Mark Rosenblum is the founder of Americans for Peace Now (APN), sister organization of Shalom Achshav, which APN describes as Israel’s pre-eminent peace movement. Rosenblum is a historian and professor at Queens College of the City University of New York, where he’s also director of the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding and the Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values and Social Change.
Rosenblum was in Toronto and Ottawa last fall to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at events sponsored by Canadian Friends of Peace Now.
What sorts of things did you speak about during your visit to Canada?
I talked about where hope resides in the present disastrous, cynical moment, and about needing to oppose ignoring the uphill struggle that people who believe in Israel will need to go through to make peace in a region that’s imploding – a region with a Palestinian people who are divided ideologically and territorially. I also addressed the need to look at the harsh realities, but not give up hope, because in my mind there are elements of hope.
More specifically, I talked about the three fires burning right now in the Middle East:
• The local fire: Israel and Palestine. Jerusalem is burning. It’s leaderless. We have an Israeli prime minister who has no vision of a way out and who wouldn’t be willing to implement it if he did, and a Palestinian leader who seems to be lost, standing on one leg. Jerusalem is filled with terror and violence – the kind that has frightened Israelis and created a toxic environment.
• The regional fire: the great unraveling of the modern Middle East. The Arab state system is imploding. States are disintegrating, like Syria. In this vacuum of flailing states in the Arab/Muslim world, you have other forces that seem irredeemably monstrous led by the so-called Islamic State.
• The global fire: we have international institutions that aren’t up to the job of managing, much less resolving, the local Israeli-Palestinian and regional conflicts, and the makings of a revived battle between blocs that could lead to a revived Cold War – Russia as a renewed power, working hand and glove with the Iranians.
Given all of this, do you believe a two-state solution is still feasible?
I think it’s possible, but it won’t happen by the two parties alone pulling themselves out of the mud and the blood. I don’t think Israel and Palestine at this juncture have the will, capacity or leadership to make a substantive breakthrough on negotiating a permanent peace or two-state solution.
I say that right now, we have a four-state solution. We have Israel, then we have Israel’s carving out of Judea and Samaria – this is in part with international recognition and in part a de facto annexation – and then we have two Palestinian entities that are enemies: one controlled by Hamas in Gaza and one by the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank.
If anyone’s in favour of a two-state solution, they’ll have to engage in strange mathematics to get there. They’ll have to subtract the Jewish de facto sub-state in the West Bank and have the Palestinians accept Israel and have a single Palestinian entity governing Gaza and the West Bank.
I think [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas don’t simply lack the will to negotiate peace, I think for almost two years now, both have seen the price they’ll have to pay for peace as too high and are just trying to manage the status quo and play the blame game.
The local level is pretty grim, and the regional and international actors will have to intervene to make a difference.
I’ve talked about the Arab League peace initiative, which has been around since 2002, and about why it hasn’t had traction and why it’s not impossible
We ought to be looking at who the states and movements are who could actually change the Israel-Palestinian situation from its downward spiral of death. The Arab League peace initiative is a fascinating causeway to negotiate certain issues. It’s possible Abbas will only move in the direction of peace in a regional context. He’s lost the trust of a large segment of the Palestinian population and will need to have the cover of someone else from the Arab world with substance, influence and money in the international region to propose things. These proposals don’t have to come from Israel or even the United States.
It’s often argued in the pro-Israel camp that the Palestinian leadership isn’t a viable peace partner. Do you think Abbas wants peace?
I think he wants peace, but in recent history in particular, he hasn’t demonstrated that he’s willing to make peace under terms necessary for both sides, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t either.
We can go back to the historical moment of 2008. The narrative is that Abbas walked away from the best offer imaginable – made by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert – which even would have created an international body responsible for the sovereign rule of Jerusalem. I would say there’s some truth to that narrative, but on the other hand, Abbas had his own domestic politics to consider.
Olmert was a standing corpse politically when he made the offer. He was under multiple investigations for crime, several of which would have driven him out of office. I’m not making excuses for Abbas, but I’m using what I’ve been told by interlocutors from negotiations that Abbas didn’t have good incentive to sign this deal, because he wasn’t going to get the benefits, that the prime minister wouldn’t have been in power to implement it.
I’d still say that, at the end of the day, Abbas wants peace on his terms, and so far, he’s not accepted the most generous peace deal the Israelis have offered.
Is the North American media biased against Israel, in your opinion?
I’d say, in general, it depends what you read. Israel has a much more problematic set of optics to cope with than the other side. For example, during the last Gaza war and the one before it, you had body bags in the four figures on the Palestinian side and less dead on the Jewish side.
The optics made it look like the Israelis are the perpetrators and the Palestinians are completely innocent victims. Of course, the reality is much more complicated. Palestinians have launched thousands of rockets at Israel.
But for the public that watches the body bag count and some of the more atrocious killings of Palestinians, particularly of non-combatants, it creates a visual that tends to put blame on the Israelis.
This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.