Israel has nothing to lose by maintaining status quo — scholar

AMMAN — Did Egyptian and American leaders sell out the Palestinians and their quest for statehood in the widely acclaimed 1978 Camp David Accords? 

That is one of the questions that Seth Anziska, the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky lecturer of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, explored in his recently published book: “Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo”.

At the event hosted by the Columbia Global Centre in Amman last week, Anziska said: “The origin of this book begins almost 17 years ago… my experience of moving between the West Bank and other parts of Palestine and Israel was very shocking. Most of the roads that I would travel on as a student were limited only to settlers and you would pass by these Palestinian villages that were unable to access this infrastructure.” 

Safwan Masri, executive vice president for Global Centres and Global Development at Columbia University, then read a passage that he said summed up the book’s thesis: “The outcome of the Egyptian-Israeli settlement was indeed a significant achievement, for Israel the primary outcome of the peace treaty was the end of a military rivalry with a neighbouring Arab state. Concurrently, it also helped secure legitimacy for the extension of Israeli state sovereignty beyond the 1967 borders. For the Palestinians, it was a crucial moment of state prevention; it marked the first instance of post-1948 discussion of their plight on a global scale, yet, excluded them from the political negotiations that would decide their fate.” 

“From the vantage point of a limited peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, the Camp David Accords is enormously significant. But if you think about this from the vantage point of the Palestinians this is actually the moment of disenfranchisement,” Anziska noted.

The scholar believes that there were a few reasons that the comprehensive peace plan that US President Jimmy Carter had envisioned at the beginning of this process, turned into this limited agreement. “Sadat was too constrained by his own domestic forces; he was concerned about the economy in Egypt and he was concerned about securing American backing once he moved away from the Soviet Union. So what ends up happening in the process of the Camp David Accords is that Sadat ends up choosing a bilateral peace and his own interests over the fate of the Palestinians.” 

Furthermore, “part of the issue is the trust put into Carter as a negotiator that is supposed to navigate between these two parties and, in the end, Carter concedes to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s positions for reasons that have to do with his own domestic political issues.”

Anziska then elaborated on Begin’s position, noting his philosophy and outlook was centred around “not seeing Palestinians on collective terms but rather, he looks at them as a kind of minority or as individuals". This idea, he continued, “becomes the basis of his political claims that aim to limit the Palestinians control to things like the education curriculum, currency, perhaps economic matters, but not actual control or not actual sovereignty over borders and entry or exit”.

The US went from strictly calling settlements “illegal” under the Carter administration to becoming “obstacles to peace” under the Reagan administration, Anziska noted, adding that his book touches on the 1982 Lebanon War and Israel’s role in the invasion and occupation of its northern neighbour.

The historian also analysed where the American Jewish community is at today. “The views have evolved; it isn’t to say there weren’t instances of people speaking out against expansion and speaking out against Begin in the 70s; there were. However, today there is much more sympathy and understanding of those claims for self-determination. I think many Americans see the Palestinian question in the same lens as they see other rights-based struggles,” he underlined.

Anziska then closed the discussion by responding to the question: “What could compel Israel to acknowledge the political rights of Palestinians as a people and cede some sort of sovereignty?”

“Part of this, we have to understand, is what is the cost of the status quo to the Israelis? Zero. So is it in their interest to give up these territories? We can talk about tactics or ways that might change or how to bring pressure to bear on them but [right-wing Israeli politician and incumbent minister of education Naftali] Bennett is openly talking about annexation of Area C. This may be realistic in the next year or two. There is a phenomenon that the Israelis do not see a problem with what they are doing,” Anziska underscored.