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By Shih-Yu Chou What is unique and unprecedented about Israel’s rule over what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) calls the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (OPT), which includes the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem? Can the Arab-Israeli conflict be resolved? Is there any international consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict? What role does the US play in promoting a just and lasting peace in the Middle East? Three books tackle the aforementioned questions from different angles and present three competing accounts of the conflict. This review elaborates on how the volumes approach these questions and identifies their respective shortcomings.
The Power of Inclusive Exclusion examines the structure and nature of the Israeli occupation. The authors suggest that the Israel-Palestine conflict literature places too much emphasis on the history of the conflict, while too little attention is paid to the nature of Israeli occupation itself. They regard the underlying features of Israeli rule as ‘a sui generis regime or political system, a cluster of state and non-state apparatuses, a frame of mind, and a series of political technologies that should be studied in their own right’ (p. 15). The book emphasises that analogies drawn between Israel and colonial rule/the apartheid regime (p. 281), which were characterised by ‘disciplinary’ and ‘bio-political’ power (p. 243), cannot capture the process of the institutionalisation and normalisation of Israeli law and rules, and the apparatus of state violence (p. 99). Nor can these analogies grasp the complete fragmentation of time and space (pp. 179-216), the reality of the disorientation and trauma that the Palestinian people suffer, and the scale of the economic destruction in the OPT. The volume comprises a dozen chapters, 10 sets of Israeli governmental documents, five photo essays and a circumstantial ‘chronology of the occupation regime, 1967-2007’ to make its case and demonstrates that, without a close examination of the nature of Israeli military rule, there is unlikely to be ‘effective resistance’ to the occupation in the OPT (p. 17). The arguments presented in this book are generally well formulated, and overall this volume successfully sheds light on many crucial aspects of Israeli rule. There is one exception to this, however. Ben-Naftali and his colleagues suggest that an advisory opinion rendered by the ICJ in 2004 merely condemned Israeli settlements and the wall, and that the ICJ did ‘not question the legality of the occupation regime as such’ (p. 34). They consider the notion that occupation is deemed legal and permissible under international law (i.e. the Fourth Geneva Convention) to be problematic (pp. 31-68). Contrary to their claims, Israel was in fact severely condemned by the ICJ for refusing to abide by (1) the Fourth Geneva Convention, (2) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and (3) the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, given that Israel had been a signatory of these treaties.[1] More specifically, the ICJ reiterated UN Security Council Resolution 242 (hereafter S/RES/242) adopted in 1967, reaffirming the principle of ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’, and ruled that the construction of the ‘security’ wall and all Israeli settlements in the OPT constituted a flagrant violation of international law.[2] Furthermore, the wall, Israeli military occupation and operations in the OPT and the transfer of the Israeli population to the territories amounted to de facto annexation. In light of this, the court ruled that Israel must end the military occupation, renounce all illegal settlements in the OPT and dismantle the wall. The ICJ additionally endorsed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination upheld by the United Nations. In short, while this volume is a useful exploration of Israeli rule and an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict, it does not make positive references to international legal principles. Nor does it clearly set out that the ICJ did not allow Israel to place itself above the rule of international law and phrase Israel’s conquest, annexation and rule of the OPT in terms of security. In contrast to Ophir et al., Bickerton takes a more even-handed stance on The Arab-Israeli Conflict and covers at length the major events that shaped the contours of the conflict. He assumes that there are legitimate grievances on both sides and that the conflict has remained unresolved because both sides ‘frame their issues in absolute terms’ (p. 10) and allow nationalism that is ‘driven by a sense of divine destiny’ (p. 29) to dictate solutions. To compound the problem, ‘the Christian, Muslim and Jewish worlds could not stand by’ (p. 24). He additionally argues that ‘the US has quite limited power to shape the course of the confrontation’, and that ‘it suits everyone to argue that the US holds the key to peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict’ (p. 209). While this book is a very thorough analysis of the conflict, it is not immediately clear why Bickerton finds the conflict to be interracial (‘Arab-Israeli’) or inter-religious, or why he considers the role played by Washington to be largely irrelevant. These statements are inconsistent with his account that begins with Britain’s imperial design in the Near East, with which Zionism aligned itself (pp. 51-65), and goes on to discuss the demise of the British Empire and the decades of American dominance in the region. A few examples illustrate this point. Firstly, Bickerton indicates that ‘up to 1945 the United States was not intricately involved in the region, except for Christian missions, education efforts, and relatively small oil interests’ (p. 97). Historical records do not support this claim. Washington approached the House of Saud to secure oil concessions in the early 1930s and wrested control of Saudi Arabia from Britain in the early 1940s.[3] Securing the uninterrupted flow of Gulf oil can hardly be described as ‘small oil interests’. Secondly, Bickerton notes that Washington ‘is the largest supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel’ and that the figure for US aid has been ‘an average of US $3 billion per year’ (p. 211) for decades, and yet he assumes Washington’s unwavering support for Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008 to be the direct result of Israel’s ‘carefully crafted’ ‘propaganda campaign’ (p. 45). It is difficult to reconcile these two stories. Thirdly, Bickerton proclaims that ‘any search for a solution must be grounded in a thorough understanding of the history leading from 1948 to 2009’ (p. 12) and that diplomacy rather than the use of force is the way forward. Given this, readers might be baffled by his argument (particularly in Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine) portraying the Israel-Palestine conflict as an irresolvable clash in which Washington played only a limited role. This contradicts the fact that the Eisenhower administration had no objection to the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, assisted by France, for ‘peaceful purposes’, and that the US has indirectly helped Israel develop nuclear weapons from the late 1960s onwards.[4] Such help was an egregious violation of US congressional legislation. Moreover, the US voted against a 1993 General Assembly resolution condemning ‘Israeli oppression’ and ‘the violations of Palestinian human rights’ in the OPT (p. 171). It is also worth recalling that since 1996 Washington has consistently voted against the international consensus codified in the General Assembly resolution on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine (a vote of 152 in favour and two against).