An Ibishblog reader asks me the following question:

For as long as I have been reading your articles, you have maintained an almost messianic belief in “negotiated settlements; road maps, etc.. etc..” and in the meantime, Israel has continued to colonize, terrorize, violate and punish. My question is: how long will you go on believing (do you really), advocating, and dreaming that your preferred approach will yield any results that any Palestinian (and most any Arab not on some payroll) can accept? Am at a loss to understand. Do you really believe in this endless charade of “negotiations”?

Now this is actually an interesting question: why do I continue to advocate that Palestinians pursue negotiations in spite of the many reasons for suspecting they probably won’t achieve anything in the immediate term and may even not ever achieve anything in the long-term? Simply, because there is no other way of ending the conflict and ending the occupation. Either we have negotiations that produce a conflict-ending agreement, or the conflict and the occupation will continue. It really is as simple as that. Unless one believes that there is some kind of military solution available to either party (and I think making the case for the Palestinian military solution is not only unrealistic but actually insane, given the asymmetry of military power at work), then the only thing that can work is a negotiated agreement. This is obvious. It’s not a messianic belief. It’s an obvious fact.

But I think it’s important for me to point out that I don’t only support negotiations, but an array of other tactics as well designed to bolster the Palestinian position in negotiations. I’ve recently been writing about the development of three additional tactics in the broader Palestinian strategy for achieving an end to the occupation that complement rather than contradict negotiations: PA state and institution building, nonviolent popular protests against the occupation, and economic measures aimed at the settlements and the occupation including boycotts and preventing Palestinian laborers from working in settlement construction. I think this is commendable and should be supported by everyone, including Israelis who have their own best interests at heart.

But even tactics that I don’t agree with such as broadbrush boycotts that target Israel generally, or tactics that I disagree with passionately like violence, armed struggle and terrorist acts would all, of necessity, have to be conceptualized as in some way strengthening the Palestinian hand in negotiations with Israel, since, given that there is no possibility of an imposed military solution, ultimately an agreement is, in fact, the only way to end the conflict. Even those committed to armed struggle like Hamas must know this if they are in rational in the least. If it’s true that negotiations are the only way out, there is no argument whatsoever for not engaging in them, even if it is very hard (and I think this is true) to imagine significant progress under the present circumstances.

It certainly can’t do any harm to negotiate with the Israelis, even if this particular Israeli cabinet is unlikely to be forthcoming on all that much, though they should be tested on that. But it’s very helpful in developing stronger relations with the United States, the Europeans and others, which are essential to achieving most vital Palestinian national goals and to sustaining and expanding the state building project which is a potential game-changer. Apart from people like the reader feeling emotionally frustrated, an affect I share but do not indulge, at the spectacle of negotiations that are not likely to yield much benefits in the coming few months, I can’t see any harm at all in them and I do see significant benefits other than actually achieving a permanent status agreement in the next few months. In particular, if Palestinian willingness to negotiate strengthens international support and protection for the state and institution building program and solidifies the international impression that Palestinians are sincere and ready for peace and that the principal obstacles come from the Israeli side, this is extremely helpful and useful, and I think that’s obvious. And consider the damage to Palestinian diplomacy if they simply refused to cooperate with talks that the US, Europeans and Arabs are urging them to engage. This would make Israel’s argument that there is no Palestinian partner suddenly sound reasonable and, in turn, provide cover for continuing and deepening the occupation.

The only alternative to understanding the usefulness of negotiations, even when they are unlikely to yield immediate-term breakthroughs, and the dangers of refusing to engage in them, is to either indulge in ridiculous fantasies about military victory or Israel suddenly somehow imploding or disappearing, or to throw up one’s hands and say, “the conflict and the occupation are going to continue for the foreseeable future and there’s nothing we can do about that, so why bother.” I’m not willing to do that, first because I find the reality of the occupation totally unacceptable and even a slim chance to end it is worth pursuing, and also because I have very grave concerns that if the conflict continues, it will further metastasize and morph into a religious conflict led by bearded fanatics on both sides over the will of God and holy places and therefore become much harder to resolve and much more dangerous for Israelis, Palestinians and all of their neighbors, if not the whole world.

