In December 2009, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy conducted a day-long simulation of the diplomatic and military fallout that could result from an Israeli military strike against the Iranian nuclear program. In this Middle East Memo, Kenneth M. Pollack analyzes the critical decisions each side made during the wargame.

The simulation was conducted as a three-move game with three separate country teams. One team represented a hypothetical American National Security Council, a second team represented a hypothetical Israeli cabinet, and a third team represented a hypothetical Iranian Supreme National Security Council. The U.S. team consisted of approximately ten members, all of whom had served in senior positions in the U.S. government and U.S. military. The Israel team consisted of a half-dozen American experts on Israel with close ties to Israeli decision-makers, and who, in some cases, had spent considerable time in Israel. Some members of the Israel team had also served in the U.S. government. The Iran team consisted of a half-dozen American experts on Iran, some of whom had lived and/or traveled extensively in Iran, are of Iranian extraction, and/or had served in the U.S. government with responsibility for Iran.

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In the ebb and flow of Middle East diplomacy, the two interrelated issues of an Israeli-Syrian peace settlement and Washington’s bilateral relationship with Damascus have gone up and down on Washington’s scale of importance. The election of Barack Obama raised expectations that the United States would give the two issues the priority they had not received during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. Candidate Obama promised to assign a high priority to the resuscitation of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and separately to “engage” with Iran and Syria (as recommended by the Iraq Study Group in 2006).

In May 2009, shortly after assuming office, President Obama sent the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, and the senior director for the Middle East in the National Security Council, Daniel Shapiro, to Damascus to open a dialogue with Bashar al-Asad’s regime. Several members of Congress also travelled to Syria early in Obama’s first year, including the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry, and the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Howard Berman. In addition, when the president appointed George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East, Mitchell named as his deputy Fred Hof, a respected expert on Syria and the Israeli-Syrian dispute. Last summer, both Mitchell and Hof visited Damascus and began their give and take with Syria.

And yet, after this apparent auspicious beginning, neither the bilateral relationship between the United States and Syria, nor the effort to revive the Israeli-Syrian negotiation has gained much traction. Damascus must be chagrined by the fact that when the Arab-Israeli peace process is discussed now, it is practically equated with the Israeli-Palestinian track. This paper analyzes the difficulties confronting Washington’s and Jerusalem’s respective Syria policies and offers an approach for dealing with Syria. Many of the recommendations stem from lessons resulting from the past rounds of negotiations, so it is important to understand what occurred.

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Introduction:

There is an Egyptian proverb that says those who worry about demons will tend to run into them. Like much folk wisdom, it has solid psychological foundations; the likelihood of a problem rearing its head often appears to be exacerbated by constantly fretting about it. Ever since Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt on February 11, 2011, the demon named “Now What?” has been keeping the Israeli government up at night. On August 18, it finally leapt up at them.

That day, a group of armed men attacked Israeli buses, as well as civilian and military vehicles north of Eilat, near the Egyptian border. Eight Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, were killed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) set off in hot pursuit, shooting at the attackers from a helicopter. The helicopter crew either failed to notice, or ignored, that they were shooting over the Egyptian side of the border. In the pursuit, three Egyptians— an officer and two enlisted men—were killed and another three later died of their wounds. Israeli minister of defense Ehud Barak, while blaming Palestinian groups for the assault, made comments to the effect that the attacks were largely Egypt’s fault as there had been a major security collapse in Egypt since the former regime had been ousted six months earlier.

The way matters unfolded over the next few days pointedly illustrated the answer to a question that had been asked repeatedly both by international media and the Israeli government since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster: What did Egypt’s January 25 Revolution mean for Israel? The simplest answer is that it is no longer business as usual. The relationship between Egypt and Israel has changed and both countries will have to navigate new waters carefully and wisely.

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Complexity and ambivalence are inherent in Israel’s relationship with its Middle Eastern environment. Israel’s national security agenda is shaped by the hostility of a large part of the Arab and Muslim worlds. During the past 66 years, Israel has been able to crack the wall of Arab hostility, to make peace with two Arab neighbors, and to establish semi-normal relations with several Arab states. But the Arab-Israeli conflict, and its Palestinian core in particular, rages on, and Iran has joined the fray as a powerful and determined adversary.

In Israel, debates over the state’s identity, its place and role in the region, and the more specific issues of the future of the West Bank and Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, govern the country’s politics and national discourse. The March 2015 Israeli elections are being conducted over a wide range of issues, but they are seen first and foremost as a referendum on these key questions. Politics and policy can hardly be separated. Appearances can be misleading. Currently, the focus of the election campaign seems to be on socio-economic issues. The main challenger of Netanyahu’s current government and potential right-wing coalition is “The Zionist Camp” led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni. They are strong advocates of reviving a peace process with the Palestinians, but they realize that the Israeli public has drifted to the right. Furthermore, the primaries in the Labor Party produced a left-leaning list of candidates. But whatever the current drift of the campaign, in the elections’ immediate aftermath, whoever forms the next government will have to deal primarily with the Palestinian issue and the national security challenges facing the country.

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• Israel and the Changing Middle East

“It’s probably the most interesting presidential election I’ve seen in my lifetime,” I said to an American friend the moment I arrived to Washington. My friend was upset. “For you it’s interesting,” he said. “For us it’s painful.”

“What you’ve just said rings a bell,” I said. “This is exactly, word for word, what I keep saying to foreign journalists who come to Israel to write a story.” Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight: the rivals exchange numerous hits, shout at each other, humiliate each other, disregard every rule, but in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight...in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Americans are supposed to play their political game in a cooler way. At least, this is the impression a foreign correspondent get when he lands here, directly from the boiling quarrels of the Middle East. 

