A Glimmer of Hope

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the establishment of the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, which was then handed over to the British to administer in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. To say that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then is really to say the very least. And yet that specific shift in Middle Eastern reality—the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the assignment of its territories outside of Turkey itself to one or another of the victor nations—created the Middle East we know today more than did any other single political or diplomatic event. The British, of course, had their hands full from the beginning, appearing—at least at first—only barely to understand what it was going to mean to govern almost two million people, more or less none of whom trusted them or wanted to be governed by them even benignly. Nor did Britain’s racist and imperialist history of governing its own overseas colonies in Asia or Africa with little to no respect for the rights or culture of the governed bode particularly well for their chances of governing Palestine effectively or successfully.

Looking at the map a century later, we can see how much has and hasn’t changed. The Brits themselves are long gone, of course. But the legacy the Mandate bequeathed to the region and the world—primarily the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan, but also the mass of Palestinian Arabs who failed to create the Arab state envisioned by the authors of the Partition Plan adopted by the United Nations in 1947 but who also failed to embrace the possibility of Israeli or Jordanian citizenship and so who were left with neither a country of their own nor easy entrée into the social fabric of any other—that legacy remains in place and needs to be confronted by all who wish for peace in the Middle East. Laying the intractability of the Middle Eastern situation at the feet of the British feels a bit overstated. But the map of the region with which all who yearn for peace must come to terms is precisely a result of their legacy.

Just lately, however, after decades of endless deliberation and failed initiatives, things are beginning to feel just a bit different.

The Palestinians appear to be increasingly unhappy with their own leaders, and particularly the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Time and time again, they have declined to accept any sort of offer from Israel, including offers along the lines of the Oslo Accords of 1993 that would have led directly to an independent Palestinian state. Equally meaningfully, though, is the fact that the Palestinian leadership has declined to act unilaterally and simply to declare their own independence. The world would surely run to accept such a development as legitimate and beyond acceptable. (Despite the fact that no such state actually exists, over 130 nations have already recognized the existence of the State of Palestine.) But that would require coming to terms with the reality of an independent Israel next door…and that, the Palestinian leadership seem unable or unwilling to contemplate. Nor has the situation in Gaza been all that different—after Israel withdrew in 2005 and the Palestinians in Gaza voted to be governed by Hamas, the possibility existed for the Palestinians to declare their independence and move forward to create a nation. But Hamas, unwilling to abandon its terrorist orientation and live in peace with the neighbors, could not bring itself to do that. And so the Palestinians remain, year after year, in a self-made limbo that arouses the sympathy of a world all too willing to look away from the fact that the Palestinians could declare their independence at any time and move forward from there.

But now, as we pass the 100^th anniversary of the beginning of the British Mandate, things seem to be changing. Arab states, once implacably opposed to living in peace with Israel, seem slowly to be coming around. The long-standing, occasionally beleaguered, peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have remained in place. The Abraham Accords have led three significant Muslim nations to establish an official and public relationship with Israel. The “big” Middle Eastern conflict is no longer the one between Israel and the Arabs, but the one between an aggressive Iran on the brink of becoming a nuclear power and the nations that entirely reasonably fear Iranian expansionism and terror. As a result, there is a certain discernible frustration in the Arab world with the way the endless insistence of the Palestinians on their right to a state is belied by their refusal actually to move forward towards statehood.

The Palestinians have done very well promoting themselves as a cause célèbre among progressive groups in North America and in Europe. But that success apparently does not extend to nations who truly fear Iran and who are more than aware of the fact that the real possibility of preventing Iran from becoming the world’s most dangerous nuclear power rests with Israel’s willingness to prevent that from happening and not from the slightly pathetic efforts of Western powers, the U.S. included, to negotiate yet more agreements that the Iranians will sign and then ignore. When people ask, as they do constantly, why nations like Bahrain or the UAE would make peace with Israel before the final resolution of the Palestinian issue, the answer has far less to do with their feelings about Palestinian intransigency, real thought they may well be, than with their fear of Iranian aggression. And the next countries to join the Abraham Accords will surely be nations who understand the world in precisely the same way as the Bahrainis and the Emiratis. And, yes, there is a certain irony in the fact that this realignment of the political landscape of the region will help, not hinder, those Palestinians who are sick of their endless war with a nation they cannot defeat and who yearn for autonomy, for independence, and for peace: once the Palestinians acquire leaders who understand that they can no long refuse to negotiate a just peace with Israel without alienating a serious number of nations on whom they have traditionally counted for support, including especially financial support—once that happens, the path to Palestinian independence will be straighter and far easier to negotiate.

So, despite all the reasons I generally feel gloomy about the Middle East, I’m entering 2022 feeling a bit upbeat. There was a time when the thought of the Saudis and the Israelis exchanging ambassadors would have seemed like something out of a science fiction novel. But now, given the current state of affairs and despite the fact that I don’t imagine the Saudis are on the brink of joining the Abraham Accords any time too soon, it no long feels like something that couldn’t plausibly happen, just like something that hasn’t happened yet. I noticed an online article the other day that referenced somebody as a “Saudi Zionist,” an expression that would once have sounded unimaginable for someone to say out loud seriously. But there it was in print (so to speak) for all the world to see. Nor was it meant sarcastically or cynically. (To see the article, click here.)

The resolution of conflict in the Middle East is not just around the corner. But each nation that signs onto the Abraham Accords constitutes a chink in a wall that was once deemed impenetrable, each a door that just a moment ago existed only in the imaginations of inveterate dreamers. The notion that Israel could take its place among the nations of the Middle East not as a pariah state doomed to fight for its very right to exist, but as a welcome partner in the intellectual, commercial, and cultural life of its own neighborhood—that idea is as intoxicating as it is wild.

In the long run, the Palestinians will eventually have to accept the reality of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel and move forward with the work of nation building. They’ve seemed so unwilling for so long to move forward into their own future that it seems bizarrely Pollyanna-ish even to imagine a bright, peaceful future for the Middle East involving an economically robust Palestine living in secure peace with its neighbors in Israel. But I’m that kind of mood these days for some reason, willing to imagine a future in which the Palestinian leadership finally opts to act in its own best interests and follow the lead of other Muslim nations in accepting Israel as a worthy member of the family of nations. I know it feels unlikely that could ever happen. But, hey, I can dream, can’t I?