Tit-For-Tat Unilateralism
The great virtue of unilateralism is that you don’t have to get any agreement to execute it.
Consider Sharon’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. There will undoubtedly, always be debate about why he pursued withdrawal in the face of so much opposition and in direct contradiction of his party’s platform. Was this the first step of a larger plan to withdraw from much of the West Bank, and implement a two state solution on Israeli terms? Or was it intended merely to divide the Palestinian entity into two, making it that much easier to hold on to the West Bank? I incline toward the former interpretation, but many informed observers disagree.
But what we can all agree on is this: Sharon implemented unilateral withdrawal from Gaza because he wanted to withdraw from Gaza.
The alternatives to getting out of Gaza unilaterally were to stay, or to get out as the result of negotiations. Assuming he didn’t want to stay, the question becomes how likely negotiations were to succeed. And I think most honest observers would conclude: not very likely.
To achieve the withdrawal, Sharon had to confront directly those forces within Israel who were opposed to the objective, as well as those who worried about the consequences of unilateral action. But he didn’t have to get an agreement from the other side, and then, if that could be achieved, sell that agreement (which, to achieve, would require very far-reaching concessions) to the Israeli people.
Mahmoud Abbas’s unilateral declaration plan strikes me as a similar gambit. We can debate the longer-term strategy of which such a declaration may or may not be a part. But most simply, Abbas wants to declare independence because he wants the Palestinian Authority to be recognized as a state.
Declaring statehood unilaterally within the 1949 armistice lines requires Abbas to confront those who oppose anything less than a comprehensive solution, as well as those who remain opposed to any two-state solution, comprehensive or no. But it doesn’t require him to get any kind of agreement from Netanyahu. Nor does it require him to sell that agreement – which, no doubt, would require very far-reaching concessions – to the Palestinian people.
Withdrawal from Gaza was something both sides wanted, but neither could achieve because of other issues with which it was linked. Unilateral withdrawal did not take place on terms that made the Palestinians happy, but the result – the removal of the Israeli settlements and the Israeli army – was still a Palestinian objective that was achieved. And likewise an Israeli objective.
Outside of the precincts of Israeli and Palestinian fantasists who believe, respectively, that Jews can rule over a captive Arab population forever, or that the Jews will simply surrender their hard-won homeland one day, a Palestinian state of some sort is understood to be an objective of both sides. Unilateral declaration, if it is followed by widespread recognition in Europe, will achieve that objective. It won’t be on the terms the Israelis want, but it’ll still be an achieved objective. And likewise a Palestinian objective.
It’s not a “solution” to the conflict. But, like the Gaza withdrawal, it would be the achievement of a concrete objective that both sides actually want, but cannot achieve because they cannot agree on other questions with which the question of independent statehood is linked.
And it’s worth pointing out that, had the Netanyahu government seized the diplomatic moment and tried to get a statehood resolution that the Israeli government could endorse out of Abbas, he might have failed. Any declaration that Netanyahu actually could endorse, after all, would surely be understood by the Palestinians as a treasonous sellout of Palestinian interests. It’s one thing if Abbas risks decoupling the Palestinian diaspora from the issue of statehood for the sake of dealing the Israelis a big diplomatic defeat. But in the context of an agreement with the Israelis, such a risk would be totally unacceptable. The most likely result of any hypothetical Israeli engagement on the declaration would be a neutered declaration that didn’t actually achieve the objective of recognition of a state – something more comparable to the 1988 declaration. Such a declaration would not advance the ball one bit.
Tit-for-tat unilateralism is not preferable to a negotiated solution. But it may be preferable to a negotiated impasse.
