Living in a fantasy world

Consider the following report, for instance: “In recent weeks the Foreign Ministry, Military Intelligence, the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad have distributed a number of documents stating that a return to negotiations [with the Palestinians] would tone down [regional] tensions and anger against Israel.” Well, yes, it might, which is precisely why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has spent the last two years begging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume talks. He even imposed an unprecedented 10-month freeze on settlement construction – something none of his predecessors ever did – to woo his reluctant interlocutor. There’s only one problem: Abbas repeatedly and consistently refused to negotiate unless Israel effectively conceded all the final-status issues in advance.

For instance, he insisted that Israel agree upfront to the 1967 lines, altered only by “mutually agreed” swaps, while making clear that he would only countenance swaps far smaller than even Ehud Olmert considered tenable, and which Netanyahu deems wildly insufficient. He also insisted that Israel cede East Jerusalem in advance: After all, accepting the 1967 lines is tantamount to conceding that East Jerusalem, which lies beyond them, is Palestinian territory. Meanwhile, he repeatedly vowed never to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or to drop his demand to resettle millions of Palestinians in Israel (thereby eradicating the Jewish state demographically). And if Israel were to cede all its territorial bargaining chips in advance, it would have no leverage left with which to exact concessions on these issues, either.

In short, negotiations can only be resumed on terms that no sane government could accept. So what’s the point in recommending “a return to negotiations” when in reality, there’s no way to do so – unless our intelligence analysts and diplomats actually think the government should sacrifice vital long-term strategic interests for the sake of temporarily easing regional tensions, which would be even more worrying?

We pay our analysts and diplomats to produce practical suggestions for how to improve Israel’s tactical and strategic situation. If the best they can come up with is “a number of documents” recommending an unattainable fantasy, what do we need them for? Fantasies we could get from any child for the price of a piece of chocolate, and the millions we now spend on their salaries could be used for more productive purposes.

Then there’s the report (which a Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed to me) that Israeli diplomats are currently lobbying the world to continue funding the PA despite its bid for UN recognition as a state. Given that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is one of the government’s most vocal advocates of penalizing the PA for its UN bid, it seems strange that his direct subordinates are busily urging the world not to do so. And if senior ministry officials are using the diplomatic corps to conduct their own foreign policy rather than the government’s, that obviously goes way beyond problematic. But the more likely explanation is that they’re acting on orders from Netanyahu, who on foreign policy issues frequently aligns with Defense Minister Ehud Barak (a proponent of continued funding) rather than Lieberman.

The stated purpose of this policy is to prevent the PA, and especially its security forces, from collapsing, on the theory that such a collapse would make a third intifada more likely. But even if one buys this argument, the chance of donations to the PA drying up following the UN vote is nil.

The PA’s largest donor is Europe, and past experience shows it would take a miracle of Biblical proportions to get Europe to stop funding the PA. If European states, despite their stated opposition to terror, refused to stop the cash flow over the PA’s direct involvement in terror during the second intifada, then they certainly won’t do so over a UN bid which most of them support. Indeed, when Washington halted donations over the intifada, the Europeans actually increased their contributions to compensate, and would doubtless do the same this time around. Nor will Arab states halt donations. And the PA’s biggest revenue source is tax transfers from Israel, which finance up to two-thirds of its budget, so the decision most relevant to the PA’s financial stability will be made in Jerusalem, not overseas.

Thus at best, Israel’s diplomats are wasting precious time and diplomatic capital to ensure an aid flow that is far more vital to the Palestinians than to Israel – meaning Palestinians can and will lobby for it themselves – when it isn’t even at risk to begin with. And they are doing so at the expense of time and effort that could be used to further exclusively Israeli interests, which nobody will pursue if Israel doesn’t.

But at worst, they are actually undermining a vital Israeli interest: the principle that signed agreements can’t be violated with impunity. After all, the Palestinians’ UN bid blatantly violates the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, which states that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations”; UN recognition of a Palestinian state in these territories would clearly change their status radically. Indeed, this fact has been the cornerstone of Israel’s lobbying campaign against the UN gambit. But now our diplomats are telling the world, “yes, of course, the PA shouldn’t violate its signed agreements, but under no circumstances should you penalize them if they do.” In other words, Israel is encouraging the PA to violate its agreements by ensuring that it won’t suffer any penalty for doing so.

So at best, our diplomats are wasting their time, and at worst, they’re undermining a vital Israeli interest in the process. If that’s the best way we can think of to use our diplomatic corps, then really, what do we need one for?

The writer is a journalist and commentator.