I admit, there was a time when I had great hopes that Benjamin Netanyahu could bring Israel to peace with the Palestinians. In 2011 when Netanyahu agreed to make the deal that I helped to negotiate for the return of Gilad Schalit, I believed that he could make additional leadership decisions. I approached Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to see if he would agree to enter into a direct secret channel of negotiations with Netanyahu and Abbas immediately agreed.
During that period, I was holding frequent meetings with Abbas. After each meeting I sent messages to Netanyahu from Abbas proposing the direct secret channel of negotiations and three times Netanyahu rejected the calls from Abbas to negotiate. It became increasingly clear to me that Netanyahu did not want to negotiate with the Palestinians. It was clear that his strategy was to delegitimize Abbas, to keep Hamas in power in Gaza and to incite against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Netanyahu’s plan has been to ensure that there is no Palestinian partner for peace while increasing settlement building in the West Bank, cuddling up to the right-wing and haredi populations and legitimizing extreme right-wing groups like Lehava, La Familia, the Hilltop Youth of violent settlers, and people like Itamar Ben Gvir. Netanyahu allowed criminal gangs in Palestinian communities in Israel to buy and sell illegal weapons and as murders increased in those communities, almost nothing was done to prevent them or to capture the
murderers. From Netanyahu’s point of view, when Arabs kill Arabs there is no urgency to stop it.
My claim against Netanyahu has never been focused on the indictments against him for corruption, although it is astounding that he did not resign when first indicted, and because of a lacuna in our law has been able to remain a sitting prime minister with those indictments against him. My case against Netanyahu is that for all of the years that he has been prime minister he has labored to kill the two-states solution and to bury any options for peace with the Palestinians. I will be glad to see him out of the Prime Minister’s office.
I have no illusions that the Bennett-Lapid government will advance negotiations with the Palestinians. If this government succeeds to come to life, it will not be able to do anything that is outside of the broad consensus of dealing only with the economy and hopefully begin to heal the divides within our society that Netanyahu has deepened over too many years. I hope that the drive to build more settlements will slow down, but it probably will not stop entirely. I hope that in creating the government, some of the leaders from the Palestinian citizens of Israel will be legitimized within our political system.
I hope that relations with our Arab neighbors, such as Jordan and Egypt, will improve. That is something that Lapid as foreign minister can do. I hope that with the assistance of some of our Arab neighbors – Jordan, Egypt, the UAE – we can help to find ways to ease the suffering of our neighbors in Gaza. It is clear that the occupation will not end during the term of the next government, even though that is what needs to happen. But perhaps some of the tension in relations can ease.
THE NEW government needs to strengthen the Palestinian Authority. It can do that by actually allowing it to have some genuine authority. The joint committees created under the Oslo agreement could be re-established. There were 26 joint committees at the peak of the process. The purpose of the joint committees was to establish cross-border cooperation, not to place an Israeli veto on what the Palestinians want to do. That is what essentially happened to many of the joint committees.
I propose that they start with the Joint Economic Committee, the Joint Water Committee, the Joint Agriculture Committee, the Joint Tourism Committee. I would propose that the new government conclude the electricity negotiations with the Palestinian Authority that have been dragging along for years without progress. The main high voltage grid lines in the West Bank that deliver electricity to the Palestinians should be transferred to the Palestinian Authority and a joint committee for electricity should be established and should encourage cooperation in bringing a significant amount of solar energy to the Palestinian electricity supply.
Since Israeli annexation of the West Bank or parts of it will not be on the agenda of the new government, it would be a good idea to cease house and water well demolitions in Area C, especially in the South Hebron Hills and in the Jordan Valley. It is also time to approve the construction of the main access road for the new Palestinian city Rawabi. The new government could also execute plans that have been made for upgrading the Allenby Bridge and perhaps even reinstating the status of the Palestinian Authority there as was agreed to in the Oslo agreements. It would also be a good idea to enable the Palestinians to reach G4 cellular telephone technology.
If agreements are reached with Gaza, there are many things that could be done that would serve the interests of both sides, such as thousands of work permits for Palestinians from Gaza to work in the farms and factories on the Israeli side of the border. With international assistance, the government can renew negotiations for the establishment of a joint industrial zone on the Gaza-Israel border. Israel could allow the Palestinians to construct solar energy fields in the buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border all along the Strip. According to my calculations about 200 MW of electricity could be produced there while creating a much more secure buffer zone. A water pipeline could be constructed from the Ashkelon desalination plant to Gaza. The Ashkelon plant is working way below its total capacity. An electricity line could also be brought from Israel to Gaza. These are quickies that can be done with relatively small amounts of money.
If the new government will have a positive attitude toward its Palestinian neighbors, there is much that can be done in a relatively short time to create more positive relations and lead to the possibilities for better negotiations in the future. A new government of change in Israel will enable us to get back to the central questions that we need to address – such as peace with the Palestinians, instead of focusing solely on Bibi yes or Bibi no.
The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and its neighbors. His latest book, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine, was published by Vanderbilt University Press and is now available in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It is now out in Arabic and in Portuguese as well.