The Palestinians have failed to resolve their national cause by taking it into their own hands under what used to be called the principle of “independent Palestinian decision-making.”
The attempted “re-Arabization” of the cause via the Saudi peace initiative has also not managed to achieve concrete results on the ground. That makes internationalization imperative for the Palestinians and desirable for the Arabs. The alternative would be for the world to refrain from intervening in a conflict in which virtually all the power is wielded by one side.
Accordingly, to object to an international conference on the Middle East with active United States, Russian, European and United Nations participation would only serve Israel’s policy of imposing military solutions by force, as being pursued by Ariel Sharon.
And indeed, Israel’s prime minister has come to be depicted as a relative moderate in comparison to his leadership rival Benjamin Netanyahu, just as their Likud Party now seems comparatively moderate when contrasted with some of the attitudes of the US Congress.
The idea of an international conference remains shrouded in obscurity. No specific aims, agenda, or terms of reference have yet been evolved for it. It ought not to be an open-ended function, but should have its final objective ­ the establishment of an independent Palestinian state ­ set in advance.
Only if the general parameters of a solution are specified beforehand can the negotiations be prevented from dragging on inconclusively for months and years.
This time, in other words, the conflict needs to be resolved, rather than merely managed.
If the aim of the international conference is merely to set the stage for a resumption of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, failure is inevitable. It will all be futile and a waste of time. The negotiations failed to produce results even when the two sides were partners, on relatively accommodating and friendly terms following the signing of the Oslo Accords, and both believed that peace was within reach.
Such talks cannot be expected to produce anything today, now that the partnership has turned to animosity, that each side has lost trust in the other, and much blood has flown on both sides of the divide.
Although every case is distinct, the experience of East Timor provides a precedent that can be built on in Palestine.
The territory was invaded by Suharto and annexed to Indonesia a quarter of a century ago. Its inhabitants rejected the occupation and in the ensuing bloody struggle many people lost their lives. That prompted international intervention, culminating in a referendum at which the majority of the population opted for independence. The territory was placed under UN administration for an interim period, which came to a happy ending last month when an independent state was proclaimed under the leadership of a democratically elected president who is now striving to rebuild the country with international financial and technical aid.
The international conference on the Middle East would not be required to discuss, let alone resolve, the five well-known points of contention over which the most that Israel would be prepared to “concede” would fall short of the least the Palestinians would be able to accept.
The conference would, however, be required to recognize that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has regional and international dimensions and repercussions that threaten world stability, and that it cannot be considered to be a conflict whose resolution can be left to the parties directly involved.
The conference should, accordingly, place the West Bank and Gaza Strip territory occupied in 1967 ­ and its entire population, whether indigenous inhabitants or Jewish settlers ­ under UN administration for a transitional period during which a referendum can be held.
There is no doubt that the Palestinian inhabitants would opt for independence and the Jewish settlers would choose to return to Israel, in the knowledge that they constitute an alien and utterly rejected presence that can only be maintained by the might of the occupation army.
The UN’s responsibility would not end with the emergence of an independent Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967, borders (with minor amendments), and the acknowledgement of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and compensation (in a manner that addresses Israel’s demographic fears).
Israel would remain concerned about the personal security of its citizens and want guarantees that guerilla operations would end. Palestine would be concerned about its national security and want protection from attack by its powerful neighbor. This being the case, it would be necessary to deploy international forces along the lines separating the two sides for an indefinite period, until such time as both sides’ concerns have been satisfactorily addressed. Such a force could come from NATO.
But could the US lead such a process in cooperation with the three other main players ­ Russia, the European Union and the UN ­ at the proposed international conference?
This is where the prospects weaken, due to a combination of America’s unilateralist instincts and the blind bias toward Israel that prevails in US decision-making circles ­ especially the Congress, which nowadays is more Zionist than the Knesset and more extremist than the Likud Party. (House majority leader Tom DeLay, for example, openly called for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, yet his advocacy of ethnic cleansing was barely noticed by the mainstream US media.)
It is futile for America to try to eliminate terrorism while the Palestinians continue to be subjected to injustices and denied their rights, and it is equally ineffectual for some to try to arrive at a negotiated solution without forceful international intervention, bolstered by UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
The step-by-step approach has had the opposite effect to that intended. There would be no point in reverting to it unless the aim were to continue wasting time, while seeking to manage the conflict instead of resolving it.

Fahed Fanek is one of Jordan’s leading economics and media consultants. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

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