[wvns] Time for sanctions on Israel

Effective, targeted sanctions against the symbols of Israeli occupation could break the deadlock of the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process

Time for sanctions
Ezzedine Choukri Fishere *
http://jnoubiyeh.blogspot.com/2009/02/time-for-sanctions.html

In July 2006, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa declared the Middle East peace process dead. Some found his statement premature and argued that the peace process was only "frozen". A few months later, in fact on Christmas Eve, the US administration intervened in order to resuscitate the ailing process, moving it to what would become the "Annapolis intensive care unit". The peace process was kept there on life support until the end of 2008, and then left to die quietly as the key actors exited the stage. Now that Israel has brought back the master of ceremonies, it is time to bury the dead.

As we gather in front of the deceased and try to think of something serious to say (which is understandably difficult for many of us given that this is not the first funeral of that morbid process), it is important to come to grips with the basic facts about its ailing life and ultimate death. The diseases of the Middle East peace process were complex and many, but the virus at the core of it all is one: it is more profitable in Israeli politics to oppose withdrawal from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Advocating such withdrawals, which is the condition sine qua non of peace, would erode any politician's chances of getting elected. In extreme cases it could cost him his life. Rabin is testimony to that.

Some in the international community are all too ready to point to Hamas's rejectionist positions; to the divisions among Palestinians, and to the lack of initiative on the part of the Arab world. But regardless of what the Palestinians and Arabs do or do not, the deadlock of the peace process always boiled down to this persistent fact. Opposing withdrawals, undermining the chances of establishing a Palestinian state, expanding settlements, and tightening Israel's fist is a guaranteed recipe in Israeli politics to bring you more votes, provided that you don't alienate the United States and/or incur the wrath of the international community. Netanyahu's rise and fall, and rise again, is testimony to that.

Indeed, unless outside actors gather enough courage and vision to alter the Israeli political calculus, it will always be wiser for Israeli politicians to veer to the right. What is needed then is to make ending the occupation a viable political position for Israeli leaders. What is needed is to lower the cost of compromise for those leaders who are willing to engage in genuine peace with their Arab neighbours. And to do this, the cost of occupation must be raised.

The best peaceful way to raise the cost of occupation is through imposing sanctions against the nexus of Israel's occupation: the settlers, their products, their sponsors and their financial institutions. Such sanctions are not directed against Israel as a whole; they target Israeli occupation of Arab lands. This would send a clear message to all Israeli citizens that the international community -- while it continues to support Israel's right to live in peace and security -- will not tolerate Israel's occupation of Arab territories for much longer. Such sanctions would raise the cost of the occupation without triggering the Masada Complex Syndrome, pushing Israel further into extremism.

Such sanctions should include: a ban on travel against those who reside in settlements built beyond the Green Line (i.e. the territories occupied in the 1967 war); a ban on importing settlement products; a ban on companies to do business in settlements (including construction companies and their suppliers); and pressure exerted on the government of Israel to curtail its financial assistance to settlement councils and the credit facilities it extends to settlers, with a potential deduction of sums spent in that regard from its foreign assistance.

Sanctioning occupation is right and wise at the same time. It is right, because the international community can no longer maintain the intolerable duplicity in its standards. Standing up against occupation by adopting concrete and fair measures to penalise the settlement enterprise would affirm -- better than a thousand speeches by Obama in a Muslim country -- the universality of human rights standards and international law. At the same time, imposing sanctions against settlers and their support network is a wise policy decision: it helps those in Israel who are fighting for its soul by showing the public the possible cost of slipping down the slope of hatred and extremism.

And sanctioning the Israeli occupation is the least that Arab states should demand from their international partners. Arab states have cooperated with every international effort aimed at finding a political settlement to their conflict with Israel, since the armistice agreements of 1949 to the ill-fated Annapolis process. They have extended hand after hand to Israel, offered peace and normalisation for a state whose legitimacy they contested. And yet because occupation continues to be a relatively low cost option, its continuation remains a preferred choice for the majority of Israeli voters. There is nothing much the Arabs can do to alter that -- it is now the turn of the international community to step in and help raise the cost of that seemingly endless occupation. Alternatively, we can all stand before the deceased peace process, listen to the master of ceremonies, and -- why not -- say a prayer.

* The writer is professor of international relations at the American University in Cairo and former adviser to the Egyptian foreign minister and to the UN envoy to the Middle East.

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