I had the opportunity to cover almost all the U.S. presidential campaigns since Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1974. I loved it—I loved the town halls and the rallies in remote places, where people are kind and willing to answer every clueless question from a foreign reporter; I loved the access to the candidates, weeks and months before the secret service builds a wall between them and real life; I loved the hectic atmosphere, described so well in the “Making of the President” books by Theodore H. White; I loved to see how little-known candidates like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama evolve, grow, and flourish; and I enjoyed every chapter: the spins, the buzz, the role played by big money.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger—anger dominated the selection process in both parties. Angry voters elected angry candidates. If a candidate was not angry enough—e. g. Jeb Bush—the voters judged him unfit for the job.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger.

An accidental tourist like me pauses here for a long list of questions: how do we quantify anger? Is it limited to the ballots or can it evaporate at some point and turn into violent acts, as Donald Trump has insinuated time and again? Is it a reflection of the bitterness of specific, limited constituencies or is it something much more widespread, an outrage of a generation or a class of Americans who feel that they were betrayed by the political and business elite, by the establishment? How to explain the Trump phenomenon, the Sanders phenomenon? 

The obvious answer is the economic collapse of 2008: the people who fell victim to the 2008 crisis, who lost a home or a job or had to give up college for their children are now in revolt. Why now and not earlier? Because four years ago they were struggling to survive; they were busy. Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

Tip O'Neill, speaker of the house in the second half of the previous century, taught us that all politics is local. There is a lot of truth in it even today, but is it the whole truth? In the flat world of 2016, local politics are executed in a global way. All politics are local and global at the same time. Political actions spread from country to country like the Zika virus, using social media as carriers.

The young Sanders supporters I met in Brooklyn, during the last Democratic debate, were not much different from the young Israelis I met in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Those Israelis complained about similar things: high prices, loss of employment security, difficulty getting a decent job, and the ever-growing gap between expectations and reality. They were promised to live in the land of opportunity; the opportunity was not there—not for them.

Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

They complained bitterly about the banks and the major corporations. They became so big that the government has no choice but to subsidize them when they lose money. And the people who run them get huge salaries and bonuses on the expense of the shareholders and the general public. Israel used to be a social democratic society, with a strong middle class and a relatively narrow gap between rich and poor. Now the rich are very rich and get richer, and the less fortunate are left behind.

The protest was fueled by social media: another similarity between Tel Aviv and the young voters in Brooklyn and elsewhere. The brazenness, the bluntness, the rudeness of the social media culture affected the political discourse. It became less cordial and more personal. 

Israelis were not alone. The Arab Spring predated the Israeli Summer. Greece and Spain followed. Occupy Wall Street, a smaller, more radical protest movement, appeared on the streets of major American cities in the fall of 2011. It was inspired by the protests in the Arab countries and in Spain. The demonstrators faded away after a while, but they left their mark: political agendas have changed dramatically, governments fell, conventions were shuttered. It remains to be seen if and how they will contribute to social justice and equality.

In Israel, the demand for social justice captured a prominent place on the national agenda; several activists in the protest movement were elected to the Knesset; the rhetoric has changed, priorities didn't. Not really. Most Israelis were not prepared for a revolution, not even a moderate revolution, Bernie Sanders-style. 

I have no way to know what lies ahead for the American society. What I can see so far is a unique electoral season, characterized by unusual, almost bizarre candidates, their qualification for the job questionable, and a long, destructive battle over votes. For many Americans it is painful. People in other countries can only wonder: is it the best America is able to produce? 

Event Information

The emergence of a new digital economy is changing the ways in which businesses and development organizations engage in emerging and developing countries. Transaction costs have been radically driven down, enabling greater inclusion. And technology is driving efficiency improvements, and permitting rapid scaling-up and transformational change.

On August 5-7, 2015, Brookings Global Economy and Development is hosting the twelfth annual Brookings Blum Roundtable on Global Poverty in Aspen, Colorado. This year’s roundtable theme, “Disrupting development with digital technologies,” brings together global leaders, entrepreneurs, practitioners, and public intellectuals to discuss three trends in particular have the potential to redefine how global development occurs and how efforts will support it over the next 10 years: (1) the growing adoption of digital payments serving people everywhere with near-frictionless transactions; (2) the spread of internet connectivity and digital literacy; and (3) the harnessing of data to better serve the poor and to generate new knowledge.

This event is closed, but you can follow along on Twitter using #Blum2015.

Roundtable Agenda

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Welcome and opening remarks - 8:40-9:00 a.m.:

• Richard C. Blum, Blum Capital Partners
• Mike Kubzansky, Omidyar Network
• Kemal Derviş, Brookings Institution

Session I - 9:00-10:30 a.m.: Realizing the potential of the digital economy

The digital revolution presents profound opportunities for global development. By integrating poor people into digital networks, the revolution can redefine what it means to be poor, and forge new pathways to prosperity for both individuals and countries.

What are the challenges in making the digital revolution fully inclusive and scalable—and how can they be lifted? In a full-fledged digital economy, which constraints facing the poor will diminish and which will remain? What risks does the digital economy pose?

Moderator:

• Kemal Derviş, Brookings Institution

Introductory remarks:

• Michael Faye, GiveDirectly, Segovia Technology
• Tunde Kehinde, African Courier Express
• Christina Sass, Andela
• Tariq Malik, National Database and Registration Authority

Session II - 10:50 - 12:20 p.m.: Global money

Between 2011 and 2014, 700 million people started a bank account for the first time, representing a giant step toward the World Bank goal of universal financial inclusion by 2020. Meanwhile, the digitalization of payments, spurred in part by 255 mobile money services across the developing world, is pushing the cost of basic financial transactions down toward zero.

How will an era of global money transform formal and informal business? Which sectors, product markets, and government services have the most to gain and lose from increased market efficiency? What are the consequences for financial regulation?

