Why America's Undying Devotion to Israel Guarantees New Peace Talks Will Fail

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One tries to be reasonable. And I think the Palestinian side in negotiations did try to be reasonable. They presented a map during the Annapolis negotiations which said, "We will annex 2 percent—we will allow Israel to annex 2 percent of the West Bank, but on those 2 percent are more than 60 percent of the settlers. We will let them keep 60 percent and more of the settlers in place." They did their best to be reasonable and also within the framework of international law. So they wanted Israel would get 1.5—excuse me, 2 percent of the West Bank, Palestinians would get 2 percent of Israel—a one-for-one land swap. They tried very hard to be reasonable.

The Israeli-American position, the one that Indyk formulates and basically is just an echo of the Israeli position, is: You’re going to leave a West Bank which is fragmented down the middle, fragmented in the north. They lose the water. They lose the most arable land. They lose East Jerusalem. There’s no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem. The Palestinian what’s called Greater Jerusalem extends from East Jerusalem to Ramallah to Bethlehem. That Greater East Jerusalem, it accounts for 40 percent of the Palestinian economy. There is no Palestinian state if Israel annexes East Jerusalem.

The problem is how all of this is going to be sold, because people don’t know the facts. And it’s very frustrating when you’re watching what’s happening. Israel claims it wants all of the West Bank. That’s what it formally claims. That’s its theatrical position. And then it’s going to say, "We’re making a gut-wrenching concessions. We’re going to give up 90 percent. All we want is 10 percent." And it’s going to cast the Palestinians as being so unreasonable: "Look at the gut-wrenching concessions that Israel is making." And, in fact, I think it probably is going to sell.

I talked to a very close Palestinian friend. She’s a professor. And I said to her, "Israel really only wants 10 percent, for an obvious reason: They don’t want the Arabs." If you look at the wall Israel is building, believe it or not, the wall is twice the size of the border. Do you know why it’s twice the size of the border? Because it winds and winds, it takes this sinuous route, to keep the land in and the Arabs out. So the wall in East Jerusalem, it cuts right through East Jerusalem and puts 55,000 Palestinian Arabs out. They can’t want the whole West Bank, because, in the famous phrase of Levi Eshkol, the prime minister, "We want the dowry; we don’t want the bride." We want the land, but we don’t want the people.

AARON MATÉ: Well, Norman, on the issue of the people, I wanted to ask you—it’s the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington next month.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

AARON MATÉ: And we’re speaking at a time when the history of the civil rights movement is alive right now, with the Trayvon Martin verdict, the striking down of the Voting Rights Act. Are there any lessons you think that a Palestinian nonviolent movement could draw from the history of civil rights in the U.S.?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, I think that—you know, Munayyer, he complains about the United States putting pressure on Palestinians, not putting pressure on Israel. For me, that’s a given. The Palestinians are not demonstrating any power, so of course they’re going to be clobbered by the United States and Israel. The question is: Can you change the power equation? And I think there are realistic possibilities for changing that equation. The most important thing is, number one, using the instrument of international law to isolate Israel in public opinion. And, number two, you need massive Palestinian civil disobedience—with, unfortunately, the force and repression that Israel unleashes—to galvanize international opinion. That was exactly the strategy of the civil rights movement.