[5] This resolution has received the endorsement of Britain, EU member states, member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Arab League and the rest of the world, with just the US and Israel steadfast in their rejection. The resolution ‘[a]ffirm[s] the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’, and ‘[r]eaffirm[s] the illegality of the Israeli settlements’ in the OPT including East Jerusalem ‘since 1967’. From 2004 onwards, the resolution also ‘[r]ecall[s] the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004’ by the ICJ. Given all this, this volume on the ‘Arab–Israeli’ conflict is at best incoherent and at worst senseless. In contrast to Bickerton’s monograph, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace considers the role played by the US in facilitating peace in the region to be of enormous significance. The book is the result of an ambitious project launched by the US Institute of Peace under the leadership of Daniel Kurtzer, whose research group conducted ‘not-for-attribution interviews’ (p. x) with key players of the Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations as well as participants from the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The volume draws 10 lessons from numerous mistakes made by Washington and seeks to enhance US influence in the Middle East. This book suggests that there are two obstacles to peace. These are Israel and Arab ‘rejectionists’. It is not entirely clear why it is Israel rather than the US that stands in the way of peace because there is little evidence to substantiate the claim that US foreign policy always panders to external pressures, particularly ‘what Israel needed and wanted and required’ (p. 30), and is ‘manipulated’ by ‘parties outside Washington’ (p. 32). It is worth mentioning that the US confines the ‘peace process’ (pp. 25-122) to peace deals proposed by Washington and excludes both the international consensus discussed above and all peace initiatives offered by Arab states and the Arab League. Examples abound. In February 1970 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser proposed making peace with Israel, should Israel observe S/RES/242 adopted in 1967 and withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, affirming the principle of ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ indicated in S/RES/242. Anwar Sadat further offered a peace treaty with Israel in February 1971, should Israel implement S/RES/242. The US rejected both of these initiatives. Syria, Jordan and Egypt subsequently put a two-state proposal based upon S/RES/242 to the Security Council in January 1976. The US vetoed this. The list could go on for many pages.[6] Oddly, none of these historical facts appear in the Kurtzer and Lasensky-edited chronology of the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1967 and 2007 (pp. 85-122). Nor are these peace plans mentioned elsewhere in their book. Given this, a few questions arise. Is Washington a peace-broker or a party to the conflict? Why have Arab states that are parties to the Arab–Israeli conflict not been allowed to frame peace deals on their own terms and bring them to the negotiating table? Why did Arab peace proposals never become a component of the ‘peace process’? If readers accept the US definition of ‘peace process’ that pushes the international consensus and Arab peace initiatives out of existence, they are likely to reach the conclusion that the US is indispensable to peace because Israel could not find a partner for ‘peace’ and because Arab leaders reject ‘peace’. Furthermore, it is entirely unclear why Arab-Israeli peace has been derailed by the intransigence of Arab ‘rejectionists’, including non-state actors and Arab leaders who refused to recognise Israel’s ‘right to exist’ (pp. 90, 96, 118, 163). It should be noted that the phrase ‘right to exist’ is not a legal term under international law. States cannot claim a ‘right to exist’. Nor can states exercise a ‘right to exist’. Rather, they have a ‘right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force’, as codified in S/RES/242, which was reaffirmed in 2004 by the ICJ’s advisory opinion. Israel is the sole state that refuses to define its borders. Thus Israel’s ‘right to exist’ has come to justify the rejection of any party to the conflict that resists Israel’s continuing expansion of settlements. One question arises. Why does Washington label Arab leaders and non-state actors who call for the full implementation of the international consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict as ‘rejectionist forces’ and ‘rejectionist groups’ (pp. 2, 6, 8, 41)? There is also the additional question of whether the US-framed phraseology that undermines the fundamental principles of international law is conducive to ‘negotiating Arab-Israeli peace’, as suggested by the title of this book. Unlike other intractable conflicts, there has been an overwhelming international consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict since the mid-1970s, affirming ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’. None of the books reviewed above sufficiently elucidate the cause of truth and justice and the crucial significance of international law upon which a meaningful two-state settlement can be built. Moreover, the substantive content of Negotiating Arab–Israeli Peace could not withstand even minimal scrutiny. Provided that readers question the dominant representations, which suggest that international law offers ‘little’ legal remedy for injustice, that ‘the Arab–Israeli conflict’ is ‘interracial’ or that the US inevitably has to continue to ‘broker’ ‘peace’, these three volumes will be valuable to IR students who wish to understand how the Arab–Israeli conflict literature has contributed to the construction of the only knowable ‘reality’. [7] Shih-Yu Chou Shih-Yu Chou is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK. 1. International Court of Justice, ‘Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004’, available at: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=4&k=5a&case=131&code=mwp&p3=5 (accessed 17 October 2010). 2. The United Nations Security Council, ‘The Situation in the Middle East: Resolution Adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 22 November 1967’, S/RES/242, available at: http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1967/scres67.htm (accessed 17 October 2010). 3. For discussion, see As’ad AbuKhalil, The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (New York: Seven Stories, 2004); Said K. Aburish, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (London: Gollancz, 1997). 4. Backed by the US, Israel has refused not only to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but also to permit inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. For discussion of declassified high-level documents, see Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 5. UN General Assembly, ‘Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine: Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 12 December 1996’, A/RES/51/26, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3b00f33610.html (accessed 17 October 2010). 6. For discussion, see Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (London: Pluto Press, 1999); Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2003); Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2003); Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (London: Routledge, 1980). 7. Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, ‘Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 2 (1997): 193–237.
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