Moderator:

• Henrietta Fore, Holsman International

Introductory remarks:

• Ruth Goodwin-Groen, Better than Cash Alliance
• Luis Buenaventura, Rebit.ph, Satoshi Citadel Industries
• Tayo Oviosu, Paga
• Loretta Michaels, U.S. Department of the Treasury

Lunch - 12:30-2:00 p.m.

Cocktail reception and interview - 5:00-7:00 p.m.:

During the reception, Richard Blum will lead a short discussion with Walter Isaacson and Ann Mei Chang on the topic “Silicon Valley and Innovation for the Developing World,” followed by questions. Remarks begin at 5:30 and will end at 6:15 p.m.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Session III - 9:00-10:30 a.m.: Global connections

Numerous ventures are competing today to bring internet connectivity to the furthest corners of the planet, while low-cost, user-centered-designed platforms are expanding the spread of digital literacy. Social media and crowdsourcing offer efficient ways for people to share information, solve problems, and act collectively.

To what extent can internet connectivity overcome isolation and empower poor communities that are socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised? Do the benefits of global connectivity for the world’s poor rely on issues like net neutrality, and what has been learned from recent battles to uphold this paradigm?

Moderator:

• Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America Foundation

Introductory remarks:

• Ross LaJeunesse, Google
• Andy O’Connell, Facebook
• Maria Ressa, Rappler
• Chris Locke, Caribou Digital

Session IV - 10:50-12:20 p.m.: Global knowledge

The creation of a universal digital network will provide the poor with greater access to the information they need, and generate new knowledge that can be used to serve poor people more effectively. Digital inclusion can expand possibilities for targeting, verification, and analysis, while big data from biometric registries, satellites, phones, payments, and the internet can unlock insights on individual needs and preferences. In addition, open source platforms and MOOCs have the potential to be powerful accelerators for technology and skill transfer.

What kinds of new personalized services can be developed using improved capacity for targeting and tailoring? How might the reduction of barriers to information affect social mobility and economic convergence? How should big data be regulated?

Moderator:

• Smita Singh, President’s Global Development Council

Introductory remarks:

• David Soloff, Premise
• Rebecca Taber, Coursera
• Jonathan Hakim, Cignifi
• Deepak Mishra, World Bank

Friday, August 7, 2015

Session V - 9:00-10:30 a.m.: Opportunities and challenges for business

The digital economy promises to disrupt many existing markets and generate new business opportunities that employ and serve the poor.

How can businesses employ digital technologies to expand their presence in poor and emerging countries? According to businesses, what is an effective regulatory framework for the digital economy? To what extent can strong digital infrastructure compensate for deficiencies in physical infrastructure or governance?

Moderator:

• Laura Tyson, Blum Center for Developing Economies

Introductory Remarks:

• Jesse Moore, M-KOPA Solar
• Anup Akkihal, Logistimo
• V. Shankar, formerly Standard Chartered Bank
• Barbara Span, Western Union

Session VI - 10:50-12:20 p.m.: Opportunities and challenges for development cooperation

The U.S. government sees itself as a leader in harnessing technology for global development. Meanwhile, aid agencies have been identified as a possible target for disintermediation by the digital revolution.

How can development organizations, both government and non-government, accelerate the digital revolution? How might traditional aid programs be enhanced by employing digital knowledge and technologies? Does U.S. regulatory policy on the digital economy cohere with its global development agenda?

Moderator:

• Mary Robinson, Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice

• Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps
• Michael Anderson, Children's Investment Fund Foundation
• Helen Clark, United Nations Development Program
• Ann Mei Chang, USAID

Closing remarks:

• Richard C. Blum, Blum Capital
• Mike Kubzansky, Omidyar Network
• Kemal Derviş, Brookings Institution

Event Materials

• Participant List 731

The 2015 Brookings Blum Roundtable was convened to explore how digital technologies might disrupt global development.

Our intention was to imagine a world 10 years from now where digital technologies have become ubiquitous. In this world, how would we expect digital trends and innovations to affect the work of business and development organizations? What policy challenges and risks will the new digital economy pose? And what are the constraints on making digital innovations fully inclusive and scalable?

In 10 years, the world will look very different from today. The number of people worldwide who own a telephone, have access to the Internet, have registered their biometric identity, and own a bank account is rising by between 200 million and 300 million a year. These technologies are spreading at such a high speed that an era of digital inclusion beckons, characterized by universal connectivity and the frictionless movement of money and information.

History attests to the transformative effects of technology. And there is every reason to believe that the impact of digital technologies will be especially profound. The spread of mobile telephones already represents perhaps the most conspicuous change for life in the developing world over the past generation. However, the impact of digital technologies on people’s well-being can be both positive and negative. The onus is on developing countries and the broader global development community to maximize the upside of digital inclusion, while managing its downside, in navigating this exciting future.

Download the full introduction »

Let’s take a moment for a thought experiment. I do this days after more Palestinian attacks on Israelis, including the horrific murder of a mother of six children; soon after Israel announced the expropriation of another 370 acres of land near Jericho; and after Majed Faraj, the Palestinian security chief, announced that Palestinian security forces had intercepted 200 potential terrorist attacks against Israel. The thought experiment focuses on whether the “Plan B” for the Israel-Palestine dispute should be Israel’s annexation of the territories it occupied in 1967 and the extension of full citizenship rights to the Palestinians in those areas.

To be sure, I still count myself among the dying breed of those who believe fervently in the two-state solution—two states living side by side in peace and security, each enjoying sovereignty and political independence in part of the land that both claim as their exclusive national homes. This is still the best, by far, of all possible outcomes of the dispute. This is not to say that the two-state solution is without faults. Thus far, the two sides have not been able to agree on critical details, and there is no guarantee that achieving two states would assure peaceful relations. But the two-state solution, based on partition of the land, appears to offer the best chance for long term peace. I would dump all Plan B’s and C’s in a heartbeat if leadership emerged in Israel and Palestine—and in the United States—that proved willing to move toward a two-state outcome. 