I do know people who have, in fact, thrown up their hands and walked away, or who say “negotiations can’t work and neither can anything else so let’s just not bother.” Indeed, it’s a line of thinking with some influential proponents in the Washington foreign policy community. To me, however, this is the height of irresponsibility, and not just for Palestinians, but for Americans too. I think Palestinians should pursue negotiations for the reasons cited above, bolstered by the additional strategies cited above, because I don’t think they can walk away from their own struggle and, in the end, if they are to ever live decent lives, free of occupation and oppression, it’s going to require an agreement with Israel. I think measures that constructively and peacefully challenge the occupation are absolutely crucial, and I see the development of these new Palestinian tactics as an exceptionally important development because they really are confronting the occupation in quite a serious and potentially effective manner without the unbearable costs of quixotic armed struggle or completely counterproductive violence such as we saw during the second intifada.

The bottom line for the reader and everyone who shares this sentiment (and I’ll be the first to admit, you came by it honestly and I experience the same emotions but will not be ruled by them) is: what alternative do you propose? Even people who advocate a single democratic state for all in the region must know that the only means of achieving this outcome has to be a negotiated agreement, and all of their models (South Africa, Northern Ireland, etc.) point to that. Violence and political tactics deployed by the ANC and the IRA were ultimately designed to enhance their leverage during negotiations. Any tactic one can possibly imagine, if rationally deployed, would have to be intended to strengthen one’s hand in some future negotiation. I suppose one might say, “yes, but in this case these are the wrong negotiations.” That’s another story. The reader is attacking the notion of negotiations per se, and I think that is very hard to sustain. One only sensibly refuses to negotiate with those one can safely ignore or plausibly defeat. Neither of those applies in this case, and I think that’s completely obvious. Once one agrees with the principle of negotiations, it’s very difficult to critique the Palestinian decision to engage in them with Israel at this time because of the rather obvious benefits cited above. The only way to sustain this point of view is to go back to a mentality defined by the three nos of the Khartoum Declaration of 1967.

For decades based on this logic, the Arabs and the Palestinians refused to negotiate with Israel and achieved nothing. The reader points out, rightly, that 17 years of negotiations — or rather an era of negotiations since there haven’t been actual negotiations during most of that time — haven’t resulted in an end to the occupation yet. And it may never. But anyone who denounces the idea of negotiations needs to explain very clearly what their alternative is, what they seek and how, exactly, they intend to accomplish it. The PLO has a pretty clear strategy to achieve a very clear goal, and furthermore it has been rather dynamically enhanced by new tactics developed on the ground in the West Bank over the past few months. It’s perfectly reasonable to critique it, but not without proposing an alternative with which we can draw a contrast, both in terms of potential efficacy and probable outcome. We need to hear a clear goal, a coherent strategy and plausibly effective tactics in order to take any alternative seriously. The main debate among Palestinians is between nationalists led by the PLO and Islamists led by Hamas, and I think the contrast between the consequences of their two policies is extremely clear given the conditions in the West Bank and those in Gaza. So, my counter-question to the reader and everyone else who condemns negotiations is: what is your alternative precisely? And it had better be a scenario that doesn’t eventually lead back to the bargaining table, or this isn’t much of a critique.

I’m frequently accused of being an optimist or a Pollyanna, which is, of course, completely wrong. In fact I wrote an Ibishblog posting last year criticizing both optimism and pessimism as politically invalid categories because they dwell on irrational affects rather than likelihoods based on existing forces that produce outcomes. I’m not an optimist at all, and I have frequently said that the most likely scenario is continued conflict and occupation leading to an increasingly bitter, intractable and religious war that will yield no winners. Part of my passion for continuing to work on this issue is a desperate desire to prevent such a disastrous turn of events. But just because I think a negotiated agreement is less likely than an ever-deteriorating conflict doesn’t mean I’m willing to accept that situation. I’m going to do whatever I can to try to help prevent the Israelis and the Palestinians from going down this mutually suicidal path. Everyone should.

As a consequence of this approach, my colleagues and I at ATFP are always looking for what we can work with in any given situation rather than focusing on a disengaged or detached evaluation, or an emotional response. We are goal-oriented, specifically aiming to promote peace based on an end to the occupation, and for that reason we are only interested in that which will help us in promoting that goal. This is not common in Arab-American and pro-Palestinian circles, in which lamentation is the general rule and purposive, strategic politics are not usually understood. It’s therefore quite common for our goal-oriented approach which emphasizes that which is useful to our aims to be misunderstood as some kind of “optimism.” But it’s not optimism at all. It’s affect-free. Instead it simply reflects a single-minded desire to advance a single issue and to always look for the means of doing that under all circumstances and given any development, no matter how challenging it may be. This is the difference between thinking and feeling. Personally, I prefer thinking.