushing the conflict toward full-scale war would be in Israel's best interests. He is, therefore, beginning to feel comfortable with the status quo. He keeps saying that he finds no "reliable peace partner" on the Palestinian side and thus is under no obligation to present any peace plan. All he needs now is a simple strategy: Let's wait until there is a new Palestinian leadership.

But what about Arafat? He, too, may be happy with the status quo for a number of reasons. He has never presented an "Arafat Plan" detailing the very minimum that he would accept from the Israelis in any peace deal. The Barak package would have forced him to do precisely that. Now, however, he has no need of doing so because he can always claim that the Israeli side is not interested in peace at all. Suddenly all his strategy has been reduced to a simple formula: let's wait until the Sharon coalition disintegrates for reasons other than the current crisis.

As we all know there is always some good in the worst of circumstances. And the current crisis is no exception. What is good in it is that it puts a definitive end to the practice of posturing, that is to say diplomatic dancing around the issue, that has marked the peace process since Madrid. The era of plans and projects and reports that are endlessly negotiated and fine-tuned, and transformed into diplomatic fetishes, but never fully implemented may well be over.

The last of these fetishes may well be the Mitchell Report itself. It is interesting that the Mitchell mission was first focused on a single issue: to find out whether or not the current crisis had been triggered by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Interestingly, this is the only question that the final report does not answer. What was a fact-finding mission was suddenly transformed into a peace-making one. The document issued at the end of the mission was initially called "The Mitchell Report" which eventually became known as "The Mitchell Peace Plan".

Like the proverbial drowning man who hangs on to every flotsam and jetsam to save himself, leaders on both sides of the conflict are now pretending that "The Mitchell Peace Plan" can save the region from unspecified but presumably bigger disasters. Officials and pundits in the US, Western Europe and the Arab countries parrot this absurd sentiment.

The truth is that there is no "Mitchell Peace Plan". In fact, there is no peace plan of any kind. We are back to a diplomatic tabula rasa. The current crisis, painful though it is for both sides, offers a breathing space. This should be used by the Bush administration, ultimately the only potential player that can make a meaningful move, to maintain a discreet dialogue with both sides. Only two questions need to be asked. The first is: What is the maximum that Israel is ready to give and the minimum that the Palestinians are prepared to accept. The second is: What measures need to be taken to narrow the gap that would inevitably exist between the two positions.

Once those two questions have been answered we could, once again, have a peace process. It is important that any future process be transparent and designed to inform the Palestinian and Israeli publics as fully as possible. Only then can calls for confidence-building measures have a meaning because there would be something tangible upon which to build confidence. In the meantime the two sides, the region, and the outside world, unhappy though they understandably are, can live with the status quo.