I still count myself among the dying breed of those who believe fervently in the two-state solution.

But hoping for better, stronger, more farsighted leadership is not a substitute for policy. The fact is that both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are further today from bringing forth such leaders than at any time before. Even if Benjamin Netanyahu yields the prime minister’s office to another contender, no one in Israel is proposing the kind of far-reaching accommodation toward which Ehud Olmert was heading in 2008. None of Mahmoud Abbas’s likely successors has even articulated a reasonable peace plan. And none of the candidates for U.S. president is likely to be as committed to the search for peace as Barack Obama has been, and even his commitment has fallen far short of what is needed to move the recalcitrant parties toward peace. The sad reality is that politics—not policy, per se—is what blocks progress toward a two-state solution.

The sad reality is that politics—not policy, per se—is what blocks progress toward a two-state solution.

Regional solution?

In the absence of progress toward two states, are there better alternatives than throwing in the towel and looking at annexation as Plan B? The search for alternative Plan B’s is a fool’s errand. Some of those ideas are creative, but none of them will be accepted by both sides. For example, one Plan B variant du jour rests on the premise of a “regional solution”—that is, having Israel and the Arab world reach a comprehensive peace agreement that includes a resolution of the Palestinian issue. Sounds good, except it makes no sense. 

First, Israel has not accepted the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002, the closest the Arab world has come to accepting Israel within the borders of the 1949 armistice line and agreeing to normalize relations with Israel once peace has been achieved. But no Israeli government has liked its terms, especially the paragraph on Palestinian refugees, the notion of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, and the API’s insistence on full Israeli withdrawal. Thus, the question to those who propose a regional solution today is whether there is a coalition in Israel ready to use the API as the basis for negotiating a comprehensive peace. I think not.

Second, the Arab world is in no position to deliver on what the API promises. The Arabs have never followed up the API by engaging Israel. And the premise of the API has been that the Arabs will recognize Israel and agree to normalize only after peace is concluded with the Palestinians (and the Syrians and Lebanese)– not a very attractive incentive for Israelis to enter a risky peace process.

[T]he Arab world of 2002, however dysfunctional, was far more stable than the Arab world of 2016.

And third, the Arab world of 2002, however dysfunctional, was far more stable than the Arab world of 2016. The opponents of the two-state solution in Israel point to this when describing the security dangers that Israel would face were it to concede anything now to the Palestinians. Even if a comprehensive solution were to rest on the shoulders of Egypt and Jordan, Israel’s peace treaty partners, would Israeli skeptics truly be assuaged that these countries could assure Israel’s security in the face of continued instability (Egypt) or the impact of refugees and economic distress (Jordan)? Indeed, the idea of a regional or comprehensive solution based on Arab stability today is chimerical. 

Status quo?

The alternatives to the regional idea are equally unrealistic. The idea of confederation rests on the agreement of Jordan (and potentially Egypt) to join a political entity with the Palestinians. However, neither state has indicated any interest in doing so. 

“Maintaining the status quo” is a non-starter, because status quos are never static—as the events of recent years prove, they tend to get worse. How many Intifadas or stabbings will it take for the people of Israel to believe their own security chiefs, who recognize that these actions are born of frustration over the occupation and related grievances? Why should Israelis believe that the majority of Palestinians are interested in peace when Hamas—opposed to Israel’s very existence—still rules Gaza and commands significant popular support, and while the Palestinian Authority is crumbling and hardly represents anyone anymore? And how long will it take Palestinian supporters of armed and violent resistance to recognize that their abortive efforts to destroy Israel and indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians are repugnant: targeting civilians is a morally unacceptable tactic for any resistance movement. 

Thus, the idea of “conflict management” or even “conflict mitigation”—staple products of those who support maintaining the status quo until somehow things change—is pernicious, for it rests on an assumption that the rest of us simply don’t understand the conflict.

[T]he idea of a regional or comprehensive solution based on Arab stability today is chimerical.

A futile search for alternatives

And so it is for all other Plan B’s. Several years ago, my Princeton graduate students embarked on an effort to find a viable alternative to the two-state solution; and they told me at the outset that they intended to prove that such an alternative existed. In the end, they failed and returned to the idea that the only viable solution was to partition the land into two states. Others, too, have tried to find alternatives, and some retain the hope that their policy proposal might win the day. I wish them well—for I really do believe in peace, whether it’s via two states or otherwise. But I have no confidence they will succeed.

[T]he idea of “conflict management” or even “conflict mitigation”—staple products of those who support maintaining the status quo until somehow things change—is pernicious, for it rests on an assumption that the rest of us simply don’t understand the conflict.

And so we are back to the thought experiment. This would take as a starting point what Israeli Minister Uri Ariel told my students several years ago: we (Israel) have won, and the land of Israel is ours. Under this scenario, Israel would:

• Formally annex the territories it occupied in 1967, basing its legal argument on its belief that these are “disputed” rather than “occupied” territories. 
• In connection with this act of annexation, Israel would offer full citizenship rights to all the Palestinians living in the territories. While Israel would probably want to include only the West Bank in this arrangement, excluding Gaza would make it impossible to secure any support internationally, in that Gaza is as much a part of Resolution 242 as is the West Bank.
• Those Palestinians who accept citizenship would then enjoy equal rights with all other Israelis; those Palestinians who reject citizenship would be offered permanent residency, a status that would include certain rights and privileges but not full citizenship rights (for example, voting in national elections). 
• Israel would then approach the United Nations Security Council to argue that these measures constituted an act of self-determination, and that the outcome represented an end of the conflict in accordance with Resolution 242. I am not a lawyer and I assume that many—including Palestinians and Arabs—would dispute this Israeli argument. But the process would change the status quo fundamentally and offer a real alternative to the two-state solution.

Could this work, and is it a real Plan B for the conflict? This is but a thought experiment. I suppose most Israelis will hate this idea for it exposes the most significant weakness of the Israeli right wing and the settlements movement, namely that it undercuts fundamentally the idea of a permanent Jewish majority state. Similarly, most Palestinians will also hate this idea because it forecloses the possibility of a real act of self-determination culminating in an independent state and forces Palestinians to confront the emptiness of the slogans that their leaders have employed over the years in the context of the Arab-Israeli dispute. 

The thought experiment is thus not very sound. Perhaps, then, it will scare everyone enough for leaders to get serious about peace.

Indian and Israeli relations are getting even friendlier: Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Israel in January, and the trip is widely thought to precede higher level visits, including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (he’d be the first Indian head of government to visit Israel). Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both also indicated that they plan to travel to India “soon.”

The foreign minister’s visit was part of the ongoing Indian effort not just to broaden and deepen India’s relationship with Israel, but also to make it more public. But the trip—not just to Israel, but to what the Indian government now routinely calls the state of Palestine—also highlighted the Modi government’s attempt to de-hyphenate India’s relations with the Israelis and Palestinians. 

What is the state of India’s relationship with Israel, the Modi government’s approach toward it, and this de-hyphenated approach? 

A blossoming friendship

Since India normalized relations with Israel in 1992, the partnership has developed steadily. The countries have a close defense, homeland security, and intelligence relationship—one that the two governments do not talk much about publicly. Shared concerns about terrorism have proven to be a key driver; so have commercial interests (including Israel’s quest for additional markets and India’s desire to diversify its defense suppliers, get access to better technology, and co-develop and co-produce equipment). India has become Israeli defense companies’ largest customer. Israel, in turn, has shot up on India’s list of suppliers. 

In the early 1990s, Israel—like the United States—did not really figure on India’s list of defense suppliers. However, between 2005 and 2014, it accounted for 7 percent (in dollar terms) of military equipment deliveries—the third highest after Russia and the United States. As Indian President Pranab Mukherjee recently noted, Israel has crucially come through for India at times “when India needed them the most” (i.e. during crises or when other sources have not been available, for example, due to sanctions). The president referred to the assistance given during the Kargil crisis in 1999 in particular, but there has also been less publicly-acknowledged help in the past, including during India’s 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan. 

Beyond the defense and security relationship, cooperation in the agricultural sector—water management, research and development, sharing of best practices—might have the most on-the-ground impact, including in terms of building constituencies for Israel at the state level in India. Israeli ambassadors have indeed been nurturing this constituency and reaching out to the chief ministers of Indian states for a number of years. (Incidentally, India, for its part, has felt that the closer relationship with Israel has created a constituency for it in the United States.)

Economic ties have also grown: The two countries are negotiating a free trade agreement, and have been trying to encourage greater investments from the other. The success of Indian and Israeli information technology companies has particularly led to interest in collaboration in that sector. 

The governments have also been trying to increase people-to-people interaction through educational exchanges and tourism, with some success. Israeli tourism officials have highlighted the 13 percent increase in arrivals from India over the last year. And tourist arrivals to India from Israel have doubled over the last 15 years, including thousands of Israelis visiting after their compulsory military service. 

Let’s go public

The India-Israel relationship has developed under Indian governments of different stripes. It was normalized by a Congress party-led government and progressed considerably during the United Progressive Alliance coalition government led by the party between 2004 and 2014. However, while some ministers and senior military officials exchanged visits during that decade, there were not that many high-visibility visits—especially from India to Israel, with the foreign minister only visiting once. A planned 2006 trip by then Defense Minister Mukherjee was reportedly cancelled because of Israeli military operations in Gaza and then the Lebanon war. The last Israeli prime minister to visit India was Ariel Sharon in 2003, and no defense minister had ever visited despite those ties. 

The Israeli ambassador has talked about the relationship being “held under the carpet.” More bluntly, in private, Israeli officials and commentators have said that India has treated Israel like a “mistress”—happy to engage intimately in private, but hesitant to acknowledge the relationship in public. The explanations for this have ranged from Indian domestic political sensitivities to its relations with the Arab countries.

[I]n private, Israeli officials and commentators have said that India has treated Israel like a “mistress”—happy to engage intimately in private, but hesitant to acknowledge the relationship in public.

When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government took office in May 2014 with Modi at its helm, there was a belief that the partnership with Israel would be a priority and more visible. Relations under the BJP-led coalition government between 1998 and 2004 had been more conspicuous. When in opposition, BJP leaders had visited Israel, and also been supportive of that country in election manifestos and speeches. 

As chief minister of the state of Gujarat, Modi himself had expressed admiration for Israel’s achievements, including “how it has overcome various adversities to make the desert bloom.” Traveling there in 2006 with the central agricultural minister, he also helped facilitate trips for politicians, business leaders, and farmers from his state to Israel. His government welcomed Israeli investment and technological assistance in the agricultural, dairy, and irrigation sectors. And, at a time when Modi was not welcome in many Western capitals, Israelis reciprocated: Businesses and government engaged with him, with Israeli ambassadors and consul generals from Mumbai meeting with him long before European and American officials did so. Thus, Modi’s elevation to prime minister was welcomed in Israel, as was the appointment as foreign minister of Swaraj, a former head of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group.

However, the Modi government’s response to the Gaza crisis in summer 2014 left many perplexed and some of its supporters disappointed. The Indian government initially sought to avoid a debate on the crisis in the Indian parliament, on the grounds that it did not want “discourteous references” to a friend (Israel). After opposition complaints, there was a debate but the government nixed a resolution. In its official statements, the Modi government consistently expressed concern about the violence in general—and, in particular, both the loss of civilian life in Gaza and the provocations against Israel—and called for both sides to exercise restraint and deescalate. Yet, it then voted in support of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution that condemned Israel, a move that left observers—including many in the BJP base—wondering why the government didn’t instead abstain. 

Since then, however, the Modi government has moved toward the expected approach. The first sign of this was Modi’s decision to meet with Netanyahu on the sidelines of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in 2014—despite reported hesitation on the part of some in the foreign ministry. Since then, there have been a number of high-level visits and interactions (and Twitter exchanges), including a few “firsts.” This past October, Pranab Mukherjee, for example, became the first Indian president to travel to Israel, where he declared the state of the relationship to be “excellent.” 

The Israeli ambassador to India has observed the “high visibility” the relationship now enjoys. Also noticed more widely was India abstaining in a July 2015 UNHRC vote on a report criticizing Israeli actions in the 2014 Gaza crisis. Indian diplomats explained the vote as due to the mention of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the resolution, but observers pointed out that India has voted for other resolutions mentioning the ICC. Israeli commentators saw the abstention as “quite dramatic;” the Israeli ambassador expressed gratitude. Palestinian officials, on the other hand, expressed “shock” and criticized the vote as a “departure.” 

In the defense space, cooperation is only growing: The Indian government moved forward on (delayed) deals to purchase Spike anti-tank missiles and Barak missiles for its navy; it recently tested the jointly-developed Barak 8 missile system, along with Israel Aerospace Industries; and an Indian private sector company has reportedly formed a joint venture with an Israeli company to produce small arms. Cooperation is also continuing in the agricultural sector, with 30 centers of excellence either established or planned across 10 Indian states. More broadly, the two governments are seeking to facilitate greater economic ties, as well as science and technology collaboration. 

There have been questions about why Modi hasn’t visited Israel yet, despite the more visible bonhomie. But, in many ways, it made sense to have the Indian president take the first leadership-level visit during this government. Mukherjee’s position as head of state, as well as the fact that he was a life-long Congress party member and minister, helped convey to both Indian and Israeli audiences that this is not a one-party approach. This point was reinforced by the accompanying delegation of MPs representing different political parties and parts of the country. For similar reasons, it would not be surprising if there was a Rivlin visit to India before a Netanyahu one. 

De-hyphenation? 

The deepening—and more open—relationship with Israel, however, hasn’t been accompanied by a U-turn on the Indian government’s policy toward Palestine. What the Modi government seems to be doing is trying to de-hyphenate its ties with Israel and Palestine. Previous governments have also tried to keep the relationships on parallel tracks—but the current one has sought to make both relationships more direct and visible, less linked to the other, while also making it clear that neither will enjoy a veto on India’s relations with the other. 

The deepening—and more open—relationship with Israel, however, hasn’t been accompanied by a U-turn on the Indian government’s policy toward Palestine.

The Modi government doesn’t demure from referring to the “state of Palestine” rather than “the Palestinian Authority.” It held the first-ever Foreign Office consultations with the Palestinians last spring, and the Indian foreign ministry made it a point to release separate press releases for the president’s and the foreign minister’s trips to Israel and Palestine. The Indian president became the first foreign head of state to stay overnight in Ramallah. Modi met with Mahmoud Abbas, whom the Indian government refers to as the “president of the state of Palestine, on the sidelines of both the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York and the climate change summit in Paris in 2015. The Indian foreign minister met with Abbas in 2014 in New York, and again in Ramallah on her visit. During their trips, both she and the Indian president also went to the mausoleum of Yasser Arafat (who the BJP in the past called “the illustrious leader of the Palestinian people”).

The government has reiterated India’s traditional position on a two-state solution, indicating its belief in an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. It voted in favor of the resolution on raising the Palestinian flag at the United Nations, and has continued to sign on to BRICS declarations “oppos[ing] the continuous Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Territories.” In Ramallah, Sushma Swaraj emphasized that India’s support for Palestinians remained “undiluted.” 

The continuity on this front is not just driven by historic and domestic political factors, but also by India’s broader balancing act in the region. Even as India’s relations with Israel have deepened, it has maintained—and even enhanced—its relations with Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Modi has welcomed the emir of Qatar, visited the UAE, and met with Iran’s Hassan Rouhani. The first-ever Arab-India Cooperation Forum ministerial meeting also took place in January. It would not be surprising if the Indian prime minister visited Saudi Arabia this year or there were high-level visits exchanged between Delhi and Tehran. The government has emphasized its “strategic intent and commitment to simultaneously enhance relations with the Arab world as well as Israel, without allowing it to become a zero sum game.” And, overall, the Israelis, Palestinians, and GCC countries have not pushed for Delhi to make a choice. 

The de-hyphenated approach, in turn, potentially gives Indian policymakers more space to take India’s relationship with Israel further. But, as was evident during the Indian president’s visit to the region, it hasn’t been problem-free and it has not been feasible to keep the two relationships entirely insulated. An upsurge in violence reportedly caused Israel to nix a proposal for Mukherjee to visit the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. There was also some heartburn about the Israeli delay in clearing 30 Indians' computers destined for an India-Palestine Centre for Excellence in Information and Communication Technology at Al-Quds University in Ramallah, as well as its refusal to allow communications equipment to be transferred. In the Israeli press, there was criticism of the president’s lack of mention of Palestinian violence. The Indian president and the foreign ministry also found themselves having to explain the president’s remark in Israel that “religion cannot be the basis of a state.”

There have been other differences between India and Israel as well, notably on Iran (something officials have tended not to discuss publicly). There might be other difficulties in the future, stemming, for example, from: negative public and media reaction in India if there’s another Israel-Palestine crisis; the stalled free trade agreement negotiations; potential Israeli defense sales to China; renewed questions about defense acquisitions from Israel; or the behavior of Israeli tourists in India. But the relationship is likely to continue to move forward, and increase in visibility, including with visits by Rivlin, Netanyahu, and Modi—potentially before the 25th anniversary of the two countries establishing full diplomatic relations on January 29, 2017.

The composition and track record of the current Israeli government leads Palestinians to expect very little from Israel in the way of advancing peace. After five decades of military occupation, and repeated failures of two decades of bilateral negotiations based on the Oslo Accords, there is a clear need for new ideas. But the proposals offered by Amos Yadlin’s post last month, “Two states, four paths for achieving them,” do not accord with basic realities on the Palestinian side, and as such do not offer a viable pathway to a two-state outcome.

Yadlin’s argument is premised on the belief that a negotiated two-state outcome is not possible today because of a Palestinian refusal to engage. He argues: “It appears that in 2016, the Palestinians do not view a two-state solution…as a preferred outcome.” Palestinians, by contrast, see their leaders’ actions, like the November 2012 UN General Assembly resolution that accorded Palestine observer state status, as efforts to save the two-state solution in the face of Israeli actions that undermine it.

The outcome Yadlin offers as one that would meet Israel’s needs would require Palestinians to forfeit basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law, such as the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their or their families’ places of origin in what is today Israel. 

Similarly, Yadlin calls for Palestinians to accept “limitations on their sovereignty” to meet Israeli security concerns. From a Palestinian perspective, though, that sovereignty has been systematically constrained already by Israeli policies, including annexation of territory and the expanding settlement enterprise. These are but two examples of divergent viewpoints between Israelis and Palestinians that doom each of the “four paths” Mr. Yadlin proposes to reach a two-state solution. 

Each of Yadlin’s proposed paths for Israel—negotiations toward a final status agreement (with the expectation that they would fail due to Palestinian intransigence), pursuing a regional agreement, seeking an interim bilateral agreement, and taking unilateral action—is problematic.

“A negotiation process resulting in a final status agreement” – The Oslo Peace Accords and the 20 years of unconsummated negotiations that followed were an intensive effort to achieve just that. However, they failed in part because they did not address the fundamental asymmetry between the parties to those accords—Palestinians recognized a state, and Israel, in turn, recognized the representative body of a national movement seeking its right to self-determination. 

If Israelis were serious about two states, and heeded lessons from the failed interim agreements of the Oslo process, a good starting point would be for Israel to reciprocate the political recognition of Israel that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made back in 1993. Israel’s recognition of the state of Palestine is long overdue, especially after more than 130 countries—including the Vatican—have done so. 

This symmetrical recognition would also define the end game upfront as the outcome to which both sides are already formally committed—and then both sides can spend their negotiating energies on realizing two states living in peace.

“A regional agreement” – The notion that a regional track could substitute for the bilateral track suggests a failure to learn from the past. At many points throughout the history of this conflict, Israeli politicians and policymakers have sought to transfer the Palestinian issue onto other regional states—as in the Camp David I agreement with Egypt, or the suggestion that Palestinians should instead create their state in Jordan, a sovereign country. 

It is positive that Mr. Yadlin seems to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative (API) as a means for progress toward two states—but it can only play the role he envisions if it morphs into something it is not. 

The API is not a starting point for negotiations, but rather terms of reference for an agreement that Arab states would recognize as sufficient to gain Israel normalization within the Middle East. As such, Yadlin’s call for an “updated version” in which the “plan should be decoupled from the issue of the [occupied] Golan Heights” and “not be conditional on a solution to the refugee problem according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 from 1949,” do not take into account Arab governments’ own interests in these issues. Regional peace for Israel is unattainable without Israel first making peace with Palestinians.

“An interim bilateral agreement” – When Palestinians accepted the interim agreements of the Oslo bilateral process, there were 100,000 illegal settlers on the ground. Two decades of negotiations has left us with over 500,000 settlers and with the Palestinian community in the West Bank and Gaza further fragmented and battered. This is why the Palestinian leadership has been crystal clear in rejecting another interim agreement. 

Without more than verbal commitments to a viable two-state solution, and without a clear pathway to get there, another interim agreement would only allow Israel to create more “facts on the ground” that would preclude such a solution. It is hard to understand how such a proposal would offer Palestinians any hope of progress, given the experience of the past two decades. 

“In the case a negotiated agreement cannot be realized, an independent Israeli determination of its own borders” – It is even harder to understand how a unilateral Israeli determination of its own borders could, as Yadlin argues, “reinforce the agreed two-state solution paradigm,” especially because this would likely require massive Israeli military force (along with continued blind support from the United States) to create more facts on the ground. It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so. Still, this does not mean that unilateral decisions by Israel will one day find support among Palestinians. 

It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so.

It is the nature of international conflicts that they can “end” only in one of two ways: either the two parties agree to a solution that meets their mutual interests, or the side with greater power dictates, imposes, and enforces an outcome over the objections of the weaker side. In proposing unilateralism as a “solution,” Yadlin abandons the more sustainable former pathway for the latter, which I see as doomed. 

If Israel’s leadership is serious about reaching a two-state solution, the road is defined and clear. It requires that Israelis grapple with the real interests and demands of Palestinians as of equal substance and value to their own, rather than wishing them away. Equality can be achieved in two, truly independent states; or this conflict will default to a single state—as warned by President Obama and Secretary Kerry—marred by a civil rights struggle that may take another 70 years to bear fruition, but whose result is pre-defined.

Editors’ Note: According to a new Pew poll, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity in Israel. That doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel, writes Shibley Telhami—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza. This post originally appeared on the Monkey Cage blog.

When U.S. leaders and commentators warn that the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state, they generally mean that a Jewish democracy requires a Jewish majority; if Israel encompasses the West Bank and Gaza, Arabs will become a majority. What they may not have realized is that, in the meantime, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity.

That is one of the most troubling findings of a new Pew poll in Israel. And it doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.

This major study was conducted from October 14, 2014, to May 21, 2015, among 5,601 Israeli adults ages 18 and older. (Disclosure: I served as an adviser to the project). It found that 48 percent of all Israeli Jews agree with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” while 46 percent disagreed. Even more troubling, the majority of every non-secular Jewish group, including 71 percent of Datim (modern orthodox Jews) agreed with the statement.

While age is not much of a factor when it comes to attitudes toward expelling Arabs from Israel, younger Israelis are slightly more likely to agree with the statement that Arabs should be expelled than older Israelis.

These attitudes are anchored in a broader view of identity and of the nature of the Israeli state. Overall, only about a third of Israeli Jews say their Israeli identity takes precedence over their Jewish identity, with the overwhelming majority of every group, except for secular Jews, saying their Jewishness comes first.

This view has consequences for citizen rights. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of all Jewish Israelis (98 percent) feel that Jews around the world have a birthright to make aliya (immigration to Israel with automatic Israeli citizenship). But what is striking is that 79 percent of all Jews, including 69 percent of Hilonim (secular Jews) say that Jews deserve “preferential treatment” in Israel—so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.

These attitudes spell trouble for Arab citizens of Israel who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s citizens. It’s true that attitudes are dynamic; they are partly a function of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel itself, but also outside, especially within the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Like their Jewish counterparts, Arab citizens of Israel (mostly Muslim, but also including Christians and Druze), identify themselves with their ethnicity (Palestinian or Arab) or religion above their Israeli citizenship. And these ethnic/religious identities intensify when conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza intensifies. There is no way to fully divorce the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict from Arab-Jewish relations within Israel.

In recent years, this latter linkage has become central for two reasons: loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab expresses joy at the death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest.

But there is also an American responsibility—not so much with regard to failure of diplomatic efforts, but with the very positing of the nature of the conflict itself, and the nature of the state of Israel. As President Obama considers steps he could undertake on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before leaving office, he may contemplate addressing what has become a distorting and detrimental discourse that serves to give a pass to non-democratic attitudes, and diversion of attention from core problems.

First, there is something wrong with positing the possibility of Arabs as constituting a demographic problem for Israel. It legitimizes the privileging of Jewishness over democracy. It also distorts the reason why Israel is obligated to end occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; it has nothing to do with the character of Israel as such, but with international law and United Nations resolutions.

Second, while states can define themselves as they wish (and are accepted by the international community accordingly), the American embrace of the “Jewishness” of Israel, cannot be decoupled from the Palestinian-Israeli context, or from the overarching American demand that all states must be for all their citizens equally.

In part, this is based on the notion that the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181) recommended in 1947 dividing mandatory Palestine into an “Arab” and a “Jewish” State. In part, it’s based on the notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a political conflict that can be resolved through two states, one manifesting the self-determination of Jews as a people, and one manifesting the right of self-determination of Palestinians as a people. The two were bound together. An embrace of a Jewish state that excludes a Palestinian state defeats the principle.

If two states become impossible, America chooses democracy over Jewishness. In fact, this has been consistently reflected in American public attitudes across the political spectrum, most recently in this November 2015poll; in the absence of a two-state solution, 72 percent of Americans would want a democratic Israel, even if it meant that Israel ceases to be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.

More centrally, even with two states—one manifesting Jewish self determination and one Palestinian self-determination—an overarching, principled American position takes precedence: If Israel is a state of the Jewish people, it must also be above all a state of all its citizens equally; (and if Palestine is to be a state of the Palestinian people, it must also be a state of all its citizens equally). This democratic principle, highlighted front and center in a reformulated American position, can help avoid legitimizing undemocratic attitudes in the name of Jewish identity.

While Israeli and Palestinian interests are best served by a negotiated two-state state solution, the peace plan that Sam Bahour proposed in his February post disregards Israel's demographic and security concerns and is tantamount to a Palestinian veto on a negotiated solution. His insistence on the right of return for Palestinian refugees and rejection of security limitations on Palestinian sovereignty in effect asks Israel to become a binational state while creating a militarized Palestinian state alongside it. Bahour rejects the notion of unilateral action, but his case only reinforces my belief that Israel may need to act independently to protect its interests.

The logic behind the Clinton parameters and President Obama’s peace plan was that in return for the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian refugees would relinquish their claim to Israel; the hope was that this would allow for the "two states for two peoples" to exist side-by-side. Yet Bahour rejects compromise on the refugee issue as the forfeiture of “basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law.” Any peace agreement that both establishes a Palestinian state and recognizes the rights of millions of Palestinians to enter Israel would hasten the end of Israel's Jewish identity.

Israel's interest in the creation of a Palestinian state is also built upon the assumption that a sound agreement would improve its security rather than threaten it. To this end, Israel has called for a demilitarized Palestinian state, and this has been echoed by the United States, France, the Czech Republic, the European Union, and Australia’s Labor Party. Even Mahmoud Abbas accepted the premise of demilitarization, saying, “We don’t need planes or missiles. All we need is a strong police force.” Nevertheless, Bahour’s piece declares any limitations on the sovereignty of Palestine unacceptable. For Israel, a peace deal that grants one’s adversaries access to more deadly weaponry would be absurd.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace. His proposal not only fails to improve Israel's situation in any tangible sense, but further endangers it. Rejectionist Palestinian positions like Bahour's (and Abbas's recent dismissal of Biden's initiative) would veto the two-state solution as a means to move towards a single binational state. That is precisely why Israel may need to act independently to keep a two-state solution viable.